In criticising the works of the writers respectively comprised within the period under consideration, the genial character of Delta's mind evinces itself in the most pleasing manner. His distinctions are delicate, and his summings up exhibit great breadth of appreciation, fulness of reading, and considerable power of analysis. He has a keen eye for borrowed lines, and all degrees of plagiarism. He hits off the characteristics of the several authors by sparkling epigrammatic comparisons, so piquant in spirit, so kindly in tone, as to provide a mélange of light reading, side. by side with the most solid estimates of modern poetical literature. Another prejudice, long cherished and stoutly maintained, was that strange conception of the nature and office of poetry which placed it in opposition to the revelations of science, as a creation so distinct and remote from facts, as to be in danger of annihilation in this age of philosophical inquiry and precision. This idea flashes out frequently in his poems, but is expounded in full force in the last of these lectures, In his "Reminiscences of Boyhood" he says The leaden talisman of truth, And in another he expresses the wish- But the book has two besetting sins. These are the classification of poets as To science, when it deadens, blind. to merit and style, and the enunciation of what we regard as a most unphilo- Though we have not room to discuss sophical idea in regard to the relations this question here, nor if we had, would and objects of poetry itself. Some of it perhaps be fit we should; yet, we Delta's estimates are accurate and just, may dismiss the point by stating our and especially when they concern mi- opinion that science and poetry may nute particulars; but when he attempts harmoniously march together; the one to arrange the poets in the order of their widening the field of man's physical respective positions in literature, he and mental triumphs, the other minismakes (we think) some decisions so erro- tering to the requirements of his moral neous as to verge on the ludicrous. nature; both necessary elements of his What does the reader think of his character and life. If science teaches placing Sir Walter Scott "alone and us to regard as fictions many of the above all" in the list of modern poets-creations of the mind which so long above Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge; have been the truths of poetry; if she above Campbell, Keats, Shelly, Tenny- discards the witches and their infernal son! "I at once put him far beyond broth; the seers, the demons, the fairies, Byron, Wordsworth, or any other com- and all the spells of a necromancy petitor for supremacy, on a throne by which has perished; she, at the same, the side of Shakspere." And again, "I enlarges the sphere of man's thought challenge one instance from the whole and wonder; lifts him nearer to the history of literature, where that popu- Creator by an inspiration drawn from larity, whether slow or sudden, which the Creator's works; and so provides a was not deserved, has continued to en- region of new idealities wherein the dure; and assuredly Scott's must, while creatures of poetry and imagination a single human heart continues to may find " room and verge enough" to beat." In poetry, there can be little develope each its particular form of ground for disputing that Scott was, to a being. Whatever increases man's knowconsiderable extent, extinguished by ledge of nature and himself, increases Byron, whose genius took a higher flight the domain of true poetry, by the prointo regions where Scott's less ample duction of a series of images and perwing would not carry him; and now, sonalities peculiar to the new life which Scott is least read of any of the seven has arisen; and it must be the task of whose names are believed, by Delta, to imagination to adapt itself continually have been eclipsed by him. Scott's to the new conditions of existence, and immortality rests on his prose fictions, not to cling in sadness and tears and only the most partial nationality to perishing idols, merely because there could have prompted Delta to place his was once a time when they were worpoems" alone and above all on a shelf shipped with hearts of devotion and by the side of Shakspere." with eyes of faith. 240 SIR THOMAS MORE. BIOGRAPHY may be compared to a lamp | parts and unimpeached integrity; wear 66 perpetually burning before the niche ing the robes of a judge, and doubly exwhich contains the effigy of a great man. alted, in his old age, by seeing his son If it be feeble and dim, the image re- the Chancellor of England. Few of his mains half-shadowed; but if it throw a maxims, nevertheless, have been befull and brilliant light, the figure and queathed; though one axiom matriface of the dead are reflected in lumi-monial all chroniclers have thought prenous relief from the chiaroscuro of the cious enough to be preserved. The past. Through the works in which our choice of a wife," said the forensic sage, ancestral master-spirits have embalmed "is like dipping your hand into a bag their minds for immortality, they "rule full of snakes, with only an eel among our spirits from their urns;" but through them: you may happen to light upon the groves of the historical academy, the eel, but it is a hundred to one that they become visible as the lights to you are stung by a snake." Sincere or which a hundred centuries may look not in this profession, Sir John three back for warning or example. Sir times risked the venom, for so many THOMAS MORE was one whose works times did he marry, and died at last, were dedicated to