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GERALD OF WALES 
 
 A MEDIAEVAL EGOTIST 
 
 BY 
 
 FRBDERICK TUPPER, JR. 
 
 Reprinted from THe SewAnee Review 
 for ;October, 1 9 1 2 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH 
 
 SEWANEE, TENNESSEE 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924031414570 
 
GERALD OF WALES 
 
 A MEDIAEVAL EGOTIST 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK TUPPER, JR. 
 
 Reprinted from The Sewanee Review 
 for October, 191 2 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH 
 
 SEWANEE, TENNESSEE 
 
AaS^^SH- 
 
GERALD OF WALES 
 
 It was the perilous practice of a famous literary critic to tag 
 with curt phrases this or that man of genius. "He never spoke 
 out," served for Gray. "A brave soldier in the war of human- 
 ity," was Heine complete. Goethe's saying, "He was quite too 
 much in the dark about himself," did Byron's business. If we 
 follow this Arnold precedent, we shall not go far astray in thus 
 summarizing Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), priest, 
 statesman, scholar, orator, historian: — He was always sure of 
 himself. Other men are troubled by doubts noble and ignoble. 
 Men far greater than he have held halting colloquy with their 
 souls. But to this self-confident spirit the road always lay clear 
 and open. The call of his own lofty ambitions was to Giraldus 
 the voice of deity. 
 
 At the very root of this perfect confidence lay a prodigious 
 self-satisfaction, an almost boyish joy in all that pertained to 
 him and his. He is the supreme egotist of mediaeval England. 
 His family, his home, his person, his genius, his exploits, his 
 honors, are ever his dearest themes; and, in chanting their 
 glories, enthusiasm rises to rapture. "O family! O race! In- 
 deed it is doubly noble; deriving its courage from the Trojans, 
 and its skill in arms from the French." The best Welsh and 
 Norman blood mingled in his veins; and his chief volume of 
 history. The Conquest of Ireland, blends encomia upon the 
 adventures of his own race, the Geraldines, with disparagement 
 of all outside that cousinship. 
 
 Gerald de Barri was born in 1146 — or was it 11 47.' — at the 
 castle of Manorbeer in Pembrokeshire. Happy year and blessed 
 castle! Logic crumbles before his superlatives: — "As Demetia 
 is the fairest of all the seven cantreds of Wales, and Pembroke 
 the fairest of Demetia, and this spot the fairest of all Pembroke, 
 it follows that Manorbeer is the most pleasant spot in Wales." 
 Thus his heart rules his head. All the fairies were present at 
 his christening, but, this time, no malignant elf came last with 
 her curse. He was, he tells us, so richly dowered with beauty 
 that, in his youth, men gazed upon him in wonder that a being 
 
4 Gerald of Wales 
 
 so fair must one day decline and die. The' qualities of his mind 
 early transcended the intellects of all other youths. In the 
 schools of Paris, so he informs us, he gained such distinction 
 that Gerald the Welshman was pointed out by his masters to 
 every comer as a model of piety and good scholarship. All men 
 at the great French university were charmed — the words are 
 his own — "by the sweetness of his voice, the beauty of his lan- 
 guage and the force of his arguments." Indeed, he ever "found 
 in the music of his own sweet voice the most enchanting 
 melody." So miraculous indeed were the results of his elo- 
 quence that, when in 1188 he preached to the Welsh a crusade, 
 his hearers, though totally ignorant of the languages employed 
 by the speaker, Latin and French, burst into tears ("Never 
 were so many tears shed in one day!") and ran in crowds to 
 take the cross. Had Gerald used his mother tongue, Wales 
 would have been depopulated. 
 
 However much the power of his spoken word rejoiced Giral- 
 dus, he found a deeper and more abiding content in the worth of 
 his writings, which he loudly proclaims with the boastfulness 
 of Glendower. "The elegance of his scholastic style had 
 obtained uniform praise from all quarters." "His friend, the 
 urbane Walter Map, had admitted that the writings of Master 
 Giraldus were far better and much more likely to be handed 
 down to future ages than his own discourses." That mighty 
 genius, Pope Innocent III, the proud author assures us, kept 
 for a month close to bed's head six volumes of his works, in 
 which the pontifE took such rare delight that he was never 
 weary of expounding their beauties to the cardinals in their 
 visits of business, and could not be persuaded to part with a 
 single volume even for an hour. It is significant that the best 
 known act of Gerald's literary life was one of princely ostenta- 
 tion. When he had finished his greatest work. The Topog- 
 raphy of Ireland, "not willing to hide his candle under a 
 bushel [these are his very words] but to place it on a candlestick 
 that it might give light to all, he resolved to read it publicly at 
 Oxford where the most learned and famous of the English clergy 
 were at that time to be found." This is the first appearance of 
 the university in history years before its oldest college, Merton, 
 
