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scribing the palace of Calypso, Homer represents Mercury as astonished at its magnificence."

"Speaking of the Pheacians, Homer

says,

"The friendly banquet, and the cheerful harp,

Are ever theirs—"

"The suitors being 108, they placed the same number of pieces, equally divided, in opposition to each other, leaving a space between them. In this interval was placed another piece, which was called Penelope, or the queen. To obtain this, was the great object of the contest. They drew lots who should If any

"Eratosthenes reads thus the fol- have the first throw or move. lowing passage in Homer:

"In my opinion, life has not to boast
A greater bliss, than when, reclin'd at ease,
And free from worldly cares, the guests are
charm'd

With the sweet warblings of the poet's lyre."

"In the text he has xaxoTTos avans; all malice or wickedness apart: but the word here means only excess or extravagance of any kind; as the Pheacians, according to Nausicratus, were greatly beloved by the gods, and could not be otherwise than sober and discreet."

"The suitors of Penelope entertain themselves by playing at a game (somewhat similar to chess) before the court of the palace. They were certainly not instructed in this by Diodorus of Megolopolis, the capital of Arcadia, nor Leo of Mitylene, originally of Athens, who, according to Phanias, was not to be conquered at this game."

"Appian of Alexandria says, that Cteso of Ithaca had informed him particularly of the game which was played by the suitors, which he thus describes :

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Clarke has the following note on this reading of Eratosthenes, κακοτητος απούσης pro κατα δήμον απαντα : " Eratosthenes apud Athenæum, 1 i. c. 14, legendum vult κακότητες απούσης, sed malè, uti notant Barnesius et Casaubonus in Annotationibus ad hunc Athenæi locum."

Pope (for he was the translator of this book) omits the music, and gives the passage in a very tame insipid manner, thus: "How goodly seems it ever to employ Man's social days in union and in joy, The plenteous board high heap'd with cates divine,

And o'er the foaming bowl, the laughing wine."

Cowper, more in the spirit of Homer, gives it thus:

"The world, in my account, no sight affords
More gratifying, than a people blest
With cheerfulness and peace; a palace
throng'd

With guests in order rang'd, listening to

sounds Melodious."

one struck the queen, so as to remove her, his piece was to take the place which she had occupied, and she continued in that to which she had been driven. He then launches a second piece; and if he strikes her again, without touching any of the other pieces, he wins the game; and from this circumstance conceives the hope of obtaining Penelope.'

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"Eurymachus, who had often conquered his rivals at this game, flattered himself that he should succeed in the marriage. The suitors were in general so enervated by luxurious habits, that none of them had strength to bend the bow of Ulysses. Their very slaves were equally weak and effeminate."

"Homer was not unacquainted with the luxury of soft beds. Arete orders such a one to be prepared for Ulysses: and Nestor, speaking to Telemachus, boasts of the number he possessed."

"Eschylus is censured for the indelicacy of his descriptions, in representing the Greeks in such a state of intoxication, as to throw urinals at each other.'

Sophocles, in the banquet of the Greeks, exceeds the filthiness of Æschylus on this subject.

By a fragment of Eupolis, Palamedes appears to have been the inventor of urinals.

"When the chiefs in Homer are entertained by Agamemnon, though Achilles and Ulysses dispute, they still preserve a certain decorum, and are guilty of no breach of good manners. The object of their contention was useful. It was to determine whether Troy should be taken by open force or by stratagem. Even the suitors of Penelope, though they are represented

Fuit ille Græcorum sanè quàm turpis et defædus mos quem tangit auctor hisce verbis, as xas τας αμίδας αλληλοις, δις. Aderant illis convivantibus, inter alia instrumenta perditi luxus, etiam matulæ, has sæpe, ubi incaluissent, in capita invicem sibi illidebant.-Casauboni Animad. in locum, p. 26.

as riotous and drunken, do not proceed to the vulgarity we read of in Eschylus and Sophocles, with an exception only, that one of them throws the foot of an ox zoo Booy at the head of Ulysses."

