If the art of biography be the development of "the ruling passion," it
is in strong characters that we must seek for the single feature.
Learned and meditative as was Sir THOMAS MORE, a jesting humour, a
philosophical jocundity, indulged on important as well as on ordinary
occasions, served his wise purpose. He seems to have taken refuge from
the follies of other men by retreating to the pleasantry of his own.
Grave men censured him for the absence of all gravity; and some imagined
that the singularity of his facetious disposition, which sometimes
seemed even ludicrous, was carried on to affectation. It was certainly
inherent,--it was a constitutional temper--it twined itself in his
fibres,--it betrayed itself on his countenance. We detect it from the
comic vein of his boyhood when among the players; we pursue it through
the numerous transactions of his life; and we leave him at its last
solemn close, when life and death were within a second of each other,
uttering three jests upon the scaffold. Even when he seemed to have
quitted the world, and had laid his head on the block, he bade the
executioner stay his hand till he had removed his beard, observing,
"that that had never committed any treason."
This mirthful mind had, indeed, settled on his features. ERASMUS, who
has furnished us with an enamelled portrait of MORE, among its minuter
touches reluctantly confessed that "the countenance of Sir Thomas More
was a transcript of his mind, inclining to an habitual smile;" and he
adds, "ingenuously to confess the truth, that face is formed for the
expression of mirth rather than of gravity or dignity." But, lest he
should derange the gravity of the German to whom he was writing, Erasmus
cautiously qualifies the disparaging delineation--"though as far as
possible removed from folly or buffoonery." MORE, however, would assume
a solemn countenance when on the point of throwing out some facetious
stroke. He has so described himself when an interlocutor in one of his
dialogues addresses him--"You use to look so sadly when you mean
merrily, that many times men doubt whether you speak in sport when you
mean good earnest."[1]
The unaffected playfulness of the mind; the smile whose sweetness
allayed the causticity of the tongue; the tingling pleasantry when
pointed at persons; the pungent raillery which corrected opinions
without scorn or contumely; and the art of promptly amusing the mind of
another by stealing it away from a present object--appeared not only in
his conversations, but was carried into his writings.
The grave and sullen pages of the polemical labours of MORE, whose
writings chiefly turn on the controversies of the Romanists and the
Reformers, are perhaps the only controversial ones which exhibit in the
marginal notes, frequently repeated, "a merrie tale." "A merry tale
cometh never amiss to me," said MORE truly of himself. He has offered an
apology for introducing this anomalous style into these controversial
works. He conceived that, as a layman, it better became him "to tell his
mind merrily than more solemnly to preach." Jests, he acknowledges, are
but sauce; and "it were but an absurd banquet indeed in which there were
few dishes of meat and much variety of sauces; but that is but an
unpleasant one where there were no sauce at all."
The massive folio of Sir THOMAS MORE'S "English Works"[2] remains a
monument of our language at a period of its pristine vigour. 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.
These works were the fertile produce of "those spare hours for writing,
stolen from his meat and sleep." We are told that "by using much
writing, towards his latter end he complained of the ache of his
breast." He has himself acknowledged that "those delicate dainty folk,
the evangelical brethren (so More calls our early reformers), think my
works too long, for everything that is, they think too long." More
alludes to the rising disposition in men for curtailing all forms and
other ceremonial acts, especially in the church service.
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
infelicity 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.
MORE has been fortunate in the zeal of his biographers; but we are
conscious, that had there been a Xenophon or a Boswell among them, they
could have told us much more. The conversations of Sir THOMAS MORE were
racy. His was that rare gift of nature, perfect presence of mind,
deprived of which the fullest is but slow and late. His conversancy with
public affairs, combined with a close observation of familiar life, ever
afforded him a striking aptitude of illustration; but the levity of his
wit, and the luxuriance of his humour, could not hide the deep sense
which at all times gave weight to his thoughts, and decision to his
acts. Of all these we are furnished with ample evidence.
