Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/20

 been her husband, it might have seemed to have been her own germane brother, as Erasmus was wont to say of a happy couple. But above all, she was to her father a most natural loving child. And albeit her behaviour and reverence towards him all her lifetime was much to be commended, yet never so notably as after her father's trouble and imprisonment: and then not so much for her pains and travail, which she took to procure him some ease and relief, as for her wise and godly talk, and for her comfortable letters she often sent him, and for some other reasons; so that it well appeared she was the chiefest, and only comfort almost he had in the world. Erasmus wrote many Epistles to her, and dedicated his commentaries on certain hymns of Prudentius to this gentlewoman, and calleth her the flower of all the learned matrons of England. Nor was she meanly learned. She composed in Greek and Latin, both verse and prose, and that most eloquently. Her wit was sharp and quick."

A few additional particulars of no very great importance relating to the life of Sir Thomas More may be gleaned from this anonymous writer, who seems to have constructed his narrative fromRoper, Harpsfield, and Stapleton, together with copious extracts from the letters which are to be found in our Appendix. Dr. Wordsworth justly observes, "that by means of the successive lives of Sir Thomas More, we possess a curious specimen of the aversion which Popery has against reforming itself;