did not escape the English writer's eye any more than its higher
aspirations. This is illustrated not only by Chaucer, who chose to write
poetry, but by such men as Nigel Wireker[15] and Walter Map who chose to
write Latin.[16] But not one English author before the Renaissance
employed such gifts in writing prose studies of real life in his native
tongue. Owing to the Conquest a certain discredit seemed to rest for
generations on England's original language. Long after an English
nation, rich in every sort of glory had come into being, writers are to
be found hesitating to use the national idiom. This circumstance is
chiefly noticeable in prose where the use of a foreign tongue offers
less difficulties than in poetry. Prose was less cultivated in England
even so late as the commencement of the sixteenth century than in France
during the thirteenth. At the time of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More,
the wittiest Englishman of his day, whose English style was admirable
and who moreover loved the language of his native land, wishing to
publish a romance of social satire, the "Utopia,"[17] wrote it in Latin.
It is one of the oldest examples in modern literature of that species of
book which includes at a later date the story of Gargantua and
Pantagruel, Bacon's "New Atlantis," Cyrano de Bergerac's "Etats et
empires de la lune et du soleil," Fenelon's "Telemaque," "Gulliver's
Travels," Voltaire's tales, &c. More's use of Latin is to be the more
regretted since his romance exhibits infinite resources of spirit and
animation; of all his writings it is the one that best justifies his
great reputation for wit and enlightenment. His characters are living
men and their conversation undoubtedly resembles that which delighted
him in the society of his friend Erasmus.

The subject of the book is the quest for the best possible government.
More and his companions meet at Antwerp one of the fellow voyagers of
Amerigo Vespucci the famous godfather of America, and they question him
concerning the civilizations he has seen. "He likewise very willingly
tolde us of the same. But as for monsters, by cause they be no newes, of
them we were nothyng inquisitive. For nothyng is more easye to bee
founde, then bee barkynge Scyllaes, ravenyng Celenes, & Lestrigones
devourers of people, & suche lyke great, & incredible monsters. But to
find citisens ruled by good & holsome lawes, that is an exceding rare, &
harde thyng."[18] By good luck Amerigo's comp