the future, but whose aged ninety, not like Cleopatra, by blood was shed for the past; in morals, warming an asp upon his breast, but a philosopher, mounting far above his from feasting too luxuriously on grapes. time; in religion, an enthusiast, cling- Thomas was by his first wife, who reing to superstitions by which an usurp-lated to her physicians a dream, which, ing church had profaned and polluted in that credulous age, obtained the the pure faith first preached abroad by the fishers of Galilee. In depicting his character, writers have sometimes confounded the office of the historian with that of the funeral orator, or the partizan of a hostile creed. There have, however, been temperate and candid pens employed in delineating his career, which appears indeed so conspicuously in the annals of his age, that we find, without unusual difficulty, the colours to paint him for our biographical gallery. credit of a prophecy. She had, she said, a vision of all her children, and among them was one whose countenance shone with a superior brightness. This was Thomas. He was born in Milk-street, London, in 1480; the twentieth year of Edward the Fourth's reign. Anecdotes are related of his infancy, prophetic of a future greatness; but they are nurses' gossip, too puerile to be preserved. He was early placed at St. Anthony's Free School, an ancient foundation, in ThreadneedleOf the stem from which he sprung, street, where, among other eminent his autographical epitaph declares the men, Whitgift and Heath had received truth, he was of an honourable but not their education. There, as he tells illustrious birth. Sir John More, the himself, he rather greedily devoured father, is supposed to have been de- than leisurely chewed his grammar scended remotely from an Irish stock; rules; but stayed only for a short while, but all the family papers being seized for his father had interest enough to after the attainder of the son, history is procure him admission into the family without the means of verifying this fact. of Cardinal Morton. This method of However, we look for no pedigree in education was then much in vogue, the author of "Utopia." He was at though considered the privilege of once the flower and the fruit of his noblemen's sons. The Cardinal, howgenealogical tree. No ancestral lustre ever, among all his patrician students gave an early glory to his name. His had none so illustrious as Thomas merits were original and personal-not More, who afterwards drew a generous derivative; and heralds would have bla-portrait of him in his "Utopia," as well zoned him dimly in their books, since as in his "History of Richard III." they, as Burke has phrased it, seek no further for virtue than in the preamble of a patent or the inscription of a tomb. Sir John, however, who was born about the year 1440, figured as a lawyer of fine His policy crowned Henry in place of his usurper, and united the Houses of the Red and White Rose; and his talents elevated him to the triple honours of an Archbishop's mitre, Chancellor's exalted offices of life-to marry, to be a faithful husband, a good father, and a patriot, active in the service of his country. One seal and a Cardinal's hat; yet we remember him less admiringly for these, than for the share he had in training to maturity the rare and fruitful genius of| More entered Parliament at twentythe Judge's son. He predicted of him one, and soon distinguished himself by that whoever lived to watch him grow an eloquence which the senate timidly up, would see a marvellous man; for applauded, though the Court resented it young More gave an early earnest of fiercely. For he was not a palace his capacity. In the Christmas plays agent, and once roused the Commons he took part among the actors, and to refuse a subsidy, imperiously decharmed audiences of no common sort manded of them by the Crown. by the sparkle of his unpremeditated of the Privy Council went to the King wit; he devised pageants for the amuse- and told him, " that a beardless boy had ment of his companions; drew inge- overthrown his purpose." Even then, nious pictures, and wrote beneath them however, the sovereign dared not openly verses which he need never have been attack the representatives, but satisfied ashamed to own. his pique by inventing a quarrel against the young orator's father, from whom he extorted, in the Tower, a fine of £100. To coerce the son, nevertheless, was found impossible, so a bishop was employed to cajole him, which was equally futile; for Thomas refused the flatteries by which they sought to corrupt him, and continued to study the arts of eloquence, and to acquire that authority of learning which might give him a dominion over the minds of other men. He studied the lives of the pious, and resolved to copy the virtue of Pius of Mirandula, whose works he then trans bacy he could not persuade himself to imitate the Fathers of the Roman Church; for wisely he judged, that it was better to live chastely with a wife, than licentiously as a priest, and to move purely in the light of day, than to.brood, bat-like, in the obscurity of those catacombs, where monks and hermits wasted their bodies, and petrified their souls. To cultivate this sprouting genius, the Cardinal sent him, at seventeen years of age, to Oxford, where he remained two years. Rhetoric, logic, and philosophy chiefly occupied his mind, with the classics, and especially Greek, though that language of the original Muses was not then commonly studied in this country. From the university he came to New Inn, to read for the law, where his father allowed him an income so scanty, and