Domestic affection in all its naive simplicity dictated the artless
record of Roper, the companion of More, for sixteen years, and the
husband of his adored daughter Margaret.[3] The pride of ancestry in the
pages of his great-grandson, the ascetic Cresacre More, could not borrow
the charm of that work whence he derived his enlarged narrative.[4] More
than one beadsman, the votaries of their martyr, have consecrated his
memory even with their legendary faith;[5] while recent and more
philosophical writers have expatiated on the wide theme, and have
repeated the story of this great Chancellor of England.[6]
"The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live to see it, will
prove a marvellous man." It was thus that the early patron of More,
Cardinal Morton, sagaciously contemplated on the precocity of More's
boyhood. His prompt natural humour broke out at the Christmas revels,
when the boy, suddenly slipping in among the players, acted an extempore
part of his own invention. Yet this jocund humour, which never was to
quit him to his last awful minute, at times indulged a solemnity of
thought, as remarkable in a youth of eighteen. In the taste of that day,
he invented an allegorical pageant. These pageants consisted of
paintings on rolls of cloth, with inscriptions in verse, descriptive of
the scenical objects. They formed a series of the occupations of
childhood, manhood, the indolent liver, "a child again," and old age,
thin and hoar, wise and discreet. The last scenes exhibited more
original conceptions. The image of DEATH, where under his "misshapen
feet" lay the sage old man; then came "the Lady FAME," boasting that she
had survived death, and would preserve the old man's name "by the voice
of the people." But FAME was followed by TIME, "the lord of every hour,
the great destroyer both of sea and land," deriding simple "Fame;" for
"who shall boast an eternal name before me?" Yet was there a more potent
destroyer than TIME; Time itself was mortal! and the eighth pageant
revealed the triumph of ETERNITY. The last exhibited the poet himself,
meditating in his chair--he "who had fed their eyes with these fictions
and these figures." The allegory of Fame, Time, and Eternity, is a
sublime creation of ideal personifications. The conception of these
pageants reminds one of the allegorical "Trionfi" of Petrarch; but they
are not borrowed from the Italian poet. They were, indeed, in the taste
of the age, and such pageants were exhibited in the streets; but the
present gorgeous invention, as well as the verses, were the fancies of
the youthful More.
MORE in his youth was a true poet; but in his active life he soon
deserted these shadows of the imagination.
A modern critic has regretted, that, notwithstanding the zeal of his
biographers, we would gladly have been better acquainted with MORE'S
political life, his parliamentary speeches, his judicial decrees, and
his history as an ambassador and a courtier.
There is not, however, wanting the most striking evidence of MORE'S
admirable independence in all these characters. I fix on his
parliamentary life.
As a burgess under Henry the Seventh, he effectually opposed a royal
demand for money. When the king heard that "a beardless boy had
disappointed all his purpose," the malice of royalty was wreaked on the
devoted head of the judge his father, in a causeless quarrel and a heavy
fine. When MORE was chosen the Speaker of the Commons, he addressed
Henry the Eighth on the important subject of _freedom of debate_. There
is a remarkable passage on the heat of discussion, and the diversity of
men's faculties, which displays a nice discrimination in human nature.
"Among so many wise men, neither is every one wise alike; nor among so
many alike well-witted, every man alike well-spoken; and it often
happeneth, that likewise as much folly is uttered with painted polished
speeches, so many boisterous and rude in language see deep, indeed, and
give right substantial counsel. And since also in matters of great
importance the mind is so often occupied in the matter, that a man
rather studies what to say than how, by reason whereof the wisest man
and best-spoken in a whole country fortuneth, while his mind is fervent
in the matter, somewhat to speak in such wise as he would afterward wish
to have been uttered otherwise; and yet no worse will had he when he
spake it, than he had when he would gladly change it."
Once the potent cardinal, irritated at the free language of the Commons,
to awe the House, came down in person, amid the blazonry of all the
insignia of his multiform state. To check his arrogance, it was debated
whether the minister should be only admitted with a few lords. MORE
suggested, that as WOLSEY had lately taxed the lightness of their
tongues, "it would not be amiss to receive him in all his pomp, with his
(silver) pillars, emblems of his ecclesiastical power, as a pillar of
the church, his maces, his pole-axes, his crosses, his hat, and his
great seal too, to the intent that if he find the like fault with us
hereafter, we may the more boldly lay the blame on those his grace
brings with him." The cardinal made a solemn oration; and when he
ceased, behold the whole House was struck by one unbroken and dead
silence! The minister addressed several personally--each man was a mute:
discovering that he could not carry his point by his presence, he seemed
to recollect that the custom of the House was to speak by the mouth of
their Speaker, and WOLSEY turned to him. MORE, in all humility,
explained the cause of the universal silence, by the amazement of the
House at the presence of so noble a personage; "besides, that it was not
agreeable to the liberty of the House to offer answers--that he himself
could return no answer except every one of the members could put into
his head their several wits." The minister abruptly rose and departed
_re infecta_. Shortly after, WOLSEY in his gallery at Whitehall told
MORE, "Would to God you had been at Rome, Mr. More, when I made you
Speaker!" "So would I too!" replied MORE; and then immediately
exclaimed, "I like this gallery much better than your gallery at Hampton
Court;" and thus, talking of pictures, he broke off "the cardinal's
displeasant talk."
