Born, in London, 7 Feb. 1478. Early education at a school in London. Entered household of Archbishop of Canterbury, 1491. At Canterbury Hall, Oxford, 1492–94. Student of Law at New Inn, 1494; removed to Lincoln’s Inn, 1496; called to Bar, 1501; Reader in Law, Furnivall’s Inn, 1501. Friendship with Erasmus begun, 1497…. Member of Parliament, 1504. Married (i) Jane Colet, 1505; lived in Bucklersbury. Travelled on Continent, 1508. Wife died, 1511 (?); he married (ii) Mrs. Alice Middleton within a month afterwards. Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, 1509; “Reader,” 1511 and 1516. Under-Sheriff of London, 1510–19. On Embassy to Flanders, May to Nov. 1515. On Commission of Peace for Hampshire, 1515 and 1528. On Embassy to Calais, autumn of 1516. Master of Requests, and Privy Councillor, 1518. With King at “Field of Cloth of Gold,” June 1520. Knighted, and appointed Sub-Treasurer to King, 1521. With Wolsey on Embassy to Calais and Bruges, 1521. Removed to Chelsea, 1523. M.P. (for Middlesex?), 1523. Speaker of House of Commons, April 1523. High Steward of Oxford University, 1524; of Cambridge University, 1525. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, July 1525. On Embassy to Amiens, Aug. 1527; to Cambrai, July 1528. Lord High Chancellor, Oct. 1529 to May 1532. Lived in retirement, 1532–34. Imprisoned in Tower for refusing oath to Act of Succession, 17 April 1534. Indicted of High Treason, 1 July 1535. Beheaded, 6 July 1535. Buried in Church of St.-Peter-in-the-Tower…. Works: “Utopia” (1516), (earliest English, tr. by R. Robinson, 1551); “Epigrammata,” 1518; “Epistola ad Germanŭ Brixiŭ,” 1520; “Eruditissimi viri G. Rossei (pseud.) opus … quo refellet … Lutheri calumnias,” 1523; “A Dyaloge … of the Veneration and worshyp of Ymages, etc.,” 1529; “Supplycacyon of Soulys” (1529?); “The Cōfutacyon of Tyndale’s Answere” (to More’s “Dyaloge”), 1532; “The Second parte of the Cōfutacyon,” 1533; “The Apologye of Syr Thomas More,” 1533; “The Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance,” 1533; “A Letter impugnynge the erronyouse wrytyng of John Fryth against the blessed Sacrament,” 1533; “The Answere to the fyrste parte of … The Souper of the Lorde,” 1534; “The Boke of the fayre Gentylwoman,” n. d. (only one copy known). Posthumous: “A Dyaloge of Comfort against Tribulation,” 1553; “Workes … wrytten … in the Englysh tonge,” 1557; “Omnia Latina Opera,” 1565; “Epistola in qua … respondet literis Joannis Pomerani,” 1568; “Dissertatio Epistolica de aliquot … Theologastrorum ineptiis,” 1625; “Epistola … ad Academiam Oxon.,” 1633. He translated: Lucian’s “Dialogues” (with Erasmus), 1506; F. Pico’s “Lyfe of John Picus, Earl of Mirandola” (1510). Collected Works: 1629.

Personal

  Whiles I doo dayelie bestowe my time aboute law matters: some to pleade, some to heare, some as an arbitratoure with myne awarde to determine, some as an umpier or a Judge, with my sentence finallye to discusse. Whiles I go one waye to see and visite my frende: an other waye about myne owne privat affaires. Whiles I spende almost al the day abrode emonges other, and the residue at home among mine owne; I leave to my self, I meane to my booke no time. For when I am come home, I muste commen with my wife, chatte with my children, and talke wyth my servauntes. All the whiche thinges I recken and accompte amonge businesse, forasmuche as they muste of necessitie be done: and done muste they nedes be, onelesse a man wyll be straunger in his owne house. And in any wyse a man muste so fashyon and order hys conditions, and so appoint and dispose him selfe, that he be merie, jocunde, and pleasaunt amonge them, whom eyther nature hathe provided, or chaunce hath made, or he hym selfe hath chosen to be the felowes, and companyons of hys life: so that with to muche gentle behavioure and familiaritie, he do not marre them, and by to muche sufferaunce of his servauntes, make them his maysters. Emonge these thynges now rehearsed, stealeth awaye the daye, the moneth, the yeare. When do I write then? And all this while have I spoken no worde of slepe, neyther yet of meate, which emong a great number doth wast no lesse tyme, then doeth slepe, wherein almoste halfe the life tyme of man crepeth awaye. I therefore do wynne and get onelye that tyme, whiche I steale from slepe and meate. Whiche tyme because it is very litle, and yet somwhat it is, therfore have I ones at the laste, thoughe it be longe first, finished “Utopia;” and have sent it to you, frende Peter, to reade and peruse: to the intente that yf anye thynge have escaped me, you might put me in remembraunce of it.