"The heroes sat at table, and were not reclined on couches, as Douris represents to have been the custom in the time of Alexander the Great. This prince, giving an entertainment to four hundred officers of his army, made them sit on chairs and couches of silver, covered with purple cushions. Tegesander writes, that it was not the custom for any one in Macedonia to recline on couches at their meals, who had not killed a wild boar beyond the toils; and that Cassander, though he was thirty-five years old, always sat at his father's table, because he had not achieved this exploit, notwithstanding his skill and agility in hunting."

"Homer, always attentive to decorum, makes his heroes dress their own food. Ulysses was an excellent carver, and unrivalled in the art of making a fire; Patroclus and Achilles put their hands to every thing. At the feast by Menelaus for Megapenthes, the young bridegroom pours out the wine for the guests.

"But we are so fallen off from these good old customs, that we luxuriously recline upon our couches."

"Baths, too, are become common, whereas formerly they were not permitted within the precincts of the city."

"Homer, who knew well the nature of perfumes, does not allow them to any of his heroes, except Paris."

"It is to be observed, that in the Odyssey, Ulysses washes his hands before he eats. This the heroes of the Iliad never do. The Odyssey is the quiet picture of the private life of persons, whom peace had accustomed to luxurious indulgence."

of our ancient literature, has lately published, at Chiswick, a truly exquisite reprint of what he himself justly calls "one of the most beautifully simple and impressive specimens of biographical writing to be found in our own or any other language."

We know not that there is any feature in the literary character of the age which delights us more heartily, than the returning affection manifested in every direction by our educated coun trymen for those old English books, which, although utterly neglected and despised by our literati of the last century, cannot fail to go down to the most distant generations, and to be prized, wherever they shall be read, by wise and good men, as containing the portraits, and opinions, and histories, of the most truly venerable and noble set of worthies which Christian Europe has ever had the glory to produce. Of these worthies, one of the chief was that Thomas More, the memory of whose genius and virtue can never die, so long as England deserves to keep her name. His "angelicall witt,' as his son-in-law calls it, has embodied itself in works not much to the taste of our time. But it would be indeed a bad sign of this, or of any age, to contemplate, otherwise than with an ardent and reverent interest, the memorials of his personal character-the simplicity-the innocent cheerfulness-the manly unbending integrity-the piety, pure and primitive, scarcely deformed by its small tincture of Catholic superstition-the heroic death, finally, of this martyr to principle," cui pectus," as his friend Erasmus has expressed it, erat omni nive candidius."

The only objection we have to make to the present edition of Roper's Life of this great and good man, arises out of its extreme beauty, and consequent high price. It would perhaps be too much to blame the elegant scholar, to whom we are indebted for the book, for having done every thing he thought

NOTICES OF REPRINTS OF CURIOUS most likely to make the book ac

OLD BOOKS.

No III.

The Life of Sir Thomas More; by his Son-in-Law, WILLIAM ROPER, Esq. Chiswick, Whittingham. 1817.

MR SINGER, already well known, by many excellent works, to the students

ceptable to that portion of the public for whom almost all books are in our time published. But we wish, on many accounts, that some person or persons, disposed to confer a benefit upon a yet more extensive circle of readers, would give another reprint of the same work in a form as simple and cheap as possible. Books like this

should not be allowed to remain in the hands of those alone, who can afford to pay a large price for a small pocket volume. They should be circulated as widely as coarse paper and plain types can enable them to be. They should be the manuals of youth; they could not fail to be the comfort and delight of the pious and the aged.

