yet chose rather to strain beyond its strength than to resist his
bidding; fearing that while our neighbours rejoiced and transmitted
records of their deeds, the repute of our own people might appear not
to possess any written chronicle, but rather to be sunk in oblivion and
antiquity. Thus I, forced to put my shoulder, which was unused to the
task, to a burden unfamiliar to all authors of preceding time,
and dreading to slight his command, have obeyed more boldly than
effectually, borrowing from the greatness of my admonisher that good
heart which the weakness of my own wit denied me.

And since, ere my enterprise reached its goal, his death outran it; I
entreat thee chiefly, Andrew, who wast chosen by a most wholesome and
accordant vote to be successor in the same office and to headship of
spiritual things, to direct and inspire my theme; that I may baulk by
the defence of so great an advocate that spiteful detraction which
ever reviles what is most conspicuous. For thy breast, very fruitful in
knowledge, and covered with great store of worshipful doctrines, is to
be deemed a kind of shrine of heavenly treasures. Thou who hast searched
through Gaul and Italy and Britain also in order to gather knowledge of
letters and amass them abundantly, didst after thy long wandering obtain
a most illustrious post in a foreign school, and proved such a pillar
thereof, that thou seemedst to confer more grace on thy degree than it
did on thee. Then being made, on account of the height of thy honours
and the desert of thy virtues, Secretary to the King, thou didst adorn
that employment, in itself bounded and insignificant, with such works of
wisdom as to leave it a piece of promotion for men of greatest rank to
covet afterwards, when thou wert transferred to that office which now
thou holdest. Wherefore Skaane has been found to leap for joy that she
has borrowed a Pontiff from her neighbours rather than chosen one from
her own people; inasmuch as she both elected nobly and deserved joy of