INTRODUCTION.

in the schools of Italy. The opportunity came through his old friend and teacher, William of Selling, who was sent by Henry the Seventh as his envoy to the Papal Court. It is not clear that Linacre had any official position in the embassy; he accompanied his patron however, as far as Bologna, but not in his further journey to Rome. At Bologna Linacre is stated by Leland to have been introduced to Angelo Politiano, and to have remained there in order to become a pupil of this great scholar. His stay in Bologna appears to have been short, and we next hear of him at Florence, having perhaps followed thither Politiano, who along with Demetrius Chalcondylas had now been charged with the instruction of the two sons of Lorenzo de Medici, Piero and Giovanni. Linacre seems to have been favoured with the patronage of Lorenzo, who allowed him to share the instructions given to the young princes. It is not easy to understand precisely what was the position Linacre now occupied at the Court of Florence, for though his fellow pupils were boys and he himself a man of twenty-five and already a considerable scholar, he is not spoken of as in any sense their tutor. The connexion however must have been in after years valuable to him, as the dedication of the work now reprinted clearly shews: the pope Leo the Tenth, being the younger of the two Medici princes. It will be evident from the dedication itself that the privilege accorded to Linacre was shared by others, and it was therefore perhaps not so important as it has been regarded. It is enough to know that he studied under such eminent scholars as Politiano and Chalcondylas, and thus laid the foundation of the elegance in Latin scholarship and profundity in Greek learning for which he was afterwards distinguished.

After a year thus spent in Florence, Linacre proceeded to