"I found them as before and where they were before; nor did they appear to have reached the goal in unravelling the old questions, nor had they added one jot of a proposition. The aims that once inspired them, inspired them still; they only had progressed in one point, they had unlearned moderation, they knew not modesty. And thus experience taught me a manifest conclusion that, whereas dialectic furthers other studies, so if it remain by itself it lies bloodless and barren, nor does it quicken the soul to yield fruit of philosophy, except the same conceive from elsewhere."[705] We also obtain a certain amount of educational biography from the writings of Alexander Neckham, who was at one time the master of the school at Dunstable.[706] Neckham tells us that, when he was a boy, he attended the school at St. Albans; then he passed over to Paris, where he studied theology, medicine, canon and civil law.[707] A third account needs to be referred to before we can consider what conclusions we can draw with regard to the curriculum of the twelfth century. William Fitzstephen, (d. 1190), was employed by Thomas a Beckett. He witnessed the murder of his master and wrote his biography. This work contains an interesting account of London in the twelfth century and, incidentally, describes an important occasion in schoolboy life. He states:-- "On feast days, the masters celebrate assemblies at the churches, _en fete_. The scholars hold disputations, some declaiming, others by way of question and answer. These roll out euthymemes, these use the better form of perfect syllogisms. Some dispute merely for show as they do at collections; others for truth, which is the grace of perfection. The sophists using the Socratic irony are pronounced happy because of the mass and volume of their words; others play upon words. Those learning rhetoric, with rhetorical speeches, speak to the point with a view to persuasion, being careful to observe the precepts of their art, and to leave out nothing that belongs to it. The boys of the different schools vie with each other in verses; or dispute; or dispute on the principles of grammar, or the rules of preterites and supines." Fitzstephen concludes with a quotation from Persius:-- "multum ridere parati Ingeminant tremulos naso crispante cachinnos."[708] We may also note, from the same work, the reference which Fitzstephen gives to the education of Beckett. He tells us that the future archbishop was first brought up "in religiosa domo canonicorum Meritoniae," then he passed the years of "infantiae, pueritiae, et pubertatis" in the home of his father and "in scholis urbis." When he became a young man, Thomas proceeded to Paris to study.[709]