  Here I will remark that no one ever lived who did not first ascertain the meaning of words, and from them gather the meaning of the sentences which they compose—no one, I say, with one single exception, and that is our own Thomas More. For he is wont to gather the force of the words from the sentences in which they occur, especially in his study and translation of Greek. This is not contrary to grammar, but above it, and an instinct of genius. Indeed, his genius is more than human, and his learning not only eminent, but so various, that there is nothing of which he seems to be ignorant. His eloquence is incomparable and twofold, for he speaks with the same facility in Latin as in his own language. His sense of fun is joined with perfect refinement—you may call humour his father and wit his mother. When the matter requires it, he can imitate a good cook, and serve up the meat in sharp sauce.

  In stature he is not tall, though not remarkably short. His limbs are formed with such perfect symmetry as to leave nothing to be desired. His complexion is white, his face fair rather than pale, and though by no means ruddy, a faint flush of pink appears beneath the whiteness of his skin. His hair is dark brown, or brownish black. The eyes are grayish blue, with some spots, a kind which betokens singular talent, and among the English is considered attractive, whereas Germans generally prefer black. It is said that none are so free from vice. His countenance is in harmony with his character, being always expressive of an amiable joyousness, and even an incipient laughter, and, to speak candidly, it is better framed for gladness than for gravity and dignity, though without any approach to folly or buffoonery. The right shoulder is a little higher than the left, especially when he walks. This is not a defect of birth, but the result of habit, such as we often contract. In the rest of his person there is nothing to offend. His hands are the least refined part of his body…. His voice is neither loud nor very weak, but penetrating; not resounding or soft, but that of a clear speaker. Though he delights in every kind of music he has no vocal talents. He speaks with great clearness and perfect articulation, without rapidity or hesitation. He likes a simple dress, using neither silk nor purple nor gold chain, except when it may not be omitted. It is wonderful how negligent he is as regards all the ceremonious forms in which most men make politeness to consist…. He seems born and framed for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices admit no correction, he manages to loosen and let go the intimacy rather than to break it off suddenly. When he finds any sincere and according to his heart, he so delights in their society and conversation as to place in it the principal charm of life. He abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent of his own interests, no one is more diligent in those of his friends. In a word, if you want a perfect model of friendship, you will find it in no one better than in More.

  The chancellor’s seal has remained in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk till this morning, when it was transferred to Sir Thomas More. Everyone is delighted at his promotion, because he is an upright and learned man, and a good-servant of the Queen.

  The king’s majesty hath raised to the most high dignity of Chancellorship Sir Thomas More, a man for his extraordinary worth and sufficiency well known to himself and the whole realm, for no other cause or earthly respect, but for that he hath plainly perceived all the gifts of nature and grace to be heaped upon him, which either the people could desire or himself wish for, for the discharge of so great an office. For the admirable wisdom, integrity, and innocence, joined with most pleasant facility of wit, that this man is endowed withal, have been sufficiently known to all Englishmen from their youth, and for these many years to the king’s majesty himself…. He hath perceived no man in his realm to be more wise in deliberating, more sincere in opening to him what he thought, or more eloquent in expressing what he uttered.

  This we will say, that if he had been ours we should sooner have lost the best city in our dominions than so worthy a councillor.

  He was not able for the maintenance of himself and such as necessarily belonged to him, sufficiently to find meat, drink, fuel, apparel and such other necessary things; but was enforced and compelled, for lack of other fuel, every night before he went to bed, to cause a great burden of ferns to be brought into his own chamber, and with the blaze thereof to warm himself, his wife and his children; and so, without any other fire, to go to their beds.

