SOME FAMOUS BOOKS. MORE'S "UTOPIA." Ir will generally be found, I think, in considering any great classic work of art or literature, that it proceeded from a man and from an age peculiarly fitted for the production of such a work, and that it is of value, therefore, not only on account of its intrinsic qualities, but on account of the light it sheds upon the character of the man and of the age by whom and in which it was produced. Thus, the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More interests us not more as one of the most striking of our English classics, than as a valuable illustration of the times in which it was written, and of the genius by whom it was composed. That it should have issued from the England of King Henry VIII. is a fact which seems at first sight scarcely to admit of explanation; but when we come to look more deeply into the circumstances of the case, it is obvious that the period was extremely favourable, and that the author was especially fitted for the task he set before himself. The age of Henry VIII. was that in which Skelton directed his bitterly sarcastic satires against the corruptions of the Court and Church; and in England, as well as on the Continent, the people were beginning to express in words, if not in deeds, those aspirations towards civil and religious freedom which had slumbered since the days of Wickcliffe. What more natural than that Thomas More, the scholar, the lawyer, and the politician—who had known what it was to enjoy the friendship of Erasmus, and who, though by no means a Reformer in the sense that Luther was a Reformer, was a more than usually enlightened Churchman-should be moved by the spirit of the age, as well as by his own humorous and philosophic fancy, to construct on paper a Vision of a Perfect Commonwealth, wherein, without apparently aiming at any practical results, he could direct the shafts of his satire against the corruptions of his age and country? There can be no doubt, I think, that though Sir Thomas More was unable to go the whole length of the Lutheran controversy-though he was steadfast in maintaining the supremacy of the Pope in all ecclesiastical matters-he was so far imbued with the zeit-geist or spirit of his time that he sincerely reprobated the evils he saw around him, and was willing to go a long way—not so far, indeed, as his countryman, Tyndale, but so far as his illustrious friend Erasmusin the work of correcting them. It is true that he publicly advocated the persecution of the Reformers, from a feeling, doubtless, that they went too fast and furiously, and that they transgressed the laws of fairness and consideration which he has laid down in his Utopia." But he seems to have been perfectly willing that the Scriptures, properly translated and revised, should be spread abroad among the people; and, if he finally turned his back upon the party of progress, it was not because he was fanatically opposed to changewe shall see, by-and-by, that in his "Utopia " he goes even farther than the most philosophical Radicals of the present day-but because he was, like the great majority of his countrymen then as now, enamoured of the via media—the path of moderation, which we have the authority of Horace for declaring to be the safest to tread. * The idea of the "Utopia" was probably taken mainly from the "Republic" of Plato, but it is not unlikely that Sir Thomas was acquainted with many other of those ideal schemes of perfect societies which have existed from the era of Hippodamos to the present time. The latter philosopher was an architect by profession, and is known in history as the designer of the town of Peiræus, but we are told he was ambitious of reaching eminence in all kinds of knowledge, and he is described by Aristotlet as "the first author who wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government." The scheme of Phaleas of Chalcedon, also mentioned by Aristotle,+ was apparently directed towards the equalisation of property, and is far less remarkable than the famous fragment of Theopompus of Chios, in which a number of extraordinary relations of this kind are collected under the title of Oavμaoia. * Hallam, "Literature of Europe." Ibid., ii. 4. See Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography." |