The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 363 pages of information about The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).

The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 363 pages of information about The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).
to Mr. Lieutenant, “I pray you, Sir, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”  When he mounted on the scaffold, he threw his eyes round the multitude, desired them to pray for him, and to bear him witness that he died for the holy catholic church, a faithful servant both to God and the King.  His gaiety and propension to jesting did not forsake him in his last moments; when he laid his head upon the block, he bad the executioner stay till he had removed aside his beard, saying, “that that had never committed treason.”  When the executioner asked his forgiveness, he kissed him and said, “thou wilt do me this day a greater benefit than any mortal man can be able to give me; pluck up thy spirit man, and be not afraid to do thy office, my neck is very short, take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving thy honesty.”

Thus by an honest but mistaken zeal fell Sir Thomas More; a man of wit and parts superior to all his contemporaries of integrity unshaken; of a generous and noble disposition; of a courage intrepid; a great scholar and a devout christian.  Wood says that he was but an indifferent divine, and that he was very ignorant of antiquity and the learning of the fathers, but he allows him to be a man of a pleasant and fruitful imagination, and a statesman beyond any that succeeded him.

His works besides those we have already mentioned are chiefly these,

A Merry Jest, How a Serjeant will learn to play a Friar, written in verse.

Verses on the hanging of a Painted Cloth in his Father’s House.

Lamentations on Elizabeth Queen of Henry vii, 1503.

Verses on the Book of Fortune.

Dialogue concerning Heresies.

Supplication of Souls, writ in answer to a book called the
Supplication of Beggars.

A Confutation of Tindal’s Answer to More’s Dialogues, printed 1533.

The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, 1533.

In answer to another book of Tindal’s.

Treatise on the Passion of Chrift.

——­Godly Meditation.

------Devout Prayer.

Letters while in the Tower, all printed 1557.

Progymnasmata.

Responsio ad Convitia Martini Lutheri, 1523.

Quod pro Fide Mors fugienda non est, written in the Tower 1534.

Precationes ex Psalmis.

* * * * *

HENRY HOWARD, Earl of SURRY

Was son of Thomas, duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward, duke of Buckingham.  The father of our author held the highest places under King Henry VIII, and had so faithfully and bravely served him, that the nobility grew jealous of his influence, and by their united efforts produced his ruin.  After many excellent services in France, he was constituted Lord Treasurer, and made General of the King’s whole army design’d to march against the Scots: 

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.