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Upon the whole, we consider the work as respectable. It exhibits a fair portion of industry and knowledge, and ranks very well with our second rate historians; but is never to be named with those of primary merit. If the author is equal even to Mr. Roscoe in political reach, about which there may be soine doubt, he is vastly inferior to him in the charms of style, and in the art of painting to the imagination.

Art. III. Memoirs of Sir Thomas More, with a new Translation of his Utopia, his History of King Richard III. and his Latin Poems. By Arthur Cayley, the younger, Esq. 2 vols. 4to. pp. 700. Price 21. 2s. bds. Cadell and Davies. 1808.

AN extended article in our two last numbers*, occupied,

for the greater part, by Sir Thomas More, forbids us to yield to the temptation of assigning more than a very few pages to him in our notice of the present voluminous work. Yet, as readers of political biography, we might well be forgiven, in consideration of the moral dreariness of the subject in general, for lingering long in sight of a statesman who never once slighted the dictates of conscience, nor in any concern forgot his accountableness to the Governor of the universe. Somewhere in the map of the world, we remember to have observed a promontory called Cape Farewell, and to have imagined to ourselves the pensiveness with which the adventurers who named it so might be supposed to have looked on it, while departing into the barren treacherous waste of the wide sea, which they might traverse thousands of miles before their sight would again rest on a grove or a declivity green with grass. In taking leave of a political character like More, who can tell the extent of historical research, or the protracted duration of future waiting, before we come to such another!

The present author has obtained the greater pari of his materials necessarily from the same books as Mr. Macdiarmid, making besides a very ample use of More's English works, a more ample use indeed than could be allowed if they were not become very scarce. The narration is too much interrupted and diversified by letters, and by extracts from More's poetry, to assume any thing of the formal style of history; it is very correctly designated by the title of memoirs. The parts which are in Sir Thomas's own words are perhaps the most interesting, the simplicity of the antique expression seeming to give stronger effect to the animation. and significance which inspirit every sentence; just as a person of ninety or a hundred years old, whose manners should be lively, and whose conversation should glow and glitter with fancy, and wit, and keen intelligence, if such aperson

* Macdiarmid's Lives of British Statesmen, pp. 855 and 994.

were to be found, would at many seasons have attractions for us, with which those of the sprightliest and fairest of our young acquaintance could maintain no competition. By means of these selections from More's letters and other prose writings, and of a great number of anecdotes agreeably told, together with very characteristic and curious pieces of verse, Mr. Cayley has certainly given a striking exhibition of this memorable person. His observations are generally pertinent; and his applause of Sir Thomas, which in passing on we thought rather too unqualified in one or two instances, we found reduced nearly to the standard of justice at the conclusion, by a strong censure of the intolerant spirit which dimmed the lustre of his character in his conduct toward the protestants.

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We are however by no means satisfied with the very slight manner in which the biographer has disposed of the charges of Strype and Burnet; who very possibly had too little susceptibility to the rare and admirable parts of More's charac ter, but whose respectable authority, as historians, demanded some accurate investigation of their accusatory statements, from a biographer who had taken up his work on so wide scale. His quotation from More's Apology, denying his having employed torture, is decisive as far as it goes*; but surely Mr. Cayley did not think it was to stand as a comprehensive denial of all the facts alledged by the protestant historians. Sir Thomas himself, when representing before the court appointed to examine him, the injustice of being reduced to an explicit declaration for or against the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, and when shrewdly reminded by the Secretary that he himself in his judicial office had deemed it right to reduce persons suspected of what was called beresy to as severe an alternative, instantly admitted the fact, by remarking between the two cases a difference, which he considered as justifying his conduct; and this admission, and the justification, will serve to render not improbable too many of the charges against him. We are not pretending that many readers would now feel any very deep concern in having an accurate proof made out of all the official proceedings against protestantism, of an individual, however distinguished in his time, whose influence on the state of the Christian church has ceased for centuries; but the biographer must not be permitted to take this comparative indifference, respecting the accurate proof of remote facts, as a licence for indolence, unless he will have the discretion at the same time to confine his book to a less ostentatious magnitude. When he determines to take all possible advantages of his subject, it can never be fair to avoid its difficulties. If he is content

* We have before availed ourselves of this citation, p. 997.

to collect and digest within very moderate limits such facts as confessedly need no very laborious research, it is very well; but when he comes forth with 300 quarto pages of memoirs, and appends 400 more reprinted and translated from the works of the person of whom he writes, it would be a coutempt of literary justice that he should be allowed to make up his own part of the publication entirely of the facts most easily found, with very large pieces of extract, which only needed to be transcribed, and indulgently excuse himself from any disquisitions, however important to the character in question, that require historical investigation. When he chooses his work shall have the benefit, in bulk and price, of such a mass of appendix that costs him so little, we surely have a right to insist that what he really does himself shall be done in the most finished style of workmanship. Such a stately publication, concerning an individual, should not, except through a total deficiency of records, have left the most important part of his history involved in nearly all its former uncertainty. While therefore we are considerably gratified by the memoirs, as telling us a great many facts concerning a most rare character, but facts, for the most part, rather easily collected by the biographer, we must tax Mr. Cayley with some degree of indolence, whether regarded as an investigator of historic truth, or the apologist of the illustrious statesman.

