city, and from the immoralities of the representatives of the supreme pontiff abroad." *

The uncharitableness, the turbulence, the hatred, the bloodshed, which followed the preaching of Luther, closed the bright visions of the two illustrious friends, who agreed in an ardent love of peace, though not without a difference in the shades and modifications of their pacific temper, arising from some dissimilarity of original character. The tender heart of More clung more strongly to the religion of his youth. Erasmus more apprehended disturbance of his tastes and pursuits, and betrays in some of his writings a temper, which might have led him to doubt whether the glimmering of probability, to which More is limited, be equivalent to the evils attendant on the search.

The public life of More began in the summer of 1514 †, with a mission to Bruges, in which Tunstall, then master of the rolls, and afterwards bishop of Durham, was his colleague, of which the object was to settle some particulars relating to the commercial intercourse of England with the Netherlands. He was consoled for a detention, unexpectedly long, by the company of Tunstall, whom he describes as one not only fraught with all learning, and severe in his life and morals, but inferior to no man as a delightful companion. On this mission he became acquainted with several of the friends of Erasmus in Flanders, where he evidently saw a progress in the accommodations and ornaments of life, to which he had been hitherto a stranger. With Peter Giles of Antwerp, to whom he intrusted the publication of Utopia by a prefatory dedication, he continued to be closely connected during the lives of both. In the year 1515, he was sent again to the Netherlands on the like mission. The intricate relations of traffic between the two countries had given rise to a succession of disputes,

*Tonstal. Erasm. 590. Pentinger. Cologne, 9th of November, 1520. To this theory neither of the parties about to contend could have assented; but it is not on that account the less likely to be in a great measure true. Erasm. Petro Algidio. Lond. 7th of May, 1514. Opp. iii. 135. Records of the Common Council of London.

Morus Erasmo, 30th April, 1516.

in which the determination of one case generally produced new suits. As More had in the year 1510* been elected sub-sheriff of London, he obtained leave of absence from the mayor and aldermen of that city, on occasion of both these missions, to go upon the king's ambasset to Flanders." +

66

In the beginning of 1516 he was made a privycouncillor; and from that time may be dated the final surrender of his own tastes for domestic life, and his predilections for studious leisure, to the flattering importunities of Henry VIII. "He had resolved," says Erasmus, to be content with his private station; but having gone on more than one mission abroad, the king, not discouraged by the unusual refusal of a pension, did not rest till he had drawn More into the palace. For why should I not say drawn,' since no man ever laboured with more industry for admission to a court, than More to avoid it? The king would scarcely ever suffer the philosopher to quit him. For if serious affairs were to be considered, who could give more prudent counsel? or if the king's mind was to be relaxed by cheerful conversation, where could there be a more facetious companion?" +

"So

Roper, who was an eye-witness of these circumstances, relates them with an agreeable simplicity. from time to time was he by the king advanced, continuing in his singular favour and trusty service for twenty years. A good part thereof used the king, upon holidays, when he had done his own devotion, to send for him; and there, sometimes in matters of astronomy, geometry, divinity, and such other faculties, and sometimes on his worldly affairs, to converse with him. And other whiles in the night would he have him up into the leads, there to consider with him the diversities, courses, motions, and operations of the stars and planets. And because he was of a pleasant disposition, it pleased

City Records, 3d Sept. 1510, in room of Richard Brooke, appointed recorder, perhaps the author of the well-known Abridgment of the Law. + City Records, May 1514, and May 1515.

Erasm. Hutt. 23d of July, 1519. Opp. iii. p. 628.

the king and queen, after the council had supped at the time of their own (i. e. the royal) supper, to call for him to be merry with them." What Roper adds could not have been discovered by a less near observer, and would scarcely be credited upon less authority: "When them he perceived so much in his talk to delight, that he could not once in a month get leave to go home to his wife and children (whose company he most desired), he, much misliking this restraint on his liberty, began thereupon somewhat to dissemble his nature, and so by little and little from his former mirth to disuse himself, that he was of them from thenceforth, at such seasons, no more so ordinarily sent for."* To his retirement at Chelsea, however, the king followed him. "He used of a particular love to come of a sudden to Chelsea, and leaning on his shoulder, to talk with him of secret counsel in his garden, yea, and to dine with him upon no inviting."+ The taste for More's conversation, and the eagerness for his company thus displayed, would be creditable to the king, if his behaviour in after time had not converted them into the strongest proofs of utter depravity. Even in Henry's favour there was somewhat tyrannical, and his very friendship was dictatorial and self-willed. It was reserved for Henry afterwards to exhibit the singular, and perhaps solitary, example of a man who was softened by no recollection of a communion of counsels, of studies, of amusements, of social pleasures, and who did not consider that the remembrance of intimate friendship with such a man as More bound him to the observance of common humanity, or even of bare justice. In the moments of Henry's partiality, the sagacity of More was not so utterly blinded by his good-nature, that he did not in some degree penetrate into the true character of caresses from a beast of prey. "When I saw the king walking with him for an hour, holding his arm about his neck, I rejoiced, and said to sir Thomas, how happy he was whom the king had so familiarly entertained, as I had never seen + More's Life of Sir T. More, p. 49.

