Delighted as he plainly was with everything and everybody in England, better treated than he had ever been in his life, why did not Erasmus take his own advice and settle down there in some regular occupation? So cosmopolitan a genius as his could hardly have dreaded a change of residence; the scholar's home was wherever the sun shone, and certainly never was man more free to follow the bent of his own wishes than was Erasmus. That the idea was not a strange one to him is clear from many indications. Especially was it forced upon him by a suggestion from Colet that he might stay on at Oxford and join him in what seemed then likely to be his life-work of expounding the fundamental documents of Christianity upon the "new" basis of science and common sense. What Colet's arguments were on this point we can only guess from a reply of Erasmus, but they seem to have been such as would come naturally from one scholar to another in whom he thought he recognised a spirit kindred to his own. Colet lived in that new world of thought which was the old, and saw before him the mission of clearing away the mediæval rubbish that had piled up in the long interval between the really old theology of the Greek Fathers and the new thought of his own times. And here he seemed to have found the man of all others best fitted to help him--young, learned in the language and filled with the spirit of the ancients, free from all ties of family or home and, apparently, deeply serious in his interest in religious things. Colet had had a test of his quality in several active discussions on points of theology, which had brought out at once his learning and his desire for truth even at the sacrifice of his own less well-considered opinions. Erasmus had shown a docility in revising his judgments in very marked contrast to his firmness when dealing with other opponents. The difference was, that in facing Colet he found an opponent who was using his own weapons with equal skill and even greater courage. In the letter of Erasmus declining to remain at Oxford we hear nothing of the question of ways and means. It is impossible that it should not have been in his mind, but there is every reason to suppose that it did not influence his decision. The only trustworthy patron he had yet found was an Englishman; there was a chance of a university appointment, and, failing this, the prospect of private pupils was better in England than anywhere else. We are told _ad nauseam_ of a considerable money loss which he suffered on leaving England. So that we are sure almost beyond a doubt that his reasons for declining what must have been a very tempting proposition were somehow connected with his larger scholarly ambitions. [48]Of course he makes as much as possible of his own modesty: Colet "is (to quote Plautus) asking water of a rock." How should he have the face to teach what he has never learned; how warm the frost of others when he himself was all