than sign the marriage articles of Anne Boleyn, and would not take the oath as to the lawfulness of that marriage.  Henry’s kindness turned to fury, and More was a doomed man.  A devout Romanist, he would not violate his conscience by submitting to the act of supremacy which made Henry the head of the Church, and so he was tried for high treason, and executed on the 6th of July, 1535.  There are few scenes more pathetic than his last interview with his daughter Margaret, in the Tower, and no death more calmly and beautifully grand than his.  He kissed the executioner and forgave him.  “Thou art,” said he, “to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive:  pluck up thy spirit man, and be not afraid to do thine office.”

UTOPIA.—­His great work, and that which best illustrates the history of the age, is his Utopia, ([Greek:  ou topos], not a place.) Upon an island discovered by a companion of Vespuccius, he established an imaginary commonwealth, in which everybody was good and everybody happy.  Purely fanciful as is his Utopia, and impossible of realization as he knew it to be while men are what they are, and not what they ought to be, it is manifestly a satire on that age, for his republic shunned English errors, and practised social virtues which were not the rule in England.

Although More wrote against Luther, and opposed Henry’s Church innovations, we are struck with his Utopian claim for great freedom of inquiry on all subjects, even religion; and the bold assertion that no man should be punished for his religion, because “a man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases,” as Henry’s six bloody articles so fearfully asserted he must.  The Utopia was written in Latin, but soon translated into English.  We use the adjective utopian as meaning wildly fanciful and impossible:  its true meaning is of high excellence, to be striven for—­in a word, human perfection.

OTHER WORKS.—­More also wrote, in most excellent English prose, a history of the princes, Edward V. and his brother Richard of York, who were murdered in the Tower; and a history of their murderer and uncle, Richard III.  This Richard—­and we need not doubt his accuracy of statement, for he was born five years before Richard fell at Bosworth—­is the short, deformed youth, with his left shoulder higher than the right; crafty, stony-hearted, and cruel, so strikingly presented by Shakspeare, who takes More as his authority.  “Not letting (sparing) to kiss whom he thought to kill ... friend and foe was indifferent where his advantage grew; he spared no man’s death whose life withstood his purpose.  He slew, with his own hands, King Henry VI., being a prisoner in the Tower.”

With the honorable name of More we leave this unproductive period, in which there was no great growth of any kind, but which was the planting-time, when seeds were sown that were soon to germinate and bloom and astonish the world.  The times remind us of the dark saying in the Bible, “Out of the eater came forth meat; out of the strong came sweetness.”