NOTES.

SOURCES OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF LINACRE.

The only separate biography of Linacre is that by Dr Noble Johnson, a fellow of the College of Physicians, published, in 1835 after the author’s death, under the editorship of Mr Robert Graves. From this the biographical part of the short sketch here given has been chiefly derived. Dr Johnson collected with great learning and industry the contemporary notices of Linacre, as well as all that has appeared in later writers, and investigated many manuscript authorities. It would be ungrateful here to point out the few errors into which he has fallen, especially as they are probably partly due to his work having been published without the author’s personal revision. The earliest life is either that contained in the Elogia contributed by George Lily to the Descriptio Britanniæ of Paulus Jovius, Venetiis, 1548 (also Basileæ 1578), or that given in Bale’s Illustrium majoris Britanniæ scriptorum summarium. Gippeswici, 1548. Further materials are contained in Leland (Principum … et eruditorum etc. encomia. London 1589) Pits (De Illustribus Angliæ scriptoribus); Freind’s History of Physic; the Biographia Britannica; Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses, Bishop Tanner’s Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, etc. Later biographical collections, such as Aitken’s Biographical Memoirs of Medicine, the Lives of the British Physicians, and Dr Munk’s learned Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, have added little or nothing. The present Editor has carefully verified most of Dr Johnson’s references; and corrected or added a few facts, but has found little to glean after so exhaustive a worker. The latter part, however, of this short introduction owes little to Dr Johnson. I have to thank Mr Bradshaw, the University Librarian, for some valuable hints.

NOTES (referred to in text).

(Is this passage the foundation of Mr Browning’s fine poem, “The Grammarian’s funeral”?)

Joannis Cheki Angli de pronuntiatione Græcæ potissimum linguæ disputationes cum Stephano Wintoniensi Episcopo. Basileæ 1555, p. 176 and 281, etc. Linacre’s name is brought in as follows. Bishop Gardiner finds fault with Cheke for too Ciceronian a style of writing (Ciceronis grandiloquentiam ad sententias de rebus levibus atque ridiculis inconcinne additam et accommodatam), and quotes to him Erasmus in Ciceronianos and also Linacre, who he says never admired the style of Cicero and could not listen to it without disgust. Cheke retorts in the manner we have quoted, “Si de acumine et celeritate ingenii disputatur etc.—in eo si nunc viveret, tibi laudem concederet,” and makes the curious remark that it is strange Linacre could not listen to Cicero without disgust, when his work De structurâ abounds with examples taken from Cicero. Perhaps, Cheke suggests, he had not really neglected the study of that writer, but through some perversity wished to be thought to have neglected him, “ut non tam fortasse reverâ neglexerit, quam animi quâdam morositate videri voluit neglexisse.”

GALENI PERGAMENSIS DE TEMPERAMENTIS, ET DE INAEQVALI INTEMPERIE LIBRI TRES THOMA LINACRO ANGLO INTERPRETE

Opus non medicis modo, sed et philosophis oppido quam necessarium nunc primum prodit in lucem CVM GRATIA & Priuilegio.