Erasmus was chosen for this task and fulfilled it with success if not with enthusiasm. His extravagant phrases of laudation, in which the prince is credited with almost more than human qualities, cannot interest us. They are purely conventional and can convince us neither of the prince's merit nor of the orator's insincerity. More important for us is the evidence that even through such formal surroundings, the originality of the man cannot fail to make itself here and there felt. The oration was delivered in the ducal palace at Brussels. In its printed form it fills over twenty folio pages and can hardly have occupied less than three or four hours in delivery. One would imagine that even the divine virtues of the young prince could hardly have kept up his spirits while these ponderous paragraphs were being read to him, and it is certainly to be hoped that he was let off with an abbreviated edition. He may well have yawned over the tedious narrative of his journey to Spain and his magnificent reception in France, but he was, probably seldom privileged to hear such sound instruction as Erasmus dealt out to him from point to point of his discourse.[65] [65] iv., 529-F. "Even to-day," said the orator, "there are not wanting those who croak into the ears of kings such stuff as this:--'Why should you hesitate? Have you forgotten that you are a prince? Is not your pleasure the law? It is the part of kings to live not by rule but by the lust of their own hearts. Whatever any of your subjects has, that belongs to you. It is yours to give life and to take it away; yours to make or to ruin the fortunes of whom you will. Others are praised or blamed, but to you everything is honourable, everything praiseworthy. Will you listen to those philosophers and scholastics?... Seal your ears with wax, most noble Duke, against the fatal song of these Sirens; like Homer's Ulysses, or rather, like Virgil's Æneas, steer your course so far from their coast that the poison of their seductive voices may not touch the soundness of your mind." "By what names we call you, it matters little to you, for you do not think yourself to be other than what Homer calls the 'shepherd of the people' or Plato its 'guardian.' You have discovered a new way to increase the revenues of your nobles and of yourself: by diminishing expense instead of increasing taxes. Oh! wonderful soul! you deprive yourself that your subjects may abound; you deny yourself that there may be the more for the multitude. You keep watch, that we may sleep in safety. You are wearied with continual anxieties, that your own may have peace. You wear your princedom, not for yourself, but for your land."