This was a customary artifice with MORE. He withdrew the mind from
disturbing thoughts by some sudden exclamation, or broke out into some
facetious sally, which gave a new turn to the conversation. Of many, to
give a single instance. On the day he resigned the chancellorship, he
went after service to his wife's pew; there bowing, in the manner and
with the very words the Lord Chancellor's servant was accustomed to
announce to her, that "My lord was gone!" she laughed at the idling
mockery; but when assured, in sober sadness, that "My lord was gone!"
this good sort of lady, with her silly exclamation of "Tillie vallie!
Tillie vallie! will you sit and make goslings in the ashes?" broke out
into one of those domestic explosions to which she was very liable. The
resigned chancellor, now resigned in more than one sense, to allay the
storm he had raised, desired his daughters to observe whether they could
not see some fault in their mother's dress. They could discover none.
"Don't you perceive that your mother's nose stands somewhat awry?" Thus
by a stroke of merriment, he dissipated the tedious remonstrances and
perplexing inquiries which a graver man could not have eluded.
At the most solemn moments of his life he was still disposed to indulge
his humour. When in the Tower, denied pen and ink, he wrote a letter to
his beloved Margaret, and tells her that "This letter is written with a
coal; but that to express his love a peck of coals would not suffice."
His political sagacity equalled the quickness of his wit or the flow of
his humour. He knew to rate at their real value the favours of such a
sovereign as Henry VIII. The king suddenly came to dine at his house at
Chelsea, and while walking in the garden, threw his arm about the neck
of the chancellor. Roper, his son-in-law, congratulated More on this
affectionate familiarity of royalty. More observed, "Son, the king
favours me as (much as) any subject within the realm; howbeit I have no
cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in
France, it should not fail to go!"
MORE seems to have descried the speck of the Reformation, while others
could not view even the gathering cloud in the political horizon. He and
Roper were conversing on their "Catholic prince, their learned clergy,
their sound nobility, their obedient subjects, and finally that no
heretic dare show his face." More went even beyond Roper in his
commendation; but he proceeded, "And yet, son Roper, I pray God that
some of us, as high as we seem to sit upon the mountains, treading
heretics under our feet like ants, live not the day that we would gladly
be at league and composition with them, to let them have their churches
quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have
ours quietly to ourselves." Roper, somewhat amazed, alleged his reasons
for not seeing any cause which could produce such consequences. The zeal
of the juvenile Catholic broke out into "a fume," which More perceiving,
with his accustomed and gentle artifice exclaimed merrily, "Well, son
Roper, it shall not be so! it shall not be so!"
No one was more sensible than MORE that to gain over the populace it is
necessary to descend to them. But when raillery passed into railing, and
sarcasm sunk into scurrility, in these unhappy polemical effusions, our
critics have bitterly censured the intolerance and bigotry of Sir THOMAS
MORE. All this, however, lies on the surface. The antagonists of MORE
were not less free, nor more refined. MORE wrote at a cruel crisis; both
the subjects he treated on, and the times he wrote in, and the distorted
medium through which he viewed the new race as the subverters of
government, and the eager despoilers of the ecclesiastical lands, were
quite sufficient to pervert the intellect of a sage of that day, and
throw even the most genial humour into a state of exacerbation.
Our sympathies are no longer to be awakened by the worship of images and
relics--prayers to saints--the state of souls in purgatory--and the
unwearied blessedness of pilgrimages--nor even by the subtle inquiry,
Whether the church were before the gospel, or the gospel before the
church?--or by the burning of Tyndale's Testament, and "the confutation
of the new church of Frere Barnes:" all these direful follies, which
cost Sir Thomas More many a sleepless night, and bound many a harmless
heretic to the stake, have passed away, only, alas! to be succeeded by
other follies as insane, which shall in their turn meet the same fate.
Those works of MORE are a voluminous labyrinth; but whoever winds its
dark passages shall gather many curious notices of the writer's own age,
and many exquisite "merrie tales," delectable to the antiquary, and not
to be contemned in the history of the human mind.
The impending Reformation was hastened by a famous invective in the form
of "The Supplication of Beggars." Its flagrant argument lay in its
arithmetic. It calculated all the possessions of the clergy, who though
but "the four-hundredth part of the nation, yet held half of the
revenues."
MORE replied to "The Supplication of the Beggars" by "The Supplications
of the Souls in Purgatory." These he represented in terror at the
sacrilegious annihilation of the masses said for their repose; and this
with the Romanist was probably no weak argument in that day.
