Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), inspired by the spirit of the Renaissance, wrote in Latin a remarkable book called Utopia (1516), which presents many new social ideals.  In the land of Utopia, society does not make criminals and then punish them for crime.  Every one worships as he pleases.  Only a few hours of work a day are necessary, and all find genuine pleasure in that.  In Utopia life is given to be a joy.  No advantage is taken of the weak or the unfortunate.  Twentieth-century dreams of social justice are not more vivid and absorbing than Sir Thomas More’s.  It is pleasant to think that the Roman Catholic church in 1886 added to her list of saints this lovable man, “martyr to faith and freedom.”

When the full influences of the Renaissance reached England, Shakespeare answered their call, and his own creations surpass the children of Utopia.

The Invention of Printing.—­In 1344, about the time of Chaucer’s birth, a Bible in manuscript cost as much as three oxen.  A century later an amount equal to the wages of a workman for 266 days was paid for a manuscript Bible.  At this time a book on astronomy cost as much as 800 pounds of butter.  One page of a manuscript book cost the equivalent of from a dollar to a dollar and a half to-day.  When a member of the Medici family in Florence desired a library, he sent for a book contractor, who secured forty-five copyists.  By rigorous work for nearly two years they produced two hundred volumes.

[Illustration:  BOOK ILLUSTRATION, EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY. British Museum.]

One of the most powerful agencies of the Renaissance was the invention of printing, which multiplied books indefinitely and made them comparatively cheap.  People were alive with newly awakened curiosity, and they read books to learn more of the expanding world.

About 1477 William Caxton, who had set up his press at the Almonry, near Westminster Abbey, printed the first book in England, The Dictes and Notable Wish Sayings of the Philosophers.  Among fully a hundred different volumes that he printed were Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, and an English translation of Vergil’s AEneid.

[Illustration:  FACSIMILE OF CAXTON’S ADVERTISEMENT OF HIS BOOKS._ Bodleian Library, Oxford._]

Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.—­The greatest prose work of the fifteenth century was completed in 1470 by a man who styles himself Sir Thomas Malory, Knight.  We know nothing of the author’s life; but he has left as a monument a great prose epic of the deeds of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.  From the various French legends concerning King Arthur, Malory selected his materials and fashioned than into the completest Arthuriad that we possess.  While his work cannot be called original, he displayed rare artistic power in arranging, abridging, and selecting the various parts from different French works.