Page:The Life of Thomas Linacre.djvu/7

 Should the quotations appear prolix, or the notes superfluous, the reader may justly ascribe their insertion less to an affectation of research, than to a desire of avoiding the historical and biographical errors, which an idle habit of quoting at second hand, and the practice of giving statements, without any reference to the works from which the writer's information was derived, generally induces; and nowhere has an author been cited, without a comparison of the text with the authority on which the citation is founded.

Whether the subject of the present biography was sufficiently distinguished in the republic of letters or of medicine; or whether the events of his life were sufficiently varied or important to merit a history beyond the scattered notices which are to be found in the writings of different authors, may perhaps excite a doubt. Belonging, however, to the institution, which owns this individual as its founder, and participating in that respectability, to which it has mainly contributed, (the best guarantee to society of the importance of the art, and competency of its professors to exercise it,) I have undertaken