Above all, he says, they worked upon his acute sense of shame. If he should turn back now he would be disgraced in the sight of God and man. His friends and guardians again joined in the cry and finally "by baseness they conquered. The youth, with abhorrence in his heart and with reluctant words, was compelled to take the cowl, precisely as captives in war offer their hands to the victor to be bound, or as conquered men go through protracted torments, not because they will, but because it pleases their master. He overcame his spirit, but no man can make his body over new. The youth did as men in prison do, consoled himself with study as far as it was permitted him;--for this had to be done secretly, while drunkenness was openly tolerated." It has seemed worth while to follow rather closely this account of his early years, as given chiefly by Erasmus himself, partly because it is almost our only source of information and partly because it gives at the outset so good an illustration of his way of dressing up every subject he touched to suit the occasion.[23] His biographers have generally done little more than copy out the Grunnius letter as an authentic record of his early experience, and its contents have become the common property of our books of reference. It must, however, be carefully studied in view of the circumstances under which it was written and by comparison with the little we can learn from other sources. Especially must all Erasmus' later criticism of the monastic life be referred to one of his earliest literary performances, the treatise, On the Contempt of the World (_de contemptu mundi_), written, probably, while he was still at Steyn, and when he was about twenty years old. This is an essay on the charms of the monastery as compared to "the world." It purports to be written by a monk to a nephew who was considering how his life should be spent. Excepting in the concluding paragraph there is hardly an indication of even a question as to the superiority of the solitary life over the life of society. The tone throughout is serious to the point of dulness. There is hardly a trace of the sparkle and liveliness which marked most of Erasmus' later writing. He begins with the same laboured comparison between human life and a troubled sea which he later ridicules:--the sea with its storms, its hidden rocks, its violent alternations, its siren voices luring the sailor to destruction. There is danger on the land, but one is far nearer to it on the sea. Life offers many joys, but none to compare with safety. Earthly joys are so hedged about with miseries that they lose their proper charm. [23] On the question of the value of Erasmus' letter see note to p. 223. [Illustration: PARISH CHURCH AT ALDINGTON, KENT. FROM KNIGHT'S "LIFE OF ERASMUS."]