Utopia

THOMAS MORE

...equally learned in Latin as in Greek; Continuing from the previous page, More is explaining that Raphael's Latin is not as polished as his Greek because Raphael is a philosopher, and humanists of this era considered Greek the primary language of philosophy. and the closer my language approaches his unstudied simplicity, the closer it will be to the truth, which is the only thing I ought to care for, and do care for, in this matter. I confess, my dear Peter, that having these materials ready to hand has spared me so much labor that almost nothing was left for me to do. Otherwise, the invention or the arrangement of such a subject might have required no small amount of time and study, even from a mind that was neither mediocre nor altogether unlearned.

But if it had been required that the matter be written with eloquence and not just with accuracy, that is something I could never have achieved, no matter how much time or study I applied. As it is, however, those worries—which would have required so much "sweat of the brow" to overcome—have been removed. Since I only had to write down simply what I heard, there should have been no difficulty at all. Yet, even for the completing of this "nothing of a task," my other tasks have left me almost less than no time. While I am constantly attending to legal cases at the bar original: "causas forenses." This refers to More’s professional duties as a lawyer and Undersheriff of London, which demanded much of his time....