A Mediceval Egotist 5 
 
 came into being. "Tlie readings lasted three successive days," 
 Gerald continues. "On the first day he received and enter- 
 tained at his lodgings all the poor of the town; on the next day, 
 all the doctors of the different faculties and such of their pupils 
 as were of fame and note; on the third day, the rest of the 
 scholars, with the knights, townsmen and many burgesses. It 
 was a costly and noble act, because the authentic and ancient 
 times of poesy were thus in some measure renewed ; and neither 
 present nor past time can furnish any record of such solemnity 
 having ever taken place in England." 
 
 Strut and svvell though he might and preen his feathers, 
 Gerald was not merely a crowing braggart, but a lusty fighter of 
 the best breed. His place in the home of Manorbeer was like 
 that of Gawain Douglas in the family of old Archibald Bell-the- 
 cat, the clerk of a tribe of warriors ; yet, though priest, he was 
 not the least militant of his house. From fierce barons of the 
 Marches, this champion of the church derived the highest 
 qualities of the fighting-man, — restless activity, loyalty, dis- 
 regard of odds and unswerving tenacity. As full of quarrels as 
 an egg of meat, he never counted the cost of his many high- 
 hearted battles and displayed every virtue, save that of humility. 
 Early an archdeacon, he found "the functions of the arch- 
 diaconate" very different from those of Barchester. A verit- 
 able young St. George or St. Michael, he seems to us, riding 
 forth fiercely against the dragon, whenever the creature reared 
 head on the banks of Wye or of Severn. Yet the most notable 
 adventure of this young scourger of the Deadly Sins was not one 
 of his marches against evil but a struggle for the rights of the 
 see of St. David's. It is a long story, if fully told, but this is 
 its kernel. A little church on the borders of St. Asaph's and St. 
 David's awaited dedication, uncertain from what source this 
 might come. The Bishop of St. Asaph's, eager to extend his 
 jurisdiction, makes stately progress to the disputed spot, but 
 the vigilant Gerald speeding across country forestalls him. The 
 investiture is over, bells have been rung, mass has been cele- 
 brated, when the bishop with his men reaches the lych-gate. 
 Here Gerald confronts him with wordy war. On the one side, 
 mitre and. staff and an archbishop's letter; on the other, long 
 
6 Gerald of Wales 
 
 tenure, present possession and a fighter's blood and skill. 
 When the angry bishop proceeds to fulminate excommunication 
 against his foes, the archdeacon gravely summons from the 
 church behind him priests and deacons in white array and in 
 louder tones pronounces anathema against the enemies of St. 
 David's. The episcopal ban is of higher dignity, doubtless, but 
 that of Gerald is backed by the triple ringing of bells and by 
 the halberds and bows of his dangerous brothers somewhere in 
 deep centre. Thus the curtain falls on the complete rout of the 
 bishop, but it rises again to disclose Gerald at King Henry's 
 court in distant Northampton wittily narrating his absurd story 
 and winning royal laughter and favor. As the king well knew, 
 bishops were plentiful enough, but there was only one Gerald 
 in twelfth-century England. 
 
 Giraldus was not only a fighter, but he was a fighter "with a 
 high aim to pursue"— that aim nothing more or less than the 
 bishopric of St. David's, the chief see of Wales. As he argued, 
 who had a better right? His uncle had long ruled the diocese, 
 and he would bring to the high place the best traditions and the 
 strongest head in all the Welsh country. But, ironically 
 enough, these very qualifications checked his preferment. 
 "Wales for Welshmen" was no part of the policy of the Plan- 
 tagenet kings; and Henry H, wiliest of rulers, had no mind to 
 rear against himself a powerful opponent in that prostrate land. 
 Thus Gerald's young ambition was thwarted. But he was one 
 of those strong men who are never on nodding terms with defeat 
 and who pursue with iron will their purposes in season and out 
 of season. Other bishoprics — Bangor, Llandaff, and an Irish 
 see or two — were offered him at different times, but he rejected 
 them all. In seeking the million, he was quite content to miss 
 the unit. Twenty years later, when the see of St. David's was 
 again without a head, Giraldus entered the lists with character- 
 istic energy. Then began for the restless archdeacon a period 
 of strenuous seeking, far journeying, long soliciting, with the 
 coveted mitre ever dangling before his keen eyes but ever elud- 
 ing his grasp. Now he is in a dreary corner of Wales winning 
 the suffrages of the canons, now trailing in England or Nor- 
 mandy a vagrant king, now questing papal favor on the long. 
 
