Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/452

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More

More retorted within a month in the ‘Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance’ (London, 1533, 8vo, by W. Rastell), another vindication of the severe punishment of heresy (Lambeth Libr. and Brit. Mus.) ‘A Letter impugnynge the erronyouse wrytyng of John Fryth against the blessed Sacrament of the Aultare,’ London, 1533, by W. Rastell, 12mo, was answered by John Frith [q.v.] and by R. Crowley in the same year. ‘The Answer to the first part of the poysoned Booke which a nameless Hereticke hath named "The Supper of the Lord, Anno 1533,"’ London, by W. Rastell, 1534, 8vo (Brit. Mus.), was mainly an exposition of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. John. A promised second book was never written. ‘The nameless Heretic’ was probably George Joye [q. v.], and not Tindal, as More assumes. Joye replied to More in ‘The Subuersion of More's False Foundacion,’ Emden, 1534.

When in the Tower, More wrote an ascetic treatise, chiefly for the comfort of his own family, ‘A Dyaloge of Comfort against Tribulation.’ He represented it as ‘made by an Hungarian in Latin, and translated out of Latin into French, and out of French into English.’ A manuscript is in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (No. 37). It was first printed by Richard Tottel in 1553; and again by John Fowler at Antwerp in 1573, with a dedication to Jane Dormer, duchess of Feria [q. v.] It reappeared in the English Catholic Library in 1847.

William Rastell, More's nephew, to whom many of his manuscripts seem to have passed, collected most of his English writings in ‘The Workes of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, sometyme Lord Chancellour of England; wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge. Printed at London, at the costes of John Cawod, John Waly, and Richarde Tottel. Anno 1557,’ fol. 1458 pp. It is dedicated to Queen Mary by Rastell. The table of contents precedes an index by Thomas Paynell [q. v.] After his English poems come the ‘Pico,’ ‘Richard III,’ ‘The Dyaloge,’ and all his controversial publications. The previously unpublished material includes an unfinished Treatise ‘uppon these words of Holy Scripture, " Memorare novissima et in eternum non peccabis,"’ dated in 1522, and dealing with reflections on death, and several devotional works written by More in the Tower, viz. ‘Treatice to receaue the blessed Body of our Lorde, sacramentally and virtually both;’ ‘Upon the Passion’ (unfinished); ‘An Exposition of a Part of the Passion’ (translated by More's granddaughter, Mary Bassett, from the Latin); ‘Certein deuout and vertuouse Instruccions, Meditacions, and Prayers,’ and some letters written just before his death to his family and friends, including his pathetic correspondence with his daughter Margaret, which is calendared in ‘Letters and Papers of Henry VIII,’ 1534, vi. 429 sq. In the copy of the volume in the Grenville Library at the British Museum is an unpaged leaf after p. 1138—at the close of the ‘ Answer to the Supper ’—supplying More's apology ‘to the Christen reader’ for a few printer's blunders. Thirty-one apophthegms attributed to More appear in a collection of ‘Witty Apophthegms by King James, King Charles, the Marquis of Worcester, Francis Lord Bacon, and Sir Thomas Moore.’ London, 1658, 12mo (pp. 155-68). A selection from his English writings by Father Bridgett—‘The Wit and Wisdom of Sir Thomas More’—was published in 1891.

II. Latin Works (other than the ‘Utopia’) 1. ‘Luciani Dialogi … compluria opuscula longe festinissimo ab Erasmo Roterodamo et Thoma Moro interpretibus optimis in Latinorum lingua traducta hac sequentur serie,’ Paris, ‘ex ædibus Ascensianis,’ 1506, fol. (Brit. Mus.) More translated four dialogues, the Cynicus,Menippus or Necromantia, Philopseudes, and ‘Pro tyrannicida;’ to the last More appended a ‘declamatio’ on the other side. These he dedicated to Thomas Ruthal, secretary to Henry VIII (afterwards bishop of Durham), with much praise of Lucian's wit and wisdom. Another edition appeared at Paris in 1514; a third at Venice (by Aldus) in 1516; a fourth at Basle by Froben in 1521, and a fifth at Leyden in 1528. An English verse rendering of the ‘Necromantia,’ published by John Rastell about 1520, may be by More, as well as the prose version of the ‘Philopseudes,’ appended to J. Wagstaffe's ‘Question of Witchcraft Debated,’ 1669. 2. ‘Epigrammata clarissimi disertissimique viri Thomæ Mori Britanni, pleraque e Græcis versa,’ Basle, March 1518—an excerpt from the Basle edition of the ‘Utopia;’ a separate edition. 1520, ‘ad emendatum exemplar ipsius autoris excusa.’ It is preceded by ‘Progymnasmata Thomæ Mori et Guilielmi Lilii sodalium,’ renderings of the Greek anthology. The epigrams were collected by Erasmus from scattered manuscripts, and were printed by Froben under the supervision of a scholar known as Beatus Rhenanus. The latter inscribed the volume to Bilibald Pirckheimer, a senator of Nuremberg, whose position in the councils of the emperor is compared to that of More at the English court. The Latin verses by More presented to Henry VIII on his marriage to Queen Catherine, which are printed in the volume, are preserved in a small illuminated manu-