The Basel sketch (No. 345)[657] (Pl. 74), upon which the various pictures still in existence are based, affords the most faithful record we possess of the great work itself, now lost, or buried under the handiwork of some inferior painter. It represents a large apartment with a group of ten persons, with two smaller figures seen through an open door in a room at the back. Sir Thomas More is seated in the centre of the group, dressed in long robes, his hands concealed in a muff. In attire, attitude, and expression the sketch agrees very closely with the portrait of More in the possession of Mr. Edward Huth. On his right hand, to the spectator’s left, is seated his old father, Sir John More, a judge of the King’s Bench (anno 76), looking straight out of the picture. By Sir John’s right side stands Margaret Gigs (anno 22), a relative of the family, afterwards married to Dr. John Clement. She has a book in her left hand, to which she points with her right, as though emphasizing a passage she is reading to the old man, towards whom she stoops. In front of her, and still further to the spectator’s left, the outside member of the group, stands Elizabeth Dancey (anno 21), More’s second daughter, with a book under her arm, drawing on her glove. On the opposite side, on the spectator’s right, in the foreground, is a group of three, which includes More’s second wife, Alice Middleton (anno 54), on the extreme right, kneeling on a prie-dieu, with a chained monkey by her side jumping up against her dress; Margaret Roper (anno 22), More’s eldest and favourite daughter, seated on the ground on a low stool in front of her stepmother, an open book held in her lap, gazing in front of her, as though lost in thought over the volume she has been reading; and Cecilia Heron (anno 20), the youngest girl, seated behind, and partly concealed by her sister, with a book and rosary in her hand, and her head turned as though speaking to Lady More. In the centre, behind Sir Thomas, stand, on the right, his only son, John More (anno 19), looking down, absorbed in a book, and on the left, Anne Cresacre, his betrothed, a girl in her fifteenth year. The group is completed by the bluff figure of Henry Patenson, More’s jester, who stands to the right of More’s son, with arms akimbo in the favourite fashion of Henry VIII. Over his shoulder, through a doorway, with a kind of porch of open woodwork which projects into the apartment, are seen the heads of the two small figures mentioned above. The room in which the group is placed is probably the dining-hall. On the left there is a sideboard reaching to the ceiling, with a flower-vase, tankards, and silver plate. On the sill of a window on the opposite side of the room there are a jug, a candlestick, and some books. The wall at the back in the centre is covered with a curtain, in front of which a clock with weights is hanging, and a violin near it. VOL. I., PLATE 74. [Illustration: