But a murmur more prejudicial arose than the idle cavil of new and hard words; for some asserted that “the Boke seemed to be overlong.” Our primeval author considered that “knowledge of wisdom cannot be shortly declared.” Elyot had not yet attained, by sufficient practice in authorship, the secret, that the volume which he had so much pleasure in writing could be over tedious in reading. “For those,” he observes sarcastically, “who be well willing, it is soon learned—in good faith sooner than primero or gleek.” The nation must have then consisted of young readers, when a diminutive volume in twelves was deemed to be “overlong.” In this apology for his writings, he threw out an undaunted declaration of his resolution to proceed with future volumes.—“If the readers of my works, by the noble example of our most dear sovereign lord, do justly and lovingly interpret my labours, I, during the residue of my life, will now and then set forth such fruits of my study, profitable, as I trust, unto this my country, leaving malicious readers with their incurable fury.” Such was the innocent criticism of our earliest writer—his pen was hardly tipped with gall.
As all subjects were equally seductive to the artless pen of a primitive author, who had yet no rivals to encounter in public, Elyot turned his useful studies to a topic very opposite to that of political ethics. He put forth “The Castle of Health,” a medical treatise, which passed through nearly as many honourable editions as “The Governor.” It did not, however, abate the number, though it changed the character of his cavillers, who were now the whole corporate body of the physicians!
The author has told his amusing story in the preface to a third edition, in 1541.
“Why should I be grieved with reproaches wherewith some of my country do recompense me for my labours, taken without hope of temporal reward, only for the fervent affection which I have ever borne toward the public weal of my country? ‘A worthy matter!’ saith one; ‘Sir Thomas Elyot has become a physician, and writeth on physic, which beseemeth not a knight; he might have been much better occupied.’ Truly, if they will call him a physician who is studious of the weal of his country, let men so name me.”
But there was no shame in studying this science, or setting forth any book, being—
“Thereto provoked by the noble example of my noble master King Henry VIII.; for his Highness hath not disdained to be the chief author of an introduction to grammar for the children of his subjects.
“If physicians be angry that I have written physic in English, let them remember that Greeks wrote in Greek, the Romans in Latin, and Avicenna in Arabic, which were their own proper and maternal tongues. These were paynims and Jews, but in this part of charity they far surmounted us Christians.”
Several years after, when our author reverted to his “Castle of Health,” the Castle was brightened by the beams of public favour. Its author now exulted that “It shall long preserve men, be some physicians never so angry.” The work had not been intended to depreciate medical professors, but “for their commodity, by instructing the sick, and observing a good order in diet, preventing the great causes of sickness, or by which they could the sooner be cured.” Our philosopher had attempted to draw aside that mystifying veil with which some affected to envelope the arcana of medicine, as if they were desirous “of writing in cypher that none but themselves could read.” Our author had anticipated that revolution in medical science which afterwards, at a distant period, has been productive of some of the ablest treatises in the vernacular languages of Europe.
The patriotic studies of Elyot did not terminate in these ethical and popular volumes, for he had taxed his daily diligence for his country’s weal. This appeared in “The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot, 1535,” a folio, which laid the foundation of our future lexicons, “declaring Latin by English,” as Elyot describes his own labour.
Elyot had suffered some disappointments as a courtier in the days of Wolsey, who lavished the royal favours on churchmen. In a letter to Lord Cromwell, he describes himself with a very narrow income, supporting his establishment, “equal to any knight in the country where I dwell who have much more to live on;” but a new office, involving considerable expense in its maintenance, to which he had been just appointed, he declares would be his ruin, having already discharged “five honest and tall personages.”—“I wot not by what malice of fortune I am constrained to be in that office, whereunto is, as it were, appendent loss of money and good name, all sharpness and diligence in justice now-a-days being everywhere odious.” And this was at a time when “I trusted to live quietly, and by little and little to repay my creditors, and to reconcile myself to mine old studies.”