nd he have embraced the belief
of it; but it seems to have too little authority, to deserve credit
from posterity.

Another miracle is related by Stapleton, which is said to have
happened in the infancy of More. His nurse one day crossing a river,
and her horse stepping into a deep place, exposed both her and the
child to great danger. She being more anxious for the safety of the
child than her own, threw him over a hedge into a field adjoining, and
escaping likewise from the imminent danger, when she came to take him
up, she found him quite unhurt and smiling sweetly upon her.

He was put to the free-school in London called St. Anthony's, under
the care of the famous Nicholas Holt, and when he had with great
rapidity acquired a knowledge of his grammar rules, he was placed by
his father's interest under the great Cardinal Merton, archbishop of
Canterbury, and Lord High Chancellor, whose gravity and learning,
generosity and tenderness, allured all men to love and honour him.
To him More dedicated his Utopia, which of all his works is
unexceptionably the most masterly and finished. The Cardinal finding
himself too much incumbered with business, and hurried with state
affairs to superintend his education, placed him in Canterbury
College in Oxford, whereby his assiduous application to books, his
extraordinary temperance and vivacity of wit, he acquired the first
character among the students, and then gave proofs of a genius that
would one day make a great blaze in the world. When he was but
eighteen years old such was the force of his understanding, he wrote
many epigrams which were highly esteemed by men of eminence, as
well abroad as at home. Beatus Rhenanus in his epistle to Bilibalus
Pitchemerus, passes great encomiums upon them, as also Leodgarius a
Quercu, public reader of humanity at Paris. One Brixius a German, who
envied the reputation of this young epigramatist, wrote a book against
these epigrams, under the title of Antimorus, which had no other
effect than drawing Erasmus into the field, who celebrated and
honoured More; whose high patronage was the greatest compliment the
most ambitious writer could expect, so that the friendship of Erasmus
was cheaply purchased by the malevolence of a thousand such critics as
Brixius. About the same time of life he translated for his exercise
one of Lucian's orations out of Greek into Latin, which he calls his
First Fruits of the Greek Tongue; and adds another oration of h