A MedicBval Egotist 7 
 
 rough roads that lead to Rome. It is on these Roman journeys 
 that the dauntless temper of the man is most picturesquely re- 
 vealed; and, as we follow him on his solitary way through the 
 grim forest of Ardennes, along the dangerous marches of Cham- 
 pagne and Burgundy, over the snowy Alps in midwinter, we 
 recall the adventures of his near-namesake, Gerard, the hero of 
 Charles Reade's wonderful story, on those same terrible paths. 
 But all in vain these quests ! Deserted by his supporters, con- 
 demned by king, tricked by pope, he must have lost, long be- 
 fore his useless fight was over, all faith in his fellows. But one 
 thing certainly.he never lost, his transcendent faith in himself. 
 To Giraldus all things that made for good on British soil seemed 
 to hang upon the happy outcome of his own ambitions and to 
 crumble into nothingness when his own dreams faded. 
 
 It is not, however, as the unsuccessful churchman, but as the 
 successful man of letters, that we must now view Giraldus 
 Cambrensis. The times in which he played his eager, strenu- 
 ous r6le were favorable to literature — so favorable indeed that 
 to the reader of limited outlook, who cherishes the silly old 
 notion that no brave writers wielded worthy pens in England 
 before Chaucer Agamemnon, a study of the court of the early 
 Plantagenets is full of delightful surprises. Between Alfred and 
 Elizabeth — this is not such high praise as it seems — learning 
 and letters knew no such royal patron as Henry II, with his 
 scholarly gifts and his princely giving; and artistry of every 
 sort awakened ready response in his queen, Eleanor, who had 
 much music in her evil soul. As one of his courtiers, Peter of 
 Blois, said of the king's circle: — "There was school every day, 
 constant conversation of the best scholars and discussion of 
 questions." Humane letters are so often the reverse of human 
 that this twelfth-century output, cloaked though it usually is in 
 grave Latinity, makes an unexpected appeal by reason of its 
 nearness to the life of a day that was big with action. We can- 
 not hope to apprehend even slightly the literary background of 
 Giraldus without a word or two of those clerks who stood among 
 the foremost Anglo-Latin writers. These are no pedants but 
 healthy fellows all, red of blood and sound of heart, who followed 
 with the keen noses of trusty hounds the base scent of the foxes 
 
8 Gerald of Wales 
 
 and jackals that then ran amuck in both church and state. 
 Nigel Wireker, hater of sham learning seeks for his ass, "Daun 
 Burnel," congenial company among long-eared schoolmen and 
 thick-skinned monks. John de Hauteville, weeping philosopher 
 — tears were then in fashion, and archweepers common — pur- 
 sues Nature and Moderation in a world of vanity and excess. 
 A greater John, he of Salisbury, gathered in the tortuous paths 
 of statecraft along which he moved by his master Backet's side 
 much material for those famous meditations on the trifling pur- 
 suits of mankind that make up his Polycraticus. And then 
 there was Gerald's chief friend at court, the most charming per- 
 sonality of this faraway century, whose name still carries some 
 fragrance in the mention, Walter Map, reputed weaver of Arthur- 
 ian legends, creator of the gluttonous Bishop Golias and ironical 
 chanter of Goliardic verses redolent of cakes and ale, and yet 
 something more, genial essayist and gossipy raconteur — much 
 good sense and honest laughter in him, not a little noble scorn, 
 and withal a vein of romance. With Walter, who was half 
 Welshman too, Gerald rubbed elbows often. These two arch- 
 deacons exchanged light-hearted verses, bartered good stories, of 
 which each had ample measure, abused Jews and Cistercians to 
 their hearts' content, and weighed in friendly rivalry and with 
 utter complacency their own high merits as masters of style. 
 When the versatile Giraldus reverently laid at the feet of 
 Innocent III books rather than money (Jibros not libras), he 
 tendered the best that it was in his power to give — himself; for 
 in his case the writings are the man. The gift of style that was 
 his endowment was not mere sense of form, though he aimed 
 with success to make his words and periods simple and pleasing, 
 his essays readable. Labor and learning might toil in vain for 
 a manner which revealed personality as intimately and was indeed 
 as truly a part of this fighting priest as his shaggy eyebrows, his 
 long and sinewy frame, his fiery temper. Not in spite of his life 
 of action, but because of it, was Gerald a great author. "Quorum 
 pars magna fui" is writ large over the eight bulky volumes that 
 bear his name in the Rolls Series. We see either Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis against the background of England, Ireland, and Wales, 
 or England, Ireland, and Wales against the background of Giral- 
 
