cessful and abiding things, are noticeable for their delicacy of fancy and feeling, their perfection of melody, and their frequent play on the same strain of sentiment,"mournfully reverting to the happy days of boyhood, wailing for desolate and disconsolate love, or symbolizing man's fate by the decay of the year." Though he wrote much, he improved to the last, adding to the experiences of his ripening years, a fuller tone of thought; while his heart lost none of its youthful freshness, but continued young in sentiment to the very

last.

His poetry has two prime excellences. It is full of true domestic feeling, chastened into a tender spirituality, by religious faith and trust, and of descriptions of scenery equal to the productions of any writer of the present century. What could excel in picturesqueness the following, from the "Fowler:"

Now day with darkness for the mastery strove:
The stars hai waned away-all, save the last
And fairest, Lucifer, whose silver lamp,
In solitary beauty, twinkling, shone
'Mid the far west, where, through the clouds of
rack

Floating around, peep'd out at intervals
A patch of sky; straightway the reign of night
Was finished, and, as if instinctively,
The ocean flocks, or slumbering on the wave
Or on the isles, seem'd the approach of dawn
To feel; and, rising from afar were heard
Shrill shrieks and pipings desolate-a pause
Ensued, and then the same lone sounds return'd,
And suddenly the whirring rush of wings
Went circling round us o'er the level sands,
Then died away; and, as we look'd aloft,
Between us and the sky we saw a speck
Of black upon the blue-some huge, wild bird,
Osprey or eagle, high amid the clouds
Sailing majestic, on its plumes to catch
The earliest crimson of the approaching day.

True to his fine heart is the lesson of

humanity taught him by the slaughter
which he and the Fowler there com-
mitted on the wild flocks of sea birds.

Soul-sicken'd, satiate, and dissatisfied,
An alter'd being homewards I return'd,
My thoughts revolting at the thirst for blood,
So brutalizing, so destructive of
The finer sensibilities which man

And palm-tree shadows,

Meadows

And bee-hive cones, and a thymy hill,
And greenwood mazes,
And greensward daisies,

And a foamy stream, and a clacking mill;

for it was the spirit of his love and life to cling to all things gentle, and beautiful, which could minister to the high spirituality of his simple nature, whether green trees, or glad birds, or tender flowers, or rosy-cheeked children; for his heart was a stranger to sordid sympathies, and his genius sought kindred with the homely and the heart-warming. Though so much that he has written will soon be forgotten, his "Domestic Verses," his "Elegiac Effusions," and a few of his sonnets and his prose tale, "Mansie Wauch," will live for ever as productions worthy of the author of Casa Wappy."

66

the Poetical Literature of the Last Delta's last work, the "Lectures on Half Century," requires a brief notice before we conclude this paper. This is a book of wholesome, manly criticism; not free from errors of judgment, or entirely purged of prejudice, yet containing errors and prejudices which, so

In boyhood owns, and which the world destroys. far from detracting, only exhibit his

Nature had preached a sermon to my heart:
And from that moment, on that snowy morn-
(Seeing that earth enough of suffering has,
And death)-all cruelty my soul abhorr'd,
Yea, loathed the purpose and the power to kill.

generous enthusiasm and goodness of heart; and are as creditable, in a poetical sense, as if they were characteristics of perfection. Himself a poet, There is a little sketch in his poem and on terms of intimacy with many of on "Thomson's Birth Place," so short, the living writers whose works it was sweet, and sunny, that it might be placed his duty to criticise, it is pleasing that beside one of Wilson's, or Watteau's, or he has discharged his task in so geneMoreland's pictures, as a literary tran-rous and independent a manner, so that script of Nature's own outlines and co- we can well afford to forgive him for his lours; it is this;few blunders,

In criticising the works of the writers respectively comprised within the period under consideration, the genial character of Delta's mind evinces itself in the most pleasing manner. His distinctions are delicate, and his summings up exhibit great breadth of appreciation, fulness of reading, and considerable power of analysis. He has a keen eye for borrowed lines, and all degrees of plagiarism. He hits off the characteristics of the several authors by sparkling epigrammatic comparisons, so piquant in spirit, so kindly in tone, as to provide a mélange of light reading, side by side with the most solid estimates of modern poetical literature.

Another prejudice, long cherished and stoutly maintained, was that strange conception of the nature and office of poetry which placed it in opposition to the revelations of science, as a creation so distinct and remote from facts, as to be in danger of annihilation in this age of philosophical inquiry and precision. This idea flashes out frequently in his poems, but is expounded in full force in the last of these lectures, In his "Reminiscences of Boyhood" he says—

The leaden talisman of truth,
Hath disenchanted of its rainbow hues
The sky, and robbed the fields of half their
flowers.

