INTRODUCTION.

after life may be traced to the bias which the young scholar's mind received from his earliest teacher. The Cathedral school of Canterbury within the monastery of Christ Church where Linacre became a pupil was at that time under the direction of William Tilly, otherwise called William of Selling, an Augustinian monk, and a scholar of a type at that time rare in England. Originally educated at Oxford, elected a Fellow of the newly founded College of All Souls, and afterwards received as a monk in the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, Selling found the means to travel in Italy, where he not only studied the Canon Law ecclesiastical law, but, what is more to the present purpose, during a stay at Bologna, studied Greek and became the pupil of Angelo Politiano. After two years' stay in Italy, he returned home, became Prior of Christ Church, and later on was sent as Envoy from Henry VII. to the papal court; an event which proved of great importance to Linacre. At the time of which we are now speaking, he was only Master of the Grammar School, whether appointed before or after his first journey to Italy we do not know. In any case it is clear that he had already those tastes and pursuits from which his pupil Linacre derived not only his determining impulse to the life of a scholar, but especially that love of Greek literature which runs like a thread through the great physician's life and is the clue to much of his versatile literary activity.

At the mature age (especially according to the customs of the day) of twenty, Linacre was sent to Oxford. At what College or Hall he studied is uncertain, though it is assumed, on trivial grounds that he must have entered at Canterbury Hall. The only fact which is certain is that after four years' residence at the University, in 1484, he was elected a fellow of All Souls' College. It has been thought by Dr Noble