a refuge from the charge of heresy, by giving his book the aspect of an idle and humorous fiction. The latter half of the volume is occupied with the ‘History of King Richard III’--and though it does not possess the intrinsic value of the Utopia, it acquires even a higher interest from the circumstance of its being the _earliest specimen_ of English prose, intelligible to readers of the present day.[2] It is also deserving of great attention, as the original chronicle of that troublous and tragical reign, written while several of the actors in its scenes are yet living. It is in this light, as the ‘Father of English Prose,’ that the character of Sir Thomas More appears most interesting. He was the first to break loose from the prevailing custom, which confined all learning and philosophy and history, to the constrained medium of a dead language, and commenced those efforts in the living English, which have resulted in giving us a vernacular prose literature, unequalled by that of any other language in the world. He was fortunate too in living just at that period, when the language had acquired sufficient elegance and copiousness, to render it in a great measure permanent. The tasteful reader will be tempted to wish that our native Saxon had been suffered to retain its pristine vigor, unencumbered with such ponderous accumulations, as it has since received, though it had remained less magnificent in its periods, and less fertile in synonymes. The principal points worthy of notice in this venerable composition, are, the honest straight-forward course of the narrative, the discrimination in the portraiture of character, and in tracing outward actions to their secret causes, and the nature and individuality shown in the speeches, which, in imitation of the manner of Livy and Sallust, he puts in the mouths of his personages. We were much struck with the _perfect_ coincidence with this authentic chronicle, maintained in Shakspeare’s drama of Richard III. It is exceedingly thorough and minute, and affords gratifying evidence that the efforts of the imagination may with success be made subservient to impressing and illustrating historical truth. As an instance of this resemblance, as well as for the purpose of exhibiting our author’s _original_ style, we quote as follows. (p. 302-304.)