The next most significant book of the Latin literature of the time is Sir Thomas More's "Utopia." Few books are more surprising in the midst of their environment. Probably no one [{437}] has ever so risen above the social atmosphere around him and breathed the rarefied air of ideal social conditions as More in the "Utopia." It was written under the influence of his first acquaintance with Plato's "Republic" and as a result of his talks with that great French scholar and friend of Erasmus, Peter Giles, or as he is known in the history of scholarship, Aegidius. More discussed not merely literary topics, but the application of the Greek literature that they were both interested in to the contemporary politics of Europe and the social conditions of their time. Not yet thirty years of age, More's powers of observation were at their highest, and his principles of life had not yet been hardened into conventional form by actual contact with too many difficulties. With no experience as yet of government and with the highest ideals of fellowship and unselfishness, he wrote out a wonderful scheme of ideal government by which the happiness of mankind would be attained. He saw clearly through all the social illusions and the social problems, and with almost youthful enthusiasm put forth his solution of all the difficulties he saw.
Undoubtedly the "Utopia" is the main literary monument of Sir Thomas More's great genius. Sir Sidney Lee in his "Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century" (Scribner's, 1904) declares that "it is as admirable in literary form as it is original in thought. It displays a mind rebelling in the power of detachment from the sentiment and the prejudices which prevailed in his personal environment. To a large extent this power of detachment was bred of his study of Greek literature." There is, perhaps, no greater series of compliments for the significance of the classics in education than the fact that these men of the Renaissance found in the Greek books not only the source of their literature, but also their art and architecture and even their science, and above all were given the breadth of mind to follow the suggestions that they met with. It must not be forgotten, however, that More was also deeply influenced by St. Augustine's "De Civitate Dei" Evident traces of this can be found. It is known that he had been reading the work of the great Latin father of the Church and that he admired him very deeply. Without any narrowness or bigotry, inspired by Augustine's great work, it was a [{438}] Christian Republic of Plato that the future Lord Chancellor of England sketched for his generation.
"Utopia" was published at the end of 1516 in Louvain, then probably the most prominent and undoubtedly the most cosmopolitan centre of academic learning in Europe. There were perhaps 5,000 students at the University there at the moment, and it was one of the large universities of the world. A new edition was published only four months later from a famous press in Paris, and within the year the great scholar-printer, Froben of Basel, produced what we would now call an édition de luxe at the suggestion and under the editorship of Erasmus, and with illustrations by Erasmus' friend, for whom More was to be such a beneficent patron later in England--Hans Holbein.
It is not surprising to hear that the book was warmly welcomed by all the scholars of Europe. The epithets which the publishers bestowed on it in the title page, aureus, saluiatis, festivus--a golden, wholesome, optimistic book--were adopted from expressions of opinion uttered by some of the best scholars of Europe. Erasmus was loud in his praise of it, it was warmly welcomed in France, it found its way everywhere among the scholars of Italy, it was read, though not too openly, in England, where there was some suspicion of its critical quality as regards English government and where Tudor wilfulness did not brook critical review of its acts.
The book was eminently interesting; there probably never has been a social Tendens novel before or since that has been so full of interest. The preliminary chapter of the book is, as Sidney Lee says, "a vivid piece of fiction which Defoe could not have excelled." More relates how he accidentally came upon his scholarly friend, Peter Giles, in the streets of Antwerp in conversation with an old sailor named Raphael or Ralph Hythlodaye. This name means an observer of trifles. More takes advantage of the current interest in the discoveries of the Western Continent by making him a sailor lately returned from a voyage to the New World under the command of Amerigo Vespucci. The name America after Amerigo was just gaining currency at that time and this added to the interest. Ralph had been impressed by the beneficent forms of [{439}] government which prevailed in the New World. He had also visited England and had noticed social evils there which called for speedy redress. The poor were getting poorer, the rich were getting richer, the degradation of the masses was sapping the strength of the country, the wrong things were in honor and social reform must come, it was hinted, or there would be social revolution. The book contained a fearless exposure of the social evils very commonly witnessed in every country in Europe at that time, though tinged more by More's experience in England than anywhere else.
Since its publication, the book has been read in every generation that has taken its social problems seriously. It was not published in England until 1551, but was translated into English again by Bishop Burnet in a form that has made it an English classic. It contains such a surprising anticipation of so many suggestions for the relief of social evils that are now discussed that I have preferred to put a series of quotations from it in the Appendix in order to show how little there is new in human thinking, and above all how a sympathetic genius at any time succeeds in seeing clearly and solving as well the problems of mankind as at any other time, in utter contradiction of the so much talked of evolution that is presumed to bring these problems gradually before the bar of human justice and secure their amelioration. The book is worthy to be placed beside Plato's "Republic," and it will be more read in the near future than probably any other work of similar nature. In our own generation editions of it have been issued in every modern language and a number of editions in English. It is one of the enduring books of mankind that a scholar of any nation cannot afford to confess not having read and in which the social reformer will ever find suggestions for human uplift and the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
The third great book of the Latin literature of the century is St. Ignatius's "Exercitia Spiritualia." This is not a book to be read, however, but to be lived. It is a book of material for thought rather than of words to be conned. It has deeply influenced every generation of men ever since. If it had done nothing else but form all the members of his own order ever [{440}] since, that would be enough of itself to stamp it as a very great human document. It has, however, deeply influenced all the religious orders both of men and women since it was written, and is now the basis of nearly all of the formative exercises on which the modern religious life is based. It is undoubtedly the work of a great spiritual and intellectual genius who above all knew how to suppress himself. There is not a word too much in it, and the one complaint has been of an abbreviation beyond what would make it readily intelligible. Those who have studied it most deeply, however, find no difficulty of understanding, though they recognize the impossibility, unless perhaps after many years of devotion to it, of comprehending all of its precious significance. It is the directions for the spiritual life in shorthand, and it is surprising that a man should have committed it to all the possibilities of misunderstanding in its present form, but its lack of too great detail makes it all the more precious and leaves that room for the expression of the individuality of the one who gives the exercises that is so necessary.
The fourth book that deserves a place in any account of the Latin literature of this period is Erasmus' "Colloquia" though doubtless some might plead for a place for the "Encomium Moriae," which has had an academic immortality at least. The "Colloquia" is eminently a book for scholars written in the elegant Latin that Erasmus could employ so effectively, and it went through many editions in his lifetime and has had many reprints ever since. It was distinctly a book of style rather than of matter and of academic rather than popular interest. Scholars at all times have turned to its pages for refreshment and information and have been regaled by its charming style and its wit. It is entirely too bitter to be always admirable, but many of its satirical parts give an excellent idea, though undoubtedly exaggerated if taken as a picture of the times, of the conditions of education at the moment. It has not been often translated, and hence, in our generally complacent ignorance of Latin, is less known in our time than in any other since its publication. Its career in comparison with the three other volumes of Latin literature in this chapter, its contemporaries, emphasizes the difference between the place of [{441}] style and thought in the world literature. The scholars of the period doubtless looked upon Erasmus' book as a very triumph of scholarship, a great contribution to world literature. "The Imitation of Christ," "Utopia" and the "Spiritual Exercises" were read originally not for themselves, but for a purpose. These have maintained an active life, however, while at most the "Colloquia" has enjoyed a rather inanimate academic existence.
This does not detract from the merit of the book, however, nor from that of Erasmus' other contributions to the Latin literature of the time. Latin was at best an adopted language, however, and the expression of native genius in it could scarcely be expected. The prose has been eminently more fortunate than the verse, and it is to the former, not the latter, that we turn in order to find some of the great contributions of the period to world literature.