we may pluck sweet flowers, and cultivate ourselves from their urbane suavity of speech."[1]
In another letter Peter writes to his bishop of Bath, as touching the accusation of some "hidden detractor," that he, Peter, is but a useless compiler, who fills letters and sermons with the plunder of the ancients and Holy Writ:
"Let him cease, or he will hear what he does not like; for I am full of cracks, and can hold in nothing, as Terence says. Let him try his hand at compiling, as he calls it. But what of it! Though dogs may bark and pigs may grunt, I shall always pattern on the writings of the ancients; with them shall be my occupation; nor ever, while I am able, shall the sun find me idle."[2]
It is evident how broadly Peter of Blois, or John of Salisbury, or the Chartrians, were read in the Latin Classics. Peter mentions even Tacitus, a writer not thought to have been much read in the Middle Ages. We have been looking at the matter rather in regard to poetry and eloquence belles lettres. But one may also note the same broad reading (among the few who read at all) on the part of those who sought for the ethical wisdom of the ancients. This is apparent (perhaps more apparent than real) with Abaelard, who is ready with a store of antique ethical citations.[3] It is also borne witness to by the treatise Moralis philosophia de honesto et utili, placed among the works of Hildebert of Le Mans,[4] but probably from the pen of William of Conches, grammaticus post Bernardum Carnotensem opulentissimus, as John of Salisbury calls him.[5] In some manuscripts it is entitled Summa moralium philosophorum, quite appropriately. One might hardly compare it for organic inclusiveness with the Christian Summa of Thomas Aquinas; but it may very well be likened to the more compact Sentences of the Lombard[6] which were so solidly put together about the same time. The Lombard drew his Sentences from the writings of the Church Fathers; William's work consists of moral extracts, mainly from Cicero, Seneca, Sallust, Terence,
