the courage to express whatever convictions his observation and intelligence declared right. Various recensions of his Chronica soon appeared, and it was continued by the successive historiographers at his abbey-by Rishanger, for example, to 1306, by Trokelowe to 1323, by Blaneford to 1324, finally by Thomas of Walsingham (Norfolk) from 1377 to 1422. Walsingham treats at length of Wycliffe and the Lollards, with whom he had no sympathy, and he evinces great chagrin at the attitude of Oxford, his alma mater, towards these heretics. From him, however, we get important light on the revolt in thought and act in Chaucer's time.

Other chronicles were written in the fourteenth century by such canons as Walter of Hemingburgh, of Gisburn in Yorkshire († after 1300); Adam Murimuth of St. Paul's, London († 1347); and Henry Knighton, of St. Mary's, Leicester († c. 1366). Knighton's work was continued from 1377 to 1395 by a partisan of the Duke of Lancaster, but a bitter opponent of Wycliffe, and in this form is one of the most valuable histories of the period. For our present purpose the Latin chronicles of the fifteenth century are insignificant.

We take leave of the historians with a word about the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden, a monk of St. Werburgh's, Chester († c. 1364). This "chronicle of many ages" deals with much more than annals. It is a sum of generally accepted knowledge on universal geography, history, and science—a whole Encyclopædia Britannica in orderly arrangement. Although it contained nothing really original, it was an extremely useful compendium of what then passed for fact, and one is not astonished at its surpassing popularity. It circulated in hundreds of copies, and, after the printing press was established, in various editions. Special interest attaches to it as the first historical work since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which was accessible in English prose. It was translated by John of Trèves (Trevisa) in 1387, and once again, in the fifteenth century. Caxton printed John of Trèves' translation in 1482, and this long remained a standard work.

One cannot consider this extensive historical production, much of it mechanical and dull, and all in commonplace Latin, without contrasting it with the wonderful sagas of contemporary Northerners, happily composed by them in the vernacular of their land. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries form the golden age of Old Norse prose, and Iceland was then as preeminent for history as England for the drama in the reign of Elizabeth. In no other tongue of medieval Europe do we find historical works at all comparable with those in Norse for naturalness, picturesqueness, fidelity to fact, vigour, or variety. Here is no affectation, no bookishness, no archaism of method or style; but all is vivid, graphic, real. Over and over again one can read these "prose epics" of warrior kings and proud freemen, of heroic men and women, whose individuality is made plain, and ever one's wonder grows at the literary power their authors display. It is sad to think that something similar might have been accomplished by Englishmen of the same period had the learned not felt obliged to write in a foreign tongue. Ordinary Middle English prose lacks the muscularity of the Norse as well as the brilliance of the Welsh and the lucidity of the French of the period. It exhibits few of the sturdy qualities that made Anglo-Saxon prose so admirable. And all because Latin had been adopted as the dignified medium to express the thought of cultivated men. The almost complete abandonment of the use of English by native historians for three hundred years and more seems to us now hardly less than a literary disaster.

III

The twelfth century was an age of universal awakening, of large rivalries, of stimulating activity-an age of enlightening travel, of prosperous social conditions, of noble architecture-an independent, idealistic, aristocratic age-the age of "fredom, trouthe, and curteisye "-the age of feudalism.

Of vernacular writings in this age the most characteristic are

romances and art-lyrics—works that an ungentle person would be slow to conceive and an untrained writer at a loss to produce. With their composition the commonalty as such had nothing to do. Epic incentive was no longer present: refined artistry had come into vogue. Now subtleties of expression were favoured; conventions of sentiment were expected; a hierarchy of poets was acknowledged. Kings and queens were numbered among the devotees of polite verse; knights and ladies achieved distinction by their pens; bishops and other clergy were enamoured of letters. Literary activity was centralised at courts, castles, and religious houses. It was encouraged by patronage, promoted by demand. All authors, whether ecclesiastical or secular, wrote feudally-with devotion, with recognised allegiance, in service to some person or cause. Even as troubadours sang for the reward, and trouvères wrote at the request, of individual patrons or patronesses, so clerks worked as disciples, under direction. Yet most appear astonishingly free from subserviency. The majority seem to have submitted themselves to none but voluntary yokes. There was much licence and scepticism in the air. More than in the century before, or that succeeding, the learned were men of the world and acquainted with other than holy writ. The twelfth century was an age of humanism.

