Erasmus was the greatest scholar of the time, Linacre was looked up to as perhaps the best Greek scholar of the period, and, while in Italy, Manutius in Venice had taken advantage of his knowledge for the editing of certain of the Greek classics. He himself translated a number of volumes of Galen into Latin, and the translation was proclaimed, in Erasmus's words, to be better than the original Greek.
The third of this group of friends of More was scarcely less distinguished than the other two. It was Dean Colet of St. Paul's. He, too, had been touched by the spirit of the Renaissance, but like all the others of this group, instead of being attracted towards Paganism or away from Christianity, his devotion to the Church and his faith had been broadened and deepened by his knowledge. His sermons at St. Paul's attracted widespread attention. But his personal influence was perhaps even more telling.
According to tradition, these men and certain others, as Lyly and at some times probably John Caius, who afterwards founded Caius College at Cambridge, used to meet for an afternoon's discussion of things literary, social and philosophic at the home of Colet's mother in Stepney. There we have a picture of them arguing over literary questions with that intense seriousness which characterized the Renaissance, and in the midst of which Colet had sometimes to restrain the ardent enthusiasm of the others lest argument should run into strife. Here, according to tradition, Dame Colet, mother of the Dean, used sometimes to bring them for a collation some of the strawberries that had been introduced into England [{230}] from Holland, probably by Erasmus himself or through his influence, and some of which were grown in the Colet garden. With English milk and the sweet cakes of the time, they made a pleasant interlude in the afternoon or served as a fitting smoothing apparatus for the end of a discussion that had waxed hot.
Such a group of men make an Academy in the best sense of the word. When Plato led his scholars through the groves of Academus and discussed high thoughts with them, the first Academy came into existence and the English Renaissance furnished another striking example of how the friction of various many-sided minds may serve to bring out what is best in all of them. The pleasure of such intercourse only those who have had opportunities of sharing it can properly appreciate. The meetings must, indeed, have been events in the lives of the men, and More, who had not had the opportunity to go to Italy, must have drunk in with special enthusiasm all that their long years of Italian experience had given to the others. These interludes from his more serious practical duties at the bar must have been most happy and marvellously broadening in their effects.
A good idea of More's interests as a young man between twenty-five and thirty can be obtained from his setting himself to make a translation of Pico della Mirandola's "Life, Letters and Works." While Pico was one of the most learned men of the Renaissance, he was also one of the most pious. And more than any other he showed the possibility of being profoundly acquainted with Greek culture, and yet retaining a deep devotion to religion. More's praise of him in the life that he wrote shows better than anything else the drift of his own thoughts. The passage affords a good idea of More's prose style in English, with the spelling somewhat but not entirely modernized:
"Oh very happy mind," he writes, "which none adversity might oppress, which no prosperity might enhance: Not the cunning of all philosophy was able to make him proud, not the knowledge of the hebrewe chaldey and arabie language besides greke and latin could make him vain gloriuse, not his great substance, not his noble blood coulde blow up his heart, [{231}] not the beauty of his body, not the great occasions of sin were able to pull him back into the voluptous broad way that lead us to hell: what thing was there of so marvelous strength that might overturn that mind of him which now: as Seneca saith was gotten above fortune as he which as well her favor as her malice hath, saitheth nought, that he might be coupled with a spiritual knot unto Christ and his heavenly citizens."
More also wrote some verses on the vicissitudes of fortune, in which he describes her as distributing brittle gifts among men only to amuse herself by suddenly taking them back again. It was the literal expression of his own career, and his advice as to how to defy her is best illustrated by his own life:
"This is her sport, thus proveth she her might;
Great boast she mak'th if one be by her power
Wealthy and wretched both within an hour.
Wherefore if thou in surety lust to stand.
Take poverty's part and let proud fortune go.
Receive nothing that cometh from her hand.
Love, manner and virtue: they be only tho,
Which double Fortune may not take thee fro':
Then may'st thou boldly defy her turning chance.
She can thee neither hinder nor advance.'"
The young King Henry VIII became deeply interested in More because of his brilliancy of intellect, his successful conduct of affairs, his sterling character and, above all, for his wit and humor. He wanted to have him as a member of his Court, but this More long resisted. He preferred independence to a courtier's life, and in spite of the urging of Wolsey, who had been made a Cardinal by Leo X in 1515, and alleged how dear his service would be to his majesty, continued to refuse. After an embassy to Flanders, however, on which he went with Cuthbert Tunstal to confer with the ambassadors of Charles V, who was then, however, only Archduke of Austria, upon a renewal of the alliance with the English Monarch and a further embassy of the same kind in 1516, [{232}] More consented to enter the Royal Court. On his embassy in Flanders he had probably taken the leisure to write out his "Utopia" in Latin, and it was published on the Continent, though not published in England until nearly twenty years after his death. The contact with Erasmus woke More's literary spirit, and Erasmus felt that there were magnificent possibilities for literature in More's intellect. Erasmus bewailed his becoming a courtier and says in his letters "the King really dragged him to his Court. No one ever strove more eagerly to gain admission there than More did to avoid it."
More's literary reputation rests more particularly on his "Utopia," written when he was thirty-seven years of age, during his absence from England on the commission in the Low Countries with Cuthbert Tunstal. That absence was but for six months, and this will give some idea of More's industry. At home he was deep in his law practice, and now when he had leisure from social and ambassadorial demands he found time to write one of the most interesting contributions to the science of government from the social side that probably has ever been written. It was written in Latin and was first printed at Louvain late in 1516 under the editorship of Erasmus, Peter Giles, sometimes known under his Latin name as AEgidius, and others of More's literary friends in Flanders. It was subsequently revised by More and printed by Frobinius at Basel in November, 1518. The book became popular on the Continent and was reprinted at Paris and Vienna, but was not published in England during More's lifetime. More evidently feared that it might be misunderstood there, though he had been very careful in the course of the book to make whatever might seem to reflect upon England appear to be directly referred to some other country.