“He seems born and fashioned for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices will not brook correction, rather than a sudden breaking off, he gradually relaxes the intimacy and quietly drops it. He abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent of his own interests, no one is more diligent in behalf of his friends. So polite, and so sweet-mannered is he in company, that no one is too melancholy to be cheered by him. Since boyhood he has always so delighted in merriment that it seems to be part of his nature; yet his merriment is never turned into buffoonery.” “No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet no one is less eccentric.” The friendship of More and Erasmus had ripened in those twenty years. In More’s house, and at his instigation, Erasmus had written the _Praise of Folly_,[83] and the great scholar watched with warm interest the famous career and the brilliant character of the man he loved so heartily. More was already high in Henry VIII.’s favour when Erasmus could write that no one was less led by the opinions of the crowd, and more than once his independence and courage of mind had been proved in the twenty years that had passed. Drawn at first to the monastic life, More had spent four years (1500–1504) with the Carthusians in Smithfield, “frequenting daily their spiritual exercises, but without any vow.” Then it is plain to him that his vocation is not the priesthood, but marriage and public life, and he leaves the Charterhouse, and in 1505 is married and in Parliament.[84] But all his life the devotion to religion, and to the services of the Church, remain in More, and he is ascetic in the mortifications of the body till the spirit and the will ride supreme. In the House of Commons More stood out against the exactions of Henry VII., and at once fell under the king’s displeasure. More’s son-in-law, Roper, tells the story: