same, and many of the men who taught at Chartres in the generations following. So likewise might have said John of Salisbury. In studying the Classics he certainly looked to them for instruction. But he also loved them, and found companionship and solace in them, as he says, and as Cicero before him had said of letters.
We may ask ourselves what sort of pleasure do we get from reading the Classics? not necessarily a light distracting of the mind, but rather a deeper gratification: thought is aroused and satisfied, and our nature is appeased by the admirable presentation of things admirable. At the same time we may be conscious of discipline and benefit. There is good reason to suppose that a like pleasure, or satisfaction, with discipline and instruction, came to this exceedingly clever John from reading Terence, Virgil and Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius and Statius, Cicero, Seneca and Quintilian—for he read them all.[1] John is affected, impressed, and trained by his classic reading; he has absorbed his authors; he quotes from them as spontaneously and aptly as he quotes from Scripture. A quotation from the one or the other may give final point to an argument, and have its own eloquent suggestions. Sometimes the tone of one of his own letters—which usually are excellent in form and language—may agree with that of the pithy antique quotation garnishing it. A mediaeval writer was not likely to say just what we should when expressing ourselves on the same matter. Yet John makes quite clear to us how he cared for antique letters, in the Prologue to his Polycraticus, his chief work on philosophy and life; and we may take his word as to the satisfaction which he drew from them, since his own writings prove his assiduity in their cult. This prologue is somewhat cherché, and imbued with a preciosity of sentiment putting one in mind of Cicero's oration Pro Archia poeta.
"Most delightful in many ways, but in this especially, is the fruit of letters, that banishing the reserve of intervening place and
time, they bring friends into each other's presence, and do not- ↑ John approved of reading the auctores, for educational purposes, and not confining the pupil to the artes. See Metalogicus, i. 23, 24 (Migne, Pat. Lat. 199, col. 453). On John, cf. post, Chapter XXXI. and XXXVI., iii.
