I labour the point, because a writer who has introduced Abélard to many of the present generation, and for whom and whose thoughts I have otherwise a high regard, has somehow been led to lay here a very damning indictment of Abélard. Mr. Cotter Morison was a follower of the religion that worships the departed great, and should have a special care to set in light the character of those whom the Church has bruised in life, and slandered after death, under a false view of the interest of humanity. Yet, in his _Life of St. Bernard_, he has grossly added to the charge against Abélard, with the slenderest of historical bases. It were almost an injustice to Kingsley to say that Cotter Morison’s Abélard recalls the great novelist’s pitiful Hypatia. The Positivist writer thus interprets this stage in Abélard’s career. After saying that his passion broke out like a volcano, and that he felt ‘a fierce, fiery thirst for pleasure, sensual and animal,’ he goes on in this remarkable strain: ‘He drank deeply, wildly. He then grew fastidious and particular. He required some delicacy of romance, some flavour of emotion, to remove the crudity of his lust. He seduced Heloise.’ Was ever a graver perversion in the historical construction of character by an impartial writer? Stranger still, Mr. Cotter Morison has already warned his readers that the ‘Story of my Calamities’ must be shorn of some penitential _exaggeration_, if we are to give it historical credence. But Mr. Morison has witnesses. Prior Fulques, in a letter to Abélard, reminded him that he squandered a fortune on harlots. The assertion of this monk of Deuil, based, professedly, on the reports of Abélard’s bitter enemies, the monks of St. Denis, and made in a letter which is wholly politic, is held by Mr. Morison to ‘more than counterbalance’ the solemn public affirmation of a morbidly humble, self-accusing penitent. And this, after warning us not to take Abélard’s self-accusation too literally! I shall examine this letter of Prior Fulques’ more closely later. Not only does the letter itself belong to, but the charge refers to, a later period, and will be weighed then. There is nothing at this stage to oppose to the quiet and indirect claim of Abélard, allowed by the action of Fulbert, that his character was unsullied up to the date of his liaison with Heloise. Let us return to the accredited historical facts. Somewhere about the year 1118 Abélard first felt the claims of love. He was wealthy and prosperous, and living in comparative luxury. He had those gifts of imagination which usually reveal an ardent temperament. Whether it was Heloise who unwittingly kindled the preparing passion, or whether Abélard yielded first to a vague, imperious craving, and sought one whom he might love, we do not know. But we have his trustworthy declaration that he detested the rampant harlotry, and knew no woman until he felt the sweet caress of Heloise.