Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/131

 writers were never tired of quoting, 'vulgi turba movetur regis ad exemplar.' Henry II was by his very descent a champion of literary culture. Not to speak of his grandfather, Henry Beauclere, whose clerkship was very probably of a very elementary sort, he was the lineal descendant of that Fulk the Good who had told King Lothar that 'Rex illiteratus' was 'asinus coronatus.' He shared too those hereditary characteristics which so strongly marked his two uncles, Baldwin III and Amalric I, Kings of Jerusalem. Both of these princes were, according to William of Tyre, good scholars, and both extremely fond of history. Baldwin was the better professor; Amalric the better examiner; Baldwin the more serious and orthodox, Amalric the more superficial; but both were students of history, and given to reading and discussion—discussion which threatened now and then to go beyond the bounds of orthodoxy.

Peter of Blois gives a similar character of Henry, and in words so nearly resembling those of William of Tyre that the two writers notably confirm one another's probability. And in Peter's sketch this feature comes in quite by the way, for he is describing Henry as a great huntsman. ' He has always in his hands bows and arrows, swords and hunting spears, save when he is busy in council or over his books. For as often as he can get breathing time amid his business cares, he occupies himself with private reading, or takes pains in working out some knotty question among his clerks. Your king,' he is writing to the Archbishop of Palermo, ' is a good scholar, but ours is far better; I know the abilities and accomplishments of both. You know that the King of Sicily was my pupil for a year; you yourself taught him the elements of verse-making and literary composition; from me he had further and deeper lessons, but as soon as I left the kingdom he threw away his books and took to the easygoing ways of the court. But with the King of England there is school every day, constant conversation of the best scholars and discussion of questions.'

He had indeed been well taught; notwithstanding the troubled times in which his youth had been trained, he had