To understand the humanistic revival of the times, one must know somewhat of the educational institutions then prominent in Western Europe. In the eleventh century regular instruction was available almost solely at the monasteries. In England before the Conquest the schools of Canterbury, Glastonbury, Abingdon, Winchester, Worcester, and York had at one time or another gained celebrity under distinguished guidance, and, though the era of their European renown was long past before the coming of the Normans, they and other abbeys maintained, throughout the whole mediæval period, seminaries of some dignity. There were also secular schools in connection with cathedrals or lay organisations, but these seem never to have attained to particular eminence. It was different, however, on

the Continent, whither, since the time of Lanfranc and Anselm, English students in large numbers had betaken themselves for advanced education. In Norman times the monastery schools of Normandy, particularly that of Bec, were recognised as important centres of learning. Alongside of these were many of fame in France proper, such as that on Mont St. Geneviève at Paris, which flourished supreme under the great Abelard (1079-1142). But gradually cathedral schools surpassed them in distinction, and by about 1150 had become the chief resorts for high intellectual stimulus. Their organisation prepared the way for the universities, which established themselves definitely about the close of the century.

The fame of these schools depended almost wholly on individual teachers. Young men went here and there to study under this or that renowned scholar. In various places they pursued different branches of research. Paris came to be noted for its schools of theology and the arts; Bologna, Orleans, and Montpellier for canon or civil law; Montpellier for medicine; but Paris offered no instruction in civil law, and Bologna had no faculty of theology before 1352. Originally the term universitas might have been applied to any co-operative society. Gradually it was limited to associations of teachers or students. While at Bologna it was the latter, at Paris it was the former who banded themselves together under this name, to uphold special rights and dignities. The seat of learning, as opposed to the organisation, was at first called a studium, and not until well on in the Middle Ages did "university" convey the idea of establishment. Special university buildings were at first unknown. The so-called "nations" at Paris were but residences, where students from various countries assembled for convenience, or as the recipients of bounty. The English "colleges," modelled after them, did not rise before the second half of the thirteenth century (Merton 1264, Balliol 1282), and only became numerous in the fifteenth. The migratory policy controlled even the organisation. If for some reason a "university" came into conflict with local authority, it moved

away to a new abode. The first studium generale at Oxford appears to have owed its existence to a large migration of English students from Paris about 1167, when Henry II., then in dispute with Becket and suspecting that the clerks abroad were partisans of his foe, ordered all of them who possessed estates in his land to return home, “as they loved their revenues." And Cambridge was established through a migration from Oxford in 1209.

The studies in the medieval schools proceeded along the old traditional lines of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). Together these formed the seven liberal arts. Based on them was the work of the professional schools of divinity, law, and medicine. In higher schools of philosophy were prosecuted advanced studies in logic and metaphysics. The philosophers were divided into antagonistic camps. Particularly were the socalled "Realists" and "Nominalists" in constant dispute on the subject of "universals." The former contended that abstract terms in metaphysics represented real things, and were not mere conceptions of the mind; the latter that these terms were only devised to denote qualities inferred from facts, which facts alone were real. To both, however, theology was Madame la Haute Science, and the study of logic all scholars deemed of fundamental importance.

The text-books at first most commonly used were: for grammar, Priscian and Donatus; for rhetoric and dialectic, the writings of the Church Fathers, especially those of Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, allegories like The Marriage of Mercury and Philology, by Martianus Capella, and treatises like The Arts and Discipline of Liberal Learning, by Cassiodorus; for history, the Origins of Isidore of Seville, and the compend of Orosius; for metre, chronology, chronography, etc., various didactic works like those of Bede and Alcuin. Boethius was

an authority on mathematics and music, as well as on philosophy. Through his translations, students generally became acquainted with Aristotle; for Greek was in early medieval times almost completely unknown. But the twelfth century saw a great

E