CHAP. IV. When comes to Happily for him it was at this critical moment that A.D. 1504. Colet came up to London to assume his new duties at St. Paul's. More was a diligent listener to his sermons, and chose him as his father confessor. Stapleton has preserved a letter from More to Colet,1 which throws much light upon the relation between them. It was written in October, 1504, whilst Colet, after preaching during the summer, was apparently spending his long vacation in the country. It shows that, under Colet's advice, More was not altogether living the life of a recluse. him as his spiritual guide. More's letter to Colet. Colet had for some time been absent from his pulpit at St. Paul's. As More was one day walking up and down Westminster Hall, waiting while other people's suits were being tried, he chanced to meet Colet's servant. Learning from him that his master had not yet returned to town, More wrote to Colet this letter, to tell him how much he missed his wonted delightful intercourse with him. He told him how he had ever prized his most wise counsel; how by his most delightful fellowship he had been refreshed; how by his weighty sermons he had been roused, and by his example helped on his way. He reminded him how fully he relied upon his guidance-how he had been wont to hang upon his very beck and nod. Under his protection he had felt himself gaining strength, now without it he was flagging and undone. He acknowledged that, by following Colet's leading, he had escaped almost from the very jaws of hell; but now, amid all the temptations of city life and the noisy wrangling of the law courts, he felt himself losing 1 Stapleton, ed. 1588, p. 20, ed. 1612, p. 163. ludes to at St. ground without his help. No doubt the country might CHAP. IV. be much more pleasant to Colet than the city, but the A.D. 1504. city, with all its vice, and follies, and temptations, had far more need of his skill than simple country folk! 'There sometimes come, indeed,' he added, into the More al'pulpit at St. Paul's, men who promise to heal the dis- Colet's eases of the people. But, though they seem to have preaching 'preached plausibly enough, their lives so jar with Paul's. 'their words that they stir up men's wounds, rather ' than heal them.' But, he said, his fellow-citizens had confidence in Colet, and all longed for his return. He urged him, therefore, to return speedily, for their sake and for his, reminding Colet again that he had submitted himself in all things to his guidance. 'Mean'while,' he concluded, 'I shall spend my time with 'Grocyn, Linacre, and Lilly; the first, as you know, is 'the director of my life in your absence; the second, 'the master of my studies; the third, my most dear 'companion. Farewell, and, as you do, ever love me.' London 10 Calend. Novembris' [1504].1 Surrounded as he was by Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, More soon began to devote his leisure to his old studies. Lilly, too, had returned home well versed in Greek. 1 That this letter was written in | wrote it. And he married in 1505, 1504 is evident. First, it cannot according to the register on the well have been written before Colet Burford picture, which, the correct had commenced his labours at St. date of More's birth having been Paul's; secondly, it cannot have found and from it the true date of been written in Oct. 1505, because Holbein's sketch, seems to be amply it speaks of Colet as still holding the confirmed by the age there given living of Stepney, which he resigned of More's eldest daughter, Margaret Sept. 21, 1505. Also the whole Roper. She is stated to be twentydrift of it leads to the conclusion two on the sketch made in 1528, that More was unmarried when he and so was probably born in 1506. buries his studies CHAP. IV. He had spent some years in the island of Rhodes, to A.D. 1504. perfect his knowledge of it.1 Naturally enough, thereMore fore, the two friends busied themselves in jointly transhimself in lating Greek epigrams; and as, with increasing zeal, with Lilly. they yielded to the charms of the new learning, it is not surprising if the fascinations of monastic life began to lose their hold upon their minds. The result was that More was saved from the false step he once had contemplated. He had, it would seem, seen enough of the evil side of the religious life' to know that in reality it did not offer that calm retreat from the world which in theory it ought to have done. He had cautiously abstained