[Footnote 1: Bayle's Dict, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of Morus, pp. 142-145 and 204-205. This last book is a curiosity. One hardly sees why the life and character of Morus should have so fascinated the Rev. Archibald Bruce, who was minister of the Associate Congregation at Whitburn, in Linlithgowshire, from 1768 to 1816, and Professor of Theology there for the Associate Presbyterian Synod for nearly all that time. He was a worthy and learned man, for whom Dr. McCrie, the author of the Life of John Knox, and of the same Presbyterian denomination, entertained a more "profound veneration" than for any other man on earth (see Life of McCrie by his son, edit. 1840, pp. 52-57). He was "a Whig of the Old School," with liberal political opinions in the main, but strongly opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation; which brought him into connexion with Lord George Gordon, of the "No Popery Riots" of 1780. He wrote many books and pamphlets, and kept a printer at Whitburn for his own use. He may have been drawn to Morus by his interest in the history of Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate, he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man, consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure, he was the author of _Paradise Lost_; but that much-praised poem had serious religious defects too! There is something actually refreshing in the _naïveté_ and courage with which the sturdy Professor of the Associate Synod propounds his own dissent from the common Milton-worship.--The authority for Morus's acquaintanceship in Italy with Holstenius and Dati is the collection of his Latin Poems, a thin quarto, published at Paris in 1669, under the title of _Alexandri Mori Poemata_. It contains his poem, a longish one in Hexameters, on the victory of the Venetians over the Turks; also verses to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany; also obituary elegiacs to Diodati of Geneva, and several pieces to or on Salmasius. One piece, in elegiacs, is addressed "_Ad Franciscum Turretinum, raræ indolis ac summæ spei juvenem_." This Francis Turretin (so addressed, I suppose, long ago, when he and Morus were in Geneva together) was, if I mistake not, the famous Turretin of Milton's letter about Morus to Ezekiel Spanheim (ante pp. 173-176). Among the other pieces are one to Holstenius and one to Carlo Dati. In the first Morus, speaking of his introduction to Holstenius and to the Vatican library together, says he does not know which seemed to him the greater library. The poem to Dati is of considerable length, in Hexameters, and entitled "_Ægri Somnium: ad præstantem virum Carolum Dati_" ("An Invalid's Dream: To the excellent Carlo Dati").