  He was of a middle stature, well proportioned, of a pale complexion; his hair of chestnut colour, his eyes grey, his countenance mild and cheerful; his voice not very musical, but clear and distinct; his constitution, which was good originally, was never impaired by his way of living, otherwise than by too much study. His diet was simple and abstemious, never drinking any wine but when he pledged those who drank to him; and rather mortifying than indulging his appetite in what he ate.

  He was for some time much in the king’s favour, and, had his temper been mercenary and ambitious, might have made his fortune to what degree he had pleased. But he was altogether above the consideration of money: his conscience was not flexible enough for this purpose: and thus he lost his life, and left his family but slenderly provided.

  He maintained the same cheerfulness of heart upon the scaffold, which he used to show at his table; and, upon laying his head on the block, gave instances of that good humour with which he had always entertained his friends in the most ordinary occurrences. His death was of a piece with his life. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected. He did not look upon the severing his head from his body as a circumstance that ought to produce any change in the disposition of his mind; and as he died under a fixed and settled hope of immortality, he thought any unusual degree of sorrow and concern improper on such an occasion, as had nothing in it which could deject or terrify him.

  A person of the greatest virtue this kingdom ever produced.

  A man who, besides the ornaments of an elegant literature, possessed the highest virtue, integrity, and capacity.

  The only art which he employed to obtain success in his profession, or the favour of his prince, was the strenuous discharge of his duty; yet such a reputation did he acquire, that he was loaded with professional business amidst an extensive competition, and compelled by his sovereign to accept of the most coveted public employments. As a pleader, his exertions were never unapplauded; as a judge, his decisions were never controverted; as a statesman, his counsels were never suspected. In one unfortunate conjuncture, we find the prejudices of education, and the violence of theological dissensions, confounding his better judgment, and hurrying him into acts which neither justice nor humanity can pass uncensured; yet, even then, he acted from mistaken principle.

  More is the first person in our history distinguished by the faculty of public speaking…. Of all men nearly perfect, Sir Thomas More had, perhaps, the clearest marks of individual character. His peculiarities, though distinguishing him from all others, were yet withheld from growing into moral faults. It is not enough to say of him that he was unaffected, that he was natural, that he was simple; so the larger part of truly great men have been. But there is something homespun in More which is common to him with scarcely any other, and which gives to all his faculties and qualities the appearance of being the native growth of the soil. The homeliness of his pleasantry purifies it from show. He walks on the scaffold clad only in his household goodness. The unrefined benignity with which he ruled his patriarchal dwelling at Chelsea enabled him to look on the axe without being disturbed by feeling hatred for the tyrant. This quality bound together his genius and learning, his eloquence and fame, with his homely and daily duties,—bestowing a genuineness on all his good qualities, a dignity on the most ordinary offices of life, and an accessible familiarity on the virtues of a hero and a martyr, which silences every suspicion that his excellencies were magnified. He thus simply performed great acts, and uttered great thoughts, because they were familiar to his great soul. The charm of this inborn and homebread character seems as if it would have been taken off by polish.

  More, who counteracted, if he did not curtail his own “Utopia,” and whose other writings degrade him for their feebleness, their bigotry, their scurrility, and their persecuting tendency, below the educated men of his day, would have sunk into oblivion, except as a punster, as a worthy pattern of the domestic virtues, and as one who had been fond of literature, and had been famed for it, but who, in its most important department, was also its unsparing persecutor; if the oppressive violence of his death had not imparted that sympathy and sanctity to his memory, which the human heart liberally bestows on the victims of power, who unite firmness of principle with moral rectitude and intellectual cultivation.

  Whose name can ask no epithet.

  More’s bigotry exceeds that of most men. It is perhaps the most remarkable instance of the prostration of great faculties by superstition. One of his principal charges against Luther is his being an enemy of crusades against the Turks. His answer to Tindale is unrivalled in weakness and in zeal.

