been named for its size, for it is Great, faces the north and the English Sea, while the opposite one, which opens towards the Loire, they call the Little Bridge....

On this island Philosophy, of old, placed a royal throne for herself, Philosophy, who, despised in her solitude, with a sole attendant, Study, now possesses an enduring citadel of light and immortality, and under her victorious feet tramples the withered flowers of a world already in its dotage.

On this island, the seven sisters, to wit, the Liberal Arts, have secured an eternal abiding place for themselves, and, with the ringing clarion of their nobler eloquence, decrees and laws are proclaimed.

Here the healing fount of learning gushes forth, and as it were evoking from itself three most limpid streams, it makes a threefold division of the knowledge of the sacred page into History, Allegory and Morals.[81]

(4) JOHANN VON JENZENSTEIN TO MASTER BENESCH OF HORSCHOWITZ, CONCERNING PARIS. (1375.)

Master Bennessius, dearest comrade and friend.  If recent doings at Paris are unknown to you, if the fecundity of pleasures, the abundance of all things edible, the manners of the men, the bountiful supply of all the sciences, even the clever teaching in very many material crafts,—­if you could but see the mere shadow of all these, surely, overpowered by their arguments, you would throw off your sluggishness and generously enter into the aforesaid enjoyments; and your eyes, grown old in old sights would renew their youth in these new sights....

For here (says the writer sarcastically) are distinguished doctors of many faculties, some of whom by their crazy ways of thinking, and still others by crazy ways of acting, others, indeed, by inflicting wounds, and still others by abusive words, furnish enjoyment that is exceeding pleasing; and (he adds more seriously) there are other Masters subtly trained in the seven liberal Arts, by whose example and teaching the entire earth, like the heavens, is adorned with stars; and some of these masters are illuminated by the three trivials and some by the four quadrivials and some by both the trivials and the quadrivials.

Now the three trivials are grammar, which teaches clearly the agreement of speech; and starting from that, the youth who holds on to his first teaching makes a beginning whereby he may obtain a deeper taste of the profundities of other knowledge also; the second is rhetoric, which by the charm of its colors adorns as with pearls the subject matter, and ennobles grammar, and instils acceptably into the ears of men that which is heard; the third is logic by means of which the method of skilful deductive reasoning is assigned to the individual sciences, without which the powers of all the sciences are quiescent, and by whose addition all the sciences are regularly organized. (The letter ends with a similar description of the quadrivials.)[82]

2.  TWO OXFORD LETTERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY