of Utopia it was decreed that no man should be punished for his religion. Every one might be of any religion he pleased, and might use argument to induce others to accept it. This liberty was extended to avowed atheists, though these were judged to be unfit for any public trust. All sects united in public worship, which was so designed that nothing might be seen or heard which should jar with the feelings of any class of worshippers. This broadminded conception formed a coping-stone to the noble ideal which More had given to the world.

More's conception of the Utopia was suggested in part, there is little doubt, by some of his favourite books. Among these we know were Plato's Republic and the playful dialogues, especially the Vera Historia of Lucian. It seems, further, that More had in his mind the recorded practices of the early Christians and some of the introductory machinery of St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei. It was the first notable example from the pen of an English writer of the type of voyage imaginaire. Its popularity abroad procured it a number of imitators. It suggested such speculative treatises as Campanella's Civitas Solis, and it may have had some influence upon such playful flights of fancy as Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage de la Lune. It certainly gave a new adjective, Utopian, not only to England, but to Europe. English literature itself contains many examples of the voyage imaginaire, both of the speculative and of the more purely playful type. Amongst the former may be merely noted Bacon's New Atlantis, Harrington's Oceana, Hobbes's Leviathan, Sir John Eliot's Monarchy of Man, Hall's Mundus alter et idem, Filmer's Patriarcha, Butler's Erewhon, and Bellamy's Looking Backward; among the latter Barclay's Argenis, Bishop Francis Goodwin's Man in the Moon, Bishop John Wilkin's Discovery of a World in the Moon, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Robert Paltock's Peter Wilkins, Raspe's

Baron Munchausen, Lytton's Coming Race, and the numerous fantastic peregrinations of Mr. H. G. Wells.

In regard to dramatic invention, More is superior to any of his successors, with the exception of Swift. In the art of feigning he is a worthy disciple of Plato. Like him, starting from a small portion of fact he founds his tale with admirable skill on the few lines in the Latin narrative of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci. He is very precise about dates and facts, and has the power of making us believe that the narrator of the tale must have been an eye-witness. More greatly regrets that he forgot to ask Raphael Hythlodaye in what part of the world Utopia was situated. When More wrote to his friends at Antwerp to make good the loss of this important detail, the whereabouts of Hythlodaye could no longer be ascertained, and the secret perished with him.1

The Utopia shows its author to have possessed a reach and originality of thought far beyond his contemporaries. Nearly all that we can learn of More is delightful, but baffling. The favourite of Holbein, of Henry and of Erasmus (who wrote his Encomium Moria under More's roof), he is described by his "Erasmiotatos" as omnibus omnium horarum homo. A merry story ever on his lips, he was never in gayer humour than when he had decided to defy Henry VIII., unless it was when he was actually on the scaffold. Always smiling (like Newman, like Arnold), he keeps his hearers and readers alike under the enigma of his style, and, like his wife, we never quite know when, if ever, he is in earnest; but he wins all hearts, even that of his practical wife, by his playful flattery. Lover of Lucian, patron of Hellenists and musicians, he brings

1 One of the nearest approaches to the Utopian polity, as pointed out by Sir Clements Markham in his interesting History of Peru, was that of Peru under the administration of the Incas.

up a family of scholars with the aid of a birch made of peacocks' feathers. Careless and ironical though he is about worldly prosperities, he constantly eulogises his father's sternness and tenacity in such matters; while, in regard to heretics, he himself was pitiless. The antique mould and the medieval strain render his character an exceptionally puzzling one for the modern man to unravel.1

1 The Workes of St Thomas More . . . written in the Englysh Tongue, were edited in folio by Rastell in 1557 (a new edition is promised by Delcourt and O'Connor). His best prose is contained in the unfinished little tract, De Quatuor Novissimis, and in the dialogue entitled "Quoth he and Quoth I." The two contemporary Lives of More are by "son Roper," who married his favourite daughter Margaret, first printed in 1616, and the Life in the Tres Thoma (1588) of Thomas Stapleton. The sketches by Mackintosh and Seebohm and the imaginary picture in Anne Manning's Household of Sir Thomas More apart, there are two good Lives by Catholics of to-day, Father Bridgett's (best edition 1892) and Henri Brémond's much briefer Blessed Thomas More (1904).

BOOK II

DRAMA AND LYRIC

CHAPTER I

FROM TRANSITION TO TRANSFORMATION-I

"The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature."-EMERSON.

An important period of development-Italian influenceClassical translations-Arthur Golding-Sir Thomas North -Sir Thomas Hoby-Sir Geoffry Fenton-Painter's Palace of Pleasure-George Chapman-Edward Fairfax-Joshua Sylvester-John Florio Thomas Shelton-Sir Thomas Urquhart.

IN dealing with the important period of transition between the early Tudor and later Tudor period, we must pause. We are in a century of two great reigns. The Wars of the Roses are becoming forgotten. Henry VIII. is King.

The Tudor régime continues-in the eighties as in the forties the absolute despotism seems undisturbed, nay even strengthened by the repulse of external enemies. But great changes had taken place quietly and imperceptibly. By 1590 the Tudors had achieved their task. Parliament was reviving and was bracing itself up for a task of its own. The force of circumstance which had delivered Englishmen bound into the hands of tyrants was going to release them. The genius of the race demanded it. So in literature, extraordinary developments had taken place in this interval. External signs had been few and of no sensational order. We shall look in vain during the Pro

tectorates, and during the fifties, sixties, and seventies for any literary planet or for any star of the first magnitude. The literary aptitudes of Englishmen were being undemonstratively schooled and disciplined.

Poetry was acquiring a new quiet force. But it was mainly by forced labours of translation, and by journey work for the infant stage, that the literary train was laid.

The development that took place in regard to English literature between early Tudor and late Tudor times, in the fifty years let us say between 1529 and 1579, was a most important one. The period may at first sight seem empty and singularly barren. But when we regard it attentively and recognise the change brought about in the view taken of fundamentals, we must admit its claim to serious interest. At the commencement of it Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia in Latin. This is a momentous fact.

Much had already been done to unify the English language. Caxton, like another King Alfred, had made translations into English, and having given vernacular books his imprimatur, had distributed them to serve as patterns of the "King's English" broadcast over the land. The same influence had been used to give a wider circulation to the poetry which had hitherto been mainly a monopoly and a luxury of the court-notably the works of Chaucer and Gower; a little later, the popular collections known as the Poetical Miscellanies. Already the Stationers' Company had grown into a powerful federation successfully interested in extending the dissemination of books.1 Much had assuredly been done, but not enough

1 In the reign of Mary, the Privy Council began to perceive and to regard with a jealous eye the far-reaching influence which the new art of printing was capable of exercising upon public opinion; the scriveners and book-sellers had formed a guild or craft fraternity in Henry IV.'s time. In Henry VII.'s