omparably
retentive and capacious memory he writes at haphazard. He never becomes
anacoluthic; his talent is too refined and sure for that; but he does
repeat himself and is unnecessarily circumstantial. 'I rather pour out
than write everything,' he says. He compares his publications to
parturitions, nay, to abortions. He does not select his subjects, he
tumbles into them, and having once taken up a subject he finishes
without intermission. For years he has read only _tumultuarie_, up and
down all literature; he no longer finds time really to refresh his mind
by reading, and to work so as to please himself. On that account he
envied Budaeus.

'Do not publish too hastily,' More warns him: 'you are watched to be
caught in inexactitudes.' Erasmus knows it: he will correct all later,
he will ever have to revise and to polish everything. He hates the
labour of revising and correcting, but he submits to it, and works
passionately, 'in the treadmill of Basle', and, he says, finishes the
work of six years in eight months.

In that recklessness and precipitation with which Erasmus labours there
is again one of the unsolved contradictions of his being. He _is_
precipitate and careless; he _wants_ to be careful and cautious; his
mind drives him to be the first, his nature restrains him, but usually
only after the word has been written and published. The result is a
continual intermingling of explosion and reserve.

The way in which Erasmus always tries to shirk definite statements
irritates us. How carefully he always tries to represent the
_Colloquies_, in which he had spontaneously revealed so much of his
inner convictions, as mere trifling committed to paper to please his
friends. They are only meant to teach correct Latin! And if anything is
said in them touching matters of faith, it is not I who say it, is it?
As often as he censures classes or offices in the _Adagia_, princes
above all, he warns the readers not to regard his words as aimed at
particular persons.

Erasmus was a master of reserve. He knew, even when he held definite
views, how to avoid direct decisions, not only from caution, but also
because he saw the eternal ambiguity of human issues.

Erasmus ascribes to himself an unusual horror of lies. On seeing a liar,
he says, he was corporeally affected. As a boy he already violently
disliked mendacious boys, such as the little braggart of whom he tells
in the _Colloquies_. That this reaction of aversion is gen