Note 579 — Chapter IV

Erasmi Epistolæ, passim. The publication of his Ciceronianus in 1528, renewed the irritation; in this he gave a sort of preference to Badius over Budæus, in respect to style alone; observing that the latter had great excellences of another kind. The French scholars made this a national quarrel, pretending that Erasmus was prejudiced against their country. He defends himself in his epistles so prolixly and elaborately, as to confirm the suspicion, not of this absurdly imputed dislike to the French, but of some little desire to pique Budæus. Epigrams in Greek were written at Paris against him by Lascaris and Toussain; and thus Erasmus, by an unlucky inability to restrain his pen from sly sarcasm, multiplied the enemies, whom an opposite part of his character, its spirit of temporising and timidity, was always raising up. Erasm. Epist. Mxvi. et alibi.