Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Erasmus did not at once accept Colet’s proposition in 1499 that he should stay and teach in Oxford.  Whether provision was offered him or not, we do not know:  he might perhaps have stayed on by right at St. Mary’s, but he loved not the rule.  We do know, however, that at Paris there certainly was no provision for him.  In quest of Greek, in quest of the proper equipment for his life’s work, he went back to the old precarious existence, pupils and starvation, the dependence and the flattery that he loathed.  It is this last, indeed, that puts the sting into his correspondence with Batt.  That loyal friend, ever coaxing money out of his complacent and generous patroness for dispatch to Paris, would now and then ask for a letter to her, to make the claims of the absent more vivid.  At this Erasmus would boil over:  ‘Letters,’ he writes, ’it’s always letters.  You seem to think I am made of adamant:  or perhaps that I have nothing else to do.’  ’There is nothing I detest more than these sycophantic epistles.’  Well he might; for this is the sort of thing he wrote.

You will remember that the Lady of Veere was named Anne of Borsselen.  A letter of Erasmus to her begins:  ’Three Annas were known to the ancients; the sister of Dido, whom the Muses of the Romans have consecrated to immortality; the wife of Elkanah, with whose praises Jewish records resound; and the mother of the Virgin, who is the object of Christian worship.  Would that my poor talents might avail, that posterity may know of your piety and snow-white purity, and count you the fourth member of this glorious band!  It was no mere chance that conferred upon you this name, making your likeness to them complete.  Were they noble?  So are you.  Did they excel in piety?  Yours, too, redounds to heaven.  Were they steadfast in affliction?  Alas that here, too, you are constrained to resemble them.  Yet in my sorrow comfort comes from this thought, that God sends suffering to bring strength.  Affliction it was that made the courage of Hercules, of Aeneas, of Ulysses shine forth, that proved the patience of Job.’  This, of course, is only a brief epitome.  After a great deal more in this strain, he concludes:  ’I send you a poem to St. Anne and some prayers to address to the Virgin.  She is ever ready to hear the prayers of virgins, and you I count not a widow, but a virgin.  That when only a child you consented to marry, was mere deference to the bidding of your parents and the future of your race; and your wedded life was a model of patience.  That now, when still no more than a girl, you repel so many suitors is further proof of your maiden heart.  If, as I confidently presage, you persevere in this high course, I shall count you not amongst the virgins of Scripture innumerable, not amongst the eighty concubines of Solomon, but, with (I am sure) the approval of Jerome, among the fifty queens.’