IO
HARVEY AND GALEN
native land, Linacre occupied a unique position in his pro- fession, for he was probably the only physician in England who had read the Greek medical fathers in their original tongue. Many honours and dignities, as we know, fell to his lot. He was physician to the King, to Wolsey, and to all the great prelates, while he directed the studies of Prince Arthur and the Princess Mary. But, more significant and honourable than these dignities* it is to be remembered that such men as Sir Thomas More, Colet, and even the great Erasmus, were in a sense his pupils as they were also his patients, for they profited by the store of Greek learning and scholarship which he had brought back from Italy. Late in life he exchanged medical practice for the priest- hood, and, thus enjoying comparative leisure, crowded all his important work into the last seven years of his life. The year before his death he published a translation from Galen, which he says was accomplished with difficulty in the intervals of the painful disease calculus. Almost on his deathbed he must have been correcting the proofs of his last work, an elaborate treatise on Latin composition, which was published shortly after his death
percipitur (Basel, 1517), he introduces a dispute between Grammar and Rhetoric as to which could claim Linacre for her own. Rhetoric admits that he cultivated grammar in his spare hours, and says his friends wondered that he, who was born for the highest things, some- times condescended to the lowest, and disputed with some grammarian about the vocative case ; but he gained a more brilliant victory at Padua. ‘ Contendit turn ille feliciter quia vicit ; sed mallem victoriam fuisse illustriorem, et similem illi quam Patavii olim reportavit. Nam quum in gymnasio Patavino pro- fession^ artis medicae ei (ut nunc moris est) darentur insignia, publice non sine summa laude disputavit, et seniorum medicorum adversaria argumenta acutissime refellit. Turn
iuvenis quidam perquam eruditus, coepit contra argumentari. Sed Aquila, Tace, inquit, O bone iuvenis ! vides ne et consyderas hunc nos seniores te longo intervallo procul a se reliquisse, et in disputando superasse ? ’
Aquila was an eminent and vener- able physician, who attained the ‘ Galenical ’ age of nearly a hundred, and, as we see, finding that he and his equals were unable to hold their ground against the learning of Linacre, rebuked the temerity of the young man who ventured to enter the lists against so formidable a dis- putant.
1 De emendata strudura Latini sermonis. London, 1524. The first pages of this work treat of the Parts of Speech , and thus supply the clue to the quotation which follows.
