The many works ascribed to Alanus include an allegorical Commentary on Canticles, a treatise on the art of preaching, a book of _sententiae_, another of _theologicae regulae_, sundry sermons, and a lengthy work “contra haereticos”; also a large dictionary of Biblical allegorical interpretations, entitled _Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium_.[130] All these are prose. He composed besides his _Liber de planctu naturae_,[131] and his _Anticlaudianus_, a learned and profound, and likewise highly imaginative allegorical poem upon man.[132] Its Preface in prose casts a curious light upon the author’s enigmatical personality, which combined the wonted or conventional humility of a monk with the towering self-consciousness of a man of genius. “The lightning scorns to spend its force on twigs, but breaks the proud tops of exalted trees. The wind’s imperious rage passes over the reed and drives the assaults of its wild blasts against the highest summits. Wherefore let not envy’s flame strike the pinched humility of my work, nor detraction’s breath overwhelm the driven poverty of my little book, where misery’s wreck demands a port of pity, far more than felicity provokes the sting of spite.” More sentences of turgid deprecation follow, and the author begs the reader not to approach his book with disgust and irritation, but with pleasant anticipations of novelty (not all a monk speaks here!). “For although the book may not bloom with the purple vestment of flowering speech, nor shine with the constellated light of the flashing period, still in the tenuity of the fragile reed the honey’s sweetness may be found, and parched thirst can be tempered with the scant water of a rill. In this book let nothing be made vulgar (_plebescat_) with ribaldry, nor let anything be open to biting reproof, as if it smacked of the coarseness of the moderns [to whom does he refer?]; but let the flower of my talent be presented, and the dignity of diligence; for pigmy humility, thus raised upon a height, may overtop the giant. Let not those dare to tire of this work, who are squalling in the cradles of elementary instruction, sucking milk from nurses’ paps; nor let those seek to cry it down, who are pledged to the service of the higher learning; nor those presume to discredit it, who strike heaven from the top-notch of philosophy. For in this work, the sweetness of the literal meaning will tickle the puerile ear; moral teaching will instruct the more proficient understanding; and the finer subtilty of allegory will sharpen the finished intellect. Wherefore let all those be kept from ingress who, abandoned to the mirrors of the senses, are not charioteered by reason, and, pursuing the sense-image, have no appetite for reason’s truth,--lest indeed what is holy be defiled by dogs, and the pearl be trampled by the feet of swine.