And in another he expresses the wish-
And be my mind

But the book has two besetting sins. These are the classification of poets as To science, when it deadens, blind. to merit and style, and the enunciation of what we regard as a most unphilo- Though we have not room to discuss sophical idea in regard to the relations this question here, nor if we had, would and objects of poetry itself. Some of it perhaps be fit we should; yet, we Delta's estimates are accurate and just, may dismiss the point by stating our and especially when they concern mi- opinion that science and poetry may nute particulars; but when he attempts harmoniously march together; the one to arrange the poets in the order of their widening the field of man's physical respective positions in literature, he and mental triumphs, the other minismakes (we think) some decisions so erro-tering to the requirements of his moral neous as to verge on the ludicrous. nature; both necessary elements of his What does the reader think of his character and life. If science teaches placing Sir Walter Scott "alone and us to regard as fictions many of the above all" in the list of modern poets-creations of the mind which so long above Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge; above Campbell, Keats, Shelly, Tennyson! "I at once put him far beyond Byron, Wordsworth, or any other competitor for supremacy, on a throne by the side of Shakspere." And again, "I challenge one instance from the whole history of literature, where that popularity, whether slow or sudden, which was not deserved, has continued to endure; and assuredly Scott's must, while a single human heart continues to beat." In poetry, there can be little ground for disputing that Scott was, to a considerable extent, extinguished by Byron, whose genius took a higher flight into regions where Scott's less ample wing would not carry him; and now, Scott is least read of any of the seven whose names are believed, by Delta, to have been eclipsed by him. Scott's immortality rests on his prose fictions, and only the most partial nationality could have prompted Delta to place his poems" alone and above all on a shelf by the side of Shakspere."

have been the truths of poetry; if she discards the witches and their infernal broth; the seers, the demons, the fairies, and all the spells of a necromancy which has perished; she, at the same, enlarges the sphere of man's thought and wonder; lifts him nearer to the Creator by an inspiration drawn from the Creator's works; and so provides a region of new idealities wherein the creatures of poetry and imagination may find room and verge enough" to develope each its particular form of being. Whatever increases man's knowledge of nature and himself, increases the domain of true poetry, by the production of a series of images and personalities peculiar to the new life which has arisen; and it must be the task of imagination to adapt itself continually to the new conditions of existence, and not to cling in sadness and tears to perishing idols, merely because there was once a time when they were worshipped with hearts of devotion and with eyes of faith.

240

SIR THOMAS MORE.

BIOGRAPHY may be compared to a lamp parts and unimpeached integrity; wearperpetually burning before the niche ing the robes of a judge, and doubly exwhich contains the effigy of a great man. alted, in his old age, by seeing his son If it be feeble and dim, the image re- the Chancellor of England. Few of his mains half-shadowed; but if it throw a maxims, nevertheless, have been befull and brilliant light, the figure and queathed; though one axiom matriface of the dead are reflected in lumi- monial all chroniclers have thought prenous relief from the chiaroscuro of the cious enough to be preserved. "The past. Through the works in which our choice of a wife," said the forensic sage, ancestral master-spirits have embalmed "is like dipping your hand into a bag their minds for immortality, they "rule full of snakes, with only an eel among our spirits from their urns;" but through them: you may happen to light upon the groves of the historical academy, the eel, but it is a hundred to one that they become visible as the lights to you are stung by a snake." Sincere or which a hundred centuries may look not in this profession, Sir John three back for warning or example. Sir times risked the venom, for so many THOMAS MORE was one whose works times did he marry, and died at last, were dedicated to the future, but whose aged ninety, not like Cleopatra, by blood was shed for the past; in morals, warming an asp upon his breast, but a philosopher, mounting far above his from feasting too luxuriously on grapes. time; in religion, an enthusiast, cling- Thomas was by his first wife, who reing to superstitions by which an usurp-lated to her physicians a dream, which, ing church had profaned and polluted in that credulous age, obtained the the pure faith first preached abroad by the fishers of Galilee. In depicting his character, writers have sometimes confounded the office of the historian with that of the funeral orator, or the partizan of a hostile creed. There have, however, been temperate and candid pens employed in delineating his career, which appears indeed so conspicuously in the annals of his age, that we find, without unusual difficulty, the colours to paint him for our biographical gallery.

credit of a prophecy. She had, she said, a vision of all her children, and among them was one whose countenance shone with a superior brightness.

