"You sha have sene [Utopian] children that had caste away their peerles and pretious stones, when they sawe the like sticking upon the Ambassadours cappes; digge and pushe theire mothers under the sides, sainge thus to them, -'Loke mother how great a lubbor doth yet were peerles, as though he were a litel child stil!' 'Peace sone,' saith she; 'I thinke he be some of the Ambassadours fooles.'" Also in this model state industrial education was in vogue; children all, of whatsovever parentage, were to be taught some craft as "masonrie or smith's craft, or the carpenter's science." Unlawful games were decried-such as "dyce, cardes, tennis, coytes [quoits] — do not all these,” says the author, "sende the haunters of them streyghte a stealynge, when theyr money is gone?" The Russian Count Tolstoi's opinion that money is an invention of Satan and should be abolished, is set forth with more humor and at least equal logic, in this Latin tractate of More's. In the matters of Religion King Utopus decreed that "it should be lawful for everie man to favoure and folow what religion he would, and that he mighte do the best he could to bring other to his opinion, so that he did it peaceablie, gentelie, quietlie and so belie, without hastie and contentious rebuking." Yet this same self-contained Sir Thomas More did in his after controversies with Tyndale use such talk of him about his "whyning and biting and - licking and tumbling in the myre," and "rubbing himself in puddles of dirt,"- as were like anything but the courtesies of Utopia. Indeed it is to be feared that theologic discussion does not greatly provoke gentleness of speech, in any time; it is a very grindstone to put men's wits to sharpened edges. But More was a most honest man withal; fearless in advocacy of his own opinions; eloquent, self-sacrificing a tender father and husband-master of a rich English speech (his Utopia was written in Latin, but translated many times into English, and most languages of Continental Europe), learned in the classics. a man to be remembered as one of the greatest of Henry VIII.'s time; a Romanist, at a date when honestest men doubted if it were worthiest to be a King's man or a Pope's man ;-not yielding to his royal master in points of religious scruple, and with a lofty obstinacy in what he counted well doing, going to the scaffold, with as serene a step as he had ever put to his walks in the pleasant gardens of Chelsea. Cranmer, Latimer, Knox, and Others. A much nobler figure is this, to my mind, than that of Cranmer,* who appears in such picturesque lights in the drama of Henry VIII.- who gave adhesion to royal wishes for divorce upon divorce; who always colored his religious allegiances with the colors of the King; who was a scholar indeed learned, eloquent; who wrought well, as it proved, for the reformed faith; but who wilted under the fierce heats of trial; would have sought the good will of the blood-thirsty Mary; but who gave even to his subserviencies a half-tone that brought distrust, and so- finally the fate of that quasi-martyrdom which has redeemed his memory. He stands very grandly in his robes upon the memorial cross at Oxford: and he has an even more august presence in the final scene of Shakespeare's play, where amidst all churchly and courtly pomp, who was to become the he christened the infant Cranmer, b. 1489; d. 1556. Complete edition of his works published 1834 (Rev. H. Jenkyus). Cranmer's Bible so called, because accompanied by a prologue, written by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop, etc. Royal Elizabeth, and says to the assembled digni taries : "This royal infant Tho' in her cradle, yet now promises Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, Which time will bring to ripeness: She shall be A pattern to all princes living with her, And all that shall succeed her. Truth shall nurse her, She shall be loved and feared. A most unspotted lily shall she pass To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her." * Tennyson, in his drama of Queen Mary (a most unfortunate choice of heroine) gives a statuesque pose to this same Archbishop Cranmer; but Shakespeare's figures are hard to duplicate. He was with Henry VIII. as counsellor at his death; was intimate adviser of the succeeding Edward VI. : and took upon himself obligations from that King *There are many reasons for doubting if these lines were from Shakespeare's own hand. Emerson (Representative Men) rarely given to Literary criticism, remarks upon "the bad rhythm of the compliment to Queen Elizabeth" as unworthy the great Dramatist: so too, he doubts, though with less reason the Shakespearean origin of the Wolsey Soliloquy. See also Trans. New Shakespere Society for 1874. Part I. (Spedding et al.) (contrary to his promises to Henry) which brought him to grief under Queen Mary. That brave thrust of his offending hand into the blaze that consumed him, cannot make us forget his weaknesses and his recantations; nor will we any more forget that he it was, who gave (1543) to the old Latin Liturgy of the Church that noble, English rhythmic flow which so largely belongs to it to-day. It is quite impossible to consider the literary aspects of the period of English history covered by the reign of Henry VIII., and the short reigns of the two succeeding monarchs, Edward VI. and Mary, without giving large frontage to the Reformers and religious controversialists. Every scholar was alive to the great battle in the Church. The Greek and Classicism of the Universities came to have their largest practical significance in connection with the settlement of religious questions or in furnishing weapons for the ecclesiastic controversies of the day. The voices of the poets - the Skeltons, the Sackvilles, the Wyatts, were chirping sparrows' voices beside that din with which Luther thundered in Germany, and Henry VIII. thundered back, more weakly, from his stand-point of Anglicanism. |