Thomas Linacre. By William Osier, M.D. (Cambridge Uni- versity Press.
2s. 6d. net.)—Here we have the Linacre Lecture for the current year. The foundation has not been as successful as its author hoped. A few men of distinction have held the post, but the distinction has not always been of the kind which one would have expected. Mat Prior, for instance, was a lecturer, though, as Professor Osier puts it, his "sole qualification for the position was the mirth and consequently health-giving character of his poems." At Oxford things have been even worse, though some fifty years ago an improvement was made, beginning in 1860 with the appointment of George Rolleston to the Professorship constituted six years before. Since then the Chair has been held by Morley, Ray Lankester, and Weldon. And now Oxford sends her Regius Professor to pay this admirable tribute to the founder. He was, indeed, no common man. We have had cultured physicians—this lecture is a proof—but though Linacre was not the first example of the combination of medicine and the humanities, he set it off in a most conspicuous way. And here he has a most worthy commemoration.
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