We have but one letter[37] from Erasmus to the lady of his hopes. It was written after his return from England and is an excellent illustration of the type of literature it represents. It is really an essay in classical composition, with its object, the getting of money, partly concealed under the cover of literary digression. This was probably the kind of thing which Erasmus liked to call _nugæ_ and which he affected to consider a waste of time. He begins with a fantastic allusion to three other Annas, the sister of Dido, the mother of Samuel, and the grandmother of Jesus. These have all been sufficiently lauded by great writers. He will now proceed to add her as a worthy fourth to the list. We may spare ourselves his fulsome eulogies of the woman whom he has treated in his letters to Battus with something pretty close to contempt, and will quote only a specimen. He has shown how the great men of antiquity favoured the scholars of their day:-- [37] iii.¹, 83. "But I, thou muse of mine, would not change thee for any Mæcenas or any Cæsar. As for what I can give in return, I will strive, as far as this little talent and this manly strength of mine may go, that future ages shall know my Mæcenas and shall marvel that one woman at the ends of the earth strove to revive by her benevolence the cause of letters corrupted by the ignorance of the unskilled, cast down by the fault of princes, neglected through the indolence of men; that she would not suffer the labours of Erasmus, deserted by splendid promise-makers, despoiled by a tyrant, buffeted by all the blows of fortune, to fall away into poverty. Go on then, as thou hast begun. My writings, thy foster-children, stretch forth suppliant hands to thee and beseech thee by the fortune which thou spurnest when favourable and bearest bravely when hostile, by their own ever hostile fates, against which they stand by thy favour alone, and by the love of that excellent queen--I mean the ancient Theology--whom the divine Psalmist (as Jerome interprets) says stood at the right hand of God, not in foul rags as she is now seen in the fooleries of the sophists, but in golden vestments, girt with varied colours, to whose recovery from the mould all my vigils are devoted." Then he becomes more explicit: two things he must have,--the trip to Italy and the doctor's degree, both of them really follies; he says: