Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/134

 if he was not equally accomplished in letters it was not because such accomplishments were undervalued by the people whom he was expected to rule. There is among the letters of Peter of Blois an epistle written in the name of Rotrou, archbishop of Rouen, and at the express wish of the Norman bishops, urging in strong terms, and by cogent examples, the importance of a literary training for a young prince. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, King David, Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, and Leo are pressed into the service. No doubt the advice was taken; but the stormy career of the younger Henry does not afford many indications of its results. One book we know, a book unfortunately lost, was especially written for his amusement. Gervase of Tilbury, who, many years after Plenry's death, wrote for his grandson, the Emperor Otto, the Otia Imperialia, tells us that he wrote a Liber Facetiarum for the young king, in which no doubt he collected the amusing stories of the popes and emperors that were current at the time, some of which are probably preserved for us in the pages of Ralph de Diceto. It is possible that the Otia Imperialia were originally drawn up for the instruction of the same prince. It is curious, however, that in none of the panegyrics of this unfortunate boy is any special stress laid on his knowledge of letters, and it is even possible that the epistle of Archbishop Rotrou was intended as a remonstrance against the exclusively military training of the heir to the crown; certainly Thomas Becket, to whose care he is said to have been committed in his youth, would, at that period of his career, have been better qualified to instruct him in arms than in letters.

With Richard it was otherwise. In his case we must certainly allow some amount of literary knowledge and skill. We may not perhaps credit him with the quotations from the classical poets which the historians of the third crusade put in his mouth, but we cannot refuse to believe those writers when they tell us of the lampoons of the king's own composition which were sung in the camp in contempt of the Duke of Burgundy; and the stream of time, in which so many more precious things have been submerged, has brought down to us some few