  Wolsey had chastised them (the innovators) with whips; Sir Thomas More would chastise them with scorpions, and the philosopher of the “Utopia,” the friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the bigot, or the fanatic, but may coexist with the fairest graces of the human character. The lives of remarkable men usually illustrate some emphatic truth. Sir Thomas More may be said to have lived to illustrate the necessary tendencies of Romanism, in an honest mind convinced of the truth; to show that the test of sincerity in a man who professes to regard orthodoxy as an essential of salvation is not the readiness to endure persecution, but the courage that will venture to inflict it.

  The most amiable and religious, the most witty, learned, and accomplished Englishman of his time; almost of any time.

  In the old parish church near the river, More’s monument still stands. The church is an interesting building of the most mixed character; so far, happily, not very much hurt by restorers. More made a chapel for his family tomb at the east end of the south aisle, and put up a black slab to record the fact. It has been twice “improved,” and is said to have originally contained a reference to his persecution of heresy, for which a blank is now left in the renewed inscription, just the kind of evasion one can imagine the straightforward chancellor would himself have particularly disliked. The architectural ornaments of the monument are in what was then the new Italian style. It is uncertain where More is buried; some say here; some say in the Tower chapel.

  It has been asked, why was he, as Lord Chancellor, a cruel persecutor of the Lutherans? The charge of cruelty rests upon accusations that began with calumnies to which, even at this day, public men are exposed when they are strong on either side in a great controversy that has stirred the passions of the people. John Foxe was a good man, though he did not need much evidence to convict a Roman Catholic of any wrong-doing with which he might be charged. Bias directed judgment. Thirty years after More’s death, Foxe charged him with the examination and torture of John Tewkesbury, who had retracted several months before More was Chancellor; with the death of John Frith, which was a year after More had resigned his office; he told also another story that, like the tale of Tewkesbury, worked up the old popular fable about a whipping-tree in More’s garden at Chelsea, called Jesus’ Tree, or the Tree of Truth. More in his lifetime explicitly contradicted accusations of this kind. No man, while More was Chancellor, was put to death by him for heresy. Among the passionate accusations, blindly hurled from one side to the other in More’s time, that story of the Tree of Truth was current. More contradicted it when it was most easy, if he did not speak truth, to confute him. His whippings, he said, had been only two—one of a child in service of his house who sought to corrupt another child, and one a public whipping of a lunatic who brawled in churches, and was thereby restrained from continuance in that form of disorder.

Utopia

  I toke upon me to tourne, and translate oute of Latine into oure Englishe tonge the frutefull, and profitable boke, which sir Thomas more knight compiled, and made of the new yle “Utopia,” containing and setting forth ye best state, and fourme of a publique weale: A worke (as it appeareth) written almost fourtie yeres ago by the said sir Thomas More ye authour thereof…. Is a work not only for ye matter yat it conteineth fruteful and profitable, but also for ye writers eloquent latine stiele pleasaunt and delectable. Which he yat readeth in latine, as ye authour himself wrote it, perfectly understanding ye same; doubtles he shal take great pleasure, and delite both in ye sweete eloquence of ye writer, and also in ye witte invencion, and fine conveiaunce, or disposition of ye matter: but most of all in the good, and holsome lessons, which be there in great plenty, and aboundaunce.

  Among his Latin Books his “Utopia” beareth the bell, containing the idea of a compleat Common-wealth in an imaginary Island (but pretended to be lately discovered in America); and that so lively counterfeited, that many, at the reading thereof, mistook it for a real truth; insomuch that many great learned men, as Budeus, and Johannes Paludanus, upon a fervent zeal, wished that some excellent Divines might be sent thither to preach Christ’s Gospel; yea, there were here amongst us at home sundry good men and learned Divines very desirous to undertake the Voyage, to bring the people to the faith of Christ, whose manners they did so well like.

  His “Utopia,” though not written in verse, yet in regard of the great fancy, and invention thereof, may well pass for a poem.

  A masterpiece of wit and fancy.