It is not, we confess, without some emotions of pain, that we observe into what miserable direction a great portion of the charity of this country has fallen.-we allude, in particular, to those institutions whose professed purpose it is to promote the moral and religious welfare of our own poorer countrymen by the distribution of tracts. The active management of the funds of these institutions has, it would appear, fallen, in a vast number of instances, into the hands of a set of persons, who, however good may be their intentions, are in no respect qualified to be the instructors, or to superintend the instruction of others. These good people inundate the country with a vast quantity of the most execrable trash that ever disgraced the press of any enlightened land, under the name of cheap tracts. Whether it be that the conceit of the directors of these institutions commonly leads them to suppose that it is their duty to write as well as to distribute, we know not; but it is certain, that the works they do distribute are the most abominable outrages upon good taste and good sense, and, in not a few instances, upon sound religion also, which have ever happened to come under our inspection. Vulgar, drivelling, absurd histories of the imaginary conversions of unreal milkmaids, boatswains, drummers, pedlars, and pickpockets;-drawling, nauseous narratives of the gossipings and whinings of religious midwives and nurses, and of children two or three years old already" under concern ;"-sickening hymns composed by blacksmiths and brewers, in whom poetry and piety have been twin-births;-horrible and blasphemous stories of sudden judgments upon card-players and beerdrinkers, &c. &c. &c.;-such are the greater part of the mystic leaves which those doting sybils, the tract societies, are perpetually dispersing over the surface of a justly thankless land. When we reflect on the vast body of most interesting and instructive

biographical sketches contained in the works of our old English authors, particularly the church historians and other ecclesiastical writers, we cannot, without sorrow, and some little anger too, see funds which might do so much good, condemned to do so little. We speak, in this matter, more with an eye to England than Scotland; for here so universally is education diffused, so intimately are our peasantry acquainted with the Pilgrim's Progress, and the rude but striking histories of the covenanting period,-but, above all, so intensely familiar are they with the Bible, that they cannot endure to see the ore of religion served up with the base alloy of these tract-mongers. They keep to their old manuals, and allow the flimsy presents of the itinerant illuminators to blow where they list. But to return to our text.

The main incidents in Sir Thomas More's life are so well known, that those who read the present tract for the first time, need not expect to acquire much new information in regard to them. But they may expect something much more valuable,-a complete view of the detail of his life,—a domestic and intimate acquaintance with the manners of the man. The book is written by the son-in-law of More, who seems, according to the primitive fashion of the times, not to have withdrawn his wife, on his marriage, from her father's house, but to have established himself there with her as an additional inmate of that patriarchal dwelling. We have no intention to analyze his narrative, but we shall enrich our pages with a few of the most interesting passages. The exquisite beauty of the style may be felt; it is not capable of being described, any more than it is of being imitated, by a writer of these degenerate days. Our language, rich and powerful as it is, has lost at least as much as it has gained within the last two centuries.

"At this Parliament Cardinall Wolsey founde himselfe muche greived with the Burgesses thearof for that nothinge was soe soone donne or spoken thearin but that it was immediatelye blowne abroad in everie alehouse. It fortuned at that Parliament a Verie great subsidie to be demanded, which Common house determined for the furtherthe Cardinall fearinge would not passe the selfe. Before whose comminge after longe ance thearof to be personallie theare himdebatinge theare, whither it weare better but

·

tie a matter was unfit to make his Grace answeare. Whearuppon the Cardinall, displeased with Sir Thomas More, that had not in this Parliament in all things satisfied his desire, suddenlie arose and departed.

