Knight affords an interesting and tolerably copious account of Linacre, as well as of Grocyn; and in connection with the former he relates an anecdote, on the authority of Erasmus, about Bernard Andreas, tutor to Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII. But I shall not enter into these matters, as Linacre, though a great promoter of Greek authors, scarcely comes within my plan. Yet I may mention that among the friends whom the learned Hollander made here was Cuthbert Tunstall, afterwards Bishop of Durham, and author of the first book on arithmetic published in this country, and Richard Pace, who succeeded Colet in the Deanery of St. Paul's. There is, however, a passage which I may be suffered to transcribe, where, speaking of the time when Erasmus was contemplating a departure homeward, Knight observes:-- "Before Erasmus left England, he laid the plan of his useful Tract _de conscribendis epistolis_, for the Service, and at the Suggestion of his noble Pupil the Lord William Montjoy, who had complained that there were no good Rules, or Examples of that kind, to which he could conform himself. Erasmus took the hint very kindly, and making his just Reflections, upon the emptiness of Franciscus Niger, and Marius Phalelfus,[2] whose Books upon that Argument were read in the common Schools, he seems resolv'd at his first leisure, to give a New Essay of that kind; and accordingly upon his first return to Paris he fell upon it, and finished it within twenty Days." So we see that, prior to the visit of Erasmus to us at the end of the fifteenth century, there were already polite letter-writers current, and current, too, as school-books. Erasmus came to the conclusion that he had done his own work too hastily, and the appearance of an edition of it in England about thirty years later, and likewise of a counterfeit, induced him to revise the undertaking, which was finally published at Basle in 1545 in a volume with other analogous tracts by various writers. A story which Knight relates about his author's literary enterprise in the epistolary line is too amusing to be overlooked:-- "In that Essay of the way of writing Epistles, Erasmus had put in two sorts of Declamations, one in the praise, the other in dispraise, of Matrimony, and asking his young Pupil L{d.} Montjoy how he lik'd that of the first sort. 'Oh sir,' says he, 'I like it so well, that you have made me resolve to marry quickly.' 'Ay!' but says Erasmus, 'you have read only one side, stay and read the other.' 'No,' replies L{d.} Montjoy, 'that side pleases me; take you the other!'" The subject is an obvious one for humorous controversy; but there is a similar idea in Rabelais, who makes his two chief characters debate the advantages and drawbacks of wedlock.