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, but 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