published literature. Translations were being made from all cultivated languages, and each new version begot the desire for another. Such events

Henry VIII.

collection at Petworth

as the progress of Turkish conquest and the discoveries of the Spaniards and Portuguese had powerfully affected the mind of man, and engendered a thirst for information which could only be gratified by books. Just at this conjuncture the printing press came in perfect correspondence with the new order of things. All these various influences, so favourable to literature, may be summed up under the head of Renaissance, a general fermentation of the spirit, eventually carrying those of whom it took possession far beyond that exclusive veneration for the classics which had for the time contributed

the Renaissance was bringing in, and relied solely upon their own pious instincts. In the second place were the scholars, champions of the Renaissance in no way remarkable for piety, but whose æsthetic taste and whose critical conscience were revolted by the prevalent superstitions.

RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

315 The Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum sums up the feelings of such men as perfectly as Luther's discourses sum up the feelings of the religious; and

may remind us that there was a Renaissance beyond the Alps, and that if the humanists of Leo the Tenth's court preferred him to Luther, the

humanists of Germany inclined the other way. Almost the perfect mean between the two extremes was held by Erasmus; and when we see how Renaissance and Reformation between them could equip that consummate man of letters, and with what a public they could provide him, we see to what a height they were capable of exalting literature.

To make an Erasmus required a combination of the Italian elements then permeating cultivated society in England with the sound and sterling type

APOPHTHEGMES,

that is to fate,prompte,quicke,wittie
and sentencious laiynges,of certain
Emperours, kynges, Lapitaines, Philoso
phiers and Dzatours, afwell Brekes, as Ro
matnes, bothe berape pleasaunt a profita
ble to reade, partely for all maner of
persones, e especially Gentlemen.
first gathered and compiled
in Latine by the ryght fa.
mous clerke Mat
fter Erasmus
of Rotero
dame.

And now translated into
Englyfbe by Nico-
las Udall.

Excufum typis Ricardi Grafto
1542.

Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum folum.

お

of her ancient character. English scholars visited Italy, some, like Pace, sent expressly by patrons for the purpose of study. The libraries of newly founded colleges were enriched with books and manuscripts imported from Italy. Italian secretaries were becoming indispensable to sovereigns. Italian sculptors and artists were remedying the backward state of the arts in a country where the mediæval style had gone out and the Renaissance had not come in. Italian merchants flourished in London, and Italian ecclesiastics bereft the natives of bishoprics and benefices. Distinguished men of letters, like Polydore Vergil and Carmelianus, found themselves at home in a country where the Italian language was studied, Italian books were read and sometimes translated, and even Italian writing masters were imported to

Title-page of Erasmus' "Apophthegmes," 1542 regenerate the national handwriting.

Had the English character possessed less native vigour Italy might have dominated her literature as completely as France now dominates that of the other Latin peoples, but while willing to be instructed the national mind refused to be subjugated. The most perfect instance to be found of the combination of the two types, the exemplar at the same time of the new Englishman and the true Englishman, is Sir THOMAS MORE, the enthusiast for Pico della Mirandola, whose life he wrote, the friend of Erasmus, and, save when religious differences interfered, of every good and intellectual man with whom it was possible for him to come into contact. It further happens that the book upon which his literary reputation rests is, though originally written in Latin, the truest representative of the better English mind of its day.

It is needless to enter at any great length into a history so well known as Sir Thomas More's. Born in 1478, educated in the household of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of

Canterbury, and afterwards at Oxford, where he learned Greek from Grocyn and Linacre, he formed at nineteen an intimate friendship with Erasmus, was called to the bar at or about the same early age, was elected to Parliament at twenty-six, and there distinguished himself by frustrating an attempt at extortion by Henry VII., who explained to the Spanish Ambassador that his subjects would become disorderly if they were too well off, an evil which he certainly did everything to obviate as far as in him lay. Henry avenged himself by fining More's father, but the new reign. brought favour to the son, who was employed in embassies and other business of State, and received the strongest tokens of personal attachment from the sovereign, which did not blind him to Henry's utter ruthlessness when public affairs were concerned. "If my head," he told his son-in-law Roper as early as 1525, "should win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go." In 1529 he succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, the first instance of the office being conferred upon a layman. His character for ability, industry, and integrity in the discharge of his judicial functions was the very highest: the one stain upon his memory is his persecution of heretics, which it is difficult to reconcile either with the general humanity of his disposition or with the liberality of religious sentiment which he had expressed in his early writings. He

