A great entirely from his profession and place him at court. ship belonging to the Pope had been obliged to put in at Southampton, and was claimed by the king as a forfeiture. The papal nuncio asked that the matter should be publicly discussed before the king or his commissioners. More not only acted as interpreter, explaining to the ambassador, in Latin, the arguments made use of on either side, but argued so learnedly himself on the Pope's side that the matter was decided in his favour. The king, hearing how greatly he had distinguished himself, called him to his service. But, before we follow his career at court, we must go back to consider him in his literary and in his domestic life. CHAPTER VII. LITERARY. I. LIFE OF JOHN PICUS. N 1510, More published his "Life of John Picus, Earl of man in all sciences, and virtuous of living, with divers Epistles and other works of the said John Picus". He had probably made this translation some years before, during the time of his retirement from the displeasure of Henry VII. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Count of Concordia, had died in 1494, at the age of thirty-two, leaving a name famous for his great talents and erudition, his first vainglorious appearance before the world and then his thorough conversion to God.* His complete works had been printed in Bologna in 1496, and again in Venice in 1498. The latter edition, which is much superior to the former, was the one used by More. Out of it he selected the life prefixed by Pico's nephew, four letters, and a commentary on the sixteenth psalm. Pico had appended to one of his letters twelve rules of spiritual warfare, twelve weapons, and twelve properties or conditions of a lover. Taking these for his theme, More His epitaph is felicitous : "Joannes jacet hic Mirandula; cætera norunt Et Tagus et Ganges, forsan et Antipodes ". This was written before Vasco de Gama had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. developed them in his favourite seven-line stanzas. The poetry is entirely his own, there are no corresponding Latin verses in the works of Pico. But Pico wrote a beautiful prayer in Latin elegiac verse, of which More has given a translation or rather paraphrase in the same stanzas as the rest. More's verses cannot be called poetical. They served, however, to put spiritual maxims in a form that would arrest the attention and cling to the memory. A specimen was given in Chapter V. The translation of Pico's Life and Letters was dedicated by More to "his right entirely beloved sister in Christ, Joyeuse Leigh," as a new year's present. This lady seems to have been a nun.* In the year 1513, while More was under-sheriff, he managed to find time to compose his History of Richard III., both in English and Latin. It was, however, never completed, nor was it published during More's life. It appeared, "corrupted" by omissions and additions, in Harding's and Hall's Chronicles; but was reprinted correctly by Rastell from a copy in More's handwriting. Some have doubted whether this work is by More or merely translated by him. The intrinsic evidence is in favour of its being his composition. The English is beautiful, and More paid no less attention to his English prose than to his Latin style. The book is full of pithy sayings. speeches introduced (though not to be taken as really spoken) are the work of an orator like More, who had carefully trained himself on ancient models. A most competent critic has said : "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 as our earliest prose writer, and as the first Englishman who wrote the history of his country in its present language. .. The composition has an ease and rotundity which gratify The Since the above was written More's translation has been republished with notes and a very interesting Introduction on the writings of Pico, by J. M. Rigg, Esq. (Nutt, 1890). the ear without awakening the suspicion of art, of which there was no model in any preceding writer of English prose." II. TRANSLATION OF LUCIAN. We have seen the friendship that sprang up between More and Erasmus during the visit made by the latter to England in 1498 and 1499. Erasmus did not return to England until the end of 1505, when More was married and had taken up in earnest his profession of the law. He found the young barrister surrounded by literary friends; Colet, vicar of Stepney, and then or soon after dean of St. Paul's; Grocyn, formerly professor of Greek at Oxford, and then rector of St. Lawrence, in the Jewry; Linacre, a most learned priest, and physician to Henry VII. (as he was afterwards to Henry VIII.); Lilly, a younger man than the others, yet not less cultivated. In fact, from a still earlier date and to the end of his life, More's company was eagerly sought by every man of the new culture, whether English or foreign, who came to London. Erasmus was invited to stay with More, and the two scholars found a most congenial occupation in the translation from Greek into Latin of several of Lucian's dialogues. More selected three of these for his own share-the Cynicus, Menippus or Necromantia, and Philopseudes, as the most witty. In his dedication of these to Thomas Ruthal, secretary to Henry VIII., and afterwards Bishop of Durham, More extols the truth and wisdom, as well as the wit, of these dialogues. That Lucian was incredulous even of man's immortality does not much trouble him. "What do I care for the opinions of a heathen on such matters?" Lucian may * Sir James Mackintosh (Life of Sir T. More (1844), p. 41). The objection made by Sir H. Ellis that the writer remembered something said to his father at the death of Edward IV. in 1483, and that More was then only three years old, is of no force, since he was really five; and it is not unusual to remember isolated facts which made an impression at the age of four or five. help us to laugh at superstition without touching our religious faith, which has no foundation in human dreams and fictions, but rests on solid historical proofs, which are only contaminated and weakened when mixed up with fables.* In addition to these translations More composed a Declamation in imitation of Lucian. Mr. Seebohm says: "At More's suggestion both (he and Erasmus) wrote a full answer to Lucian's arguments in favour of tyrannicide".+ This account might lead those unacquainted with More's writings to think that, while Lucian defended the slaying of tyrants, More rejected and reprobated it. What may have been More's serious judgment on such a subject we can only gather indirectly, from his submission to the Church's teaching both in faith and morals. In his Life of Pico he had said that Pico "committed (like a good Christian man) both his defence and all other things that he should write to the most holy judgment of our mother Holy Church". But on the subject of tyrannicide in general More has written nothing. Like Lucian, he presupposes the lawfulness and excellent merit of slaying a tyrant; yet if he does this, it is merely in a literary exercise. Lucian had supposed a Greek city, of a republican constitution, of which one of the chief magistrates had made himself the oppressor and tyrant. There was a constitutional law in the republic authorising any citizen to take the life of such a usurper, and entitling him to a great reward in case of success. A man, intent on freeing his city from the tyrant, manages to get secretly into his citadel, in order to assassinate him. not find the tyrant, but kills his son and leaves his sword in the After the above he continues: Quas scriptura nobis historias divinitus inspirita commendat, eis indubitata fides habenda est. Cæteras vero ad Christi doctrinam, tanquam ad Critolai regulam, applicantes caute et cum judicio, aut recipiamus aut respuamus si carere volumus et inani fiducia et superstitiosa formidine (Epist. Dedic.). + Oxford Reformers, p. 182. English Works, p. 4. |