"I will now go back to your work, which all are praising to the skies. Above all the archbishop of Canterbury was so pleased and delighted, that I could not get it out of his hands. 'But,' you will say, 'so far nothing but praises.' The same archbishop promises you a living if you will return and has given me five pounds cash to be sent to you for the journey. I add as much myself, not really as a gift, for this is not the kind of thing to be called a gift, but only that you may hasten to us and no longer torment us with longing for you. "Finally, there remains only this bit of advice to give: don't imagine that anything can be more grateful to me than your letters or that I could be offended by anything from you. I am exceedingly troubled that your health has become impaired in Italy; you know I was never greatly in favour of your going there. But when I see how much work you accomplished and how much fame you have won there, by Jove! I am sorry I did not go with you. For I think that such learning and such fame would be well bought with hunger, poverty, and pain, nay, even with death. Please find enclosed a draft for the money; look out for your health and come to us as soon as you can." Certainly a more than friendly letter. True, Mountjoy makes no definite promises on his own account, but his glowing picture of the great times coming for English letters was enough to fire the ambition of a less credulous scholar than Erasmus. The definite promise from Archbishop Warham of a church-living and the earnest of a gift for travelling expenses were attractions not to be resisted. Erasmus arrived in England in 1509, and remained there until the early part of 1514. Of these nearly five years we have but little satisfactory account. There is no indication that it was anyone's affair to look after him in any way. We know that he lived chiefly at Cambridge and London. He may even have made a short trip to the Continent in the interval. He was evidently much concerned with money matters, making continual complaints of poverty; but at the same time he lived in apparent comfort, not to say a kind of luxury. What he meant by poverty was the absence of a sufficient estate from which to live as he would have liked to live. He certainly had money more or less regularly from Mountjoy, and at some time during his English residence he was also handsomely furnished with a regular income by Warham. The peculiar thing about these English pensions was that they were generally paid when due, and that was more than could be said of any of the other benefits promised to Erasmus, either before or afterward.