well-marked hand, which is easily
recognizable, and in consequence his work has been traced in many
libraries. The British Museum has a treatise of Chrysostom, translated
by Selling, and written by Meghen for Urswick, afterwards Dean of
Windsor and Rector of Hackney, to present to Prior Goldstone of
Canterbury. (Urswick was frequently sent on embassies, and had
doubtless enjoyed the hospitality of Christchurch on his way between
London and Dover.) At Wells there are a Psalter and a translation of
Chrysostom on St. Matthew, which Urswick, as executor to Sir John
Huddelston, knight, caused Meghen to write in 1514 for presentation to
the Cistercians of Hailes, in Gloucestershire. The Bodleian has a
treatise written by him in 1528 for Nicholas Kratzer to present to
Henry VIII; and Wolsey's Lectionary at Christ Church, Oxford, is
probably in Meghen's hand.

But what concern us here are some manuscripts in the British Museum
and the University Library at Cambridge, written by Meghen in 1506 and
1509 at Colet's order for presentation to his father, Sir Henry Colet,
Lord Mayor of London, and containing in parallel columns the Vulgate
and another Latin translation of the New Testament, 'per D. Erasmum
Roterodamum'. Part and possibly all of this work was done by Erasmus,
therefore, during this second residence in England in 1505-6. He tells
us that he received two Latin manuscripts from Colet, which he found
exceedingly difficult to decipher; but one cannot make a new
translation from the Latin. To the Greek manuscripts used on this
occasion he gives no clue.

In connexion with this help and encouragement shown by Colet as Dean
to a foreign scholar, it is worth while to mention the visit to
London in 1509 of Cornelius Agrippa, the famous philosopher and
scientist, who had been sent to England by Maximilian on a diplomatic
errand, which he describes as 'a very secret business'. During his
stay, which lasted into 1510, he tells us that 'I laboured much over
the Epistles of St. Paul, in the company of John Colet, a man most
learned in Catholic doctrine, and of the purest life; and from him I
learnt many things that I did not know'. Erasmus was in England at the
time of this visit of Agrippa; but unfortunately he makes no allusion
to it, neither in his life of Colet, nor in his later correspondence
with Agrippa, nor, so far as I know, elsewhere in his works. If he had
done so, it might have solved a problem which is very curious in