SIR THOMAS MORE (1478-1535) BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL IR THOMAS MORE is conspicuous among English men of letters, not solely because of the quality of his English and Latin prose; but in the main for the humanistic spirit of his culture. In an age when his nation was not distinguished for liberality of thought nor for breadth of human view, Thomas More linked to his mediæval devoutness a passion for intellectual freedom which places him in the first rank of modern thinkers. He obtains perhaps broader recognition, as one whose public and private life was of such exalted purity and high-minded fidelity to a fixed ideal, that later generations have found in his character the essential elements of sainthood. He was born in 1478, in the morning twilight of the Renaissance. The strong new life of Italy, awakening to the beauty and wonder of the world and of man, under the inspiration of the Hellenic spirit, had not yet communicated its full warmth and vigor to the nations of the north. England was still mediæval and scholastic when Thomas More was a page in the household of Cardinal Morton. Even the great universities were under the domination of the schoolmen. Greek was neglected for the dusty Latin of scholasticism. The highly susceptible nature of Thomas More felt nevertheless the influence of the classical revival, with its accompanying revival of humanitarian sympathies. Humane in temperament, of a sweet and reasonable mind, he was drawn naturally to the study of the Greek classics. At the same time his inheritance of the simple Christian piety of an earlier day inclined him to asceticism. His soul was mediæval; his mind was modern. Self-repression and self-expansion struggled within him for the mastery. The hair shirt and the wooden pillow were placed over against the delights of the new learning. The career of Thomas More was determined by his father, a lawyer of distinction, who wished his son to be a devotee neither of religion nor of literature. In 1494, after a two-years' residence at Oxford, More was entered at New Inn to begin the study of law. From thenceforth his career was to be more and more involved with the troubled politics of England in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. For a time, |