But if poetry were a crime, and no other had been laid to his charge, the good chancellor might have stood his trial freely on such evidence as is found in his works. His Mery Jest, how a Sergeant would learn to play the Freere, is thought by Ellis to have furnished the hint for Cowper’s John Gilpin. A Rufull Lamentation on the death of Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII.’s mother, has touches of pathos. The dying queen soliloquizes:
“Where are our castels now, where are our towers?
Godely Rychemonde, sone art thou gone from me!
At Westminster that costly worke of yours,[103]
Myne owne dere Lorde, now shall I never see!
Almighty God vouchsafe to grant that ye
For you and your children well may edify;
My palace byldyd is, and lo! now here I ly.”
These, however, were the pastimes of his early youth, and even so were greatly, and doubtless justly, esteemed in his own time for their purity and elegance of style. For this reason also they are freely quoted by Dr. Johnson in the preface to his dictionary. More’s fame does not rest on these achievements,
but on the greatness of mind which baffled the tyrant, and “the erudition which overthrew the fabric of false learning and civilized his country.” If not a poet, he was better than a poet, a great and good man, and his memory not Catholics only, but all good men, must ever hold in affectionate reverence.