Hutten sends him his works and begs for his friendship. Erasmus replies with reserve, counsels him to keep out of fights, to devote himself to the Muses, and to preserve his own dignity. Then we have the famous and charming letter[142] in which Erasmus describes to Hutten the work and character of Thomas More. But soon it is evident that Hutten is getting out of all patience with Erasmus. The letters of 1518 and 1519, with their anxious balancing of views, were in circulation, and had made upon this upright and downright fighting man the impression of a trimming, fretful, petty spirit. In August, 1520, he writes to Erasmus in a totally altered style.[143] He has now no time or temper for compliments. In short, rapid sentences he puts the case to the great man as one in which all shilly-shallying was out of place. [142] iii.¹, 472. [143] _Hutteni opera_, ed. Böcking, 1859, i., 367. [Illustration: ULRICH VON HUTTEN. FROM A CONTEMPORARY WOODCUT.] "While Reuchlin's affair was all in a glow, you seemed to be in a more weakly terror of those people [_istos_] than you ought to have been. And now in Luther's case, you have been trying as hard as you can to persuade his enemies that you were as far as possible from defending the common good of the Christian world, while they knew you really believed just the opposite. That does not seem to be an altogether becoming thing to do.... You know with what glee they are carrying about certain letters of yours in which while you are trying to escape from blame, you are putting blame on others in a hateful fashion enough. In the same way you have been abusing the _Epistolæ obscurorum_, though you admired them powerfully once; and you are damning Luther because he has set in motion some things that ought not to have been moved, when you yourself have been handling the same subjects everywhere throughout your writings. And yet you will never make them believe that you are not desirous of the same things. You will just hurt us and at the same time will not pacify them. You are irritating the more and rousing hatred by trying to hide a thing so open as this."