This mirthful mind had, indeed, settled on his features. Erasmus, who has furnished us with an enamelled portrait of More, among its minuter touches reluctantly confessed that “the countenance of Sir Thomas More was a transcript of his mind, inclining to an habitual smile;” and he adds, “ingenuously to confess the truth, that face is formed for the expression of mirth rather than of gravity or dignity.” But, lest he should derange the gravity of the German to whom he was writing, Erasmus cautiously qualifies the disparaging delineation—“though as far as possible removed from folly or buffoonery.” More, however, would assume a solemn countenance when on the point of throwing out some facetious stroke. He has so described himself when an interlocutor in one of his dialogues addresses him—“You use to look so sadly when you mean merrily, that many times men doubt whether you speak in sport when you mean good earnest.”[1]
The unaffected playfulness of the mind; the smile whose sweetness allayed the causticity of the tongue; the tingling pleasantry when pointed at persons; the pungent raillery which corrected opinions without scorn or contumely; and the art of promptly amusing the mind of another by stealing it away from a present object—appeared not only in his conversations, but was carried into his writings.
The grave and sullen pages of the polemical labours of More, whose writings chiefly turn on the controversies of the Romanists and the Reformers, are perhaps the only controversial ones which exhibit in the marginal notes, frequently repeated, “a merrie tale.” “A merry tale cometh never amiss to me,” said More truly of himself. He has offered an apology for introducing this anomalous style into these controversial works. He conceived that, as a layman, it better became him “to tell his mind merrily than more solemnly to preach.” Jests, he acknowledges, are but sauce; and “it were but an absurd banquet indeed in which there were few dishes of meat and much variety of sauces; but that is but an unpleasant one where there were no sauce at all.”
The massive folio of Sir Thomas More’s “English Works”[2] remains a monument of our language at a period of its pristine vigour. Viewed in active as well as in contemplative life, at the bar or on the bench, as ambassador or chancellor, and not to less advantage where, “a good distance from his house at Chelsea, he builded the new building, wherein was a chapel, a library, and a gallery,” the character, the events, and the writings of this illustrious man may ever interest us.
These works were the fertile produce of “those spare hours for writing, stolen from his meat and sleep.” We are told that “by using much writing, towards his latter end he complained of the ache of his breast.” He has himself acknowledged that “those delicate dainty folk, the evangelical brethren (so More calls our early reformers), think my works too long, for everything that is, they think too long.” More alludes to the rising disposition in men for curtailing all forms and other ceremonial acts, especially in the church service.
More, however skilful as a Latin scholar, to promulgate his opinions aimed at popularity, and cultivated our vernacular idiom, till the English language seems to have enlarged the compass of its expression under the free and copious vein of the writer. It is only by the infelicity of the subjects which constitute the greater portion of this mighty volume, that its author has missed the immortality which his genius had else secured.
More has been fortunate in the zeal of his biographers; but we are conscious, that had there been a Xenophon or a Boswell among them, they could have told us much more. The conversations of Sir Thomas More were racy. His was that rare gift of nature, perfect presence of mind, deprived of which the fullest is but slow and late. His conversancy with public affairs, combined with a close observation of familiar life, ever afforded him a striking aptitude of illustration; but the levity of his wit, and the luxuriance of his humour, could not hide the deep sense which at all times gave weight to his thoughts, and decision to his acts. Of all these we are furnished with ample evidence.
Domestic affection in all its naïve simplicity dictated the artless record of Roper, the companion of More, for sixteen years, and the husband of his adored daughter Margaret.[3] The pride of ancestry in the pages of his great-grandson, the ascetic Cresacre More, could not borrow the charm of that work whence he derived his enlarged narrative.[4] More than one beadsman, the votaries of their martyr, have consecrated his memory even with their legendary faith;[5] while recent and more philosophical writers have expatiated on the wide theme, and have repeated the story of this great Chancellor of England.[6]
“The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man.” It was thus that the early patron of More, Cardinal Morton, sagaciously contemplated on the precocity of More’s boyhood. His prompt natural humour broke out at the Christmas revels, when the boy, suddenly slipping in among the players, acted an extempore part of his own invention. Yet this jocund humour, which never was to quit him to his last awful minute, at times indulged a solemnity of thought, as remarkable in a youth of eighteen. In the taste of that day, he invented an allegorical pageant. These pageants consisted of paintings on rolls of cloth, with inscriptions in verse, descriptive of the scenical objects. They formed a series of the occupations of childhood, manhood, the indolent liver, “a child again,” and old age, thin and hoar, wise and discreet. The last scenes exhibited more original conceptions. The image of Death, where under his “misshapen feet” lay the sage old man; then came “the Lady Fame,” boasting that she had survived death, and would preserve the old man’s name “by the voice of the people.” But Fame was followed by Time, “the lord of every hour, the great destroyer both of sea and land,” deriding simple “Fame;” for “who shall boast an eternal name before me?” Yet was there a more potent destroyer than Time; Time itself was mortal! and the eighth pageant revealed the triumph of Eternity. The last exhibited the poet himself, meditating in his chair—he “who had fed their eyes with these fictions and these figures.” The allegory of Fame, Time, and Eternity, is a sublime creation of ideal personifications. The conception of these pageants reminds one of the allegorical “Trionfi” of Petrarch; but they are not borrowed from the Italian poet. They were, indeed, in the taste of the age, and such pageants were exhibited in the streets; but the present gorgeous invention, as well as the verses, were the fancies of the youthful More.
More in his youth was a true poet; but in his active life he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination.