no less than they, was steeped in the spirit of the Renaissance. In him that spirit reached its apotheosis. With it, however, there mingled in his nature a mysteriously potent element, which belonged in like measure in individual minds to none other. The magic of genius has worked miracles in many epochs, but it never worked greater miracle than when it fused itself in Shakespeare's being with the ripe temper of Renaissance culture.

From the portrait by Holbein in the possession of Edward Huth, Esq.

II

SIR THOMAS MORE

"Thomae Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura vel mollius,
vel dulcius, vel felicius?'-[Than the temper of Thomas More
did nature ever frame aught gentler, sweeter, or happier?]
Erasmi Epistolae, Tom. III., No. xiv.

[BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The foundation for all lives of Sir Thomas
More is the charming personal memoir by his son-in-law, Wil-
liam Roper, which was first printed at Paris in 1626, and after
passing through numerous editions was recently reissued in
the 'King's Classics.' Cresacre More, Sir Thomas' great-
grandson, a pious Catholic layman, published a fuller biography
about 1631; this was reissued for the last time in 1828.
The
Letters of Erasmus, Erasmi Epistolae, Leyden 1706, which J. A.
Froude has charmingly summarised, shed invaluable light on
More's character. Mr. Frederic Seebohm's Oxford Reformers
(Colet, Erasmus and More) vividly describes More in relation
to the religious revolution of his day. The latest complete
biography by the Rev. W. H. Hutton, B.D., appeared in 1895.
The classical English translation of More's Utopia, which was
first published in 1551, has lately been re-edited by Mr. Churton
Collins for the Oxford University Press. More's English works
have not been reprinted since they were first collected in 1557.
The completest collection of his Latin works was issued in Ger-
many in 1689].

I

More's

SIR THOMAS MORE was a Londoner. He was born in the heart of the capital, in Milk Street, Cheapside, not far from Bread Street, where Milton was born more than a century later. The year of More's birth carries birth, 7th us back to 1478, to the end of the Middle Ages, to the year when the Renaissance was looming on England's intellectual horizon, but was as yet shedding a vague and

Feb. 1478.

flickering light. The centre of European culture was in distant Florence, and England's interests at home were still mainly absorbed by civil strife. Though by 1478 the acutest phases of that warfare were passed, it was not effectually stemmed till Henry VII. triumphed at Bosworth Field and More was seven years old. Much else was to change before opportunity for great achievement should be offered More in his maturity.

It was in association with men and movements for the most part slightly younger than himself that More first figured on life's stage. He set forth on life in the vanguard of the advancing army of contemporary progress, but destiny decreed that death should find him at the head of the opposing forces of reaction.

Senior of
Luther and
Henry VIII.

Of the leading actors in the drama in which More was to play his great part, two were at the time of his birth unborn, and two were in infancy. Luther, the practical leader of the religious revolution by which More's career was moulded, did not come into the world until More was five; nor until he was thirteen was there born Henry VIII., the monarch to whom he owed his martyrdom. To only two of the men with whom he conspicuously worked was he junior. Erasmus, one of the chief emanciThe junior of Erasmus pators of the reason, from whom More derived and Wolsey. abundant inspiration, was his senior by eleven years; Wolsey, the political priest, who was to give England ascendancy in Europe and to offer More the salient opportunities of his career, was seven years his senior.

One spacious avenue to intellectual progress was indeed in readiness for More and his friends from the outset. One commanding invention, which exerted unbounded influence-the introduction into England by Caxton of the newly invented art of printing

The invention of printing.