, and now Calvin must expect a
rival in the first pamphleteer of Germany, Luther himself. It is certain
that Calvin was acquainted with the writings of the Saxon monk against
Eck, Tetzel, Prierias, Latomus, and the Sorbonnists. He must be praised
for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a
temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in
caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words,
and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By
nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in
enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in use beyond the
Rhine.

Nor had he at his service those German smoking-houses, where, of an
evening, among the companions of gay science, his weary mind might have
revived its energies. In France the monks did not resort to taverns.
Calvin was, therefore, everything he was destined to become: an adroit,
biting disputant, ready at retort, but without warmth or enthusiasm. He
loves to bear testimony in his own behalf, that "he did not indulge his
wrath, except modestly; that he always made it a rule to set aside
outrageous or biting expressions; that he almost always moderated his
style, which was better adapted to instruct than to drive forcibly, in
such sort, however, that it may ever attract those who would not be
led." One must see that, with such humor and style, Calvin might have
died forgotten, in some little benefice of Swabia, and that he was never
formed for raising storms, but only for using them.

At this epoch the grand agitator of society was first, society itself,
and then Luther, that great pamphleteer, "whose books are quite full of
demons," who drove humanity into the paths of a revolution, for which
all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the
wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwind. Not that the latter does not
sometimes rise even to wrath, but it is a wrath which savors of labor
and which he pursues as a rhymester would a rebellious epithet. Besides,
he is good enough to repent for it, as if this wrath burned the face
over which it glowed. "I have presented some things," he murmurs, "a
little sharply, even roughly said, which, peradventure, may offend the
delicate ears of some. But, as I am aware there are some good persons
who have conceived such affection for this dream of the sleep of souls,
I would not have them offended with m