And as they made their way along the high-road a party of such begging scholars would come perhaps to a rich man's house, and ask for aid by prayer and song. Sometimes they would be put to the test as to their scholarship by being commanded to make a couplet of Latin verses on some topic. They would scratch their heads, look wistfully at one another and produce a passable verse or two. Then they would receive their reward and pass on. So popular, indeed, did this system become, that begging students had to be restricted. Only those licensed by the Chancellor and certified as deserving cases, like the scholars of Aristotle's Hall in 1461, were presently permitted to beg. Where poverty was so prevalent, the standard of comfort was not likely to be high. The enormous advance in the general level of material comfort, and even luxury, which has taken place in this country during the last hundred years, makes it difficult to describe the comfortless lives of these early students without giving an exaggerated idea of the sacrifices they were making and the hardships they were enduring for the sake of setting their feet on the first rung of this great ladder of learning. But it should be remembered that, as far as the ordinary appliances of decency and comfort, as we understand them, are concerned, the labourer's cottage in these days is better supplied than was a palace in those when princes "At matins froze and couched at curfew time," and when "Lovers of truth, by penury constrained Bucer, Erasmus or Melancthon, read Before the doors or windows of their cells By moonshine, through mere lack of taper light."