"As for your serious advice that I should pay my court to Fortune, I acknowledge the true and friendly counsel, and I will try it, though my mind rebels against it most strongly and predicts no good and happy outcome. If I had exposed myself to the risks of Fortune I should have put myself under the laws of a game, and, if I had got beaten, should be making the best of it, knowing, as I do, that this is just Fortune's trick, to set up some and restore others as she pleases. But I thought I had provided myself against having anything to do with this wanton mistress, since Mountjoy had brought me into harbour and into a settled thing. Nor does the kindness of Fortune towards others, no matter how unworthy, trouble me one particle, so help me God! The success of you and the like of you brings me a real and uncommon pleasure. Even if I were compelled to go into a calculation of my merits, my present fortune would seem beyond my deserts, for I measure myself by my own foot and not by your praises." Little inclined as Erasmus was to try his hand at court, it was not for lack of theories as to how one might best get on there. He gives Ammonius the benefit of them in this classic passage[90]: [90] iii.¹, 122-B. "Now then I, the sow, will proceed to teach Minerva; but, since you forbid it, I will not philosophise too much. The first thing is, give your forehead such a rubbing that you will never blush at anything. Mix yourself in everybody's business. Elbow aside everyone you can. Love no one and hate no one with your whole heart, but measure all things by your own advantage. Let the whole ordering of your life be turned to this one aim. Give nothing without hope of a return; agree to all things with all men. 'But,' you say, 'these are commonplaces.' Well, then, since you insist upon it, I will give you a special piece of advice, but in your ear, mind you. You know the jealousy of these Britons; make use of it for your own good. Ride two horses at once. Hire various suitors to keep at you. Threaten to leave and begin to pack up. Show letters calling you away with great promises; take yourself off somewhere, that absence may sharpen their desire for you." This is a very exact description of Erasmus' own tactics in the Battus days, and continues to fit his action very well whenever he was considering a change of residence. In 1511 he writes to Ammonius: "If you have any trustworthy news, I wish you would let me know it. I want especially to hear whether Julius is really playing Julius, and whether Christ keeps up his ancient custom of specially trying with the storms of adverse fortune those whom he desires to make specially his own." Writing from Queen's College in August, 1511, he says: