This letter illustrates well traits of Erasmus which were to become very marked in his future work. He was already showing that joy in the idea of being persecuted which later seems to have reacted on his memory of his earliest years. It flattered his vanity to think that men cared enough about him to abuse him, and such abuse gave him an added claim upon the devotion of his friends. His nature demanded affection and admiration, and he was ready to repay them in kind, so long as he thereby incurred no lasting or burdensome obligation. [Illustration: HOLBEIN'S STUDIES FOR THE HANDS OF ERASMUS.] These singular contradictions of Erasmus' nature are most clearly brought out in his early correspondence with his friend Battus, a young man whom he met at Cambrai, and who became tutor to the son of the Marchioness of Veere. In connection with Battus, also, we learn to know Erasmus for the first time as a suitor for patronage. The Battus letters, some score in number, cover the period just before and just after his first trip to England, that is, about the year 1500. We are to think of him at this time as firmly fixed in his determination to be a scholar and, to this end, to get to Italy as soon as ever it might be possible. He wanted to take his doctor's degree there, and thought of Italy as a scholar's paradise. But to gain this great privilege he was not prepared for every sacrifice. One is apt to think of Erasmus as a wanderer, and with good reason, but after all he had little of the typical Bohemian in him. He was, it is true, a poor youth, but his poverty was always a comfortable poverty. There was nothing, apparently, to prevent him from taking his staff in his hand and making his way on foot, if need were, as many another poor scholar had done, to the goal of his desires. That was Luther's method of seeing Italy, under a very different impulse. Probably nothing would have done so much to chase away the megrims that were always pestering him. He would have had less reason to complain of his digestion and his bad sleeping--but if he could not have complained he would, perhaps, have been unhappier still. Meanwhile, he had to have books, he must eat only just such food as seemed to suit him, he kept a horse, and could not think of a journey without at least one servant and two horses. Italy seemed indefinitely far away. Private tutoring was a slippery source of revenue; frequent visitations of the plague scattered his pupils and he had to cast about him for ways and means. There were two resources: a place with an income and, presumably, with duties attached to it, or a patron. For obvious reasons, he preferred the latter.