as I needed, but would gladly give fifteen angels. When you repeated this with an eager face, I asked if you thought that was enough. You answered eagerly again that you would willingly pay that. Then I said I would gladly take it. This reminder will perhaps bring the matter to your memory. I might pile up more arguments, if you had not faith in me of your own accord. There are some, and friends, too,--for I have no dealings with enemies and don't value their words one hair,--who say that you are a little hard, and in giving money a trifle exacting. They say that this does not come from meanness--so I understand them--but because from the very gentleness of your nature you cannot resist those who press and urge themselves upon you, and are the less generous with your modest friends because you cannot satisfy both.... If it would not burden you to send me the remnant of what you promised, as my affairs are at present, I will take it, not as a debt, but as a gift to be repaid when I can do so. I was sorry to hear, at the end of your letter, that you were so unusually burdened by business cares. I could wish you were as far as possible removed from the cares of this world, not for fear that the world's allurements can lay hold upon you, but because I should like to see such genius, eloquence, and learning as yours wholly devoted to Christ. If you cannot escape, look out that you do not sink deeper and deeper. It might be better to fail than to buy success at so great a price, for the highest good is peace of mind. These are the thorns that accompany riches.... I have finished the collation of the New Testament and am going on to Jerome. When I have finished him I will fly to you." [92] _De duplici copia verborum et rerum._ Singular that in all Erasmus' complaints of his Cambridge life he makes no reference to any failure on the part of the authorities to pay him his due stipend. It seems clear either that he held no position which carried a salary with it, or that his begging was for "extras" beyond the modest needs of a celibate scholar. Some light is thrown upon this point in a letter to Colet, dated October, 1513, but quite as likely belonging, as Mr. Drummond suggests, in 1511. "I am now wholly absorbed in the _Copia_, so that it seems like a regular enigma to be in the midst of plenty [_copia_] and yet in the depths of want. And would that I might bring both to a conclusion at once; for I will quickly make an end of my _Copia_ if only the Muses will favour my studies more than Fortune has up to the present time favoured my estate....