P._, iv., 5412.]

[Footnote 42: This testimonial was written in 1528
before Henry VIII. had given the most striking
demonstrations of its truth.]

[Footnote 43: See _D.N.B._, i., 398. Erasmus,
however, described Andre as being "of mean
abilities" (_L. and P._, iv., 626).]

[Footnote 44: _D.N.B._, xiv., 449; _cf._ _L. and
P._, i., 513. On Henry VIII's accession D'Ewes was
appointed keeper of the King's library at Richmond
with a salary of L10 per year.]

[Footnote 45: Skelton, _Works_, ed. Dyce, vol. i.,
p. xiii.; the white and green still survive as the
colours of Jesus College, Oxford, founded by Queen
Elizabeth.]

[Footnote 46: _Ib._, p. xxi.; a copy of the latter,
which Dyce could not find, is in _Brit. Mus. Addit.
MS. 26787_.]

The coarseness of Skelton's satires and his open disregard of the
clerical vows of chastity may justify some doubt of the value of the
poet's influence on Henry's character; but he so far observed the
conventional duties of his post as to dedicate to his royal pupil, in
1501, a moral treatise in Latin of no particular worth.[47] More
deserving of Henry's study were two books inscribed to him a (p. 022)
little later by young Boerio, son of the King's Genoese physician and
a pupil of Erasmus, who, according to his own account, suffered untold
afflictions from the father's temper. One was a translation of
Isocrates' _De Regno_, the other of Lucian's tract against believing
calumnies.[48] The latter was, to judge from the tale of Henry's
victims, a precept which he scarcely laid to heart in youth. In other
respects he was apt enough to learn. He showed "remarkable docility
for mathematics," became proficient in Latin, spoke French with ease,
understood Italian, and, later on, possibly from Catherine of Aragon,
acquired a knowledge of Spanish. In 1499 Erasmus himself, the greatest
of the humanists, visited his friend, Lord Mountjoy, near Greenwich,
and made young Henry's acquaintance. "I was staying," he writes,[49]
"at Lord Mountjoy's country house when Thomas More came to see me, and
took me out with him for a walk as far as the next village, where all
the