be admired for his
remarkable good sense. If only you had likewise found some Lysippus[92]
to cast the medal! I have the medal of you on the righthand wall of my
bedroom, the painting on the left; whether writing or walking up and
down, I have Willibald before my eyes, so that if I wanted to forget you
I could not. Though I have a more retentive memory for friends than for
anything else. Certainly Willibald could not be forgotten by me, even
were there no memento, no portraits, no letters to refresh my memory of
him. There is another very pleasant thing--the portraits often occasion
a talk about you when my friends come to visit me. If only our letters
travelled safely, how little we should miss of each other! You have a
medal of me. I should not object to having my portrait painted by
Duerer,[93] that great artist; but how this can be done I do not see.
Once at Brussels he sketched me, but after a start had been made the
work was interrupted by callers from the Court. Though I have long been
a sad model for painters, and am likely to become a sadder one still as
the days go on.[94] I read with pleasure what you write, as witty as it
is wise, on the agitations of certain persons who are destroying the
evangelical movement, to which they imagine themselves to be doing
splendid service: and I have much to tell you in my turn about this. But
this will be another time, when I have more leisure. Farewell.

XVII. TO MARTIN LUTHER

Basle, 11 April 1526

To Martin Luther, greetings:

... Your letter has been delivered too late;[95] but had it arrived in
the best of time, it would not have moved me one whit. I am not so
simple as to be appeased by one or two pleasantries or soothed by
flattery after receiving so many more than mortal wounds. Your nature is
by now known to all the world, but you have so tempered your pen that
never have you written against anyone so frenziedly, nay, what is more
abominable, so maliciously. Now it occurs to you that you are a weak
sinner, whereas at other times you insist almost on being taken for God.
You are a man, as you write, of violent temperament, and you take
pleasure in this remarkable argument. Why then did you not pour forth
this marvellous piece of invective on the Bishop of Rochester[96] or on
Cochleus?[97] They attack you personally and provoke you with insults,
while my _Diatribe_[98] was a courteous disputation. And what has all
this to do with the subject--all this facetiou