One of the noteworthy features of our time is the revival of interest in the life and letters of Blessed Thomas More.

These two new Lives of the Beatus are added evidence of this interest, and of its universal character. The one is by a non-Catholic Englishwoman, who is a scholar of the University of Oxford, the other is by a Catholic American, who is a member of the English Faculty at Harvard.

Though there are already (we are told by Miss Routh) twenty-four English Lives of More of different periods, one could not spare either of these new volumes. Of a truth, as Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth is here reported to have said, Sir Thomas More is one of the figures of abiding interest in History.

This multiplication of Lives of Thomas More goes with the reproduction of his English works in the elegant edition that is in course of publication by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode under the general editorship of W. E. Campbell, with the co-operation of Professor A. W. Read, Professor R. W. Chambers and Mr. W. A. Doyle Davidson: a notable constellation of Catholic and and non-Catholic scholars. The publication in this series of Harpsfield’s Life of Thomas More has given us, from the pen of Professor Chambers, an enduring essay ‘On the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School,’ the main thesis of which may be said to be that the English of Alfred survived as a literary language, during the centuries when French and Latin were the official languages of Law and Government, through the religious writings of Englishmen who wrote on mystical subjects for the use of English communities of religious women.