BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY STUDIES 17 



it be said, the gay capital of modern days, but Paris 

 of the closing years of the twelfth century, Lutetia 

 Parisiorwn : her low-browed houses of wood and 

 mud ; her winding streets, noisome even by day, 

 and by night still darker and more perilous ; her vast 

 Latin Quarter, then far more preponderant than 

 now — a true cosmopolis, where fur-clad barbarians 

 from the home of the north wind sharpened wits 

 with the Latin races haply trained in southern 

 schools by some keen- browed Moor or Jew. And 

 Paris knew him, watched his course, applauded 

 his success, crowned his fame by that coveted 

 title of Master, which he shared with many others, 

 but which the world of letters made peculiarly his 

 own by creating for him a singular and individual 

 propriety in it. From Paris we may follow him 

 in fancy to Bologna, yet it is not hard to believe 

 he must have left half his heart behind, enchained 

 in that remarkable devotion which Lutetia could 

 so well inspire in her children.^ Bologna might 

 be, as we have represented it, the gate to a new 

 Eden, that of Scot's Italian and Spanish life, yet 

 how could he enter it without casting many a 

 longing glance behind to the Paradise he had 

 quitted for ever when he left the banks of the 

 Seine ? 



^ The MS. of Scot's Physionomia in the Vatican Library (Fondo 

 della Reginadi Svezia 1151, saec. xvi ?) has joined to it some extravagant 

 lines in praise of the Parisian schools, where the writer compares them to 

 Paradise. There is no reason to suppose Scot wrote these verses, but 

 they fully support the statement made in the text. 



