ne,--with the name of each written above or below the figure
in More's hand, and notes as to alterations to be made in the final
composition in Holbein's hand,--is now in the Basel Museum; having come
into Amerbach's possession as the heir of Erasmus.

Illustration: PLATE 20
SIR THOMAS MORE
_Chalks. Windsor Castle_

In Mr. Huth's oil portrait More is wearing a dark-green coat trimmed
with fur, and showing the purple sleeves of his doublet beneath. His
eyes are grey-blue. He never wore a beard, made the fashion by Henry
VIII. at the same time that the head was "polled,"--a singularly ugly
combination,--until he was in the Tower and grew that beard which he
smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "It," he
said with astonishing self-possession, could be "accused of no treason."
In 1527, however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the
suspicion of it slept in More's own heart when he said to his son-in-law,
in answer to some flattering congratulation on the King's favour, "Son
Roper, if my head could win him a castle in France, my head should
fall."

But for these superb drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, we
should know nothing at all of many a portrait Holbein painted--all
among the immediate friends of More and Erasmus on this first visit
to England; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later
years. And how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of
achievement is shown by the fact that they include no studies for a
number of oil paintings that are still in existence.

Illustration: PLATE 21
JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER
_Chalks. Windsor Castle_

Of the drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a noble one of
Bishop Fisher, whose execution preceded More's by only a few weeks. A
literally venerable head it was (Plate 21), to be the shuttlecock of
papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity.
For assuredly if the life of the Bishop of Rochester hung in the
balance, as it did, in May, 1535, it was Paul III.'s mad effrontery
in making him a Cardinal while he was actually in the Tower under his
sovereign's displeasure which heated the King's anger to white-hot
brutality. "Let the Pope send him a hat," he thundered, "but I will so
provide that he shall wear it on his shoulders, for head he shall have
none to set it on!" And on the 17th of that June he made good the savage
oath. Yet the painter, after all, has