person in the medical world—a circumstance that will sufficiently account for the use that Shakespeare has made of his name when he wished to introduce a physician into the "Merry Wives of Windsor," without any necessity for supposing that direct reference to him was intended by the poet. The comedy, moreover, may be dated 1601, twenty-eight years after the death of Caius ; who, besides, was not a Frenchman as there represented, but the son of English parents, and born and bred at Norwich.

His return to his college as co-founder and generous benefactor-for it was part of his scheme to found and endow fellowships and scholarships -was naturally succeeded by his elevation to the Mastership (January 24, 1559)—a dignity which he accepted with reluctance, and the emoluments of which he systematically declined. These he generously expended on new buildings, of which he laid the first stone on the west side of the court that was afterwards called Caius Court, 5th of May, 1565, at four o'clock in the morning. His object in founding his college afresh was the promotion of sound learning. The inscription on the foundation-stone summed up these intentions in four significant words: "Johannes Caius posuit sapientia," with a solemn prayer that all who dwelt therein might be virtuous, learned, and

patriotic. It may at first sight appear strange that he should have allowed six years to elapse between his acceptance of the Mastership and the commencement of the buildings. Probably the intervening period was spent in acquiring the site, and in storing up materials. This forethought will account for the short time occupied in the actual construction, for the last stone is stated by himself in his "Annals," of which the manuscript is preserved in the college, to have been laid on the first day of September, just four months after the work had been begun. The eastern side of the quadrangle was taken in hand soon afterwards, and probably finished with equal rapidity, but its progress is not so minutely recorded.

The design of the buildings erected by Dr. Caius is stated, according to college tradition, to have been brought by him from Padua. The agreeable notion, however, that while he was living abroad he was thinking of his college and planning its extension, is unsupported by any evidence whatever. He was at Padua, as we have seen, in 1541, eighteen years before he was made master of his college, and twenty-four years before he began to build. How could he have "so forecast. the years as to imagine his future elevation to wealth and position? Again, the design is not Italian, either in conception or in style. The

buildings of the University at Padua, which he might have thought of imitating, and with which he must, of course, have been familiar, for they were built by Sansovino or Palladio about 1493, are totally different from those he afterwards erected. They are built round a court, in a heavy, classical style, with a profusion of shafts, cornices, and battlements; whereas the design of Dr. Caius, as our illustration of his Gate of Virtue shows, is thoroughly Gothic in general plan and outline, with only a subtle touch of the Renaissance here and there in a molding or a detail. It is just possible that the inscription on the foundation-stone, and the words of the prayer uttered by Dr. Caius at the ceremony, may have been suggested by the inscription on the entrance to the University at Padua, in which the same thoughts are expressed: "Sic ingredere ut te ipso quotidie doctior, sic egredere ut indies patriæ Christianæque reipublicæ utilior evadas." The words are difficult to translate literally, but the general sense is, "So enter that thou mayest become daily more learned than thou hast been; so leave that day by day thou mayest become more useful to thy country and to Christendom."

The arrangement of the Caius Court-two parallel ranges of buildings connected on the south by nothing more substantial than a wall of