With these teachers I remained two years, and got so versed in commonplaces, rules, and elements in general, which boys study, and in which my teachers were most weighty, that I seemed to myself to know them as well as I knew my own nails and fingers.  There was one thing which I had certainly attained to, namely, to estimate my own knowledge much higher than it deserved.  I thought myself a young scholar, because I was ready in what I had been taught.

Evidence external to this narrative shows that he now went to the school at Chartres,—­some sixty miles southwest of Paris,—­which was one of three great French schools of the period (see p. 10).  During the first half of the twelfth century it became famous under the teaching of the brothers Theodoric and Bernard Sylvester, who are both mentioned in the following passages.  The school was distinguished in particular for its devotion to Grammar, Rhetoric, and classical Latin literature; in this respect it was in marked contrast to Paris, where Logic and Theology were the prevailing studies.

I then, beginning to reflect and to measure my strength, attended on the Grammarian William de Conches during the space of three years; and read much at intervals:  nor shall I ever regret the way in which my time was then spent.  After this I became a follower of Richard l’Eveque, a man who was master of every kind of learning, and whose breast contained much more than his tongue dared give utterance to; for he had learning rather than eloquence, truthfulness rather than vanity, virtue rather than ostentation.  With him I reviewed all that I had learned from the others, besides certain things, which I now learnt for the first time, relating to the Quadrivium, in which I had already acquired some information from the German Hardewin.  I also again studied Rhetoric, which I had before learnt very superficially with some other studies from Master Theodoric, but without understanding what I read.  Afterwards I learnt it more fully from Peter Hely.[11]

In another chapter, which is here inserted in the narrative, John describes in detail the teaching at Chartres.  This is one of the most complete accounts which we have of the manner and the matter of the teaching in a twelfth-century school.  He begins by a general discussion of the importance of Grammar, which is the “foundation and root” of reading, teaching, and reflection.  Throughout this discussion he refers constantly to Quintilian’s “Institutes of Oratory.”  The study of Rhetoric and of other Arts prepares one for the proper understanding of Literature:  “The greater the number of Arts with which one is imbued, and the more fully he is imbued with them, so much the more completely will he appreciate the elegance of the authors, and the more clearly will he teach them.”