P. xl., line 3. all the Pristes, &c. The Statute here referred to was passed in the Parliament of 153. Of the Commission for tendering the oath, Lord Herbert (p. 401) says, "The Parliament rising, Commissioners were sent abroad to require the oath of Succession, which nevertheless John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More denied, yet so as they both professed a readiness to swear to the suc cession, but not to the whole Act, it containing divers other things. Archbishop Cranmer told Cromwell that it were not amiss to accept the oath as they offered it."

13. housled. ment.

"To be housled " was to have received the SacraThe word is derived from Lat. hostia = the host, the sacred wafer. So Shaks., Hamlet (1. 5. 77), unhouseled without having received the Sacrament.

=

24. rounded. "To round in the ear" to whisper.

33. Letters. These letters to Mrs Roper are in Rastell's Edition of More's works (1557), viz. No. v. pp. 121 seqq., No. IX. pp. 132-136, No. X. pp. 136-141, No. XII. pp. 145-146.

P. xli., line 1.

not to be acknowne, i. e. from which (oath) it could not be known, &c.

P. xli., line 2. as straight a Roome, i. e. as strait (narrow) a room, in allusion to a monastic cell. More had at several periods of his life a leaning toward the retirement of a cloister. See Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, p. 147.

P. xliv., line 20.

P. xlv., line 8. common in More's

Dietie, i. e. Deity, Godhead.

What the good yeare. A form of adjuration or oath time, and of which examples are found in Shakespeare, Merry Wives (1. 4. 129), Much Ado (1. 3. 1) &c. 20. fondlye foolishly.

25. Tille valle. An expression of contempt found in Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (11. 3. 83), and 2 Hen. IV. (II. 4. 90).

27. will this geere never be left? i.e. Will this behaviour and talk never be laid aside by you?

P. xlvi., line 11. thrussinge, i.e. trussing, a scribe's error. The correct orthography occurs xlix. 23, below.

P. xlviii., line 1. overshutte, i. e. overshoot, be mistaken or misguided.

P. xlix., line 4.

never did to temporall man before. More was the first layman who was Lord Chancellor. The office had heretofore been held by the Clergy.

35. towards the Law, i. e. engaged in matters of law, as judge and Lord Chancellor.

P. 1., line 17. dischargable, i.e. not in accord with, different from. 33. Gregorie, i. e. Gregory the Great (590—604 A.D.), the pope who sent Augustine as a missionary to England.

P. li., line 20.

acceptions, i.e. exceptions, objections.

P. lii., line 18. the ould Swanne. The old Swan on the west of London Bridge on the Middlesex side of the Thames was of great antiquity as a landing-place. It was the practice of those who feared to trust themselves to the rapids which ran through the narrow arches of

old London Bridge to land at the Swan stairs and walk to the east side of the bridge and there take boat again.

31. to the Towreward toward the Tower. ward is not unfrequently thus divided in old English. (Ps. xl. 5). To God ward (Exod. xviii. 19).

P. liii., line 3. Hollbards, i. e. halberts.

The preposition to-
Cp. To us ward

26. the Utas, i. e. the Octave, the eighth day after any of the Church festivals. From Fr. huit=eight.

33 1537. This, though in the printed text, is a mistake for 1535. P. lv., line 2. a Favilla worthless fellow. Cp. Spenser, Mother Hubbard's Tale, 309:

5.

'Expired had the term that these two javels

Should render up a reckoning of their travels."

St Cyprian. This was the celebrated Bishop of Carthage, who was martyred at Carthage by the proconsul Galerius, A.D. 258. 23. scute, i.e. shoot, aim.

NOTES.

Titlepage. the beste state......the newe yle. The ancient rule of writing definite adjectives with e final is often preserved even though grammatical accuracy in this matter is not constant.

The

Utopia. The name is derived from the Greek ov=not and TÓTOS= a place, and indicates that the country described is non-existent. Latin rendering is " Nusquama "Nowhere. The original Latin of the Utopia was first published at Louvain in 1516.

Raphe Robynson. Of the translator we learn, beside what is told us on the titlepage and in the Epistle, from Bliss's edition of Anthonya-Wood, Vol. 1. p. 199 note, that he also translated from Leland a work entitled "Ancient Order, Society and Unity laudable of Prince Arthur and his knightly Armoury of the Round Table," and reference is given to the British Bibliographer for 1810, Vol. I. pp. 109-135.

The Epistle. William Cecylle. This was the afterwards famous Lord Burleigh. At this time he was secretary to King Edward VI., who is meant by "the kyng his moste excellente maiestie."

kyng his. This became a common though mistaken form of writing the possessive cases of nouns, from an idea that the old possessive 'kynges was a contraction for "kyng his." The mistake is seen as soon as you attempt to apply the same form to feminine nouns.

66

P. 2, line 1. Upon a tyme. This story of Diogenes and his tub is taken from Lucian, Quomodo consc. hist. 3.

7. of all handes, where we should now say “on all hands.” Cp. on purpose and of set purpose.

8. harneis. The common word at this time for armour. Cp. Shaks. Macb. V. 5. 52, "We'll die with harness on our back."

9. rampiere. Fr.__rempart, a bulwark. Cp. Lodge, Rosalind, p. 48 (ed. Collier), "Rosador rampired up the house." The latter part of the word is probably connected with the Latin parare, to prepare.

P. 3, line 9. habilitie. Usually spelt thus, as derived from Latin habilis.

17. meself. This, with Robynson, is the more usual form of the accusative of this pronoun, following the orthography of the personal pronoun. Cp. infra, 19.

22. endevoire. Here the French orthography is preserved. Devoir is from Lat. debere, to owe.

26. sir Thomas More knight compiled. The second part of the Utopia was written first, and completed in 1515, so that 40 years, which Robynson mentions below, would bring the date of the translation to 1555, but Cecil at the time of this dedication was still secretary, and so it must have been completed in 1553, the last year of King Edward's reign.

P. 4, line 2. rowme room, i.e. position, dignity. Cp. Luke xiv. 8, "the highest room."

13. persever. This orthography, with the accent on the middle syllable, was common in Elizabethan English. Cp. Shaks. Comedy of Er. II. 2. 217, "I'll say as they say, and perséver so."

P. 5, line 3. ones. This is the older form of the genitive of one, which has in later English been modified into once. The Saxon is án, G. ánes. Cp. for a similar form, line 13, whoes, for what we now write whose.

16. divers other. This word is frequently used as a plural. Cp. Earle (Microcosm, p. 30), “ Other take a more crooked path."

20. what by...what by, in the sense of partly...partly. phrase occurs again p. 18, 1.

7.

The

P. 6, line 1. aucthorytye. This orthography is due to the derivation from Lat. auctoritas.

2. maystershyppe. This word was used as a title of respect by low people generally. Cp. Shaks. Two Gent. III. 1. 280, "What news with your mastership?" In vulgar speech the word was shortened into maship. See Udall, Roister-Doister, I. 2. 104, "A fitter wife for your maship might be found." The word occurs again below in line 19.

5. can say well by nothing. By concerning. For an example cf. I Cor. iv. 4, "I know nothing by myself"=1 =no ill concerning myself. So Shaks. Merch. 1. 2. 58, "How say you by the French lord?"

16. quayled. The root is the same as that of quell, and is akin to kill. Cf. manquellers=murderers, Shaks. Hen. IV. pt. 2, II. 1. 58. Also the words in which the murder of the king is spoken of by Lady Macbeth (1. 7. 72) as our great quell."

66

P. 7, line 7. a frende. This is the George Tadlowe mentioned p. 5, 1. 11.

IT. well sene. A common expression= learned. Cf. p. 10, 1. 16, "Better sene in the Greke language," where the Latin text has "doctus." See also Shaks. Taming of Shr. I. 2. 134, “A schoolmaster well seen in music."

16. submit. This is the original sense of the Latin word submittere to lower.

19. the Latin proverbe. Erasmus, Adag. (1650) p. 202, gives the Latin proverb, "Canis festinans cæcos parit catulos," but as a translation of the Greek of Aristotle.

23.

to imprintinge it came, i. e. the book came to be printed. P. 8, line 2. Terence. The lines are quoted from Terence Adelphi,

IV. 7. 22.

7. at the tables. The old name for the game of backgammon. Cf. Shaks. Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 326, “When he plays at tables, he chides the dice in honourable terms."

14. pretensed. Used in the sense of the Latin word prætendere= to set before. Hence "pretensed purpose" is a sort of tautological expression" the purpose set before us.'

24. doubted = expected, anticipated. Cf. Bacon, Hen. VII. 100. 3, "The king who doubted as much before, and saw through his business from the beginning."

sure.

P. 9, line 4. favourablye winke at them, i.e. pass over without cenCf. Acts xvii. 30, "The times of this ignorance God winked at.” P. 10, line 1. Peter Giles, one of the chief citizens and a magistrate of Antwerp. He was a pupil of Erasmus. See p. 18, 1. 16, and Rudhart, T. Morus, p. 153.

II. togethers. Robynson continually writes this word in this form on the analogy of toward and towards, forward and forwards. I have noticed the form nowhere else but in Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon, where it is frequent.

maister Raphael. This is Raphael Hythlodaye, into whose mouth More puts the description of his imaginary commonwealth. For the author's own description of his chief character, see pp. 19, 20.

15. not studied for, i.e. not elaborated, but given in ordinary plain speech.

P. 11, line 13. whiles. This word, which we now only use in the form while, was the genitive case of the Saxon noun hwil, time, and so meant of a time = at one time.

Of Sir T. More's domestic life

23. talke wyth my servauntes. see Life, pp. ix. seqq., also p. 19, ll. 1—4. P. 12, line 20. John Clement.

Afterwards a celebrated Doctor

of Medicine. He was brought up in More's household and married Margaret Gyge who had been educated with More's daughters. He was celebrated at Oxford for his Greek learning. See Stapleton, Tres Thoma (1612) pp. 250 seqq.

=

27. Hythlodaye. More has formed most of the names in his story after Greek models. 'Teodatos is apparently meant, by its connexion with los nonsense, to indicate, as the title Utopia does, the fictitious character of the narrative. So Amaurote, as if from dμavpos=dim, faint, not easy to be seen, is the name of the chief city of Utopia, and Anyder (Gk. avvôpos = waterless) is a fit appellation for a river which existed only in the writer's imagination.

31. my John sayeth. This pretence of uncertainty about some small details is meant to give a colour of reality to the author's fiction.

P. 13, line 7. I wyll rather tell a lye, then make a lie, i. e. rather repeat a false statement on the authority of another than give anything of my own invention. The Latin has "potius mendacium dicam quam mentiar."

26. to see newes. News was not always confined to what was received through the ears, but of any novel sight. Cp. Burton's Anatomy, p. 297, "New news lately done, our eyes and ears are full of

her cures.