But it is on very slender evidence that this nobleman is said to have translated Cicero on Old Age. He had left in manuscript a translation of Cicero on Friendship; and when Caxton printed it, many years after his death, with an anonymous version of the essay on Old Age, in the same volume, he was at once supposed to have been the author of both; but the translation, thus published without a name, was professedly executed in honour of Sir John Fastolf, the friend and patron of William of Worcester; and as it is well known that many of his dependant’s literary performances were undertaken expressly for his sake, and, as at the same time William of Worcester might have been easily confounded with the Earl of Worcester, there is considerable probability that William, and not the Earl, was the author of the translation in question, and consequently William could not have suffered on a comparison with him in the manner suggested. Nor is it sufficient objection to this inference, that the productions of a writer, whose style has been chosen as an example of the barbarous taste of the age in which he lived, were not likely to be imputed to one whose extraordinary attainments had won the admiration of the polished and fastidious scholars of Italy; for whatever might have been the Earl’s superiority in classical knowledge, it does not appear that he had cultivated his native tongue with greater care than his contemporaries; and William of Worcester might not have fallen below him in the rude and unsettled English of that time. Of William’s writings, of whatever kind, very little is now extant; and though for a few things the credit which he deserved has been given to others, it has been reasonably conjectured, that he has enjoyed in return the merit of some performances of which he was not the author; but however he might have laboured in the promotion of learning, he loved the acquisition of it so well, that he was accustomed to say, he found more pleasure in his books than some men derived from their estates; and to the attainments which he had made at the University, he added, by the help of one Giles, a Lombard, some acquaintance with French and Poetry. Yet study was insufficient to satisfy him without observation: τὸ εἰδέναι δίττον ἔλεγεν εἶναι· τὸ μὲν ἐπιστήμῃ, τὸ δὲ τῇ πείρᾳ. He consequently sought to enlarge his knowledge by travelling; and he has been considered worthy of respect as the earliest topographer of England, “Primum Angliæ perlustratorem ne flocci facias;” but however this may be, he is certainly the first traveller who has left us any memorials of a journey into Cornwall; and the interest and value which his observations derive from this circumstance, have made them worthy of a place in the present Appendix.