  Perhaps we scarcely appreciate highly enough the spirit and originality of this fiction, which ought to be considered with regard to the barbarism of the times, and the meagreness of preceding inventions. The Republic of Plato, no doubt, furnished More with the germ of his perfect society: but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile imagination; and it is manifest, that some of his most distinguished successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely indebted to his reasoning as well as inventive talents. Those who read the “Utopia” in Burnet’s translation may believe that they are in Brobdignag; so similar is the vein of satirical humor and easy language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the “Utopia” (and perhaps he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree true of the Platonic Republic; and they are more than compensated by the sense of justice and humanity that pervades it, and his bold censures on the vices of power. These are remarkable in a courtier of Henry VIII…. We may acknowledge, after all, that the “Utopia” gives us the impression of its having proceeded rather from a very ingenious than a profound mind; and this, apparently, is what we ought to think of Sir Thomas More.

  More’s controversial writings, on which he bestowed most pains and counted most confidently for future fame, have long fallen into utter oblivion, the very titles of most of them having perished. But the composition to which he attached no importance, which, as a jeu-d’esprit, occupied a few of his idle hours when retired from the bar,—and which he was with great difficulty prevailed upon to publish,—would of itself have made his name immortal. Since the time of Plato, there had been no composition given to to the world which, for imagination, for philosophical discrimination, for a familiarity with the principles of government, for a knowledge of the springs of human action, for a keen observation of men and manners, and for felicity of expression, could be compared to the “Utopia.”

  By a strange fate, not a single copy of this work, in any language whatsoever, was printed in England in More’s lifetime: or indeed prior to these English versions of Ralph Robinson. Yet—despite its original Latin garb—the work is essentially English, and will ever reckon among the treasures of our literature.

  One trustworthy record we have, one which has ever been appealed to as authentic, as giving us an unbiassed statement of the miseries which were endured by the poor, and of the pomp and wastefulness of the rich. I refer to the “Utopia.”

  The wit and humour of More is that of the thoughtful observant Englishman, not breaking out into peals of laughter, but so quiet, sedate, and serious as to demand on the part of the reader something of the same habit of quiet thought and observation, to be fully perceived and enjoyed. More hovers so perpetually on the confines of jest and earnest, passes so naturally from one to the other, that the reader is in constant suspense whether his jest be serious, or his seriousness a jest. The book is wonderfully Englishlike; wonderfully like that balancing habit of mind which trembles on the verge of right and wrong, sometimes struggling on in happier times to clearer vision, sometimes, like More, shutting its eyes and relapsing into older impressions unable to endure suspense any longer.

  We find beneath the idealism of the dreamer, not only a statement of all the grave social, religious, and political questions involved in the life about him, but also a series of philosophical speculations as to their solution, far in advance of the age in which the writer lived. In nothing is this prescience more manifest than in his premature announcement of the principle of religious toleration, embodied in the statement that in Utopia every man could hold whatsoever religious opinion he would, and propagate the same by argument, but without offence to the religion of others. It was, however, to the cause of the laboring poor—bowed down like beasts of burden under a system of social tyranny whose evils had been intensified by a scheme of erroneous legislation which extended from the earlier Statues of Laborers to the statute (6 Hen. VIII. c. 3) by which parliament had last attempted to fix the rate of wages—that the sensitive mind of More addressed itself with the greatest zeal and sympathy.

  At the time of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More, the wittiest Englishman of his day, whose English style was admirable and who moreover loved the language of his native land, wishing to publish a romance of social satire, the “Utopia,” wrote it in Latin. It is one of the oldest examples in modern literature of that species of book which includes at a later date the story of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Bacon’s “New Atlantis,” Cyrano de Bergerac’s “États et empires de la lune et du soleil,” Fenelon’s “Télémaque,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” Voltaire’s tales, &c. More’s use of Latin is to be the more regretted since his romance exhibits infinite resources of spirit and animation; of all his writings it is the one that best justifies his great reputation for wit and enlightenment. His characters are living men and their conversation undoubtedly resembles that which delighted him in the society of his friend Erasmus.

  Without doubt “Utopia” is the most brilliant achievement which English humanism of that period has to show. The choice Latin which carries on the narrative so smoothly is but one of its lesser merits, for the treatise as a whole makes the impression of a work of art, and also contains a fund of deep thoughts and striking observations.

  Long before Professor Drummond had elucidated the important evolutionary truth that the ascent of man has been marked by the triumph of altruistic over egoistic sentiment, Sir Thomas More’s keen insight and intellectual penetration enabled him to see that the highway upon which humanity must pass in order to secure progress, felicity and true civilization, must be other than the savage struggle for self alone which controlled man in the past when the animal overmastered the spiritual in governmental as well as individual life. The central idea of “Utopia” is the triumph of altruism over egoism.

