"If this," said the philosopher, "is not sufficient proof of the unmusical nature of the Irish people, I may add the fact that in one place only in the course of all our peregrinations did I hear a street boy whistling "The Bogie Man," and other classical pieces of the like nature, and even in that case I am not ready to vouch for the Irish extraction of the performer. Then, again, it was only in Kenmare that we came across a German Band, and even it seemed as if it had come there by accident and wasn't properly ' understanded of the people."

"I remember it well," said the poet, "but its lack of recognition may perhaps have been due to the conjunction of an artistic star of greater magnitude, of which I find a note under the title of

The Masher of Kenmare.

True it is his hat was battered,
And his garments lacked repair;
Though I hardly think that mattered;
'Twas the fashion in Kenmare:

Yet he roused the admiration
Of the simple country place,
And a smile of exaltation

Played about his wrinkled face.

And the dames that congregated
Round the tourist-haunted door
Left their avarice unsated

For a sight unseen before;
Open-mouthed their trade relinquished,
While they grew with envy green,
And the spark became extinguished
In the inch of black dhudeen.

Up and down the street he strutted,
Cynosure of every eye,

While the town its vision glutted

On refinement's prodigy.

For what roused their admiration

Was not hat or tattered suit:
Mid a bare-foot population

He possessed the only boot!"

"And now," said the philosopher, "we must bid farewell to the Emerald Isle. God save Ireland!—you know from whom I mean."

"Amen:" responded

the poet.

R. H. F.

TO SNOWDON.

SNOW-CROWNED monarch of the hills.
That rearest heavenward thy peak
Precipitate: cloud-cleaving now,
Now folding round thy giant limbs
Vestment of gossamer; anon
Rejoicing in the sun's clear gaze,
As he whose eyes are upward turned
To meet his lord's. Thee neither time
Nor space compel to bate one jot
Of stedfastness: amid the change
Of ages changeless, firm, unmoved:
Type of eternity amidst

The little, changeful lives of men!
O teach us so to rise from these
Low lives of ours, that we with thee
May firm remain through changeful skies
And fortune's devious maze, may bear

Aloft the crown of purity

By heaven bestowed, until we gain.
The vision of the unchanging God!

VOL. XVII.

W. W.

E

B. 39.

SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS "UTOPIA."

MONG our English worthies Thomas More claims a high place by many titles. "When ever did Nature form a gentler, sweeter, happier disposition than his?" exclaimed Erasmus, his intimate friend for thirty-five years, and through the praises of the most famous scholar of the age More was known and esteemed all over Europe. Yet neither wit nor wisdom nor high character could prevent his being obscured at home, for he devoted himself to a cause which the English people as a whole agreed to consider a bad one; "it is much to be lamented of all, and not only of us Englishmen," writes the first translator of the "Utopia," "that a man of so incomparable Arber 14. wit, of so profound knowledge, of so absolute learning, and of so fine eloquence was yet nevertheless so much blinded, rather with obstinacy than with ignorance, that he could not (or rather, would not) see the shining light of God's holy truth in certain principal points of Christian religion; but did rather choose to preserve and continue in his wilful and stubborn obstinacy even to the very death." Forgotten as a champion. of the "old religion" he lives in the world now B. 112 chiefly through the charming pictures of his home life drawn for us by Erasmus and by his own sonin-law William Roper. Whether the excellent bio1891. graphy recently published by Father Bridgett (an

*B = Bridgett's "Life and Writings of Sir T. More" (1891).

U The edn. of Burnett's trans. of "Utopia" in Cassell's Nat. Library.
Arber = Arber's reprint of Robinson's trans.

old Johnian) will do anything to revive the universal respect and esteem felt for him by his contemporaries remains to be seen; by it at least we are able to understand his "Utopia" better than to interpret U. 192. its concluding words: "There are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish than hope to see followed in our governments."

B. 102.

This book, most noteworthy in itself, was written B. 101. in 1515-1516, in the prime of the author's powers, and it has become his monument; for while his English B. xii. Works, as a whole, have never been reprinted since. 1557, several translations of the "Utopia" have been But it is a published and are easily procurable. book which requires an interpreter. Not only did the matter require some disguising to make it palatable, but the author was one who could scarcely speak serious words without a little admixture of banter; “even members of his own family were often puzzled to gather from his look or tone whether he was jesting or in earnest ;" and he could not go to martyrdom itself without a quip or two. Of his irony one conspicuous example may be quoted. The Utopians U. 144-146. never made treaties with other nations, because, if

B.

B. 102.

433-435

men could be trusted they were needless, and useless if they could not. If they lived in Europe they would no doubt act otherwise, for "we know how religiously treatises are observed here, more particularly where the Christian doctrine is received, among whom they are sacred and inviolable; which is partly owing to the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly to the reverence they pay to the popes, who, as they are the most religious observers of their promises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs; and when fainter methods do not prevail they compel them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if men who are particularly distinguished by the title of the Faithful' should not religiously

keep the faith of their treatises." A very slight acquaintance with the history of the age will show B. 10, 11. the point of this. More had pursued his legal studies only at the command of his father, his own inclination being to literature, but there is no bitterness in his U. 141. jest that in Utopia there were few laws and no lawyers. Nor does there seem any sinister meaning in classing women and monks along with the gentry and their 4 retainers as "idle persons;" but we do know that B. 58, 60. More was the enemy of idleness in himself and others; everyone in his household had occupation provided for him, and cards and dice were as unknown there 139 as in Utopia itself. In this far-off land the religious U. 172-174. orders occupied themselves in works useful to the

U. 25.

B.

U. 83.

commonwealth, attending on the sick or making roads and bridges. Again, it would be unnatural to suppose U. 134. that he approved of suicide in cases of painful and incurable disease, or thought that divorce (in the U. 136-7. modern sense of the word) was permissible, when he himself was so careful not to procure his own death by transgressing the statute imposing the oath of the King's ecclesiastical supremacy that he was condemned only by false witness, and when his death was a protest against the repudiation of Katharine. Surely in this we must allow the author's life to interpret his writings. His personal tastes reveal themselves in many "A man who coveted neither wealth nor U. 20. ways. greatness he admired more than any of the magnates of the earth," and his own simplicity of life and contempt of mere money appear in the maxim that "setting all upon a level is the only way to make a nation happy," in the Utopians' renunciation of those "sophisticated pleasures" of fine clothes, elaborate etiquette, and jewellery which "the rabble of mankind” have devised, and indeed in their whole economy. At the entry of ambassadors from a distant nation who had bedecked themselves in all their splendour in order to make a good impression, "you might

U. 56-59.

U. 63.

U. 115-120.

U. 104-106.