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 VIII. Some Addition* to the Biographies of Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith : in a Letter addressed to Charles Henry Cooper, Esq., F.S.A., one of the Authors of 'the Athena Cantabrigienses, by JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS, Esq., F.S.A. Read March 31st, 1859. MY DEAR SIR, Mar h 27, 1859. EVEKY cultivator of our national biography and literary antiquities must rejoice at the appearance of the first volume of the Atheme Cantabrigienses. That a work which was so obviously suggested nearly two centuries ago by the Athenae of the sister University, which has been contemplated by so many suc- cessive collectors, and for which such large, though imperfect, accumulations have been formed, should, in spite of ever-increasing difficulties, at length greet our view in substantial paper and print, is a victory over old Time of which any generation may fairly be proud; and I therefore cannot be thought to magnify its accomplishment too highly if, on this first public allusion to the work at the Society of Antiquaries, I hail its authors as conquerors who have overtaken the spoiler, and recovered from his grasp some of his most estimable treasures. As the epoch or commencement of the work that century has been adopted which is distinguished beyond all others by the great changes it produced in academical studies, and by the concurrent Reformation of the doctrines and discipline of the Church, and during which the University of Cambridge is illus- trated, among other names little less memorable, with those of the statesmen More, Cromwell, Elyot, Seymour duke of Somerset, Dudley duke of Northum- berland, Morysine, and Paget ; the prelates, Rotherham, Fox, Fisher, Gardyner, Pole, Tunstall, Grindal, and Parker ; the reformers and martyrs, Bilney, Frith, Tindal, Barnes, Bucer, Taylor, Ferrar, Cardmaker, Bradford, Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, Coverdale, and Lever ; the great scholars Erasmus, Lupset, Leland, Bale, and Ascham ; the poets Skelton, Wyat, Howard and Gascoigne ; the physicians Linacre, Record, Turner, and Caius ; the lawyers, lord keeper Bacon and Plowden ; besides hosts of others once even better known at Cambridge, though now less familiar to the world at large. It is with respect to two of these great men that I have some particulars to communicate to you. Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith were at the same