debordings and youthful emancipations, which occasioned one less acquainted with himself then [than] his reputation, to subjoyn, (some two weeks before the great day appointed), to that program of his, which was fixed on the Sorbone gate, these words: 'If you would meet with this monster of perfection, to make search for him ... in the taverne ... is the reedyest way to finde him.' By reason of which expression, (though truly as I think, both scandalous and false), the eminent sparks of the university, (imagining that those papers of provocation had been set up to no other end, but to scoff and delude them, in making them waste their spirits upon quirks and quiddities, more then [than] was fitting), did resent a little of their former toyle, and slack their studyes, becoming almost regardless thereof, till the several peals of bells ringing an hour or two before the time assigned, gave warning that the party was not to flee the barriers, nor decline the hardship of academical assaults; but, on the contrary, so confident in his former resolution, that he would not shrink to sustaine the shock of all their disceptations. This sudden alarm so awaked them out of their last fortnight's lethargy, that, calling to minde, the best way they might, the fruits of the foregoing moneth's labour, they hyed to the forenamed schoole with all diligence; where, after all of them had, according to their several degrees and qualities, seated themselves, and that by reason of the noise occasioned through the great confluence of people, which so strange a novelty brought thither out of curiosity, an universal silence was commanded, the Orator of the University, in most fluent Latine, addressing his speech to Crichtoun, extolled him for his literature, and other good parts, and for that confident opinion he had of his own sufficiency, in thinking himself able to justle in matters of learning with the whole university of Paris, Crichtoun answering him in no less eloquent terms of Latine, after he had most heartily thanked him for his elegies, so undeservedly bestowed, and darted some high encomiums upon the university and the professors therein; he very ingeniously [ingenuously] protested that he did not emit his programs out of any ambition to be esteemed able to enter in competition with the university, but meerly to be honoured with the favour of a publick conference with the learned men thereof. In complements after this manner, _ultro citroque habitis_, tossed to and again, retorted, contrerisposted, backreverted, and now and then graced with a quip or a clinch for the better relish of the ear, being unwilling in this kind of straining curtesie to yeeld to other, they spent a full half hour and more; for he being the centre to which the innumerable diameters of the discourses of that circulary convention did tend, although none was to answer but he, any of them all, according to the order of their