MORE more reasonably ridicules the extravagance of the estimates. Such
accounts, got up in haste and designed for a particular purpose, are
necessarily inaccurate; but the inaccuracy of a statement does not at
all injure the drift of the argument, should that be based on truth.
With MORE "the heretics" were but ordinary rebels, as appears by the
style of his narrative. "A rabble of heretics at Abingdon did not intend
to lose any more labour by putting up bills (petitions) to Parliament,
but to make an open insurrection and subvert all the realm, to kill the
clergy, and sell priests' heads as good and cheap as sheep's
heads--three for a penny, buy who would! But God saved the church and
the realm. Yet after this was there one John Goose roasted at
Tower-hill, and thereupon some other John Goose began to make some
gaggling awhile, but it availed him not. And now we have this gosling
with his 'Supplication of Beggars.' He maketh his bill in the name of
the beggars. The bill is couched as full of _lies_ as the beggar
swarmeth full of _lice_. We neither will nor shall need to make much
business about this matter; we trust much better in the goodness of good
men."
The marriage of the clergy was no doubt at first abused by some. MORE
describes one Richard Mayfield, late a monk and a priest, and, it may be
added, a martyr, for he was burned. Of this man he says, "His holy life
well declares his heresies, when being both a priest and a monk he went
about two wives, one in Brabant, another in England. What he meant I
cannot make you sure, whether he would be sure of the one if t'other
should happen to refuse him, or that he would have them both, the one
here, the other there; or else both in one place, the one because he was
priest, the other because he was monk."[7]
Such is the ludicrous ribaldry which runs through the polemical works of
Sir THOMAS MORE: the opposite party set no better example, and none
worse than the redoubtable Simon Fish, the writer of the "Supplication
of Beggars." Oldmixon expresses his astonishment that "the famous Sir
Thomas More was so hurried by his zeal that he forgot he was a
gentleman, and treated Mr. Fish with the language of a monk."
Writers who decide on other men and on other times by the spirit of
their own, try human affairs by a false standard. MORE was at heart a
monk. He wore a prickly hair-shirt to mortify the flesh; he scourged
himself with the knotted cord; he practised the penance; and he appeals
to miraculous relics as the evidences of his faith! I give his own words
in alluding to the Sudarium, that napkin sent to king Abgarus, on which
Jesus impressed the image of his own face: "And it hath been by like
miracle in the thin corruptible cloth kept and preserved these 1500
years fresh and well preserved, to the inward comforts, spiritual
rejoicing, and great increase of fervour in the hearts of good Christian
people." To this he joins another similar miraculous relic, "the
evangelist Luke's portrait of our blessed Lady, his mother."[8]
Such were considered as the evidences of the true faith of the
Romanists; but MORE with his relics was then dealing in a damaged
commodity. Lord Herbert has noticed the great fall of the price of
relics at the dissolution of the monasteries: some which had been left
in pawn no one cared to redeem.
"The History of King Richard the Third," which first appeared in a
correct state in this folio, has given rise to "historic doubts" which
led to some paradoxes. The personal monster whom MORE and SHAKSPEAKE
exhibited has vanished, but the deformity of the revolting parricide was
surely revealed in the bones of the infant nephews. This, the earliest
history in our vernacular literature, may still be read with delight. As
a composition the critical justice of Lord Orford may be cited. "Its
author was then in the vigour of his fancy, and fresh from the study of
the Greek and Roman historians, whose manner he has imitated." The
details in this history of a prince of the house of York, though they
may be tinged with the gall of the Lancastrian Cardinal Morton, descend
to us with the weight of contemporary authority. It is supposed that
MORE may have derived much of the materials of his history from his
early patron, but the charms which still may retain us are the natural
yet dramatic dialogue--the picturesque touches--and a style, at times,
whose beauty three centuries have not wrinkled--and the emotions which
such vital pages leave in the reader's mind.[9]
The "UTOPIA" of Sir THOMAS MORE, which being composed in Latin is not
included in this great volume of his "Workes," may be read by the
English reader in its contemporary spirited translation,[10] and more
intelligibly in Bishop Burnet's version. The title of his own coinage
has become even proverbial; and from its classical Latinity it was
better known among foreigners even in Burnet's day than at home. This
combination of philosophy, politics, and fiction, though borrowed from
the ideal republic of Plato, is worthy of an experienced statesman and a
philosopher who at that moment was writing not only above his age, but,
as it afterwards appeared, above himself. It has served as the model of
that novel class of literature--political romances. But though the
"Utopia" is altogether imaginary, it displays no graces of the
imagination in an ingeniously constructed fable. It is the dream of a
good citizen, and, like a dream, the scenes scattered and unconnected
are broken into by chimerical forms and impracticable achievements. In
times of political empiricism it may be long meditated, and the "Utopia"
may yet pass through a million of editions before that new era of the
perfectibility of the human animal, the millennium of political
theorists, which it would seem to have anticipated.
