THE KING'S MIRROR 7 



profession or of the agricultural classes has been found. 

 It is, therefore, generally believed that the work was not 

 completed beyond the point where the extant manu- 

 scripts close. Why the book was left unfinished cannot 

 be known; but it is a plausible conjecture that illness or 

 perhaps death prevented the author, who was appar- 

 ently an aged man, from completing the task that he 

 had set before him. It is also possiblejthat the ideas ex- 

 pressed in the closing chapters of the work, especially in 

 the last chapter, which deals with the subject of clerical 

 subordination to the secular powers, weze so repugnant 

 to the ecclesiastical thought of the time that the au- 

 thorities of the church discouraged or perhaps found 

 means to prevent the continuation of the work into the 

 third division, where the author had planned to deal 

 with the church and the clergy. 



In form the Speculum is a dialog between a wise and 

 learned father and his son, in which the larger part of 

 the discussion naturally falls to the former. The son 

 asks questions and suggests problems, which the father 

 promptly answers or solves. In the choice of form there 

 is nothing original: the dialog was frequently used by 

 didactic writers in the middle ages, and it was the 

 natural form to adopt. The title, Speculum Regale, is 

 also of a kind that was common in those days.* Specula 

 of many sorts were being produced : Speculum Ecclesiae, 

 Speculum Stultorum, Speculum Naturale, and Speculum 

 Perfectionis are some of the titles used for writings of a 



* It is believed that the title came into use in Europe in imitation of 

 Hindu writers who wrote " Mirrors of Princes." Nansen, In Northern Mists, 

 II, 242. 



