you have in them speaking
remembrancers of mortality. "Behold this also is vanity!"

_Sir Thomas More_.--Has it proved to you "vexation of spirit" also?

_Montesinos_.--Oh, no! for never can any man's life have been passed more
in accord with his own inclinations, nor more answerably to his own
desires. Excepting that peace which, through God's infinite mercy, is
derived from a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that
I am beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, but for every
blessing which I enjoy; health of mind and activity of mind, contentment,
cheerfulness, continual employment, and therewith continual pleasure.
_Sua vissima vita indies_, _sentire se fieri meliorem_; and this as Bacon
has said, and Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man
enjoys in retirement. To the studies which I have faithfully pursued I
am indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed an honour
to have lived in friendship; and as for the enemies which they have
procured to me in sufficient numbers, happily I am not of the
thin-skinned race: they might as well fire small-shot at a rhinoceros, as
direct their attacks upon me. _In omnibus requiem quaesivi_, said Thomas
a Kempis, _sed non inveni nisi in angulis et libellis_. I too have found
repose where he did, in books and retirement, but it was there alone I
sought it: to these my nature, under the direction of a merciful
Providence, led me betimes, and the world can offer nothing which should
tempt me from them.

_Sir Thomas More_.--If wisdom were to be found in the multitude of books,
what a progress must this nation have made in it since my head was cut
off! A man in my days might offer to dispute _de omni scibile_, and in
accepting the challenge I, as a young man, was not guilty of any
extraordinary presumption, for all which books could teach was, at that
time, within the compass of a diligent and ardent student. Even then we
had difficulties to contend with which were unknown to the ancients. The
curse of Babel fell lightly upon them. The Greeks despised other nations
too much to think of acquiring their languages for the love of knowledge,
and the Romans contented themselves with learning only the Greek. But
tongues which, in my lifetime, were hardly formed, have since been
refined and cultivated, and are become fertile in authors; and others,
the very names of which were then unknown in Europe, have been discovered
and