Italian authors were familiar to him. His intimate friends included Sir Thomas More and Roger Ascham. As a Greek scholar who first translated part of Isocrates into English, and as an early student of both Greek and Latin patristic literature, he well deserves to be remembered. That he should have written all his books in his native language gives him a high place among the pioneers of English prose literature. His style is clear, although its literary flavour is thin. His fame as a translator lived through Elizabeth's reign. Nashe the satirist writes that ‘Sir Thomas Elyot's elegance in translation did sever itself from all equals.’
All Elyot's books issued in his lifetime were published in London by Thomas Berthelet. They are as follows: 1. ‘The Boke named the Gouernour, deuised by Sir Thomas Elyot, knight,’ 1531, 1534, 1537, 1546, 1557, 1565, and 1580, dedicated to Henry VIII. The twofold object of the work was ‘to instruct men in such virtues as shall be expedient for them, which shall have authority in a weal public, and to educate those youths that hereafter may be deemed worthy to be governors.’ Much is borrowed from Patrizi's ‘De Regno & Regis Institutione’ (Paris, 1518), from Erasmus's ‘Institutio Principis Christiani,’ and Pontano's ‘De Principe.’ The latest edition, a reprint of the 1531 issue, was carefully edited by Mr. H. H. S. Crofts in 1883. 2. ‘Pasquil the Playne,’ 1533 and 1540, a prose dialogue between Pasquil, Gnatho, and Harpocrates on the advantages of loquacity and silence. Gnatho advocates the former, Harpocrates the latter, and Pasquil, who takes a neutral side, indulges in some severe satire. The work, which opens with a quotation from Æschylus, may have been suggested by the ‘Dialogus Marphorii et Pasquilli,’ issued at Rome about 1552, a copy of which Bonner sent as a gift to Cromwell 24 Dec. 1532. No copy of either the first or second edition is in the British Museum (Collier, Bibliog. Cat. i. 254; Ames, Typ. Antiq. iii. 307). 3. ‘Of the Knowledge which maketh a Wise Man,’ 1533 and 1534, a prose dialogue, on philosophical topics, between Plato and Aristippus, suggested by a perusal of Diogenes Laertius's account of Plato. A letter to Honor, second wife of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, is printed at the close of the volume. 4. ‘A Swete and devoute Sermon of Holy Saynt Ciprian of the Mortalitie of Man;’ ‘The Rules of a Christian Lyfe, made by Picus, Erle of Mirandula,’ 1534, two tracts, dedicated to Susan, wife of John Kyngstone, a daughter of the Richard Fetiplace whose widow was the second wife of Elyot's father. Cyprian's sermon was doubtless translated from Erasmus's edition (Basle, 1520). 5. ‘The Doctrine of Princes, made by the noble oratour Isocrates, and translated out of Greke in to Englishe,’ London, 1534, a translation of the Oration to Nicocles. 6. ‘The Castel of Helth,’ London, 1534, 1539, 1541, 1561, 1580 (?), 1595. No copy of the first edition, assigned to 1534 and stated to have been dedicated to Cromwell, is now known. A letter to Cromwell in Harl. MS. 6989, No. 21, is clearly intended as a dedicatory epistle, and cannot be dated later than 1534. The book is a medical treatise of prescriptions for various ailments, and Elyot gives an account of the disorders from which he himself suffered. The fact that it was written in English by one who was not a doctor roused much wrath on the part of the medical profession. Elyot replied to his medical critics in a preface to the edition of 1541. The treatise was very popular till the close of the century. 7. ‘The Bankette of Science,’ London, 1539, 1542, 1545, 1557, a collection of moral sayings chiefly from the fathers. 8. ‘The Dictionary of Syr T. Eliot, knyght,’ London, fol. 1538 and 1545, Latin-English. The copy presented by Elyot to Cromwell is at the British Museum, and with it there is a long Latin letter by Elyot to Cromwell. An edition revised by Thomas Cooper (1517?–1594) [q. v.] appeared with the title ‘Bibliotheca Eliotæ’ in 1550, 1552, and 1559. 9. ‘The Education or Bringinge up of Children, translated out of Plutarche,’ London, n.d. 4to. This book is mentioned in the ‘Image of Governance’ (1540), and is therefore earlier than 1540. The ‘British Museum Catalogue’ dates it conjecturally in 1535. 10. ‘The Defence of Good Women,’ London, 1545, a dialogue between Caninnis, Candidus, and Queen Zenobia. 11. ‘The Image of Governance, compiled of the actes and sentences notable of the moste noble Emperour Alexander Severus, late translated out of Greke into Englyshe,’ London, 1540, 1544, 1549, and (by William Seres) 1556; compiled from notes made in 1529 and 1530, while writing the ‘Governour.’ These notes were partly translated, according to Elyot, from a Greek manuscript by Eucolpius, the Emperor Alexander Severus's secretary. This manuscript had been lent to Elyot by a gentleman of Naples named Pudericus or Poderico. To the translation Elyot added extracts from other authors, both Latin and Greek, dealing with the duties of rulers. The subject resembles that of Guevara's ‘Libro Aureo,’ translated by Lord Berners [see Bourchier, John, second Baron Berners] in 1533. William Wotton [q. v.] endeavoured to convict Elyot of plagiarism