  In some ways doubtless it loses, from the social point of view, if compared with the “Vision of Piers the Plowman.” The “Vision” speaks from the people; the “Utopia” speaks for them. Langland has the impassioned sympathy of a comrade of the poor; More has the disinterested thoughtfulness of the scholar statesman. He has lived at the desk, not at the furrow; he moves among abstractions, and we infer rather than see the laborer in his work. But in compensation we know the author of the later book as we cannot know Langland. Through More’s speculations shines a personality full of sweetness and light: humorous and worldly wise, yet pure and tender, swift in stern wrath, yet habitually suave. Langland’s enormous book is the monument of an entire civilization, the symphonic expression of a mighty social class. More’s short and compact work is the record of individual thought, to be accepted, criticised, discussed, on the same basis as the work of Matthew Arnold or William Morris. It is to all practical intents the book of a modern man. The “Utopia” is the first original story by a known English author. That this earliest English novel should deal with the romance, not of a private life, but of society at large, is curious enough; it is even more curious that this first coherent conception of an ideal social state in our literature should be the outcome of the new individualism of the Renaiscence.

Epigrammata

  More’s “Epigrammata,” though much admired in their day, not only in England, but all over Europe, are now only inspected by the curious, who wish to know how the Latin language was cultivated in the reign of Henry VII. The collection in its present form was printed at Basle from a manuscript supplied by Erasmus, consisting of detached copies made by various friends, without his authority or sanction. His own opinion of their merits is thus given in one of his epistles to Erasmus: “I was never much delighted with my Epigrams, as you are well aware; and if they had not pleased yourself and certain others better than they pleased me, the volume would never have been published.”

  His English poems are of value only as proving that his bent lay in a different direction. The “Epigrammata” show that he was more at home in Latin elegiacs than in English Skeltonics or rhyme royal. They are rather vers d’occasion than epigrams in the modern sense, and often possess the same autobiographical interest which attaches to Swift’s occasional pieces. The Latin elegiac couplet, in fact, was as much the proper vehicle for this kind of writing in the first quarter of the sixteenth century as the English heroic couplet afterwards became under Queen Anne. It is here sufficient to notice that More enjoyed in this respect a European reputation second only to that of Erasmus, and that Doctor Johnson even assigns to him the superiority.

  They are neither much better nor much worse than similar compositions of More’s contemporaries. Their merit consists in the easy adaptation to poetic uses of the colloquial Latin of the time, not in style or accuracy of scholarship—for More was by no means always careful of the rules of prosody and metrical composition. They are in fact compositions remarkable neither in their own age nor in ours.

Controversial Writings

  His own controversial writings are inflamed by a passion which destroyed his mastery over self, and betrayed him, not only into hasty and violent expression, but into a confusion of thought which is remarkable in a man otherwise so clear-headed. More became a madman the moment he approached the question of religious reform.

  It is replete with keen irony and powerful reasoning, as well as earnest and touching exhortation. That it is a pleasant book to read I do not contend, nor that it is free from language that is rude and nasty. But whether the language deserves the name of ribaldry depends on the question whether, when Shakespeare’s Ajax boxes the ears of Thersites and calls him a “whoreson cur,” he thereby places himself on a level with Thersites, pouring out his foul venom on Agamemnon, Achilles, and all the princes of the army. Sir Thomas More complains that he could not clean the mouth of Luther without befouling his own fingers.

