I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your entreaty and your gracious kindness, am busied under the shelter of St. Martin’s, in bestowing upon many of my pupils the honey of the Holy Scriptures.  I am eager that others should drink deep of the old wine of ancient learning; I shall presently begin to nourish still others with the fruits of grammatical ingenuity; and some of them I am eager to enlighten with a knowledge of the order of the stars, that seem painted, as it were, on the dome of some mighty palace.  I have become all things to all men (1 Cor. i. 22) so that I may train up many to the profession of God’s Holy Church and to the glory of your imperial realm, lest the grace of Almighty God in me should be fruitless (1 Cor. xv. 10) and your munificent bounty of no avail.  But your servant lacks the rarer books of scholastic learning, which in my own country I used to have (thanks to the generous and most devoted care of my teacher and to my own humble endeavors), and I mention it to your Majesty so that, perchance, it may please you who are eagerly concerned about the whole body of learning, to have me dispatch some of our young men to procure for us certain necessary works, and bring with them to France the flowers of England; so that a graceful garden may not exist in York alone, but so that at Tours as well there may be found the blossoming of Paradise with its abundant fruits; that the south wind, when it comes, may cause the gardens along the River Loire to burst into bloom, and their perfumed airs to stream forth, and finally, that which follows in the Canticle, whence I have drawn this simile, may be brought to pass... (Canticle v. 1, 2).  Or even this exhortation of the prophet Isaiah, which urges us to acquire wisdom:—­“A11 ye who thirst, come to the waters; and you who have not money, hasten, buy and eat:  come, without money and without price, and buy wine and milk” (Isaiah iv. 1.)

And this is a thing which your gracious zeal will not overlook:  how upon every page of the Holy Scriptures we are urged to the acquisition of wisdom; how nothing is more honorable for insuring a happy life, nothing more pleasing in the observance, nothing more efficient against sin, nothing more praiseworthy in any lofty station, than that men live according to the teachings of the philosophers.  Moreover, nothing is more essential to the government of the people, nothing better for the guidance of life into the paths of honorable character, than the grace which wisdom gives, and the glory of training and the power of learning.  Therefore it is that in its praise, Solomon, the wisest of all men, exclaims, “Better is wisdom than all precious things, and more to be desired” (Prov. viii. 11 seq).  To secure this with every possible effort and to get possession of it by daily endeavor, do you, my lord King, exhort the young men who are in your Majesty’s palace, that they strive for this in the flower of their youth, so that they may be deemed worthy to