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When nearly sixty years of age, in 1592, she made a second visit to Oxford, where, having been entertained with orations, disputations, etc., she pronounced on her departure, a Latin oration to the vice-chancellors and doctors, when she took her last farewell of the university. In the ensuing year she translated from Latin into English, Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophæ."
To counteract these degrading effects he advised that the privy should be in every house the room nearest to heaven, that it should be well provided with windows commanding an extensive and noble prospect, and that the walls of the chamber should be lined with bookshelves containing all the ripest products of human wisdom, such as the Proverbs of Solomon, Boethius's 'Consolations of Philosophy', the apophthegms of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the 'Enchiridion' of Erasmus, and all other works, ancient or modern, which testify to the nobility of the human soul.
His companion smiled, and replied by another question, "What is the man who reads the book?" Mr. Norreys moved a few paces, and looked over the student's shoulder. "Preston's translation of Boethius's 'The Consolations of Philosophy," he said, coming back to his friend. "He looks as if he wanted all the consolations Philosophy can give him, poor boy."
A Christian writer, finding a book seeming to possess much of the spirit of Christianity, would naturally study it and frequently use it; and Boethius's book, with more or less adaptation, grew to be a great favourite with Christians.
In that position, once we are gently nested among the elastic mass of genial humanity, it is easy to draw out from our waistcoat pocket our copy of Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy" and really get in a little mental improvement.
He seems to have had some acquaintance with patristic and homiletic literature; he produced a version of the homily on Mary Magdalene, improperly attributed to Origen; and, as we have seen, emulated King Alfred in translating Boethius's famous manual of moral philosophy.
Petavius greatly commends Boethius's explication of this mystery, which is the very same he had before condemned in Gregory Nyssen, and those other Fathers. That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God, not three Gods: 'hujus conjunctionis ratio est indifferentia': that is, such a sameness of nature as admits of no difference or variety, or an exact 'homo-ousiotes', as he explains it.
His companion smiled, and replied by another question, "What is the man who reads the book?" Mr. Norreys moved a few paces, and looked over the student's shoulder. "Preston's translation of Boethius's 'The Consolations of Philosophy," he said, coming back to his friend. "He looks as if he wanted all the consolations Philosophy can give him, poor boy."
Among such works may be placed the exiled Bolingbroke's "Reflections upon Exile;" the retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude;" the imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy;" the oppressed Pierius Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities;" the deformed Hay's Essay on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the liberal Shenstone's Poem on "Economy."
Let us condense the story from King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae: "There was once a famous Thracian harper named Orpheus who had a beautiful wife named Eurydice. She died and went to hell. Orpheus longed sorrowfully for her, harping so sweetly that the very woods and wild beasts listened to his woe.
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