exacted from him so particular an account of his expenses, that he could scarcely dress with decency. More, however, applauded in-lated and published. But in their celistead of blaming this conduct, for it kept him from luxurious habits which engender vice, and he was himself of an ascetic disposition. At about twenty, indeed, he began to practise the mortifications of a cloister, wearing a hairshirt next his skin, which he never put aside even under the Chancellor's ermine. In 1500, he was appointed reader in Furnival's Inn, holding that He wrote for advice to the scholarly office for three years, and publicly lec- Dean Colet, founder of St. Paul's School, turing on religious topics in St. Law-which, as an inroad into the camp of rence's Church, Old Jewry. Thither the ignorance, More afterwards compared learned of the metropolis flocked, and, as to the horse of Troy. Colet, who loved Erasmus' Epistles inform us, were not his disciple, and spoke of him as the ashamed to derive addition to their only wit in England, bade him marry; sacred wisdom from the youthful lay- and this he did, with Jane, eldest man. At the expiration of his term of daughter of John Cotte, of New Hall, in office, he felt a strong attraction towards Essex. She was a very young girl, with the solitude of a monastic life, and lived none of her native simplicity concealed four years near the Chapter House, and by art; and More, at twenty-seven rigidly performed all the spiritual exer- years of age, made her his wife. His cise and penance of a Carthusian friar. first affection, indeed, had chosen her What determined him not to join any sister; but, as he quaintly thought, it monkish community, was the general would be a shame and wrong for the elder relaxation of discipline which, to his to see the younger preferred, "he from grief, he saw; and thus, fortunately, he a certain pity framed his fancy to her, was saved from the Hypogæan darkness and soon after married her." Settling in of a celibatical cell, to perform the most a house in Bucklersbury, he continued R the practice of the law, and carried on his crown, instead of a worse despot correspondence with many eminent men who cajoled and trampled on them all of his day. Among these, the most dis--the more flagitiously, in proportion tinguished was Erasmus, who, after as they put their trust in him. More many mutual letters, came to England, in consonance with the general sentiexpressly to see his friend. They met at the Lord Mayor's table, and it was contrived that they should fall into conversation before they were introduced. Erasmus was astonished by the logic and wit of the young stranger, who did not fear to dispute with him, as on equal terms, and at length exclaimed, "Aut tu Morus es, aut nullus?" To this More readily replied, "Aut tu es Erasmus, aut Diabolus."* ment, as well as with the fashion of the day, wrote a coronation ode to this prince, and his queen. Henry VIII. was indecent enough to rejoice in gratulations showered on him at the expense of his father, for it was part of his character to revenge upon others with inhuman severity, the crimes most congenial to his own predilections. Soon after the accession of the king, More was appointed an under-sheriff of More's poetical writings at this time, the City of London. As a lawyer, too, were, by contemporaries, admired as he became famous, earning "without elegant and pure, but though he was a scruple of conscience," upwards of master of rhetoric, and the English £400 a year, which was equal to six language had been restored to a classic times the amount now. There was strength, these compositions were alto- scarcely a great suit in which he was gether languid and diffuse. There is not employed, for the fame of his learndiscoverable in them, indeed, a logical ing and eloquence circulated rapidly force, and no little mixture of philoso- through every part of the kingdom. He phy, but the style is prolix, and the was twice, in 1512 and 1515, appointed ideas are lost in an overlaboured rotun-reader to Lincoln's Inn, and assiduousdity of diction. His path, however, ly buried his mind amid the unexplored was not yet to be among the myrtleshaded ways of literature. The political system of England was then in that troubled state which is the forerunner of change, and the rapid passage of authority from hand to hand, tended not to allay the rising commotion. Already the young lawyer had seen four kings upon the throne, had been persecuted by one of them, and he was now witness to the universal joy that greeted the coronation of Henry VIII. Youthful, handsome, opulent, prodigal, and, for a prince, well educated, the monarch promised to become anything, but the sordid, cruel, and licentious wretch he proved. The people cheered their hearts, by hoping for milder laws; the nobles flattered him with praises, in anticipation of a splendid reign; the clergy exalted him as the anointed of God's vicar on earth, and all joined in applauding as virtues, or excusing as ephemeral foibles, the words and the actions of the new monarch. Rejoicing in one tyrant's death; they exulted as though magnanimity itself had inherited *If the reader knows Latin, he will be indignant if we translate this. If he does not, he will be in dignant if we don't. Loosely, then, Erasinus said, "If thou art any one, thou art More;" to which More replied, "If thou art not the devil, thou art Erasmus." treasury of knowledge, which the revi val of letters had thrown open to research. But while these fruitful cares occupied his attention, the offices of friendship were not forgotten. Erasmus