‘London: 10 Calend. Novembris’[1504].[262]
More buries himself in his studies with Lilly.
Surrounded as he was by Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, More soon began to devote his leisure to his old studies. Lilly, too, had returned home well versed in Greek. He had spent some years in the island of Rhodes, to perfect his knowledge of it.[263] Naturally enough, therefore, the two friends busied themselves in jointly translating Greek epigrams;[264] and as, with increasing zeal, they yielded to the charms of the new learning, it is not surprising if the fascinations of monastic life began to lose their hold upon their minds. The result was that More was saved from the false step he once had contemplated.
He had, it would seem, seen enough of the evil side of the ‘religious life’ to know that in reality it did not offer that calm retreat from the world which in theory it ought to have done. He had cautiously abstained from rushing into vows before he had learned well what they meant; and his experience of ascetic practices had far too ruthlessly destroyed any pleasant pictures of monastic life in which he may have indulged at first, to admit of his ever becoming a Carthusian monk.
Still we may not doubt that, in truth, he had a real and natural yearning for the pure ideal of cloister holiness. Early disappointed love possibly,[265] added to the rude shipwreck made of his worldly fortunes on the rock of royal displeasure, had, we may well believe, effectually taught him the lesson not to trust in those ‘gay golden dreams’ of worldly greatness, from which, he was often wont to say, ‘we cannot help awaking when we die;’ and even the penances and scourgings inflicted by way of preparatory discipline upon his ‘wanton flesh,’ though soon proved to be of no great efficacy, were not the less without some deep root in his nature; else why should he wear secretly his whole life long the ‘sharp shirt of hair’ which we hear about at last?[266]
So much as this must be conceded to More’s Catholic biographers, who naturally incline to make the most of this ascetic phase of his life.[267]
More disgusted with the cloister.
But that, on the other hand, he did turn in disgust from the impurity of the cloister to the better chances which, he thought, the world offered of living a chaste and useful life, we know from Erasmus; and this his Catholic biographers have, in their turn, acknowledged.[268]
IV. MORE STUDIES PICO’S LIFE AND WORKS. HIS MARRIAGE (1505).
More appears to have been influenced in the course he had taken, mainly by two things:—first, a sort of hero-worship for the great Italian, Pico della Mirandola; and, secondly, his continued reverence for Colet.