yed his
position, feeling that he was fitted for it; but he was not puffed up.
In his dreams of what he would do with his life, he had ever seen
himself advancing not the name of Erasmus but the glory of God. In
his later years he became impatient of criticism, and resented with
great bitterness even difference of opinion, unless expressed with the
utmost caution; to hostile critics his language is often quite
intolerable. But the spirit underlying this is not mere vanity. No
doubt it wounded him to be evil spoken of, to have his pre-eminence
called in question, to be shown to have made mistakes: but the real
ground of his resentment was rather vexation that anything should
arise to mar the unanimity of the humanist advance toward wider
knowledge. Conscious of singleness of purpose, it was a profound
disappointment to him to have his sincerity doubted, to be treated as
an enemy by men who should have been his friends.

Into the discord of the years that followed I do not propose to enter.
They were years of disappointment to Erasmus; disappointment that grew
ever deeper, as he saw the steady growth of reform broken by the
sudden shocks of the Reformation and barred by subsequent reaction.
Throughout it all he never lost his faith in the spread of knowledge,
and gave his energies consistently to help this great cause. He
produced more editions of the Fathers, either wholly or in part:
Cyprian, Arnobius, Hilary, Jerome again, Chrysostom, Irenaeus,
Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Lactantius, Alger, Basil, Haymo, and
Origen; the last named in the concluding months of his life. The
storms that beat round him could not stir him from his principles. To
neither reformer nor reactionary would he concede one jot, and in
consequence from each side he was vilified. He was drawn into a series
of deplorable controversies, which estranged him from many; but of his
real friends he lost not one. It is pleasant to see the devotion with
which Beatus Rhenanus and Boniface Amerbach comforted his last years;
never wavering in the service to which they had plighted themselves in
the enthusiasm of youth.

The chance survival of the following note enables us to stand by
Erasmus' bedside in his last hours. It was written by one of the
Frobens, possibly his godson and namesake, Erasmius, to Boniface
Amerbach, and it may be dated early in July 1536, perhaps on the 11th,
the last sunset that Erasmus was to see. 'I have just visited the
Master, b