A Mediaval Egotist 9 
 
 dus Cambrensis — all Europe standing agape. Like a general 
 composing his memoirs in his tent after a hard-fought battle, he 
 brought to his parchment his own vivid experience, his own hopes 
 and fears, and drenched his best pages with the flood of personal 
 feeling. It is only when this feeling is stagnant — when our 
 archdeacon is laboring over a bit of hack work like the task of 
 making the unworthy Remigius into a saint for the brothers of 
 Lincoln, whose supply was short — that his style loses its dis- 
 tinction and becomes as neutral as that of any penny-lining 
 clerk of sound Latinity. When, as is usual, pride of self or of 
 race, fierce hatred of an enemy, love of glory, speed his pen, the 
 wraith of posterity, whom he saw in every vision and to whom 
 he confidently dedicated every literary labor, is smilingly im- 
 pelled to grant him at least a tithe of his large asking. 
 
 Giraldus is indeed a sounding clash of opposites — a sur- 
 prising union of powers and prejudices, as Macaulay affirms of 
 Johnson. This Welshman was really a scholar. He had a 
 scholar's training; no man of his day had eaten more paper and 
 drunk more ink, and a ready assimilation and a sound memory 
 had aided their digestion. Ovid, Persius, Claudian, and Vergil, 
 are at his finger-tips; Welsh, French, and even English, "a 
 barbarous tongue," are all well known to him, though, for dear 
 posterity's sake, he must eschew them in his own composition; 
 he dabbles in philology when he notes "the close likeness be- 
 tween British and Greek words," or when he gravely discusses 
 "the old Southern dialect of Bede, Hrabanus, and Alfred." His 
 love of noble manuscripts is manifest in his enthusiasm, in the 
 Topography of Ireland, over the splendid Book of Kildare. 
 He finds learned support for even his credulities and revels as 
 happily as a young philologist in cross references to his own 
 authoritative utterances. He has at times something of a 
 scholar's discrimination. Freedom of mind, a rare thing in his 
 age, leads him to analyze patiently the reasons for English 
 failure in Ireland and to balance soberly the virtues and defects 
 of his own people, the Welsh. One trait that is of the very 
 essence of fine scholarship he freely displays, often to his own 
 hurt as a man of letters. The difficult made to him an 
 irresistible appeal. He wrote of Ireland, not because he sym- 
 
10 Gerald of Wales 
 
 pathized with the unhappy land and its people, but because, in 
 cases which were barren of interest, language might do its best. 
 Here was his opportunity "to suck honey out of the rock and 
 to draw oil from flint." "There is nothing so rude and barba- 
 rous," he quotes complacently, "that a brilliant oratory cannot 
 ornament and polish." 
 
 Though the "scholastic elegance," in which Gerald's prefaces 
 take such pride, craves applause, it is when least the scholar that 
 this man of many activities dominates our interest. We like 
 him less when he is capping a pun from Plautus than when he 
 is retailing some hearty English story. It is easy to leave the 
 Homeric speeches, which ring so absurdly false in the mouths of 
 Norman leaders on the plains before Down and Derry, for the 
 pleasant converse of Archbishop Baldwin with his followers over 
 the sweet notes of birds in a Welsh wood. And we find Giral- 
 dus far better company when he is deep in the lap of legends 
 and superstitions than when he is vindicating the soundness of 
 his logic by illustrious precedent. His Celtic imagination and 
 love of marvels can be matched only by the Mabinogion itself. 
 His gullibility during his Irish visit was as omnivorous as, let 
 us say, that of a Frenchman recording the impressions of five 
 weeks in America, and the Topography finds its modern 
 counterpart in the Outre Mer of Paul Bourget. All was fish 
 that came to his net, and, if the fish had golden teeth like that 
 famous one of Carlingford in Ulster, or one eye apiece like those 
 of the Snowdon lake, so much the better! Gerald not only 
 accepted the folk-lore of his day, time-honored traditions of 
 barnacle goose and were-wolf; but he greedily swallowed so 
 many prodigies that even twelfth-century skepticism, a tiny 
 growth, raised indignant protest. But objections merely fired 
 Gerald's fighting blood, for, when his imagination was aroused, 
 his boasted critical powers were dormant. Mandeville and 
 Miinchausen pant in his rear, as the good archdeacon recounts 
 the wonders and miracles of Ireland: — two islands in one of 
 which no one dies, in the other no female creature enters; yet 
 another island where corpses suffer no decay; St. Brigit's fire, 
 and the hedge around that fire which no male can cross; the 
 stone in which a cavity is every day miraculously filled with 
 
