XXXVIII. Who, in this image or description of Sir Thomas More, would recognize that glorious martyr of Christ, and that generous hero, whose constancy to the obligations of his religion could not be bent or warped, neither by the threats or promises of Henry VIII. nor a hard imprisonment of fourteen months, nor the persuasions and intreaties of his wife, nor by the sad prospect of seeing his family and children reduced to misery and beggary, nor by the privation of all human comfort, in taking from him all his books, nor finally by the terrors of a scaffold placed before his eyes? So certain is it, that the qualities of great souls are not to be discovered, but by the touch-stone of great occasions and hard trials, and may be compared to large flints, which only manifest their smooth or shining surfaces by the execution of hard blows. XXXIX. Sir Thomas More was the same while he was a prisoner of state, as when he was High Chancellor of England; the same in adverse, as in prosperous fortune; the same ill treated, as in high favour; the same in the prison, as seated at the head of the Court of Chancery; but adversity, manifested and made visible his whole heart, of which the greatest and best part had before lain hid. This great man, used to give to his own virtues an air of humanity and condescension, which in the eyes of the vulgar abated their splendour; but in proportion as it obscured the lustre of them to their view, it augmented it in the sight of all men of discernment and penetration. It once happened when he was High Chancellor, that a gentleman, who had a suit depending before him, made him a present of two silver bottles: it was inconsistent with his dignity or integrity to accept the present; and how did Sir Thomas conduct himself? Did he fall into a passion against the suitor for having offered an affront to his reputation? Did he punish the criminal audacity of the man, for attempting to corrupt and make venal the functions of his duty? Did he manifest before his domestics any disinterested delicacy, or appear scandalized at the temptation? No; he did none of all this, because nothing of this sort was correspondent to the nobleness or generous turn of his mind. He received the bottles with a good grace, and immediately gave orders to one of his servants to fill them with the best wine he had in his cellar, and carry them back to the gentleman, together with this courteous message, _That it gave him great pleasure to have an opportunity of obliging him, and that any sort of wine he had in his house was much at his service_. Expressing, by this prudent seeming insensibility or want of apprehension, that he supposed that was the purpose for which the gentleman sent the bottles. In this manner, he joined integrity to gentleness of reproof, and correction with courteous behaviour; and by so much the less parade he made of his own purity, by so much the more was the confusion of the gentleman diminished.