Thomas Linacre - Works

Works

Linacre's literary activity was displayed both in pure scholarship and in translation from Greek. In the domain of scholarship he was known by the rudiments of (Latin) grammar (Progymnasmata Grammatices vulgaria), composed in English, a revised version of which was made for the use of the Princess Mary, and afterwards translated into Latin by George Buchanan. He also wrote a work on Latin composition, De emendata structura, Latini sermonis ("On the Pure and Correct Structure of Latin Prose"), which was published in London in 1524 and many times reprinted on the continent of Europe.

Linacre's only medical works were his translations. He desired to make the works of Galen (and indeed those of Aristotle also) accessible to all readers of Latin. What he effected in the case of the first, though not trifling in itself, is inconsiderable as compared with the whole mass of Galen's writings; and of his translations from Aristotle, some of which are known to have been completed, nothing has survived. The following are the works of Galen translated by Linacre:

1. De sanitate tuenda, (Paris, 1517)
2. Methodus medendi (Paris, 1519)
3. De temperamentis et de Inaequali Intemperie (Cambridge, 1521)
4. De naturalibus facultatibus (London, 1523)
5. De symptomatum differentiis et causis (London, 1524)
6. De pulsuum Usu (London, without date).

He also translated for the use of Prince Arthur an astronomical treatise of Proclus, De sphaera, which was printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499. The accuracy of these translations and their elegance of style were universally admitted. They have been generally accepted as the standard versions of those parts of Galen's writings, and frequently reprinted, either as a part of the collected works or separately.

Linacre's intellectual fastidiousness and minute accuracy were, as Erasmus suggests, the chief cause why he left no more permanent literary memorials. It is difficult to justify by any extant work the extremely high reputation which he enjoyed among the scholars of his time. His Latin style was greatly admired by Erasmus, who also praised Linacre's critical judgment ("vir non exacti tantum sed sever judicii"). According to others it was hard to say whether he was more distinguished as a grammarian or a rhetorician. Of Greek he was regarded as a consummate master; and he was equally eminent as a "philosopher", that is, as learned in the works of the ancient philosophers and naturalists. In this there may have been some exaggeration; but all have acknowledged the elevation of Linacre's character, and the fine moral qualities summed up in the epitaph written by John Caius: "Fraudes dolosque mire perosus; idus amicis; omnibus ordinibus juxta carus".