Sir Thomas More

From an engraving by Bartolozzi after a drawing by Holbein

needed but to have looked at his own Utopia to have seen the possibility of the union of firm faith. with wide toleration; but probably he was alarmed at what he deemed the social consequences of the new movement, and irritated by his acrimonious controversy with Tyndale, and his deep annoyance at the proceedings connected with the royal divorce. His opposition to this and to the more lenient treatment of heretics which came in its train cost him the Chancellorship in 1532: in 1534 he and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were imprisoned for refusing to renounce the supremacy of the Pope; and in 1535 were beheaded for denying the supremacy of the King. It is impossible to withhold the deepest sympathy for victims so illustrious perishing for conscience sake, even though they were but treated as they themselves had treated poor and defenceless men. Henry's action, however, was

not brutal tyranny, but high policy. He acted in the spirit of the French Revolutionists when they proclaimed their irreparable breach with royalty by the sacrifice of an innocent and well-intentioned King. Nothing could so clearly tell the nation and the world that Papal pretensions would never again be tolerated in England. The Pope on his part was playing the same game. He had hastened the crisis by sending Fisher a cardinal's hat, protesting afterwards that he did not know how deeply the Bishop had incurred the King's displeasure. If this was so, he was badly served by his agents, but this is hardly credible of so sagacious a pontiff as Paul III. It is more probable that

A fruteful/

and plealaunt worke of the he wished to drive Henry into extreme

befte date of a publpqne iveale, arth
of the newe ple called topia:waitten
in Latine bp Spz Thomas More
kapght, and translated into Engipfhe played between Pope and King.
bp Raphe Robpufon Litizein and
Boldimpthe of London, at the
procurement,and earnell re-
quet of George Cadlowe
Citezein & Haberdallher
of thefame Litle.
(...)

courses which he thought would provoke
a revolution, and that the heads of More
and Fisher were but counters in the game

More's character probably owes something in our estimation to the fact that it has been mainly transmitted to us by an affectionate son-in-law; but the general truth of the portrait is attested by the concurring suffrages of the best and wisest men of his time. Men of genius like Erasmus, men of erudition like Colet, men of science like Linacre, men of piety like Fisher, were his

CImpunted at London devoted friends: even men of affairs like

bp Abzaham wete, dwelling in Pauls
thurcheparde at the fpgne of
the Lambe, Anno,
1551.

Henry and Wolsey honoured, and, so far as their natures permitted, loved him. Not a voice is raised against his deportment in the highest legal office; and, indeed, the circumstances attending his fall and death are the conclusive proof of his unbending integrity. The most characteristic trait in his disposition was a geniality so exuberant that it is highly to his honour to have reconciled it with the gravity befitting the magistrate. When at the height of his prosperity he lived with the simplicity, and amid his misfortunes he displayed the resignation, of a true practical philosopher. Intellectually, he was rather brilliant than great; his precocity and powers of adaptation were marvellous; he shone equally among scholars and statesmen so long as originality was not required; but he was rather fitted to adorn than to extend the domain of letters; and as a statesman he took narrow views and misunderstood the spirit of his time.

Title-page of Robinson's translation of "Utopia," 1551

If, however, More was no creator in literature, he was a most felicitous adapter and translator. The ideal commonwealth of Plato lives again in his Utopia, a work whose title, though strictly a solecism, has become a portion of the vocabulary of every European tongue, and which is itself the parent of numberless imitations, not one of which has approached its celebrity. Though