"In your offer of money I recognise your ancient good feeling toward me and I thank you with all my heart. But there is one phrase, though you use it in jest, that stings me to the soul:--'if you would beg humbly.' Perhaps you mean, and very properly, that to bear my lot with such impatience comes wholly from human pride, for, indeed, a gentle and Christian spirit makes the best of everything. Still more, however, I marvel how you put together humility and shamelessness: for you say, 'if you would beg humbly and make your demand shamelessly.' If, according to common usage, you mean by humility the opposite of arrogance, how are impudence and modesty to be put together? But if by 'humbly' you mean 'servilely' and 'abjectly' you differ very much from Seneca, my dear Colet, who thinks that nothing comes higher than what is bought with prayers, and that he does a far from friendly service who demands of his friend that lowly word, 'I beg you.' Socrates once said, conversing with some friends:--'I should have bought me a cloak to-day if I had had the money,' and Seneca says:--'he gave too late who gave after those words.' ... "But now, I pray you, what could be more shameless than I, who have been a public beggar all this time in England? From the archbishop I have had so much that it would be more than infamous to take any more, even if he should offer it. From N. I have begged boldly enough, but as I asked without shame so has he without shame repulsed me. Why now I seem too shameless even to my dear Linacre, who, when he saw me going away from London with barely six angels in my pocket, and knew how feeble my health was, and that winter was coming on, yet eagerly warned me to spare the archbishop, to spare Mountjoy! But I will rather pull myself together and learn to bear my poverty bravely. Oh! that was a friendly counsel! This is why I especially loathe my fate, that it does not permit me to be a modest man. As long as my strength would carry me, it was a pleasure to hide my need--now I cannot do that unless I choose to neglect my life. And still I am not yet so lost to shame that I ask all things of everyone. From others I ask not, lest I get a refusal, but from you with what face, pray, can I ask? Especially since you yourself have none too much of this kind of goods. Yet, if it is boldness you like, I will end my letter with the very boldest clause I can. I cannot so put aside all shame as to beg of you with no excuse,--but I am not so proud as to refuse a gift, if such a friend as you should give it me willingly, especially in the present state of my affairs." [Illustration: CARDINAL XIMENES. FROM A PORTRAIT BY O. E. WAGSTAFF, IN THE FLORENCE GALLERY.]