Politian was at this time the tutor of the young de' Medici in Latin, and Demetrius Chalcondylas the tutor in Greek. Under these two eminent scholars Linacre obtained a knowledge of Latin and Greek such as it would have been impossible to have obtained under any other {88} circumstances, and which with his talents at once stamped him as one of the foremost humanistic scholars in Europe. While in Florence he came in contact with Lorenzo the Magnificent's younger son, who afterwards became Leo X. The friendship thus formed lasted all during Linacre's lifetime, and later on he dedicated at least one of his books to Alexander de' Medici after the latter's elevation to the papal throne. It is no wonder that Linacre always looked back on Italy as the Alma Mater--the fond mother in the fullest sense of the term--to whom he owed his precious opportunities for education and the broadest possible culture. In after-life the expression of his feelings was often tinged with romantic tenderness. It is said that when he was crossing the Alps, on his homeward journey, leaving Italy after finishing his years of apprenticeship of study, standing on the highest point of the mountains from which he could still see the Italian plains, he built with his own hands a rough altar of stone and dedicated it to the land of his studies--the land in which he had spent six happy years--under the fond title of _Sancta Mater Studiorum_. At first, after his return from Italy, Linacre lectured on Greek at Oxford. Something of the influence acquired over English students and the good he accomplished may be appreciated from the fact that with Grocyn he had such students as More and the famous Dean Colet. Erasmus also was attracted from the Netherlands and {89} studied Greek under Linacre, to whom he refers in the most kindly and appreciative terms many times in his after life. Linacre wrote books besides lecturing, and his work on certain fine points in the grammar of classical Latinity proved a revelation to English students of the old classical languages, for nothing so advanced as this had ever before been attempted outside Italy. In one of the last years of the fifteenth century Linacre was appointed tutor to Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII, to whom it will be remembered that Catherine of Aragon had been betrothed before her marriage with Henry. Arthur's untimely death, however, soon put an end to Linacres' tutorship.