Hating the monks of his own time for their ignorance and coarseness, he was as learned as any Benedictine of old, and as a master of irony he is like a gentler Pascal, a more reverent Voltaire.

He loved England, the England of Archbishop Warham, Dean Colet, and Sir Thomas More.
English ladies too were much to his taste, and in his familiar letters he has described their charms with frank appreciation.
Priest as he was, and strictly moral, he cultivated an innocent epicureanism, including the collection of manuscripts and the exposure of pretentious ignorance in high places.

He felt imperfect sympathy with Luther, and his literary criticism would have made no reformation.

He was indeed precisely what we now call a Broad Churchman, accepting forms as convenient, though not essential, to faith.

No one was better qualified to interpret him than Froude, whose translations of his letters, though free and sometimes loose, are vivid, racy, and idiomatic.