found that inability to meet the expenditure necessary for the work he desired to carry out effectually checked the projects he had in his mind. "I know how to proceed," he writes, "and with what means, and what are the impediments; but I cannot go on for lack of the necessary funds. Through the twenty years in which I laboured specially in the study of wisdom, careless of the crowd's opinion, I spent more than two thousand pounds on occult books and various experiments and languages and instruments and tables and other things."[724] Details are also available of the curriculum for the bachelors who were to determine at Oxford in 1267. This included:-- _Logic._ The bachelors "shall swear on the gospels that they have gone through all the books of the old Logic in lectures at least twice, except Boethius, for which one hearing is enough, and the Fourth Book of Boethius' Topics, which they are not bound to hear at all; in the new Logic, the book of Prior Analytics, Topics and Fallacies twice; but the book of Posterior Analytics, they shall swear that they have heard at least once." _Grammar._ Priscian and Donatus. _Natural Philosophy._ "De Anima, De Generatione et Corruptione."[725] For the fourteenth century we have the writings of Chaucer, which serve to throw some light upon what was taught in the schools. He tells us of:-- "A litel scole of Cristen folk ther stood Doun at the ferther ende, in which ther were Children an heep, y comen of Christen blood That lerned in that scole yeer by yeer, Swich maner doctrine as men used there, That is to seyn, to singen and to rede, As smale children doon in hir childhede."[726] Among these children, he describes a "widwes sone, a lytel clergeon, seven yeer of age" who had been taught by a pious mother to kneel down and say an "Ave Marie" whenever he saw "th' image of Cristes moder." The little boy heard his elders singing the "Alma redemptoris," and asked one of them to "expounden this song in his langage, or telle him why this song was in usage." The older boy explains that it was sung in honour of the Mother of Christ, "Hir to salue and eek hir for to preye." However, he could tell his questioner little more. "I can no more expounde in this matere; I lerne song, I can but smal grammere," _i.e._ he was learning how to read and sing, but his knowledge of Latin was slight. These extracts from Chaucer enable us to see that schools were common at this time, and that the curriculum of the schools consisted of Latin reading, of song, and, for those who showed aptitude, a further study of Latin grammar. Chaucer also describes for us:-- "A clerk ther was of Oxenford also, That unto logik hadde longe y go," but the only information we glean of the academic studies of this clerk was, that he had, "at his beddes heed, Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophye."[727]