[241]Ibid. p. 5, lines 151-162.
[242]Tennyson, in his "Dream of Fair Women," sings:
"Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still."—Tr.
[243]Speaking of Cressida, IV. book I. p. 236, he says:
"Right as our first letter is now an a,
In beautie first so stood she makeles,
Her goodly looking gladed all the prees,
Nas never seene thing to be praised so derre,
Nor under cloude blacke so bright a sterre."
[244]Under Proclus and under Hegel. Duns Scotus, at the age of thirty-one, died, leaving beside his sermons and commentaries, twelve folio volumes, in a small close handwriting, in a style like Hegel's, on the same subject as Proclus treats of. Similarly with Saint Thomas and the whole train of schoolmen. No idea can be formed of such a labor before handling the books themselves.
[245]Peter Lombard, "Book of Sentences." It was the classic of the Middle Ages.
[246]Duns Scotus, ed. 1639.
[247]Utrum angelus diligat se ipsum dilectione naturali vel electiva? Utrum in statu innocentiæ fuerit generatio per coitum? Utrum omnes fuissent nati in sexu masculino? Utrum cognitio angeli posset dici matutina et vespertina? Utrum martyribus aureola debeatur? Utrum virgo Maria fuerit virgo in concipiendo? Utrum remanserit virgo post partum? The reader may look out in the text the reply to these last two questions. (S. Thomas, "Summa Theologica," ed. 1677.)
[248]The Rev. Henry Anstey, in his Introduction to "Munimenta Academica," Lond. 1868, says that "the statement of Richard of Armagh that there were in the thirteenth century 30,000 scholars at Oxford is almost incredible." P. XLVIII.—Tr.
[249]"History of English Poetry," vol. II.
[250]Contemporary with Chaucer. The "Confessio Amantis" dates from 1393.