INTRODUCTION.

Rome, where his studies in the Vatican library procured him the acquaintance of another great scholar, Hermolaus Barbarus. It is possible that this acquaintance may have given Linacre’s studies a bias in the direction of medicine; for Barbarus, though not a physician, had devoted himself specially to the study of Dioscorides, whose works he translated into Latin, and illustrated with commentaries, more than once reprinted. It is suggested by Dr Noble Johnson that the example and arguments of Hermolaus Barbarus may have given Linacre’s mind a bias of a different kind, namely towards a single life; for the Italian scholar, we are told, wrote a treatise in favour of celibacy at the age of eighteen, and never afterwards deviated either in practice or theory from the principles there advocated. Barbarus was also a great Aristotelian scholar, and in this direction also he may have influenced the mind of Linacre; who afterwards undertook and partly carried out a plan which had also been among the projects of the elder scholar, of a complete translation of the works of Aristotle. In other less important matters, the influence of Hermolaus Barbarus seems traceable, and if Linacre took as his model in a learned life any of the great scholars with whom he studied, it was certainly rather Hermolaus than any other.

From Rome Linacre went to Venice, and here made the valuable acquaintance of the great printer, Aldus Manutius Romanus, who was then engaged in bringing out some of the most important editions of the classics, by which he earned the gratitude of scholars. Aldus appears to have treated the English scholar with great kindness, which is acknowledged, as a personal favour, by William Grocyn, in a letter to Aldus, which must have been written shortly after Linacre’s return from Italy. After acknowledging the kindness shewn