lead him to rival the fame of the great scholar of Amsterdam.  The schoolmaster’s surname led him as far into dissertation as his Christian appellative.  He was inclined to think that he bore the name of Holiday quasi Lucus A non LUCENDO, because he gave such few holidays to his school.  “Hence,” said he, “the schoolmaster is termed, classically, LUDI magister, because he deprives boys of their play.”  And yet, on the other hand, he thought it might bear a very different interpretation, and refer to his own exquisite art in arranging pageants, morris-dances, May-day festivities, and such-like holiday delights, for which he assured Tressilian he had positively the purest and the most inventive brain in England; insomuch, that his cunning in framing such pleasures had made him known to many honourable persons, both in country and court, and especially to the noble Earl of Leicester.  “And although he may now seem to forget me,” he said, “in the multitude of state affairs, yet I am well assured that, had he some pretty pastime to array for entertainment of the Queen’s Grace, horse and man would be seeking the humble cottage of Erasmus Holiday.  PARVO CONTENTUS, in the meanwhile, I hear my pupils parse and construe, worshipful sir, and drive away my time with the aid of the Muses.  And I have at all times, when in correspondence with foreign scholars, subscribed myself Erasmus ab Die Fausto, and have enjoyed the distinction due to the learned under that title:  witness the erudite Diedrichus Buckerschockius, who dedicated to me under that title his treatise on the letter Tau.  In fine, sir, I have been a happy and distinguished man.”

“Long may it be so, sir!” said the traveller; “but permit me to ask, in your own learned phrase, quid hoc ad IPHYCLI BOVES? what has all this to do with the shoeing of my poor nag?”

“Festina Lente,” said the man of learning, “we will presently came to that point.  You must know that some two or three years past there came to these parts one who called himself Doctor Doboobie, although it may be he never wrote even magister ARTIUM, save in right of his hungry belly.  Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they were of the devil’s giving; for he was what the vulgar call a white witch, a cunning man, and such like.—­Now, good sir, I perceive you are impatient; but if a man tell not his tale his own way, how have you warrant to think that he can tell it in yours?”

“Well, then, learned sir, take your way,” answered Tressilian; “only let us travel at a sharper pace, for my time is somewhat of the shortest.”

“Well, sir,” resumed Erasmus Holiday, with the most provoking perseverance, “I will not say that this same Demetrius for so he wrote himself when in foreign parts, was an actual conjurer, but certain it is that he professed to be a brother of the mystical Order of the Rosy Cross, a disciple of Geber (ex NOMINE CUJUS VENIT VERBUM VERNACULUM, gibberish).  He cured wounds by salving the weapon instead of the sore; told fortunes by palmistry; discovered stolen goods by the sieve and shears; gathered the right maddow and the male fern seed, through use of which men walk invisible; pretended some advances towards the panacea, or universal elixir; and affected to convert good lead into sorry silver.”