against Henry VIII. His execution was the last political act of that king.

It is to Wyatt and Surrey that we owe the introduction of the Sonnet. To Surrey alone belongs the honour of introducing Blank Verse. This he employed in his translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil's Æneid. The following sonnet is a fair specimen of Surrey's style :

The soote seasón, that bud and bloom1 forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke2 the vale.
The nightingale 3 with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make4 hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs.
The hart hath hung his old head5 on the pale";
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes fleet7 with new repaired scales;
The adder9 all her slough away she flings:
The swift swallow pursueth the fliës small;
The busy bee her honey now she mings 10;
Winter is worn that was the flower's bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

7. JOHN SKELTON, who was born in 1460, and died in 1529, was a fluent versifier, but can hardly be considered a poet. He studied at both universities, was appointed tutor to the young Prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Eighth, and was made Rector of Diss, in Norfolk. He attacked Cardinal Wolsey with great vigour and coarseness in his rhymes, and was obliged to take refuge from the Cardinal's animosity in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where

1 Bloom, a contracted form of blossom, from the verb blow.

2 Eke, the narrow and hard English form of the word which appears in German with a broad and guttural sound in auch.

3Then in nightingale (as in porringer etc.), is intrusive. The word comes from aalan to sing; and in modern English it appears as yell.

8

Make match or partner.

5 I.e., shed his horns.

7Fleet, float. Hence a fleet is a number of ships that float Scale, any covering. It is a hard form of the word shell. found in skull and scallop.

6 Pale, paling. together. The same root is

The proper form is nadder. But the word has given up its n to the indefinite article a; an adder being printed by mistake for a nadder. The same mistake has happened in apron, which should be a naperon (nap as in napkin). The opposite error is found in a nag and a newt.

10 Ming-the original word. Mingle is the frequentative, like shuffle from shove.

F

he died. The animal spirits and rapid flow of his verses— -he calls them himself "breathlesse rimes"-made them popular; but, with a few exceptions, they are poor stuff. The following is from his satire against Wolsey, entitled "Why come ye not to Court ?"

But this mad Amalek,

Like to a Mamelek,1

He regardeth lords
No more than potshords;

He is in such elation

Of his exaltation

And the supportation

Of our sovereign 2 lord.
Etc., etc., etc.

His non-political verses are much more pleasant.

8. By far the greatest name in the first half of the sixteenth century is SIR THOMAS MORE. Thomas More was born in 1480, in Milk Street, Cheapside, in the city of London, just a hundred and forty years after the birth of Chaucer. He was educated at St. Anthony's School, in Cheapside; and Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, said of him, "There is but one wit1 in England, and that is young Thomas More." At the age of fifteen he was received as page into the house of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent him to Oxford. There he studied Greek under Grocyn, who first taught Greek in England, and formed a friendship with the great Erasmus. After leaving the University, he had a strong wish to turn monk, and he became a lay-brother of the Carthusian Monastery in the city of London. But he afterwards became a member of Lincoln's Inn, was called to the bar, and was appointed lecturer in Furnival's Inn. He was so successful as a lawyer, that it came to be generally said in London that no suit

1 Mameluke.

2 This is one of the misspellings of the English language. The derivation is from the Latin supremus, through the French souverain. Milton always spells it sovran. The word reign has attracted it into the bad spelling. So the influence of the Greek word rhythm has changed the word rime into rhyme. 3 Cheapside was the street which ran along the side of the city cheap (or market). Milk Street marks the quarter where milk was sold; Bread Street (where Milton was born) stands opposite to it.

Man of ability. The use of the word to denote the power of saying odd or epigrammatic things does not occur till the eighteenth century.

could have a successful issue without Thomas More. His practice at this time brought him an income equal to about £10,000 a year of our money. He was appointed Under-Sheriff of London, went into the House of Commons, and finally became Speaker of the House. On the accession of Henry VIII., he was appointed successively Treasurer to the Exchequer, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and lastly, Lord High Chancellor, in the room of Cardinal Wolsey. More was the first lay1 Lord Chancellor of England. But, feeling it his duty to protest against the marriage of the king with Anne Bullen, he resigned the Great Seal in 1532, and retired to his country house in Chelsea, which was then a pretty village on the banks of the Thames. The king had made up his mind to have a public acknowledgment that he was right; and in 1534 he invented an oath, to be taken by all the king's servants, declaring his marriage with Catherine of Arragon invalid. This oath was taken by all present and past servants of the king, except Sir Thomas More and Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. They were arrested, and thrown into the Tower. More was tried at Westminster for treason, by the king's orders, though he had left the king's service, and was beheaded on the 6th of July, 1535. He went gaily to the scaffold, making kindly and pleasant remarks to every one around him. When his head was on the block, he asked for a moment's delay to move aside his beard. "Pity that should be cut; that has not committed treason." He was a typical Englishman of the best and highest kind: serious and God-fearing in his heart, gay and full of humour, and courteous to both rich and poor; sternly just and upright. He was a thoroughly religious man; and his religion touched all his actions, and made his feeling of duty permanent and thorough-going. As Chancellor, the business of his court was despatched with a speed hitherto unknown; bribery ceased; the sternest impartiality was shown in his decisions; and, unlike Wolsey, he could be approached by all, even the poorest and the meanest. He was a good son, too. His father lived to be senior puisne judge of the King's Bench, and to see his son Lord High Chancellor. "Every day during term time, before the Chancellor began business in his

1 The theory of this post is that the High Chancellor is the keeper of the king's conscience. But, as the king is the head of the Church, the keeper must be a priest. The word chancellor comes from cancer, a crab-cancelli, little crabs -but applied to the lattice work in front of the Chancellor's seat.

own court, he went into the court of King's Bench, and, kneeling before his father, asked and received his blessing." He was a good husband. He suffered much from the bad temper of his wife, which he always turned aside by a joke. She did her best to induce him to take the oath, and to come out of prison-" Thousands of others better than he had done it." But what thousands of others had done was no guide or measure for More. That he was a good father is shown by the love which his daughter Margaret Roper bore him. His head was fixed upon London Bridge, where it remained a fortnight; but his eldest daughter bribed one of the bridge-keepers, got the head removed from the pole, had it lowered to her as she was passing in a boat under London Bridge, carried it off with her, and, when she died, the head was buried with her in her coffin.

9. Thomas More's chief work in English is his "History of Edward V. and Richard III.," the materials for which were given him by his friend, Archbishop Morton. Hallam calls it "the first example of good English language, pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms or pedantry." To understand this judgment of Hallam's we must remember :

(a) That the fifteenth century was a century chiefly of translation from Latin or French.

(b) That the learned class wrote chiefly in Latin, and hence the English language was not cultivated so much as it ought to have been.

(c) That the sixteenth century was the time of pedantic quotation, many books being crammed with Latin quotations, often more numerous than the original matter.

The work by which Thomas More is best known, however, is his UTOPIA-written in Latin. Utopia is a Greek word, which means nowhere.1 The subject of the book is an ideal republic. Utopia is an island, crescent-shaped, and two hundred miles long. It has fiftyfour towns all alike; and there are no taverns and no lawyers. The fashions never change, and no jewellery or fine clothes are worn after childhood. No one desires any other quality in his clothing than that of durability; and, since wants are few, no man needs to work more than six hours a day. The rich do not hunt, but leave

1 From ou, not, and Tóπos, a place. We have the same word in topic, topography, etc.

hunting to the butchers. The glory of a general-for there is war even there is in proportion to the fewness of the slain in a victory. Gold and precious stones are not cared for. Criminals are not punished with death; they are made slaves, wear a peculiar dress, have the tips of their ears cut off, and are hired out to work. If, however, they desert, they are executed. All religious opinions are tolerated.

The following is an extract from his history. (It ought to be stated that Shakspeare follows his character of Richard III., and has drawn many things from him.)

Richarde, the thirde

1

RICHARD III.

sonne of Richarde, Duke of York, was in witte" and corage3 egall with his two brothers, in bodye and prouesse1 farre vnder them bothe, little of stature, ill fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard favoured of visage, and such as is in states called warlye,5 in other men otherwise. He was malicious, wrathful, envious, and ever frowarde." None evill captaine was he in the warre, as to whiche his disposicion was more metely than for peace. Sundry victories hadde hee, and sommetime 8 overthrowes, but never in defaulte as9 for his own parsone,10 either of hardinesse 11 or polytike order; 12 free was hee called of dyspence, 13 and somewhat above his power liberall. With large giftes hee gat him unsted

1 Ought to be thridde, from three. Ther has been transposed, as in turn, trundle.

2

Ability.

3 Corage in Chaucer means simply heart. The same meaning is to be found in the phrase, "He has not the heart to do it." Here, in More, in the sixteenth century, it receives the modern meaning.

4 Old French prou, brave; Mod. Fr. preux, valiant.`

5 Warlike.

6 Frowarde, inclined from the right. A toward boy is a boy inclined to his work.

8 The words time, year, month, night, stone, pound, etc., were not pluralised in old English.

9 As as far as his own person was concerned.

10 Chaucer and other old writers spell person as parson, and parson as person. "He was a porë persoun of a toun."

11 Courage. Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, was called Le Hardi.

12 Clever arrangement.

13 From dispend. But the s belongs to the dis; and our word spend ought to be pend. A similar blunder has occurred in the name De Spenser. It was originally Dispensers-in the sense of stewards. The Di came to be regarded as the French De; and the word was cut down into Spenser.