This was Thomas. He was born in Milk-street, London, in 1480; the twentieth year of Edward the Fourth's reign. Anecdotes are related of his infancy, prophetic of a future greatness; but they are nurses' gossip, too puerile to be preserved. He was early placed at St. Anthony's Free School, an ancient foundation, in ThreadneedleOf the stem from which he sprung, street, where, among other eminent his autographical epitaph declares the men, Whitgift and Heath had received truth, he was of an honourable but not their education. There, as he tells illustrious birth. Sir John More, the himself, he rather greedily devoured father, is supposed to have been de- than leisurely chewed his grammar scended remotely from an Irish stock; rules; but stayed only for a short while, but all the family papers being seized for his father had interest enough to after the attainder of the son, history is procure him admission into the family without the means of verifying this fact. of Cardinal Morton. This method of However, we look for no pedigree in education was then much in vogue, the author of "Utopia." He was at though considered the privilege of once the flower and the fruit of his noblemen's sons. The Cardinal, howgenealogical tree. No ancestral lustre ever, among all his patrician students gave an early glory to his name. His had none so illustrious as Thomas merits were original and personal-not More, who afterwards drew a generous derivative; and heralds would have bla-portrait of him in his "Utopia," as well zoned him dimly in their books, since as in his " History of Richard III." they, as Burke has phrased it, seek no further for virtue than in the preamble of a patent or the inscription of a tomb. Sir John, however, who was born about the year 1440, figured as a lawyer of fine

His policy crowned Henry in place of his usurper, and united the Houses of the Red and White Rose; and his talents elevated him to the triple honours of an Archbishop's mitre, Chancellor's

seal and a Cardinal's hat; yet we re-exalted offices of life-to marry, to be a member him less admiringly for these, faithful husband, a good father, and a pathan for the share he had in training to triot, active in the service of his country. maturity the rare and fruitful genius of More entered Parliament at twentythe Judge's son. He predicted of him one, and soon distinguished himself by that whoever lived to watch him grow an eloquence which the senate timidly up, would see a marvellous man; for applauded, though the Court resented it young More gave an early earnest of fiercely. For he was not a palace his capacity. In the Christmas plays agent, and once roused the Commons he took part among the actors, and to refuse a subsidy, imperiously decharmed audiences of no common sort manded of them by the Crown. One by the sparkle of his unpremeditated of the Privy Council went to the King wit; he devised pageants for the amuse- and told him," that a beardless boy had ment of his companions; drew inge-overthrown his purpose." Even then, nious pictures, and wrote beneath them however, the sovereign dared not openly verses which he need never have been ashamed to own.

attack the representatives, but satisfied his pique by inventing a quarrel against To cultivate this sprouting genius, the young orator's father, from whom he the Cardinal sent him, at seventeen extorted, in the Tower, a fine of £100. years of age, to Oxford, where he re- To coerce the son, nevertheless, was mained two years. Rhetoric, logic, and found impossible, so a bishop was emphilosophy chiefly occupied his mind, ployed to cajole him, which was equally with the classics, and especially Greek, futile; for Thomas refused the flatteries though that language of the original by which they sought to corrupt him, Muses was not then commonly studied and continued to study the arts of eloin this country. From the university quence, and to acquire that authority he came to New Inn, to read for the of learning which might give him a dolaw, where his father allowed him an minion over the minds of other men. income so scanty, and exacted from him He studied the lives of the pious, and so particular an account of his expenses, resolved to copy the virtue of Pius of that he could scarcely dress with de- Mirandula, whose works he then transcency. More, however, applauded in-lated and published. But in their celistead of blaming this conduct, for it bacy he could not persuade himself to kept him from luxurious habits which imitate the Fathers of the Roman Church; engender vice, and he was himself of an for wisely he judged, that it was better to ascetic disposition. At about twenty, live chastely with a wife, than licentiously indeed, he began to practise the morti- as a priest, and to move purely in the fications of a cloister, wearing a hair-light of day, than to brood, bat-like, in shirt next his skin, which he never put the obscurity of those catacombs, where aside even under the Chancellor's er- monks and hermits wasted their bodies, mine. In 1500, he was appointed and petrified their souls. reader in Furnival's Inn, holding that office for three years, and publicly lecturing on religious topics in St. Lawrence's Church, Old Jewry. Thither the learned of the metropolis flocked, and, as Erasmus' Epistles inform us, were not ashamed to derive addition to their sacred wisdom from the youthful layman. At the expiration of his term of office, he felt a strong attraction towards the solitude of a monastic life, and lived four years near the Chapter House, and rigidly performed all the spiritual exercise and penance of a Carthusian friar. What determined him not to join any monkish community, was the general relaxation of discipline which, to his grief, he saw; and thus, fortunately, he was saved from the Hypogaan darkness of a celibatical cell, to perform the most

