BORDE, Andrew, a physician, jocularly surnamed Perforatus, was born at Pevensey in Sussex early in the sixteenth century, and supposed to have been educated at Westminster school. In his Introduction to Knowledge, he says he was a student of Oxford, but omits mentioning in what college. He left the university without a degree, and entered himself as a brother in a Carthusian convent near London; but not liking the severe discipline of the order, he returned to Oxford, and applied himself to the study of physic. Some time after he embarked for the continent, and, as he himself expresses it, “travelled through and round about Christendom, and out of Christendom into some parts of Africa.” In the years 1541 and 1542 he resided at Montpelier in France, where he was received as doctor of physic; and after his return to England he was admitted to the same degree at Oxford. From the preface to his Introduction above mentioned, it appears that he had been in Scotland, probably soon after his return from France. Having now satisfied his inclination for travelling, he settled first at Pevensey, afterwards at Winchester, and finally in London, where he is said to have become a fellow of the college of physicians, and first physician to Henry VIII. But notwithstanding his eminence in his profession, he had the misfortune to spend the latter part of his life in the Fleet prison, where he died in the year 1549, about the age of forty-nine. Wood says that “he was esteemed a noted poet, a witty and ingenious person, and an excellent physician Pits calls him a man of sufficient learning, but too volatile and inconstant; while Bale and some others, on the contrary, abuse him grossly. His writings are, 1. A book of the Introduction of Knowledge, the whych doth teach man to speak part of all manner of languages, London, 1542, 4to, dedicated to the Lady Mary daughter to Henry VIII., and written partly in verse and partly in prose; 2. The Breviary of Health, wherein are remedies for all manner of sicknesses and diseases, London, 1547, 4to; 3. Dietary of Health, London, 1576, 8vo; 4. The Merry Tales of the Madmen of Gotham, printed in the time of Henry VIII., in whose reign, and afterwards, it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth, but it is now only sold on the stalls of ballad-singers; 5. A right pleasant and merry History of the Mylner of Abington, with his wife and his fair daughter, and of two poor scholars of Cambridge, London, printed by Richard Jones, 4to; 6. A Book of every Region, Country, and Province^ which shows the miles and leagues distant from city to city and from town to town, with the noted things in the said cities and towns. Wood states that the author lent the manuscript of this book to his friend Thomas Cromwell, by whom it was lost, to the inexpressible grief of the author, who would otherwise have published it. But’the antiquary was misinformed in this particular; for it has since been published by Hcarne at the end of Benedictus Abbas Petersb. de Vita Henrici II. Oxford, 1735, 8vo. His only other production was entitled The Principles of Astronomy, the whych diligently persecuted is in a manner a prognostication to the world; London, printed by Robert Copland, 12mo. The author says that he wrote this little book in four days, with one old pen without mending; a piece of information not calculated to raise our expectations of the performance.