The young lawyer who had dared to incur royal displeasure by speaking out in Parliament in defence of the pockets of his fellow-citizens, had naturally become a popular man in the City. And his appointment to this judicial office was, therefore, a popular appointment.
More’s tested high principle.
The spirit in which More entered upon its responsible duties still more endeared him to the people. Some years after, by refusing a pension offered him by Henry VIII., he proved himself more anxious to retain the just confidence of his fellow-citizens, in the impartiality of his decisions in matters between them and the King, than to secure his own emolument or his Sovereign’s patronage.[338] The spirit too in which he reentered upon his own private practice as a lawyer was illustrated both by his constant habit of doing all he could to get his clients to come to a friendly agreement before going to law, and also by his absolute refusal to undertake any cause which he did not conscientiously consider to be a rightful one.[339] It is not surprising that a man of this tested high principle should rapidly rise upon the tide of merited prosperity. Under the circumstances in which More was now placed, his practice at the bar became rapidly extensive.[340] Everything went well with him. Once more he was drinking the wine of life.
More’s domestic happiness.
There was probably no brighter home—brighter in present enjoyment, or more brilliant in future prospects—than that home in Bucklersbury, into which Erasmus, jaded by the journey, entered on his arrival from Italy. He must have found More and his gentle wife rejoicing in their infant son, and the merry voices of three little daughters echoing the joy of the house.[341]
V. ERASMUS WRITES THE ‘PRAISE OF FOLLY’ WHILE RESTING AT MORE’S HOUSE (1510 OR 1511).
For some days Erasmus was chained indoors by an attack of a painful disease to which he had for long been subject. His books had not yet arrived, and he was too ill to admit of close application of any kind.
The ‘Praise of Folly,’ written in More’s house.
To beguile his time, he took pen and paper, and began to write down at his leisure the satirical reflections on men and things which, as already mentioned, had grown up within him during his recent travels, and served to beguile the tedium of his journey from Italy to England. It was not done with any grave design, or any view of publication; but he knew his friend More was fond of a joke, and he wanted something to do, to take his attention from the weariness of the pain which he was suffering. So he worked away at his manuscript. One day when More came home from business, bringing a friend or two with him, Erasmus brought it out for their amusement. The fun would be so much the greater, he thought, when shared by several together. He had fancied Folly putting on her cap and bells, mounting her rostrum, and delivering an address to her votaries on the affairs of mankind. These few select friends having heard what he had already written, were so delighted with it that they insisted on its being completed. In about a week the whole was finished.[342] This is the simple history of the ‘Praise of Folly.’
It was a satire upon follies of all kinds. The bookworm was smiled at for his lantern jaws and sickly look; the sportsman for his love of butchery; the superstitious were sneered at for attributing strange virtues to images and shrines, for worshipping another Hercules under the name of St. George, for going on pilgrimage when their proper duty was at home. The wickedness of fictitious pardons and the sale of indulgences,[343] the folly of prayers to the Virgin in shipwreck or distress, received each a passing censure.