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ciated with greater piety and heavenly-mindedness than in Sir Thomas More."-Eccles. Biog. Pref. xviii.

Even Burnet, though he represents More as "superstitiously devoted to the interests and passions of the clergy, serving them when in authority, and assisting them in all their cruelties," yet is obliged to confess, that he is "one of the glories of the nation for probity and learning: and for justice, contempt of money, humility, and a true generosity of mind, he was an example to the age in which he lived."―(p. 356.)

A moralist has said, that "to be a good man and a disagreeable one, is a kind of treason against virtue:" and yet there are those who would fain have good men, if not disagreeable, at least austere and morose. Thus old Hall describes More as "a man well learned in the tongues, and also in the common law, whose wit was fine, and full of imaginations, by reason whereof he was much given to mocking, which was to his gravity a great blemish." In another place this most solemn of historians remarks: "I cannot tell whether I should call him a foolishwise man, or a wise-foolish man ;* for undoubtedly, besides his learning he had a great wit, but it was so mingled with taunting and mocking, that it seemed to those that best knew him, that he thought nothing to be well spoken, except he had ministered some mock in the communication." The court historian is particularly displeased with the "mocking" in the following instance :-"Even when going to his death, at the Tower-gate, a poor woman asked him for certain evidences of hers, in the time he was in office, which, after he was apprehended, This ill natured antithesis called forth the following well turned epigram:

Η εμε μωροσοφον μεν αν είποις η σοφόμωςον,

Μωρο ; γαρ κοσμῳ ειμι, σοφος τε Θεῷ.
Wise-foolish, foolish-wise!-nay, not so odd:
To the world foolish, but how wise to God!

W.

she could not come by. He answered: 'My good woman, have patience but a little while longer; for the king is so good to me, that, within this half honr or so, he will discharge me of all business, and help thee himself.""

Herbert says of him: "His jests were thought to have too much levity in them; he might have resigned his dignity without using such sarcasms, and have betaken himself to a more retired and quiet life, without making his family and himself contemptible."

Fuller's observations on this point are in his peculiar way: "Some ground we have in England, neither so light and loose as sand, nor so stiff and binding as clay, but a mixture of both, regarded as the surest soil for profit and pleasure to grow together; of such a soil was Sir Thomas More, in whom facetiousness and judiciousness were excellently tempered together. And yet some have taxed him, that he wore a feather in his cap, and wagged it too often; meaning that he was over-free in his fancies and conceits. Even at the scaffold-a place not to break jests on, but to break off jesting-he could not contain. Now though innocency may smile at death, surely it is unfit to flout thereat."

But let us listen to those who knew Sir Thomas better, and have described him to the life. On the subject of his habitual gaiety of mind, Roper says, "he has the art to temper all serious matters with some witty device or other." "Always seasoning," says Rastell, "the troublesomeness of the matter with some merry jest or pleasant tale, as it were the sweet to tempt us more willingly to drink of the wholesome drug."*

*Cosi all' egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soave licor gli orli del vaso;

Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve,
E dall inganno suo vita riceve.

So to the child, in sickness languishing,

Its edge with honey ting'd the cup we bring;
He drinks the healing bitter in the sweet,
For life indebted to the happy cheat.

Ta 880.

W.

When delivered of his jest, says Cresacre, he was never seen to laugh himself, but always spoke it so gravely, that few could see by his look whether he spoke in earnest or not." "And yet," adds his faithful historian," though he never left his mirth in outward appearance, his heart was ever humble and mortified, and he exercised acts of self-denial which worldly men would have wondered at."

More had his wit-wordt at every turn. The reader has seen numerous instances in the course of our narrative but we cannot resist the opportunity of quoting one or two other examples.

:

Hearing a friend of his accuse his wife of being a shrew, he said to him with his usual immovable gravity" Nay, nay, my friend, you defame the good woman, and so do all those who say the like of their wives. There is but one shrew in the world, and, with reverence be it spoken, that is my own—and so may every man say that is married." But, adds the author of the anonymous life, with much gravity,

Sir Thomas so much bettered the state of mind of this wife of his, that I doubt not she is a saved soul, and that they now enjoy each other's company in bliss."

More had lent a sum of money to a man, and not finding it forthcoming at the time promised, took occasion to give him a gentle hint respecting it.Instead of satisfying Sir Thomas, the borrower began to moralise on the thing; he said our sojourn here below was short, that we were too apt to set our hearts upon riches; that we might be called away,

"Ye use to look so sadly when ye mean merrily, that many times men doubt whether ye speak in sport, or mean in good earnest."— More's Dialogue, p. 18.

"Wit is the more pointed for being dry and serious: for it then seems as if the speaker himself had no intention in it, and that we were the first to find it out."-Hazlitt.

We would venture to propose the revival of this expressive old Saxon term, which exactly corresponds to the mot of the French, and is more comprehensive than our saying.

Heaven knows how soon, and then we should have little use of money, and therefore, added he, memento morieris. "There, you have it," said Sir Thomas; "follow up your maxim-Memento Mori æris (Remember More's money)."

Some one, more busy about other persons' affairs than his own, plucking him by the sleeve one day, and lamenting how much Price, Wolsey's secretary, had disgraced himself by appearing at a masquerade in a fool's coat: "Nay, nay, excuse him," said More; "it is less hurtful to the commonwealth when wise men go in fools' coats, in jest, than when fools go in wise men's, in earnest."

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There is no man so morose, says Erasmus, whom his playful humour cannot relax; there is no matter, however dry and forbidding, to which his wit cannot impart grace and vivacity.

between the natural man who labours to

The difference is immense humorist, like More, and the amuse others, or who indulges his own spleen at the expense of his neighbours in the latter, ridicule is an exotic; in the former, it is the spontaneous growth of the soil.

The great master of human life might almost be. thought to have had Sir Thomas in his eye, in the following sketch:

A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit-
For, every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ;
Which his fair tongue-conceit's expositor-
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

Shakspeare.

There was a certain dash of singularity in More's dress, as in every thing else. Erasmus says that he used to wear his lawyer's gown awry, which gave him the appearance of having one shoulder

higher than the other. And as the peculiarities of every great man are sure to find imitators, old Ascham tells us that other lawyers would imitate this negligent air of his; and yet, adds he, slily, though they contrived to resemble him in this, they were most unlike him in the more essential things of wit and learning. Cresacre tells us that he had no care what apparel he wore, insomuch that being once told by his secretary, Harris, that he had no shoes fit to put on; well, says he, tell "my tutor" to look to it for by that name he called the servant to whose discretion he left the management of his wardrobe-" never troubling his mind about such matters."

Sir Thomas More is thus described by his grandson:" He was somewhat low in stature, yet well proportioned; his complexion pale, his hair neither black nor yellow [probably chesnut], his eyes gray, his countenance amiable and cheerful, his voice neither loud nor shrill, but speaking plainly and distinctly; though he delighted much in music, it was not very tuneable; his health tolerably good, only that towards his latter end, by using much writing, he complained of a pain in the breast.

"His table was well supplied, yet he ate only of one dish himself, which was usually salted meat. He was fond of coarse brown bread, milk, cheese, eggs, and fruit. In his youth he wholly abstained from wine; and in his latter years he took it only diluted with water, or when he pledged his friends."

Rastell represents More as fond of natural history; we quote his words: "He had great pleasure in beholding the form and fashion of beasts and fowl of all kinds. There was scarcely any sort of birds that he had not in his house. He kept an ape, a fox, a weasel, a ferret, and other beasts more If there were any strange things brought out

rare.

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