He wrote for advice to the scholarly Dean Colet, founder of St. Paul's School, which, as an inroad into the camp of ignorance, More afterwards compared to the horse of Troy. Colet, who loved his disciple, and spoke of him as the only wit in England, bade him marry; and this he did, with Jane, eldest daughter of John Cotte, of New Hall, in Essex. She was a very young girl, with none of her native simplicity concealed by art; and More, at twenty-seven years of age, made her his wife. His first affection, indeed, had chosen her sister; but, as he quaintly thought, it would be a shame and wrong for the elder to see the younger preferred, "he from a certain pity framed his fancy to her, and soon after married her." Settling in a house in Bucklersbury, he continued

R

the practice of the law, and carried on his crown, instead of a worse despot correspondence with many eminent men who cajoled and trampled on them all of his day. Among these, the most dis--the more flagitiously, in proportion tinguished was Erasmus, who, after as they put their trust in him. More many mutual letters, came to England, in consonance with the general sentiexpressly to see his friend. They met at the Lord Mayor's table, and it was contrived that they should fall into conversation before they were introduced. Erasmus was astonished by the logic and wit of the young stranger, who did not fear to dispute with him, as on equal terms, and at length exclaimed, "Aut tu Morus es, aut nullus?" To this More readily replied, "Aut tu es Erasmus, aut Diabolus."*

ment, as well as with the fashion of the day, wrote a coronation ode to this prince, and his queen. Henry VIII. was indecent enough to rejoice in gratulations showered on him at the expense of his father, for it was part of his character to revenge upon others with inhuman severity, the crimes most congenial to his own predilections.

Soon after the accession of the king, More was appointed an under-sheriff of More's poetical writings at this time, the City of London. As a lawyer, too, were, by contemporaries, admired as he became famous, earning "without elegant and pure, but though he was a scruple of conscience," upwards of master of rhetoric, and the English £400 a year, which was equal to six language had been restored to a classic times the amount now. There was strength, these compositions were alto- scarcely a great suit in which he was gether languid and diffuse. There is not employed, for the fame of his learndiscoverable in them, indeed, a logical ing and eloquence circulated rapidly force, and no little mixture of philoso- through every part of the kingdom. He phy, but the style is prolix, and the was twice, in 1512 and 1515, appointed ideas are lost in an overlaboured rotun-reader to Lincoln's Inn, and assiduousdity of diction. His path, however, ly buried his mind amid the unexplored was not yet to be among the myrtleshaded ways of literature. The political system of England was then in that troubled state which is the forerunner of change, and the rapid passage of authority from hand to hand, tended not to allay the rising commotion. Already the young lawyer had seen four kings upon the throne, had been persecuted by one of them, and he was now witness to the universal joy that greeted the coronation of Henry VIII. Youthful, handsome, opulent, prodigal, and, for a prince, well educated, the monarch promised to become anything, but the sordid, cruel, and licentious wretch he proved. The people cheered their hearts, by hoping for milder laws; the nobles flattered him with praises, in anticipation of a splendid reign; the clergy exalted him as the anointed of God's vicar on earth, and all joined in applauding as virtues, or excusing as ephemeral foibles, the words and the actions of the new monarch. Rejoicing in one tyrant's death; they exulted as though magnanimity itself had inherited

*If the reader knows Latin, he will be indignant if we translate this. If he does not, he will be indignant if we don't. Loosely, then, Erasmus said, "If thou art any one, thou art More;" to which More replied, "If thou art not the devil, thou art Erasmus,"

treasury of knowledge, which the revival of letters had thrown open to research. But while these fruitful cares occupied his attention, the offices of friendship were not forgotten. Erasmus had dedicated to him his celebrated Praise of Folly, and now satirists rose up to depreciate the works of that profound and versatile scholar. They had long pelted at him the flippant epigrams inspired from wine cups, but at length Dorpius compounded an attack on the Moria Encomium, to which More undertook a reply. The philosopher himself retorted mildly on his young and ductile assailant, with whom he lived in friendliness for many years after; but the under-sheriff analyzed his disquisition, and exposed it to Europe as a mixture of ignorance, scurrility, and malevolence, and the ability of his Latin epistle on this subject won him general applause.

Six years after his marriage, More lost his first wife, and three years afterwards he took a second-Alice Middleton, a widow with one daughter. It is acknowledged that he wedded her less from any particular affection, than on account of the necessity to have some one in his household to care for his children. Neither young nor beautiful, neither rich nor of fine qualities,