This famous work was written at no immature period of life, for MORE was
then thirty-six years of age. The author had clear notions of the
imperfections of governments, but he was not as successful in proposing
remedies for the disorders he had detected. A community where all the
property belongs to the government, and to which every man contributes
by his labour, that he may have his own wants supplied; a domestic
society which very much resembles a great public school, and converts a
citizen, through all the gradations of his existence, from form to form;
and where every man, like an automatical machine, must be fixed in his
proper place,--supposes a society of passionless beings which social
life has never shown, and surely never can. The art of carrying on war
without combating, by the wiliness of stratagems; or procuring a peace
by offering a reward for the assassination of the leaders of the enemy,
with whom rather than with the people all wars originate; the injunction
to the incurable of suicide; the paucity of laws which enabled every man
to plead his own cause; the utmost freedom granted to religious sects,
where every man who contested the religion of another was sent into
exile, or condemned to bondage; the contempt of the precious metal,
which was here used but as toys for children, or as fetters for
slaves;--such fanciful notions, running counter to the experience of
history, or to the advantages of civilised society, induced some to
suspect the whole to be but the incoherent dreams of an idling
philosopher, thrown down at random without much consideration. It is
sobriety indulging an inebriation, and good sense wandering in a
delirium. Burnet, in his translation, cautiously reminds his readers
that he must in nowise be made responsible for the matter of the work
which "he ventured" to translate. Others have conceived "the Utopia"
dangerous for those speculators in politics who might imagine the author
to have been serious. MORE himself has adjudged the book "no better
worthy than to lye always in his own island, or else to be consecrated
to Vulcan."
But assuredly many of the extraordinary principles inculcated in "the
Utopia" were not so lightly held by its illustrious author. The
sincerity of his notions may be traced in his own simple habits, his
opinions in conversation, and the tenor of his invariable life. His
contempt of outward forms and personal honours, his voluntary poverty,
his fearlessness of death--all these afford ample evidence that the
singularity of the man himself was as remarkable as the work he
produced. The virtues he had expatiated on, he had contemplated in his
own breast.
This singular, but great man, was a sage whose wisdom lay concealed in
his pleasantry; a politician without ambition; a lord chancellor who
entered into office poor, and left it not richer. When his house was to
be searched for treasure, which circumstance had alarmed his friends,
well did that smile become him when he observed that "it would be only a
sport to his family," and he pleasantly added, "lest they should find
out my wife's gay girdle and her gold beads." When the clergy, in
convention, had voted a donation amounting to no inconsiderable fortune,
"not for services to be performed, but for those which he had chosen to
do," More rejected the gift with this noble confession--"I am both
over-proud, and over-slothful also, to be hired for money to take half
the labour and business in writing that I have taken since I began." And
when accused by Tyndale and others for being "the proctor of the
clergy," and richly fed, how forcible was his expression! "He had
written his controversial works only that God might give him thanks."
It happened, however, that his after-conduct in life, in regard to that
religious toleration which he had wisely maintained in his ideal
society, was as opposite as night to noon. Could he then have ever been
earnest in his "Utopia?"--he who exults over the burning of a heretic,
who "could not agree that before the day of doom there were either any
saint in heaven or soul in purgatory, or in hell either," for which
horrible heresy he was delivered at last into the secular hands, and
"burned as there was never wretch I ween better worth."[11] This
harmless and hapless metaphysical theologian did not disagree with More
on the existence of saints, of souls, nor of hell. The heretic
conceived--and could he change by volition the ideas which seemed to him
just?--that no reward or punishment could be inflicted before the final
judgment. A conversation of five minutes might have settled the
difference, for they only varied about the precise time!
In that great revolution which was just opening in his latter days, MORE
seems sometimes to have mistaken theology for politics. A strange and
mysterious change, such as the history of man can hardly parallel,
occurred in the mind of MORE, by what insensible gradations is a secret
which must lie in his grave.
This great man laid his head on the block to seal his conscience with
his blood. Protestants have lamented this act as his weakness, the
Romanists decreed a martyrdom. In a sudden change of system in the
affairs of a nation, when even justice may assume the appearance of
violence, the most enlightened minds, standing amidst their ancient
opinions and their cherished prejudices subverted, display how the
principle of integrity predominates over that of self-preservation.