LITERATURE: Didascalicon

I can’t believe I did this. I just ran out to the barn (my shop) to get Didascalicon because that’s where I left it this evening when I closed. This was the book I peeked into briefly earlier, and the blip of wisdom I absorbed in that flash of moment has been bothering me enough all night to have me brave the darkness of the night that brings the skunks out wandering from their quarters beneath the floorboards of the barn. I have run into them in the night a few times before and backed away. But this spring I was working with a customer in the middle of the morning and turned to find a baby stinker two feet behind her as she bent to look at frame samples on a board. We quit the premises for a few moments and when I quietly snuck back in, I came face to face with three tiny black and white sweet baby faces fanned out in defensive stance and hissing at me, tails lifted uselessly behind them. They were so adorable, yet still I screamed in surprise and scared the little boogers back into their hole. At any rate, I did go back and find Didascalicon and brought it inside the house, moving rather quickly once I remembered that a bear had been in the backyard just a few months ago…

But to the point, and Hugh of Saint Victor, this is what gave me courage to brave the night, and it was well worth it, and I think you will agree:

“The things by which every man advances in knowledge are principally two—namely, reading and meditation. Of these, reading holds first place in instruction, and it is of reading that this book treats, setting forth rules for it. For there are three things particularly necessary to learn for reading: first, each man should know what he ought to read; second, in what order he ought to read, that is, what first and what afterwards; and third, in what manner he ought to read.”

I have just placed this book a few notches before others in the queue, for I think there will be much to learn from Hugh; and, the man is not afraid to use the semicolon.