पृष्ठ 624 / 1391

The 'Utopia' of Sir Thomas More is a surprising monument of his

genius, and shows a reach of thought far beyond his

contemporaries. The book was written by him at the age of about

34 or 35, and is full of the generous sentiments of youth. He

brings the light of Plato to bear upon the miserable state of his

own country. Living not long after the Wars of the Roses, and in

the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he is indignant at

the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the nobility and

gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities caused

by war. To the eye of More the whole world was in dissolution and

decay; and side by side with the misery and oppression which he

has described in the First Book of the Utopia, he places in the

Second Book the ideal state which by the help of Plato he had

constructed. The times were full of stir and intellectual

interest. The distant murmur of the Reformation was beginning to

be heard.