m, some food for an intellect
craving for classic antiquity, and friendships with men of the same turn
of mind. There were three who especially attracted him. Of the
schoolfellow who had induced him to become a monk, we hear no more. His
friends are Servatius Roger of Rotterdam and William Hermans of Gouda,
both his companions at Steyn, and the older Cornelius Gerard of Gouda,
usually called Aurelius (a quasi-latinization of Goudanus), who spent
most of his time in the monastery of Lopsen, near Leyden. With them he
read and conversed sociably and jestingly; with them he exchanged
letters when they were not together.

Out of the letters to Servatius there rises the picture of an Erasmus
whom we shall never find again--a young man of more than feminine
sensitiveness; of a languishing need for sentimental friendship. In
writing to Servatius, Erasmus runs the whole gamut of an ardent lover.
As often as the image of his friend presents itself to his mind tears
break from his eyes. Weeping he re-reads his friend's letter every hour.
But he is mortally dejected and anxious, for the friend proves averse to
this excessive attachment. 'What do you want from me?' he asks. 'What is
wrong with you?' the other replies. Erasmus cannot bear to find that
this friendship is not fully returned. 'Do not be so reserved; do tell
me what is wrong! I repose my hope in you alone; I have become yours so
completely that you have left me naught of myself. You know my
pusillanimity, which when it has no one on whom to lean and rest, makes
me so desperate that life becomes a burden.'

Let us remember this. Erasmus never again expresses himself so
passionately. He has given us here the clue by which we may understand
much of what he becomes in his later years.

These letters have sometimes been taken as mere literary exercises; the
weakness they betray and the complete absence of all reticence, seem to
tally ill with his habit of cloaking his most intimate feelings which,
afterwards, Erasmus never quite relinquishes. Dr. Allen, who leaves this
question undecided, nevertheless inclines to regard the letters as
sincere effusions, and to me they seem so, incontestably. This exuberant
friendship accords quite well with the times and the person.

Sentimental friendships were as much in vogue in secular circles during
the fifteenth century as towards the end of the eighteenth century. Each
court had its pairs of friends, who dressed alike, and shared ro