from rushing into vows before he had learned well what they meant; and his experience of ascetic practices had far too ruthlessly destroyed any pleasant pictures of monastic life in which he may have indulged at first, to admit of his ever becoming a Carthusian monk. Still we may not doubt that, in truth, he had a real and natural yearning for the pure ideal of cloister holiness. Early disappointed love possibly," added to the rude shipwreck made of his worldly fortunes on the rock of royal displeasure, had, we may well believe, effectually taught him the lesson not to trust in those gay golden dreams' of worldly greatness, from which, he was often wont to say, 'we cannot help awaking 'when we die;' and even the penances and scourgings inflicted by way of preparatory discipline upon his 'wanton flesh,' though soon proved to be of no great 1 Mori Epigrammata: Basle,1518, | ' latur quod eam repererit Incolumem p. 6. See the prefatory letter by Beatus Rhenanus. quam olim ferme Puer amaverat.' -Epigrammata: Basle, 1520, p. 108, and Philomorus, pp. 37-39. efficacy, were not the less without some deep root in CHAP. IV. his nature; else why should he wear secretly his whole A.D. 1505, life long the 'sharp shirt of hair' which we hear about at last ?1 So much as this must be conceded to More's Catholic biographers, who naturally incline to make the most of this ascetic phase of his life.? disgusted cloister. But that, on the other hand, he did turn in disgust More from the impurity of the cloister to the better chances with the which, he thought, the world offered of living a chaste and useful life, we know from Erasmus; and this his Catholic biographers have, in their turn, acknowledged.3 IV. MORE STUDIES PICO'S LIFE AND WORKS. HIS MARRIAGE (1505). More appears to have been influenced in the course he had taken, mainly by two things:-first, a sort of hero-worship for the great Italian, Pico della Mirandola; and, secondly, his continued reverence for Colet. The Life of Pico, with divers Epistles and other 'Works' of his, had come into More's hands. Very probably Lilly may have brought them home with him amongst his Italian spoils. More had taken the pains 1 From whence [the Tower], the 'day before he suffered, he sent his 'shirt of hair, not willing to have it seen, to my wife, his dearly beloved 'daughter.'-Roper, p. 91. 2 Walter's Life of More, London, 1840, pp. 7, 8. Cresacre More's Life of More, pp. 24-26. 3 Maluit igitur maritus esse castus quam sacerdos impurus.'Erasmus to Hutten: Eras. Op. iii. More translates the life and works of Pico. Pico's and zeal. CHAP. IV. to translate them into English. He had doubtless A.D. 1505. heard all about Pico's outward life from those of his friends who had known him personally when in Italy. But here was the record of Pico's inner history, for the most part in his own words; and reading this in More's translation, it is not hard to see how strong an influence it may have exercised upon him. It told how, suddenly checked, as More himself had been, in a career of worldly honour and ambition, the proud vaunter of universal knowledge had been transformed into the humble student of the Bible; how he had learned to abhor scholastic disputations, of which he had been so great a master, and to search for truth instead of fame. It told how, giving no great force to outward obserwarm piety vances,' 'he cleaved to God in very fervent love,' so that, on a time as he walked with his nephew in an orchard at Ferrara, in talking of the love of Christ, he 'told him of his secret purpose to give away his goods to the poor, and fencing himself with the crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle to preach of Christ.' It told how he, too, ' scourged his own flesh in remembrance of the passion and death that Christ suffered for our sake;' and urged others also ever to bear in mind two things, 'that the Son of God died for thee, and that thou thy'self shall die shortly;' and how, finally, in spite of the urgent warnings of the great Savonarola, he remained A layman a layman to the end, and in the midst of indefatigable to the end. study of the Oriental languages, and, above all, the Scriptures, through their means, died at the early age of thirty-five, leaving the world to wonder at his genius, and Savonarola to preach a sermon on his death.1 6 6 1 Sir Thomas More's Works, pp. | religious history, and his connection 1-34; and see the note on Pico's with Savonarola, above, p. 19. |