A Mediceval Egotist 1 1 
 
 wine; the seed-wheat which was produced from rye; St. Col- 
 man's teal which were tamed by him and cannot suffer injury; 
 creatures which are half -man, half-ox or half-stag, half-cow; 
 cocks that crow at unnatural hours; wolves that whelp in 
 December; grasshoppers that sing the better when their heads 
 are cut off; these and a hundred other things that "befall pre- 
 posterously." Nor do we meet such monsters only in Gerald's 
 catalogue of marvels; now and again in the midst of serious 
 history he pauses to point out some enormity. And the reason 
 for this intense interest in supposed freaks of nature is not far 
 to seek. Gerald found each wonder big with portent for the 
 student of contemporary events : — the three golden teeth of the 
 Ulster fish presaged the golden times of the future conquest 
 immediately impending; a frog found in the grassy meadows 
 near Waterford, where no such reptile had been seen before, 
 was a prognostic of the coming of the English ; wolves whelping 
 out of season betokened the evils of treason and rapine which in 
 Ireland were too early rife. 
 
 Recorder of unnatural history and prognostical zoology though 
 Gerald was, scores of passages attest a lively regard for nature 
 in her normal moods, — not in the least the love of the dedicated 
 spirit, but the wide-eyed curiosity of the quick observer of man 
 and beast. From the orchard plot of St. Ludoc church in 
 South Wales near an old mill and bridge he watches the Teivy 
 salmon swimming against the stream and springing with great 
 force, like a bow let loose, from the bottom to the top of the 
 leap ; or else in the same river he marks each movement of the 
 beavers as they construct their willow castles. Then perhaps 
 he is listening in Irish meadows to "clouds of larks singing 
 praise to God." Nothing in Hugh of Lincoln's life delights 
 Gerald more than his affection for his pet swan at Stow and for 
 his little tame bird at Witham. Yet, like his famous con- 
 temporary, Alexander Neckham, and the many anonymous 
 authors of the bestiaries, Gerald valued birds and other creatures 
 chiefly as metaphors of man. Symbolism intrudes everywhere. 
 Cranes keeping watch in turns at night for their common safety 
 are to Giraldus emblems of the bishops of the church whose 
 office it is to keep watch over their flock, not knowing at what 
 
12 Gerald of Wales 
 
 hour the thief will come. With hawks he compares those who 
 indulge in sumptuous banquets, equipages, and clothing and 
 the various other allurements of the flesh; with falcons, those of 
 soaring virtue who reject a delicate diet and choose by divine 
 inspiration to suffer hardships and privations. Thus he alle- 
 gorizes nature. 
 
 One knack Gerald had in large measure, and through this he 
 wins the regard of modern readers, who reck little of his marvels 
 and his moralizings — he was a natural story-teller. Few of the 
 tales that fill his pages are of his own making, but they are 
 always well found and well fitted. Once or twice he assays the 
 supernatural, as in the legend of the demon steward, the red- 
 haired youth who kept the keys of the house of Stakepole and 
 held nightly converse near a mill and a pool of water, and in the 
 narrative, yet more wonderful, of the beautiful phantom of evil 
 who revenged upon an English clerk his injury to her slighted 
 form. But our raconteur moves in the main along everyday 
 levels, with the humorist's quick eye for the incongruous action 
 and with the wit's appreciation of the happy phrase. Here is 
 the amusing lapse of a Worcester priest, who, having heard all 
 night in churchyard dances the refrain of a love-song, chanted 
 in full canonicals next morning at the altar, not "Dominus 
 vobiscum!" but "Sweet mistress, thy grace!" There the parlous 
 plight of the ignorant old churchman who, in his devout prayer 
 for a little Latin, neglected to specify verbal inflections, and so, 
 in receiving the heavenly boon, was limited to the infinitive dur- 
 ing all his life after. Many of Gerald's best anecdotes hinge upon 
 the illiteracy of the Welsh clergy. The textual critic of to-day 
 would do well to treasure the story of the priest who inquired 
 eagerly of the famous schoolman, John of Cornwall, the meaning 
 of the word busillis, deeming it the proper name of some king 
 or prince. On John's asking him where the word was to be 
 found, the seeker after knowledge fetched triumphantly his 
 missal and pointed to the words, in die, at the end of one 
 column and bus Hits at the top of the next (in diebus illis, of 
 course). There is a large sheaf of such blunders in the arch- 
 deacon's charge to his flock, the Gemma Ecclesiastica. 
 
