ART. II.-1. The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, sometyme Lord Chauncellor of England: wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge. Printed at London at the costes and charges of John Cawod, John Waly, and Richarde Tottell. Finished in Apryll, the yere of our Lorde God 1557. 2. Thomæ Mori Angliæ quondam Cancellarii Opera Omnia.* Francofurti ad Monum et Lipsia, MDCLXXXIX. 3. The Life of Sir Thomas More. By his son-in-law, William Roper, Esq. With Notes and an Appendix of Letters. A New Edition, revised and corrected, by S. W. Singer. Chiswick, MDCCCXXII. 4. The Life of Sir Thomas More. By his great-grandson, Cresacre More. With a biographical Preface, Notes, and other Illustrations, by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.S.A. London, MDCCCXXVIII. 5. The History of the Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor of England in King Henry the Eight's time. Collected by I. H.† London, 1662. 6. Thomas Morus aus den Quellen bearbeitet von Dr. Georg Thomas Rudhart. Nürnberg, 1829. 7. Renaissance et Réforme. Par D. Nisard, de l'Académie Française. In Two Volumes. Paris, 1877. 8. Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England and Martyr under Henry VIII. By the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. London, 1891. 9. Sir Thomas More. By William Holden Hutton, B.D. London, 1895. A N important German writer has observed that, at the present day, thinkers may be divided into two great sections: Idealists and Materialists. By Idealists he means those who seek the explanation of the great enigma of human existence from within man; by Materialists, those who seek it from without. The dictum, like most dicta which aim at precise classification in intellectual matters, is doubtless too general, too sweeping; but it is substantially true. Unquestionably, there is a school of thought which exhibits a tendency—yes, and often more than a tendency—in the study of humanity, to subordinate mind to matter, character to environment. As unquestionably, in the reaction against this school and its excesses, many writers of no mean ability have Stapleton's Life of More, in his 'Tres Thomæ,' is prefixed to this edition. † Hoddesdon. been as their been led to attribute too little importance to the merely external conditions of our life. The difference between the two schools is clearly marked in all provinces of intellectual activity, and nowhere more clearly than in history. There are writers-the late M. Taine was a brilliant example of them—who make of history a mere department of physics, 'eine reine Naturgeschichte,' as the Germans would say; for whom the annals of the world are nothing more than a record of necessitated transformation and movement, and its sages, saints, and heroes mere puppets; impotent pieces in the game' played by Natural Selection. There are others-Carlyle may serve spokesman-who tell us, Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is, at the bottom, the History of the Great Men who have worked here: all things which we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outward material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world.' Now the difference between these two schools has really its origin in the old controversy between Freewill and Determinism. The school of which we take Taine as a representative, is strictly necessarian; it holds that the political organism which we call a nation, developes according to laws as absolute and undeviating as those which govern the growth of a physical organism. The school to which Carlyle belonged, and which professes what Mr. Herbert Spencer derisively calls The Great Man Theory,' practically accounts of will as the only reality, and does not sufficiently realize that freedom of volition is limited and conditioned. The Great Man Theory' is assuredly truer than the theory of Physical Determinism. It is true that great men original forces; but it is also true that great men are, to some extent, made by their society. They are of their age. They would not be great men else. But they are not wholly fashioned by circumstances. On the contrary, their are greatness largely lies in this, that they are not. They are conditioned doubtless by environment, by evolution, by temperament, by heredity. But they are something more than an aggregate of conditions. They are subject to the laws of time and matter; but not wholly subject. Their thoughts, their energy, their action, their suffering work wonders beyond time and matter, and the effects of mechanical force howsoever subtle. 'Of mechanical force,' we say. For there are forces not mechanical; forces not subject to the law of physical necessity. Such are, for example, duty and right. They are, properly speaking, speaking, ideas; and these ideas suffice to hinder action or to determine it. They are ideal forces. And that is what we mean when we oppose right to might; to fact, justice. And so Kant rightly holds that there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of necessity and the kingdom of liberty. In the kingdom of nature, necessity rules: every phenomenon is determined by an antecedent phenomenon: there is a rigorous mechanism in virtue of which the antecedent produces the consequent. In the kingdom of liberty, the rational will knows that its law is an ideal law,—a law which cannot act physically or mechanically upon it, and which in determining its action, so to speak, metaphysically, leaves to it its own spontaneity. Now man belongs to both these kingdoms. And so does history which is the record of man's action. History, like individual life, exhibits the play of both physical and ideal forces. And there is no common measure between the two. Considerations such as these are not out of place in approaching the subject with which we propose to deal in the present paper. Cicero, in a well-known passage, speaks of great men as luminaries in the world's history. And so they are lights which enable us to understand and judge their times. They exhibit more clearly than their fellow-men the working of the ideas, aspirations, tendencies of their generations. I count him a great man,' says Emerson, who inhabits a higher sphere of thought into which other men rise with labour and difficulty: he has but to open his eyes, to see things in a true light and in relations. . . . Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes and enable us to see other people and their works.' Yes; great men are lights. And they radiate light on their times. They see by virtue of the illumination that is in them: and in their light we may see light. True, they see in part. They may survey their age from only one point of view. They may discern only one side of the complex questions with which they have to deal. It cannot, in most cases, be otherwise. 'What do we see? Each man a space We cannot see more of what lies level to us in the present. Only the future supplies the vantage-ground from which we may take a general survey of an age. It is Time that 'solves all doubt, by bringing Truth, his glorious daughter, out.' But what great men do see, they see with the clear vision of intellectual and spiritual superiority. And to them we must go for the interpretation of their times. Now Sir Thomas More was unquestionably one of the greatest men of the age in which he Vol. 184.-No. 368. 2 A lived: lived the age of transition from the medieval to that modern order in which our lot is cast. And in the present article we propose to regard him as a representative of his times. In January of last year we put before our readers a sketch of Erasmus, whom we took as a type of the Philosopher of those times. In Sir Thomas More we have the type of the Saint. Our task in writing of Erasmus was greatly facilitated by the large number of his letters which have come down to us. In them we have the man and his environment painted for us by himself, with supreme literary skill. Of More's letters comparatively few have been preserved. For some of the most important of them we are indebted to Erasmus, in whose correspondence they find place. On the other hand, we are fortunate in possessing an admirable account of More from the pen of William Roper, who married his favourite daughter Margaret, and who lived in his house for sixteen years. It is a mere rough sketch notes for a biography rather than a biography itself; and written, as it was, from memory, twenty years after More's death, it is occasionally inaccurate. But it is of incomparable value by reason of the simple piety and lucid candour impressed upon every line of it. Stapleton, whose Life of More was written thirty years later, unquestionably had it before him in MS.-it was not published till 1626-and largely used it, gathering, however, information regarding his subject from many other trustworthy sources. His biography,* which was printed at Douai in 1588, is by far the fullest, as it is the earliest published of the ancient lives of More.† Of the modern, those by Sir James Mackintosh, Rudhart, Father Bridgett, and Mr. Hutton are the most important. Sir James Mackintosh's book, though the author has fallen into a few errors, is a kindly and generous tribute, paid nearly a century ago by an accomplished man of letters, to a character whose sweetness and elevation took him captive. Rudhart's volume, which appeared in 1829, is a monument of wide and accurate erudition, and of judicial impartiality. Of course, since it was written, a vast amount of original material, long buried in the archives of this and other countries, has been given to the world. Father Bridgett's chief reason for composing his work, as he tells us, *It forms part of the work called 'Tres Thomæ'; the other two Thomases being St. Thomas the Apostle and St. Thomas à Becket. The other most notable of them are Harpsfield's, written in the reign of Queen Mary-it has never been printed-an anonymous life bearing date 1599, and printed by Dr. Wordsworth in his Ecclesiastical Biography,' and Cresacre More's published in 1627. Cresacre More was Sir Thomas More's great-grandson. Rastell, More's son-in-law, also wrote a life of him, but no copy is known to exist. was was that he might use that material, unknown to former biographers; and no competent critic will deny that he has used it admirably. He modestly claims for himself no higher credit than that he has been industrious, and has worked with a sympathy for his subject. The claim must be conceded in ample measure. He appears not to have left unexplored any source whence information about More might be derived. No one can rise from the perusal of the four hundred and fifty pages of his book without feeling his debtor for the clear and conscientious way in which he presents his conclusions, although, to say the truth, the debt would be greatly enhanced if his work had been crowned by an ampler index. Sir Thomas More, as is natural, chiefly appeals to his sympathies as a witness, even unto death, for the authority of the Roman See. But Father Bridgett always writes with calmness, candour, and courtesy; and although not declining theological controversy when the course of his narrative gives occasion for it, he never goes out of his way to seek it. Mr. Hutton, in his sympathetic and pleasing study which appeared last year, subordinates the discussion of critical questions of divinity and history to the personal interest of his subject. His aim is admirably indicated in the lines of Martial, so aptly quoted on his titlepage 'Ars utinam mores animumque effingere possit: He ingenuously confesses the fascination of his subject for him. 'I certainly do not claim to be unbiassed; and I must admit that towards such a character as More's I find it very difficult even to fancy myself critical.' Father Bridgett, it is interesting to note, has expressed himself in very similar words: If I have been sparing in criticism, it is because the longer and more minutely I have studied those features, the more I have admired and loved them.' It is not wonderful that the Roman and the Anglican ecclesiastic should thus agree in devotion to a saintly character, with whose faith both have much in common. But we find it as strongly expressed by M. Nisard, for whom the religion which was the light of life to More is little more as he pathetically owns-than the shadow of a great name. This brilliant and accomplished writer, towards the end of his admirable study, asks himself the question, 'Has More been rightly judged in the preceding pages?' And he answers, I know not; but sure I am that the tears which have more than once moistened my pages as I wrote, were not shed for a fictitious person' (un personnage falsifié). The fifty-seven years of More's earthly life extend from 2 A 2 1478 |