* Roper, 12.

him to do to any one before, except cardinal Wolsey. I thank our Lord, son,' said he, I find his grace my very good lord indeed, and I believe he doth as singularly favour me as any other subject within this realm: how beit, son Roper, I may tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof; for if my head would win him a castle in France, when there was war between us, it should not fail to go.'"*

Utopia, composed in 1516, was printed incorrectly, perhaps clandestinely, at Paris. Erasmus's friend and printer, Froben, brought out an exact edition at Basle in 1518, which was retarded by the expectation of a preface from Buddè or Buddæus, the restorer of Greek learning in France, and probably the most critical scholar in that province of literature on the north of the Alps. It was received with loud applause by the scholars of France and Germany. Erasmus confidently observed to an intimate friend, that the second book having been written before the first, had occasioned some disorder and inequality of style; but he particularly praised its novelty and originality, and its keen satire on the vices and absurdities of Europe.

So important was the office of under-sheriff then held to be, that More did not resign it till the 23d of July, 1519†, though he had in the intermediate time served the public in stations of trust and honour. In 1521 he was knighted, and raised to the office of treasurer of the exchequer, a station in some respects the same with that of chancellor of the exchequer, who at present is

* Roper, 21, 22. Compare this insight into Henry's character with a declaration of an opposite nature, though borrowed also from castles and towns, made by Charles V. when he heard of More's murder.

+ City Records.

Est quod Moro gratuleris, nam Rex illum nec ambientem nec flagitantem munere magnifico honestavit addito salario nequaquam penitendo, est enim principi suo a thesauris. Nec hoc contentus, equitis aurati dignitatem adjecit. Erasm. Budd. 1521. Opp. iii. 378.

"Then died master Weston, treasurer of the exchequer, whose office the king of his own accord, without any asking, freely gave unto sir Thomas More."Roper, 13.

The minute verbal coincidences which often occur between Erasmus and Roper, cannot be explained otherwise than by the probable supposition, that copies or originals of the correspondence between More and Erasmus were preserved by Roper after the death of the former.

on his appointment to be designated by the additional name of under-treasurer of the exchequer. It is a minute, but somewhat remarkable, stroke in the picture of manners, that the honour of knighthood should be spoken of by Erasmus, if not as of superior dignity to so important an office, at least as observably adding to its consequence.

From 1517 to 1522, More was employed at various times at Bruges, in missions like his first to the Flemish government, or at Calais in watching and conciliating Francis I., with whom Henry and Wolsey long thought it convenient to keep up friendly appearances. To trace the date of More's reluctant journeys in the course of the uninteresting attempts of politicians on both sides to gain or dupe each other, would be vain, without some outline of the negotiations in which he was employed, and repulsive to most readers if the enquiry promised a better chance of a successful result. Wolsey appears to have occasionally appointed commissioners to conduct his own affairs as well as those of his master at Calais, where they received instructions from London with the greatest rapidity, and whence it was easy to manage negotiations, and to shift them speedily, with Brussels and Paris; with the additional advantage, that it might be somewhat easier to conceal from one of those jealous courts the secret dealings of that of England with the other, than if the despatches had been sent directly from London to the place of their destination. Of this commission More was once at least an unwilling member. Erasmus, in a letter to Peter Giles on the 15th of November, 1518, says, "More is still at Calais, of which he is heartily tired. He lives with great expense, and is engaged in business most odious to him. Such are the rewards reserved by kings for their favourites." Two years after, More writes more bitterly to Erasmus, of his own residence and occupations. "I approve your determination never to be involved in the busy trifling of princes; from which, as you love me, you must wish that I were extricated. You cannot

* Erasm. Opp. iii. 357.