they were in close companionship with Erasmus.

More's "Utopia" was written in Latin, and is in two parts, of which the
second, describing the place ([Greek text]--or Nusquama, as he called it
sometimes in his letters--"Nowhere"), was probably written towards the
close of 1515; the first part, introductory, early in 1516. The book was
first printed at Louvain, late in 1516, under the editorship of Erasmus,
Peter Giles, and other of More's friends in Flanders. It was then
revised by More, and printed by Frobenius at Basle in November, 1518. It
was reprinted at Paris and Vienna, but was not printed in England during
More's lifetime. Its first publication in this country was in the
English translation, made in Edward's VI.'s reign (1551) by Ralph
Robinson. It was translated with more literary skill by Gilbert Burnet,
in 1684, soon after he had conducted the defence of his friend Lord
William Russell, attended his execution, vindicated his memory, and been
spitefully deprived by James II. of his lectureship at St. Clement's.
Burnet was drawn to the translation of "Utopia" by the same sense of
unreason in high places that caused More to write the book. Burnet's is
the translation given in this volume.

The name of the book has given an adjective to our language--we call an
impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction,
the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It
is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman, who attacks in his own
way the chief political and social evils of his time. Beginning with
fact, More tells how he was sent into Flanders with Cuthbert Tunstal,
"whom the king's majesty of late, to the great rejoicing of all men, did
prefer to the office of Master of the Rolls;" how the commissioners of
Charles met them at Bruges, and presently returned to Brussels for
instructions; and how More then went to Antwerp, where he found a
pleasure in the society of Peter Giles which soothed his desire to see
again his wife and children, from whom he had been four months away. Then
fact slides into fiction with the finding of Raphael Hythloday (whose
name, made of two Greek words [Greek text] and [Greek text], means
"knowing in trifles"), a man who had been with Amerigo Vespucci in the
three last of the voyages to the new world lately discovered, of which
the account had been first printed in 1507, only nine years before Utopia
was written.

Designedly fantasti