with a fewe of his Lords, as the most opinions of the house was, or with his whole traine to receave him theare amongst them: Masters, quoth Sir Thomas More, forasmuche as my Lord Cardinall latelie laied to our charges the lightnes of our tonges for "And after the Parliament ended, in things uttered out of this house, it shall not his gallerie at White hall at Westminster in my minde be amisse to receave him with [he] uttered unto him his griefes, sayeinge : all his pompe, with his maces, his pillers, Would to God you had binne at Rome, pollaxes, his crosses, his hatt and the greate Mr More, when I made you Speaker." seale too; to th'intent that if he finde the Your Grace not offended soe would I too,' like fault with us heerafter, wee maie be quoth Sir Thomas More. And to winde the bolder from ourselves to laie the blame suche quarrells out of the Cardinall's head, on those that his Grace bringeth hither with he beganne to talke of the gallerie, sayehim.' Whearunto the house agreeinge, he inge, I like this gallerie of yours muche was receaved accordinglie. Wheare after better then your gallerie at Hampton-Court. that he had in a solemne oration by manie Whearwith soe wiselie broke he off the Carreasons proved how necessarie it was the de- dinal's displeasant talke, that the Cardinall mande theare moved to be graunted, and at that present, as it seemed, wist not what further shewed that lesse woulde not serve more to saie unto him*. to maintaine the Prince's purpose, He seeinge the companie sittinge still silent and thearunto nothinge answearinge, contrarye to his expectation shewinge in themselves towardes his request noe towardnes of inclinacion, saied unto them, Masters, you have many wise and learned men amongst you, and since I am from the Kinge's owne person sent hither unto you for the preservacion of your selves and all the Realme, I thinke it meete you give me some reasonable answeare.' Wheareat everie man holdinge his peace, then beganne he to speake to one Mr Marney, afterward Lord Marney, How saie you, quothe hee, Mr Marney? who makinge him noe answeare neyther, he severallie asked the same question of diverse other accompted the wisest of the companye, to whome when none of them all would give so muche as one worde, being agreed before, as the custome was, to answeare by their Speaker, Masters, quoth the Cardinall, unlesse it be the manner of your house, as of likelihood it is, by the mouthe of your Speaker whome you have chosen for trustie and wise, (as indeed he is) in such cases to utter your mindes, heere is without doubt a marvellous obstinate silence,' and thearupon he required answeare of Mr Speaker. Who first reverentlie on his knees excusinge the silence of the house, abashed at the presence of so noble a personage able to amaze the wisest and best learn'd in a Realme, and after by many probable arguments provinge that for them to make answeare it was neyther expedient nor agreeable with the auntient libertie of the house; in conclusion for himselfe shewed that though they had all with their voices trusted him, yet except everie one of them could put into his head of their severall witts, he alone in soe weigh

Every cardinal of the Roman church has a pillar of silver carried before him as an emblem of his being a pillar of the church. But Wolsey out of his love of pomp and splendor had two born before him.Lewis.

"Suche entire favour did the Kinge beare him, that he made hime Chauncellor of the Duchie of Lancaster uppon the deathe of Sir Richard Wingfield who had that office before. And for the pleasure he tooke in his companie would his Grace suddenlie sometimes come home to his house at Chelsey to be merry with him, Whither, on a time, unlooked for he came to dinner, and after dinner, in a faire garden of his, walked with him by the space of an howre, holdinge his arme about his necke. As soone as his Grace was gone, I rejoy cinge thearat, saide to Sir Thomas More, how happie he was whome the Kinge had soe familliarlie entertained, as I never had seene him doe to any other, except Cardinall Wolsey, whome I sawe his Grace walke once with arme in arme. I thanke our Lord, sonne, (quoth he) I finde his Grace my very good Lord indeed, and I beleive he dothe as singularlie favor me as anye subject within this Realme: howbeit, sonne Roper, I maie tell thee, I have no cause to be prowde thearof, for if my head would winne him a castle in Fraunce (for then was theare warres beetwixt us) it should not faile to goe."

"As Sir Thomas More's custome was dailie (if he weare at home) besides his+ private praiers with his children, to saie the seaven psalmes, the Lettanie, and the Suffrages followeinge, so was his guise nightlie before he went to bed, with his wife, children and houshold, to goe to his chappell, and theare on his knees ordinarily to saie certaine psalmes and collects with them. And because he was desirous for godlie purposes, solitarie to sequester himselfe from

* Cardinalis dum viveret Moro parum æquus erat, cumqué metuebat verius quam amabat.-Erasmi Epist.

+ Habet suas horas quibus Deo litet precibus, non ex more, sed ex pectore depromptis.-Erasmi Epist.

worldlie companie, a good distance from his house builded he a place called the newebuildinge, whearin was a Chappell, a Librarie, and a Gallerye, in which, as his use was on other daies to occupie himselfe in prayer and studie theare together, soe on the Fridaies used he continuallie to be theare from morninge to night, spendinge his time onlie in devout praiers and spirituall exercises. And to provoake his wife and children to the desier of heavenlie thinges, he would sometimes use these wordes unto them. It is now noe maistrie for children to goe to heaven, for everie body givethe you good counsaile, everie body giveth you good example. You see virtue rewarded and vice punished, soe that you are carried up to heaven even by the chinnes. But if you live in the time that noe man will give you good counsaile, noe man will give you good example, when you shall see virtue punished and vice rewarded, if you will then stande fast and firmelie sticke to God uppon paine of life, though you be but halfe good, God will allow you for whole good.' If his wife or anie of his children had binne diseased or troubled, he would saie unto them; We maie not looke, at our pleasures, to go to heaven in featherbeds, it is not the way; for the Lord himselfe went thither with great paine, by many tribulacions, which was the pathe whearin he walked thither, for the servant maie not looke to be in better case then his Master.' And as he would in this sort perswade them to take their troubles patientlie, soe would he in like sort teache them to withstand the Divill and his temptacions valiantly, sayeinge, Whosoever will marke the Divill and his temptacions, shall finde him thearin much like to ane ape, who not well looked