had dedicated to him his celebrated Praise of Folly, and now satirists rose up to depreciate the works of that profound and versatile scholar. They had long pelted at him the flippant epigrams inspired from wine cups, but at length Dorpius compounded an attack on the Moria Encomium, to which More undertook a reply. The philosopher himself retorted mildly on his young and ductile assailant, with whom he lived in friendliness for many years after; but the under-sheriff analyzed his disquisition, and exposed it to Europe as a mixture of ignorance, scurrility, and malevolence, and the ability of his Latin epistle on this subject won him general applause. Six years after his marriage, More lost his first wife, and three years afterwards he took a second-Alice Middleton, a widow with one daughter. It is acknowledged that he wedded her less from any particular affection, than on account of the necessity to have some one in his household to care for his children. Neither young nor beautiful, neither rich nor of fine qualities, More had wooed her for a friend, never thinking of her for himself. But gradually the friend having passed aside, he made the suit his own, placed her among the penates of his hearth, and taught her music, to render her less worldly. For himself, he also desired little to concern himself with the general transactions of the world. No man ever sought with more assiduity to gain entrance to the court, than he to keep out of it; but he was already too conspicuous to be spared from the administration of public affairs. Wolsey, mounting by sudden degrees towards the greatness he afterwards achieved, was desired by the King to engage the services of More; but the legal robe still fitted him better than a courtier's taffety cloak, and he eluded the offered honour. Nevertheless in 1516 we find him associating with Cuthbert Tonstall, in the Embassy to Flanders, where envoys from Charles of Castille, met them to fence with pensful of protests, protocols and ultimata, though differently named in the diplomatic language of the day. Six months were thus consumed, with a successful result, and More was thoroughly satiated with ambassadorial honours. Such duties, he said, writing to an ecclesiastic, suit me less than they suit you, who have no wives at home, or else find them wherever you go. Yet he passed some agreeable hours with the learned men of Antwerp, and at his return, was offered a pension by the king. This he declined, as well as other distinctions which the Court was desirous of conferring on him. At length an incident occurred which carried him beyond his own control, to the public eminence he appeared to shun. A richly freighted ship belonging to the Pope put in at Southampton. In accordance with the maritime laws of that age, Henry VIII. claimed it as a prize. The Roman Legate required that the case should be argued before the constituted tribunals of the realm. A hearing was appointed before the Chancellor and the Judges in the Star Chamber. Who should plead for the Pontifical right? There was no lawyer equal to More, and he could not refuse the service of God's vicar and the head of his religion. Therefore, when the great question was tried, he rose, and with such eloquence and learning, pleaded the cause of the Vatican, that not only was the Pope's ship restored, but the king delighted with the powers of his antagonist, so far that he refused any longer to forego the advantage of such a man's aid in the administration. No high office was then vacant, but More was appointed Master of the Bequests, and a month after knighted and sworn a Privy Councillor, whence with a rapid transition, he rose to the post of Treasurer to the Exchequer. In this dignity he felt as he tells us, somewhat uneasy as they feel on horseback who have never before been in a saddle. Yet the prince was so affable that all courtiers flattered themselves with a confidence in his especial favour, “just as our London matrons persuade themselves that our Lady's image smileth upon them as they pray before it." Nor was he the only virtuous man deceived by the early hypocrisy of this Eighth Henry, for Erasmus joined in offering to the court the fragrance of an honourable fame. Great was the change that had now come over the complexion of More's life. He was no longer an advocate, but an officer of state; no longer a private gentleman, but an ornament of the court; though still preserving that simple integrity of heart and plain frugality of life, which enabled him, amid palace follies, to feast with content on pure philosophy, sometimes holding a nocturnal vigil with the king, and conversing long hours with him, on the movements and distribution of the stars. So agreeable to the monarch and his consort was the society of this witty and accomplished man, that they continually sent for him "to make merry with them." The knight had made it a rule to chat with his wife, and prattle with his children some part of every day; but his conversation became so entertaining to the king and queen, that he could not once in a month obtain permission to spend an evening with his family. In order to relieve himself from this surfeit of court favour, he sacrificed all vanity, and wilfully made himself less attractive than before, so that gradually his time became more his own. There were, however, other cares to occupy his heart. The first deep murmurs of the reformation boded a storm in Europe; Leo was corrupting the church by every flagrant device of sacerdotal greed; Erasmus had aroused the monastic orders; and Luther was refuting the spurious doctrines intro |