Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/156

 Glanville, afterwards bishops, and several others; of whom the most famous was Uberto of Milan, afterwards Pope Urban III, who had attached himself to Becket in his exile.

I think that a generation further back, in the household of Theobald or of Henry of Blois, we might perhaps find, if record had remained, a more illustrious list; Theobald certainly contributed the traditions of Bee Abbey, which had gathered round Lanfranc and Anselm, whilst Henry concentrated about him all that remained of the enlightenment and refinement of English and Norman society.

Whilst Theobald, however, collected learned men and Henry collected statuary from Italy, whilst the great Bishop Roger built his miracles of castles, England was a prey to conflicting factions, and every great man was bound above all things to be a politician. Hence the academic and political elements were thus early found in closest union: if Henry, Baldwin and Amalrie, discussed deep questions of theology with their councillors, the knotty questions of the realm were laid before Peter of Blois and Giraldus Cambrensis; and the minds of the curiales were, notwithstanding the sneers of the satirists, occupied on the same matters as those of the scholares.

To this community of subject it is that we owe some of the most significant anecdotes of the great men of the time: the scraps of conversation of Ranulf Glanville, the great justiciar, who discussed, as he was riding out, the decay of valour among the French; the amusing exaggerations of Giraldus when he criticises the colloquial Latin of Hubert Walter; the most interesting details of the friendship between S. Hugh of Lincoln and Henry II; and very much that enlivens such books as the Polycraticus of John of Salisbury, the de Nugis Curialium of Walter Map, the de Institutione Principum and other discursive productions of Giraldus, the Otia Imperialia of Gervase, and the Satires of Nigel of Canterbury. It is true indeed that men professedly literary would most naturally, I am afraid I cannot say necessarily or invariably, preserve such scraps as might be supposed to have a literary or historical interest; and therefore that such anecdotes may not be a fair specimen of the ordinary conversations of the educated classes