84 JOHN G00DYI:R 



cured through Dr. How, some through Dr. Dale, and they 

 came down to Petersfield by carrier, or in the trunk of 

 Mrs. Heath, presumably the wife of his friend and neigh- 

 bour the Rev. John Heath. 



He was now closely associated with a botanist in the 

 work of preparing- a list and a synonymy of all known 

 British plants, incorporating and extending the lists drawn 

 on by How. The greater part of the labour of this work 

 fell on a collaborator who had access to Goodyer s books 

 and made notes in them : his name is not known to us for 

 certain, but we have his manuscript. The evidence all 

 tends to identify him with the Dr. Dale just mentioned, 

 but the matter will be again discussed below, p. 295. 



This last period of his life is also marked by a literary 

 labour that remains a record which to this day has never 

 been broken. It was the writing out of the Greek text 

 of the JMateria Medica of Dioscorides, and the rendering 

 it into English. Goodyer therefore accomplished in the 

 case of Dioscorides a work which not one of the tens 

 of thousands of Greek scholars who have lived before 

 or during the past three centuries have been known to 

 have attempted, a worthy sequel to his translation of 

 Theophrastus. 



And neither Theophrastus nor Dioscorides can be con- 

 sidered as of no import. Of Matthiolus' Commentaries 

 on Diosco7'ides alone thirty-two thousand copies were sold 

 before 1561, and it passed through seventeen editions. 

 His works have been translated into almost every civilized 

 language, except English, and there is no separate article 

 on Dioscorides in our national Encyclopaedia. 



The interlinear translation of Dioscorides fills six quarto 

 volumes of 4,540 pages in all. It is most clearly written, 

 the Greek text beings easier to read in Goodver's manu- 

 script than in the 1499 edition, printed at the Aldine Press 

 at Venice, Goodyer's copy of which has now been restored 

 to its proper place among his books in the Magdalen 

 LiV)rary. 



