yment of antimony in order to give sharpness
and definition to the impression produced by metal types. It would
seem as though he was the first scientist who discussed this subject,
and there is even some question whether printers and type founders did
not derive their ideas in this matter from Basil Valentine, rather
than he from them. Interested as he was in the transmutation of
metals, he never failed to try to find and suggest some medicinal use
for all of the substances that he investigated. His was no greedy
search for gold and no accumulation of investigations with the idea of
benefiting only himself. Mankind was always in his mind, and perhaps
there is no better demonstration of his fulfilment of the character of
the monk than this constant {75} solicitude to benefit others by every
bit of investigation that he carried out. For him with medieval
nobleness of spirit the first part of every work must be the
invocation of God, and the last, though no less important than the
first, must be the utility and fruit for mankind that can be derived
from it.

{76}

{77}

IV.

LINACRE: SCHOLAR, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST.

{78}

Linacre, as Dr. Payne remarks, "was possessed from his youth till his
death by the enthusiasm of learning. He was an idealist devoted to
objects which the world thought of little use." Painstaking, accurate,
critical, hypercritical perhaps, he remains to-day the chief literary
representative of British Medicine. Neither in Britain nor in Greater
Britain have we maintained the place in the world of letters created
for us by Linacre's noble start. Quoted by Osler in _AEquanimitas_.

[Illustration: THOMAS LINACRE]

{79}

IV.

LINACRE: SCHOLAR, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST.

Not long ago, in one of his piquant little essays, Mr. Augustine
Birrell discussed the question as to what really happened at the time
of the so-called Reformation in England. There is much more doubt with
regard to this matter, even in the minds of non-Catholics, than is
usually suspected. Mr. Birrell seems to have considered it one of the
most important problems, and at the same time not by any means the
least intricate one, in modern English history. The so-called High
Church people emphatically insist that there is no break in the
continuity of the Church of England, and that the modern Anglicanism
is a direct descendant of the old British Church. They reject with
scorn the idea that it was the Lutheran movement on the Cont