Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/194

 , John Little or Short—little, according to his own paraphrase, in name, less in skill, least in worth—was born at Salisbury, it seems of English stock, about the middle of Henry the First's reign. The year of his birth is commonly given as 1110; but this is evidently a mere calculation from the date of his death, 1180, on the presumption that he was then seventy years old, and it is contradicted by his own statement that he was but a lad, adolescens admodum, when he went to Paris in 1136. Studies in those days began early, and it is nearly inconceivable that a man of six-and-twenty should enter, as John did, upon a course of education lasting ten or twelve years. We shall certainly be safer then if we place his birth between 1115 and 1120. As a child, he tells us, he was sent to a priest, as the manner was, to learn his Psalms. The teacher happened to have a