  The “Apology,” although not a work of art, will always have a personal interest to More’s admirers. The literary historian, however, would very gladly draw a veil over his polemical treatises on religious subjects. They certainly give us the opportunity of admiring More’s enormous capacity for work, the fluency of his pen, his great learning and command of the English language; but one cannot help wishing that his capacity for work and his learning had been utilized for other purposes, and his good English applied to other subjects…. Everywhere traces of abundant talent are observable; but the occasion, More’s own frame of mind, and the fatal diffuseness to which his ability and haste have misled him, do not allow of any æsthetic impression being made. Something of the old More is met with at times, inasmuch as in fundamental and general matters he manifests a certain large-heartedness and moderation; but this fundamental large-heartedness does not exclude much narrow-heartedness in his judgment of special cases. His moderation in general cases is coupled with great personal bitterness against his adversaries. More was unquestionably far superior to Tindale in intellect and learning, and yet in his dispute with Tindale he plays a miserable figure…. Few things are more adapted to make us realize the weakness of human nature, and the immense gulf that lies between mere theoretical speculation and the proof we have to offer of the sincerity of our ideas, than this melancholy episode in More’s life, when it is compared with the glorious days of his earlier years. Rarely has fate allowed herself to indulge in such trenchant irony as in the metamorphosis by which the author of “Utopia” became the author of the “Confutacyon of Tindale.”

Life of Richard III.

  All the passages whereof are so elegantly related by Sir Thomas More, that a man shall get little who comes with a fork, where Sir Thomas hath gone with a rake before him, and by his judicious industry collected all remarkables.

  As if it had been the lot of More to open all the paths through the wilds of our old English speech, he is to be considered also as our earliest prose writer, and as the first Englishman who wrote the history of his country in its present language. The historical fragment commands belief by simplicity, and by abstinence from too confident affirmation. It betrays some negligence about minute particulars, which is not displeasing as a symptom of the absence of eagerness to enforce a narrative. The composition has an ease and a rotundity (which gratify the ear without awakening the suspicion of art) of which there was no model in any preceding writer of English prose. In comparing the prose of More with the modern style, we must distinguish the words from the composition. A very small part of his vocabulary has been superannuated; the number of terms which require any explanation is inconsiderable: and in that respect the stability of the language is remarkable. He is, indeed, in his words, more English than the great writers of a century after him, who loaded their native tongue with expressions of Greek or Latin derivation.

  Our first prose composition worthy of the title of history.

  Sir Thomas More’s “History of Richard III.,” though not precisely an original authority, set a seal upon the name of that monarch which no subsequent investigation has been able to break.

  It is certainly the first good historical English prose. This must be largely attributed to the union in More of two qualifications which had hitherto not been found together. He was at once a finished Latin scholar and the most racy English conversationalist of his day. Thus he has succeeded in investing his narrative with a certain classical shapeliness and dignity without impairing the freshness and vigour of the native vein; the former never becomes stilted, the latter never passes into the broad mannerisms which disfigure most Elizabethan and much Jacobean prose. In fact, what Chaucer had done for English vocabulary, More did for English style; to the two together we owe the fixing of the true proportion in which the Teutonic and Latin elements of the language are most effectively blended. Chaucer is the father of English verse; More has almost an equal claim to be called the father of English prose. Their genius, indeed, is not dissimilar though exercised in different domains; above all, they resemble each other in that subtle humour and perfect sanity of judgment, springing from a just balance of the faculties, which have stamped their literary innovations with classic permanence.

  A work left imperfect by the author, but full of graphic description and vigorous writing. The portrait drawn of Richard by Sir Thomas, though true in the main, is highly coloured.

  Incomplete as it is, it is a work of the highest value; and this not only as an authority, for in style and method it far surpasses any previous history written in English…. Of the literary merit of the history there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. The story is unfolded with admirable clearness, and the progress of events is followed by the reader with intense interest. The characters are drawn with remarkable precision and power, and the speeches are not the rhetorical offspring of the historian’s imagination, but might well be the direct utterances of the historical characters themselves. The facts tell their own tale untrammelled by tedious moral commentary. The result is that an extraordinarily vivid picture is presented, the leading features of which are impressed upon the mind with striking and peculiar force…. It was he unquestionably who did most to originate the historical sympathy for the Tudor dynasty which has been so striking a feature of English literature…. More gave to English history an indelible portrait of Richard Crookback, and in giving it, his clear and incisive style taught a new school of historians to write so that all might read. With More history passed from the monastery into the market-place, and where he began, Holinshed, Cavendish, and Stow followed; and Bacon on his lines gave his masterly portrait of Henry VII.

  The eulogies of critics like Hallam were probably determined by the fact that it is an early and not unhappy example of the rather colourless “classical” prose, of which a little later we shall find the chief exponents to be Ascham and his friends at Cambridge. It is, of course, a good deal better than Capgrave, and it is free from Pecock’s harshness and crudity of phrase. But as it cannot on the one hand compare for richness, colour, and representative effect with the style of Berners, one of the two best writers of prose nearly contemporary with More, so it is not to be mentioned with that of Fisher, the other, for nice rhetorical artifice and intelligent employment of craftsman-like methods of work. But it is much more “eighteenth century” than either, and this commended it to Hallam; while More’s pleasant wit and great intellectual ability naturally set it above the work of mere translators or compilers. Sir Thomas has a secure place in English history, and no mean one in that very interesting history of works of distinction composed in Latin, since the arrival of the vernaculars at years of discretion, which has yet to be written. But his place in the strict History of English literature is very small, and not extraordinarily high.

General

  More was the special orator of the bishops, to feign lies for their purpose.

  Sir Tho. More is always wrangling and jangling, harping and carping, about No and Nay, Yea and Yes; this word and that word; an Elder, and an Elder stick: and as Rachell mourned for her children, because she had them not, so Sir Thomas More might mourn for more divinity, because he had it not.

  A great ornament to this land, and a Rymer.

  More was no divine at all; and it is plain to any that reads his writings that he knew nothing of antiquity, beyond the quotations he found in the canon law and in the master of the sentences (only he had read some of St. Austin’s treatises).

  The massive folio of Sir Thomas More’s “English Works” remains a monument of our language at a period of its pristine vigor. Viewed in active as well as in contemplative life, at the bar or on the bench, as ambassador or chancellor, and not to less advantage, where, “a good distance from his house at Chelsea, he builded the new building, wherein was a chapel, a library, and a gallery,” the character, the events, and the writings of this illustrious man may ever interest us…. More, however skilful as a Latin scholar, to promulgate his opinions aimed at popularity, and cultivated our vernacular idiom, till the English language seems to have enlarged the compass of its expression under the free and copious vein of the writer. It is only by the infecility of the subjects which constitute the greater portion of this mighty volume, that its author has missed the immortality which his genius had else secured.

  It was written by an Englishman, a very honest, brave, learned, and graceful Englishman. It was the work of a lawyer, one of the best of English lawyers; though it was written about a place that never existed, it laid bare corruptions that did exist, corruptions that were passing under Sir Thomas More’s eyes, in his own country. Like a good man, he spoke most of the evils of his own profession, those which he knew best and had most to do with—the bribery, and denials of justice, from which his own hands were quite pure. But he also exposed the evils which he saw in the Church of his days; he spoke plainly and severely of its need of reformation. Nevertheless, when the Reformation came in his age, Sir Thomas More did not like it. He would have heartily supported one which had been managed by scholars and accomplished men; he did not sympathise with one which appealed directly to the sympathies of common men, suffering from the miseries of the world, and of their own sins. The brave Sir Thomas More would have checked such a Reformation as that by any means; he rather died on the scaffold than in any way sanction it. I should be ashamed not to feel a great reverence for him. It is strongest when I think him most wrong.

  More is altogether before his time, so far as anyone can be said to occupy such a position, both in his thoughts and in his methods of expressing them. For nearly a hundred years afterwards we do not meet with such a vigorous, perspicuous, and above all such an evidently thoughtful style. He was perhaps one of the few men of the 16th century who had any command over their pens, who wrote as they thought; and his thoughts must have been always clear as they were always noble.

  One among the Catholics was no doubt capable, if he had chosen, of borrowing not perhaps the unsavoury though pungent pen of Murner, but the finer Attic weapon of Erasmus and Hutten. But devoted as he was to the church, and prodigally as he spent his skill and learning in its cause, the huge volume that contains his best arguments for Catholicism could in no way rival one small but golden book in which he had embodied the more than half pagan inspiration of his early manhood. For the rest, this volume—a dialogue against Tyndale’s book on the Mass—has pleasing qualities; but it belongs essentially to the less vivacious Ciceronian type. Every circumstance which could provoke any scintillation of dramatic liveliness and seduce the attention from the flow of cogent reasons, is carefully refined away.

  He was a Greek of the very Greeks, in both character and attainment.

  It is to be regretted that Sir Thomas More, the greatest humanist, perhaps the greatest intellect of his time, gave so much to Europe that was meant for England.