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to will be busie and bold to do shrewde turnes, and contrariwise beinge spyede will suddainelie leape backe and adventure noe farther. Soe the Divill findinge a man idle, sloathfull, and without resistance readie to receave his temptacions, waxethe soe hardie

that he will not faile still to continewe with him, untill to his purpose he have throughlie brought him. But on the other side if he see a man with dilligence persevere to withstand his tempacions, he waxethe so wearie that in conclusion he utterlie forsaketh him. For as the Divill of disposition is a spirit of soe high pride as he cannot abide to be mocked, soe is he of nature soe envious, that he fearethe anie more to assault him, least

he should thearbie not onlie catche a foule

fall himselfe, but also should minister to the man more matter of merit.' Thus delighted he evermore not only in vertuous exercises to be occupied himselfe, but alsoe to exhort his wife, children, and housholde,

to embrace the same and followe it."

Cum amicis sic fabulatur de vita futuri seculi, ut agnoscas illum ex animo loqui, nec sine optima spe.-Erasmi Epist.

"This Lord Chauncellor used commonlie everie afternoone to sit in his open hall, to the intent that if any person had any suit unto him, they might the more boldlie come to his presence and then open their complaints before him. Whose manner was alsoe to reade everie bill himselfe, before he would award any Sub-pana, which being matter worthie of Sub-pana, he would set his hande unto or else cancell it. Whensoever he passed through Westminster-Hall to his place in the Chauncery by the Court of the King's Bench, if his Father (beinge one of the Judges therof) had binne satt ere he came, he would goe into the same Court, and theare reverentlie kneelinge downe in the sight of them all dulie aske his Father's blessinge. And if it fortuned that his Father and he at Readings in Lincolnes Inne met together, (as they sometimes did) notwithstandinge his high office he would offer in argument the preeminence to his Father, though he for his office sake would refuse to take it. And for better declaration of his naturall affections towards his Father, he not onelie, while he laye on his deathe bedd, accordinge to his dutie, oftentimes with comfortable wordes most kindlie came to visit him, but also at his departure out of this world, with teares takeinge him about the necke, most lovingelie kissed and embraced him, commendinge him into the hands of almightie God, and soe departed from him."

The reader will recollect that More resigned the Chancellorship on account of his resolution not to assist Henry in "his great matter," as Roper calls it, viz. the divorce from Queen Katharine.

Chauncellorship, and placed all his gentle"After he had thus given over the men and yeomen with noblemen and byshops, and his 8 watermen with the Lord Audley, that in the same office succeeded him, to whome alsoe he gave his great children to him, and askinge our advise how barge; then callinge us all that weare his we might now in this decay of his abilitie, (by the surrender of his office soe impaired, lie would, beare out the whole chardges of that he could not, as he was wont and gladthem all himselfe,) thenceforthe be able to live and continew together, as he wished we should; when he sawe us silent, and in that him, then will I, said he, shewe my poore case not readie to shewe our opinions unto quoth he, at Oxford, at an Inne of the minde to you. I have been brought up, Chauncery, at Lincolne's Inne, and alsoe in the King's Court, and so from the least

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degree to the highest, and yet have 1 in little above a hundred powndes by the yeere. yeerlie revennues at this present leaft me Soe that now must we heerafter, if we like to live together, be contented to become contributors together. But by my counsaile it shall not be best for us to fall to the lowest fare first; we will not therfore descend to Oxford-fare, nor to the fare of New-Inne;

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