If we accuse him of indolence, we do not charge him with any perversion, or with servility to any spirit of party, as a narrator and judge. He displays a respectable freedom of thought, and forms, we think, in general, just estimates of the men and things brought in his view in the course of his work. We were pleased particularly with the remarks on the character and conduct of Erasmus, at the close of the memoirs of More, whom he survived only about a year. The friendship between these illustrious rivals in literature, wit, and celebrity, appears to have been that of two men, each of whom knew that his friend, if lost, could never be replaced by his equal. Fine portraits of both, with short fac-similes of their hand-writing, are placed as frontispieces to these volumes.

The youth of Sir Thomas threw out luxuriantly the blossoms of that virtue, wit, and genius, in which he was destined to excel all his English contemporaries. From his English works Mr. Cayley has given some ingenious poetical devices, written when he was a boy, for a series of emblematical pictures, and a very long copy of excessively humor. ous verses, reciting the story of a sheriff's officer, who assumed the guise of a friar, in order to gain access to apprehend a man who was slyly acting the sick recluse on account

of his debts, which false friar incurred the most ludicrously lamentable disasters in attempting to execute his purpose.

We have before given a slight sketch of the successive events of the life of our admirable wit and statesman, and shall therefore do little more here than extract a few anecdotes and one of his letters.

His second wife appears from the following anecdote to have been less a philosopher than himself on the occasion of his quitting his high office. During his chancellorship, one of More's attendants had been in the habit, after the church service was over, of going to his lady's pew to inform her when the chancellor was gone. The first holiday after the resignation of his office, Sir Thomas came to the pew himself, and making a low bow, said, Madam, my lord is gone. His lady at first imagined this to be one of his jests, and took little notice of it; but when he i formed her seriously that he had resigned the seal, she was in a passion. The facetious knight called his daughters, and asked if they could espy no fault in their mother's appearance. Being answered in the negative, he said, Do ye not perceive that her nose standeth awry ? The good lady is reported to have exclaimed, with her usual worldly feeling on this occasion, Tilly vally, what will you do, Mr. More? will you sit and make goslings in the ashes? it is better to rule than be ruled.' Vol. I. p. 122.

While he was sitting one day in his hall, a beggar came to complain to him that Lady More detained a little dog that belonged to him. The chancellor sent for his lady and ordered her to bring the dog with her. He took it into his hands, and placing Lady More at the upper end of the hall, desired the beggar to stand at the lower end. I sit here, he said, to do every one justice; and he desired each of them to call the dog. The little favourite immediately forsook his new mistress and ran to the beggar; upon which Lady More was compelled to indulge her partiality by purchasing the animal.' Vol. I. p. 114.

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During his chancellorship, he had made a decree against Parnell at the suit of Vaughan, and was now in his adversity accused of having received a gilt cup, as a bribe, of Vaughan's wife. Being summoned before the council, More gravely confessed, that forasmuch as that cup was, long after the aforesaid decree, brought him for a new-year's gift, he, upon the importunate pressing upon him thereof, of courtesy refused not to take it.' Here Lord Wiltshire, Ann Boleyn's father, exclaimed in triumph, Lo, did I not tell ye, my Lords, that ye should find this matter true!' More desired their lordships as they had courteously heard him tell one part of his tale, that they would vouchsafe of their honours indifferently to hear the other.' He then clared, that although he had indeed with much difficulty received the cup, yet immediately thereupon he caused his butler to fill it with wine, and he drank to the lady. When she had pledged him, he gave her the cup again, that she might give it to her husband as a new-year's gift from him; and at his urgent request, though much against her will, she at last received it. Vaughan's wife, and other witnesses present, con firmed his statement.' Vol. I. p. 252.

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When one of the family of Manners said to More, honores mutant Mores,' the knight readily retorted on him, that it was true in English, for then it applied to Manners.

When a debtor to the knight, on being asked to discharge his claim, expatiated on the uncertainty of this life, and the inutility of money in the grave, concluding pompously memento morieris, More answered him, memento Mori aris.

When one of his friends brought More an ill-written work, to receive his opinion of it previously to its publication, the knight told him gravely it would be better in verse.' The man took home his book, versified it, and brought it again to More. Yea, marry,' said the knight, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.' Vol. I. p. 247.

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After his condemnation, a light-headed courtier, as More's greatgrandson calls him, having come to the knight, not to talk of serious matters, but to urge him to change his mind, Sir Thomas, wearied by his impertinence and importunity, at last replied, I have changed it. The report of this soon reached the king, and More was commanded to explain himself. The knight now rebuked the courtier for troubling his majesty with what he spoke in jest; his meaning he said was, that whereas he proposed to have been shaved, that he might appear as usual at his execution, he had now changed his mind, and his beard should share the fate of his head.' Vol. I. p. 229.

After reading these, and a great many more such instances of humour and gaiety, after being told that his jocularity accompanied him in the gravest official situations and engagements, and his wit in the most awful ones, as it vividly darted out its beams at the sight of the executioner and the axe; in short, that he uttered pleasantries almost as naturally and involuntarily as he breathed,-a person will be entirely unable to comprehend, unless he reads the whole account of the character, how this very same man should, with all the same natural grace and ease, utter and write expressions which no one can read without tears; how the man, who but two minutes since vanquished the gravity of the austerest auditor with his arch terms and gay images, can now without an effort, and with the most captivating and irresistible expres sion of simplicity and sincerity, be making the most devout and affecting references to death and the Sovereign Judge. No character so exquisitely compounded of different elements, has been heard of since his time. It is a humble comparison, else we should say that the character resembled those textures in which several colours are so interwoven, that the slightest movements in the light give them a quick alternation of predominance and brilliance, while neither hurts, but each seems to set off more richly, the lustre of the other.

In the short intervals of his trial, he recounted the proceedings, in letters to his eldest daughter; one of which we

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