Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/317

Rh in octavo at Strasburg in 1567. The editor, G. Gratarolo, a Basle physician, who discovered the book in Italy, apparently at Padua, took it (as appears from the title-page) to be a composition of the fourteenth century: the internal evidence, however, is decisive on this head. The dialogue is held between the author and a certain dux Normannorum et comes Andegavensium, a style by which only two persons could possibly be designated. One is Geoffrey the Fair, the husband of the empress Matilda, from the year 1143 or 1144, until his resignation of the duchy in 1150 ; the other is his son, our king Henry the Second, from the latter date until his accession to the English throne. Henry, however, is excluded by the i mention of the education of the duke's sons, since he only married in 1152. It may be observed that the belief that Henry was intended, combined with the mistaken inference from k John of Salisbury that William was about the year 1138 a teacher at Paris, plainly originated the fable which we read in i Oudin, that Henry the Second olim in curia regis Franciae enutritus et litteris in Parisiensi academia initiatus sub Guillelmo fuerat. The same passage which shows that Henry was not the interlocutor in the dialogue helps to fix the composition of the work within narrower limits. In te tamen, says William, et in filiis tuis aliquid spei consistit; quos non, ut alii, ludo alearum sed studio literarum, tenera aetate imbuisti: cuius odorem diu servabunt. The dialogue was written therefore some time, probably some years, before Henry was of an age to be knighted, in 1149; and we shall not be far wrong if we place it about the year 1145.