ed by a frank and generous
temper and a nobleness of political aims. Pole, his bitterest enemy, owned
in later days that at the beginning of his reign Henry's nature was one
"from which all excellent things might have been hoped." Already in
stature and strength a king among his fellows, taller than any, bigger
than any, a mighty wrestler, a mighty hunter, an archer of the best, a
knight who bore down rider after rider in the tourney, the young monarch
combined with this bodily lordliness a largeness and versatility of mind
which was to be the special characteristic of the age that had begun. His
fine voice, his love of music, his skill on lute or organ, the taste for
poetry that made him delight in Surrey's verse, the taste for art which
made him delight in Holbein's canvas, left room for tendencies of a more
practical sort, for dabbling in medicine, or for a real skill in
shipbuilding. There was a popular fibre in Henry's nature which made him
seek throughout his reign the love of his people; and at its outset he
gave promise of a more popular system of government by checking the
extortion which had been practised under colour of enforcing forgotten
laws, and by bringing his father's financial ministers, Empson and Dudley,
to trial on a charge of treason. His sympathies were known to be heartily
with the New Learning; he was a clever linguist, he had a taste that never
left him for theological study, he was a fair scholar. Even as a boy of
nine he had roused by his wit and attainments the wonder of Erasmus, and
now that he mounted the throne the great scholar hurried back to England
to pour out his exultation in the "Praise of Folly," a song of triumph
over the old world of ignorance and bigotry that was to vanish away before
the light and knowledge of the new reign. Folly in his amusing little book
mounts a pulpit in cap and bells, and pelts with her satire the
absurdities of the world around her, the superstition of the monk, the
pedantry of the grammarian, the dogmatism of the doctors, of the schools,
the selfishness and tyranny of kings.

[Sidenote: Colet's School]

The irony of Erasmus was backed by the earnest effort of Colet. He seized
the opportunity to commence the work of educational reform by devoting in
1510 his private fortune to the foundation of a Grammar School beside St.
Paul's. The bent of its founder's mind was shown by the image of the Child
Jesus over the master's chair with the words "Hear ye H