 The stories in which Gerald seems to take most delight in 
 
A MedicBval Egotist 13 
 
 displaying his skill are little tales of situation, of the essentially 
 dramatic and popular type that lies at the root of balladry. In- 
 deed, it is in his tract against the Cistercians that we meet for 
 the first time in England the very familiar motif of the humor- 
 ous encounter of the disguised king with a subject. Henry II, 
 separated from his companions during the hunt, chances upon 
 a Cistercian monastery, where unrecognized he is hospitably 
 entertained and bidden subscribe to local custom by drinking 
 often wassail, — here a hearty exchange of "Pril" and "Wril" — 
 with the bibulous abbot and his jolly fellows. On the following 
 day the king returns of course in royal state to the utter con- 
 fusion of the "priestly revelers. In this same Speculum 
 Ecclesim there is yet another story of distinctly popular flavor- 
 unhappily too long for our present telling — centring in the 
 interchange of sick-bed visits between Walter Map and his 
 hated neighbor, the Cistercian abbot of the Forest of Dean. 
 Again humor comes to the aid of slashing criticism in Gerald's 
 attack upon Geoffrey of Monmouth, whom he himself had freely 
 plundered: "If evil spirits oppressed too much one of their 
 chief victims, Melerius, the Gospel of St. John was laid on his 
 bosom, when like birds they immediately vanished away. But 
 when that book was removed and The History of the Britons, 
 by Geoffrey, for the sake of experiment, substituted in its 
 stead, they settled, in far greater numbers and for a much longer 
 time than usual, not only upon his entire body, but on the book 
 that was placed upon it." Assuredly Gerald had the knack of 
 it. At this sort of thing not even Map himself was his master. 
 All these piquant stories had their serious aim and end, for 
 no man was ever less a trifler than this fighting priest of the 
 de Barri blood. At the core of him, as of all good haters, was a 
 grimness of temper that scorned flattering amenities. It is his 
 own saying that "he never sought to win favor by bearing a 
 cap, by placing a cushion, by shielding off the rain, or by wiping 
 the dust, even if there should be none, in the midst of a fawning 
 herd. The heart-flame of the man flashes forth, when this un- 
 compromising apostle of right living and thinking scathes the 
 worldiness and hypocrisy of monastic degenerates or scourges 
 with fierce invectives, which his enemies ascribed to "rebellious 
 
14 Gerald of Wales 
 
 craft," the weakness of Hubert Walker, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, and the vices of William of Ely. An old age of peace, 
 devoted to study and reminiscence, mellowed little this acerbity. 
 "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" doubtless seemed to him, as to 
 Laurence Sterne, little more than "a nonsensical lullaby of some 
 nurse, put into Latin by some pedant, to be chanted by some 
 hypocrite to the end of the world for the consolation of departing 
 lechers." Gerald had crossed the whims of three Plantagenets 
 and had boldly spoken out his mind before their thrones. Now 
 that Henry and his sons were dead, this close observer of their 
 follies spared them as little, in that last worthy work of his 
 on The Rearing of a Prince, as Thackeray spared the four 
 Georges. With Gerald blame was always safer than praise — 
 that is, blame of the other man. In the case of him and his, 
 he was, as we have seen, of quite another opinion. 
 
 So Giraldus Cambrensis, who all his life had been sure of 
 himself, came confidently to the threshold of death, neither ask- 
 ing nor expecting worldly recompense, refusing even the bishop- 
 ric for which he had contended so stoutly during the long years 
 of his prime; full of lofty pride that "he had waged so great 
 and fierce a war against king and archbishop and had with- 
 stood the might of the whole clergy and people of England for 
 the honor of Wales." 
 
 Frederick T upper, Jr. 
 
 University of Vermont. 
 
Gerald of Wales: 
 
 olln,an? ^924 031 414 570