Among the teaching methods adopted by Bernard, and by his successors in the school, Richard the Bishop, and William of Conches, were those of requiring exercises daily in prose and verse composition. By way of preparation for these exercises, the pupils were shown the qualities in the classical writers which were deemed worthy of adoption. The pupils passed round their exercises to one another for comment and criticism, and in this way emulation was stimulated. In addition to composition, the pupils had a good deal to commit to memory; they were every day required to keep a record of the lessons they had received. John of Salisbury writes of Richard the Bishop that he was a man "who was master of every kind of learning and who had more heart even than speech, more learning than eloquence, more truth than vanity, more virtue than ostentation; the things I had learnt from others, I reviewed from him, besides certain things which I now learnt for the first time relating to the Quadrivium.... I also again studied Rhetoric, which previously I had scarcely understood when it was first treated of superficially by Master Theodoric."[704] John also studied rhetoric from Peter Helias, "a grammarian of high repute." Apparently John was obliged to maintain himself during this period, as he had no parents or relatives who could support him. Consequently, we find that he taught the "children of noble persons." He did not consider the time he spent in teaching the young as wasted, because it forced him to revise that which he had previously learnt himself. Whilst engaged in the task of teaching, John became acquainted with Adam du Petit Pont, an Englishman who subsequently became Bishop of St. Asaph. John describes Adam as a man "of much learning who had given special study to Aristotle." John is careful to point out that he was never a pupil of Adam, yet Adam seems to have been well disposed to John, and to have assisted him in various ways. In order to apply himself to the study of theology, John returned to Paris. His course was interrupted by his poverty; during the necessary interval he again acted as tutor. At the end of three years, he was once again in Paris, where his studies were continued, first under Robert Pullus and afterwards under Simon of Poissy--"a trusty lecturer but dull in disputations." In the conclusion of the record of his school studies, John gives an account of a visit he paid to the school of logic at Paris attended by him whilst a youth. He states that his purpose in doing so was to endeavour to estimate the relative progress made by the schools of logic, and by himself. He writes:--