improvement of the sons of citizens of a trading metropolis, both entrusted to the charge and government of societies of merchants, and one of them founded by a mercantile company, not any care was taken that the boys should be put in the road to so necessary an acquisition; and, as I have understood, no provision for arithmetical knowledge was made in the original establishments of St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors' Schools.
In endeavouring to supply so great an omission Record was entitled to a considerable degree of merit; for though, as he confessed, "his Ground of Artes might be of small aid to the learned sort, it might be to the simple and the ignorant which needeth most, a good furtherance and mean to knowledge." Nor ought his co-adjutor, John Dee, to be passed by without his share of credit. To an improved edition of Dr. Record's book the reputed conjurer prefixed these stanzas:
"That which my friend hath well begun
For very love to common weal,
Need not all whole to be new done
But now inerease I doe appeal.
"Something herein I once redrest,
And now again for thy behoof,
Of zeal I doe, and at request,
Both mend and adde, fit for all proof.
"Of numbers use, the endlesse might,
No wit nor language can expresse:
Apply and try both day and night,
And then this truth thou wilt confesse."
And to the title page of a former edition, as it is believed, wassubjoined
