prose or poetry were prescribed, he announced the poets or orators and bade them imitate their example, pointing out the way they joined their words and the elegance of their perorations.

But if any one to make his own work brilliant had borrowed the cloak of another he detected the theft and convicted him, though he did not very often inflict a punishment; but he directed the culprit thus convicted, if the poorness of his work had so merited, to condescend with modest favor to express the exact meaning of the author; and he made the one who imitated his predecessors worthy of imitation by his successors.

The following matters, too, he taught among the first rudiments and fixed them in their minds:—­the value of order; what is praiseworthy in embellishment and in [choice of] words; where there is tenuity and, as it were, emaciation of speech; where, a pleasing abundance; where, excess; and where, a due limit in all things....

And since in the entire preliminary training of those who are to be taught there is nothing more useful than to grow accustomed to that which must needs be done with skill, they repeatedly wrote prose and poetry every day, and trained themselves by mutual comparisons,—­a training than which nothing is more effective for eloquence, nothing more expeditious for learning; and it confers the greatest benefit upon life, at least, if affection [rather than envy] rules these comparisons, if humility is not lost in literary proficiency.[13]

John’s stay at Chartres (1138-1141) made him a permanent advocate of liberal education; but to no avail; the influence of Paris and the rising tide of Aristotelianism gained the day.  As a champion of the newly-recovered works of Aristotle (see p. 42) he was more in accord with the tendencies of his time.

The concluding section of the account narrates John’s return to Paris, his further studies there (1141-1148), and his visit to his old school on the “Mount”: 

From hence I was withdrawn by the poverty of my condition, the request of my companions, and the advice of my friends, that I should undertake the office of a tutor.  I obeyed their wishes; and on my return [to Paris] after three years, finding Master Gilbert [de la Porree] I studied Logic and Divinity with him:  but he was very speedly removed from us, and in his place we had Robert de Poule, a man amiable alike for his rectitude and his attainments.  Then came Simon de Poissy, who was a faithful reader, but an obtuse disputator.  These two were my teachers in Theology only.

Twelve years having passed away, whilst I was engaged in these various occupations, I determined to revisit my old companions, whom I found still engaged with Logic at Mont St. Genevieve, and to confer with them touching old matters of debate; that we might by mutual comparison measure together our several progress.  I found