ut without his knowing. He seems to me to fail very much: for
his tongue cleaves to his palate, so that you can scarcely understand
him when he speaks. He is drawing his breath so deep and quick, that I
cannot but wonder whether he will live through the night. So far he
has taken nothing to-day except some chicken-broth. I have sent for
Sebastian <Munster, the Hebraist>. If he comes, I will have him
introduced into the room, but without the Master's knowledge, in order
that he may hear what I have heard. I am sending you this word, so
that you may come quickly.'

Erasmus' last words were in his own Dutch speech: 'Liever Got'.

No account of Erasmus must omit to tell how he laboured for peace.
Well he might. In his youth he had seen his native Holland torn
between the Hoeks and the Cabeljaus, the Duke of Gueldres and the
Bishop of Utrecht, with occasional intervention by higher powers. Year
after year the war had dragged on, with no decisive settlement, no
relief to the poor. One of his friends, Cornelius Gerard, wrote a
prose narrative of it; another, William Herman, composed a poem of
Holland weeping for her children and would not be comforted. _Dulce
bellum inexpertis._ War sometimes seems purifying and ennobling to
those whose own lives have never been jeoparded, who have never seen
men die: but not so to those who have known and suffered. Throughout
his life Erasmus never wearied of ensuing peace; and for its sake he
reproved even kings. In 1504 he was allowed to deliver a panegyric of
congratulation before the Archduke Philip the Fair, who had just
returned from Spain to the Netherlands; and after sketching a picture
of a model prince, inculcated upon him the duty of maintaining peace.
In 1514 he wrote to one of his patrons, brother of the Bishop of
Cambray, a letter on the wickedness of war, obviously designed for
publication and actually translated into German by an admirer a few
years later, to give it wider circulation. In 1515 the enlarged
_Adagia_ contained an essay on the same theme, under the title quoted
above: words which, translated into English, were again and again
reprinted during the nineteenth century by Peace Associations and the
Society of Friends. In 1516 he was appointed Councillor to Philip's
son, Charles, who at 16 had just succeeded to the crowns of Spain. His
first offering to his young sovereign was counsel on the training of a
Christian prince, with due emphasis on his obligations for pea