the privilege of borrowing as many as ten volumes
at a time, and I made use of the privilege to the
full. The limitations of these libraries were also
to my benefit. For example, there was no set of
Migne s Patrologia in them, and I had to seek my
texts in the Benedictine editions of the fathers, in
the Lyons Maxima Biblictheca Patrum, and in the
collections of D Achery, Mabillon, Baluze, Fez, and
others ; a process which taught me a great deal on
the way.
By the time that, working forward from a much earlier period, I had again reached John of Salisbury, the field of my studies was altered by an extraneous cause. It so happened that in the winter which I spent at Leipzig a society was formed with the object of editing Wycliffe s Latin works, and I undertook the charge of the two treatises On Dominion. It was not that I was particularly interested in Wycliffe ; but I had a young man s ambition to print an editio princeps, to bring to light matter hitherto known only from scanty citations ; and the work had a greater attraction for me because it belonged to an early time in Wycliffe s career, before he had come into conflict with authority on questions of theological doctrine. The treatises which I proposed to edit followed in direct sequel the work of other political theorists ; they did not belong to that part of WyclinVs activity in which he stands forth as a pioneer in the discussion of problems which lay apart from those to which my attention had been directed.
Thus after I had completed what I had to say about John of Salisbury I limited myself to the consideration of political theory; and this restric tion prevented me from attempting to include anything which I had contemplated relative to the great period of mature scholasticism. But it was
