soon forgot the little he had learnt at school. However, as time went on, he became disgusted with his secular way of life, and embracing the ecclesiastical state, received two benefices in the diocese of Toul. There he became acquainted with the learned deacon Berners, who, by no means approving of illiterate clerks, persuaded John to begin his studies over again. Divine grace quickening his powers, he did his best to make up for lost time. But he was never much of a grammarian. He contented himself with what his biographer calls a _sprinkling_ of Donatus, just so much as enabled him to read and understand the Scriptures, to the study of which he then exclusively devoted himself, and in which he obtained very extraordinary light. The church which he served was dependent on a convent of nuns at Metz, where his duties called him from time to time to say mass. He became acquainted with the community, and the example of their holy and mortified life inspired him with new ardour. He began a course of reading with these good religious, which speaks in favour of his diligence and their patience, and in which, says his biographer, he persevered “with all his might.” First, then, having read through with them the whole of the Old and New Testaments, he committed both to memory, “and that so accurately that no man could do it better,” also “all the lessons appointed to be read in church,” which are contained in the book called _Comes_; then the rules for the computing of Easter and the canonical laws, that is, the decrees of councils, the judgments of penitents, the mode of ecclesiastical proceedings, and the secular laws, all of which he treasured up word for word. Of homilies, sermons, and treatises on the Epistles and Gospels, I will only say that he was able to repeat an alarming catalogue of them in the vernacular, “straightforward from beginning to end, as if he were reading from the book.” At the same time he laboured hard to acquire a knowledge of church music, not caring for the derision of some who considered it an unsuitable enterprise for one of his age to engage in. However, his perseverance was rewarded with very fair success, and it was thus that he employed his intervals of leisure time, together with the handmaids of God. It must be confessed that John’s choice of reading, considering the gentler sex of his fellow-students, was somewhat of the driest. Nor do I at all cite him as a model of erudition, though, considering the deficiencies of his early education, his achievements in that line might have saved him from the contempt of Brucker, who notices him only to string him up among other barbarous dunces. His studies probably took their direction from the very few books which he had at his command, and it is at least clear that he made a tolerable use of those he possessed.