64. To The Monk Maurice.
180 The Letters of St. Anselm
64. TO THE MONK MAURICE.
Since he disliked teaching grammar and had not been particularly good at it, Anselm encourages Maurice to study grammar diligently with the renowned expert Amulf and to work through Virgil and other classical authors.
TO HIS BELOVED BROTHER AND SON, MAURICE: BROTHER ANSELM.
I HAVE HEARD YOU ARE ATTENDING LECTURES given
by Dom Arnulf.1 If this is true, it pleases me, for I have al ways desired your progress, as you yourself know from ex perience, and at no time more than now. I have also heard that he is excellent in grammar, and you know that teach ing the boys grammar has always been a burden to me, and I know that for this reason you made less progress in your knowledge of grammar than you should have. I exhort and pray you, therefore, and I order you as a dearly beloved son, to attend as many of his lectures as possible and en deavor very diligently to learn everything else you can. Do not be ashamed to apply yourself in this way to these things, as if you had just recently started on them, even though you think you do not need them. In this way what you do know you will grasp more firmly by listening to him; if you are mistaken about something you will correct it and by his teaching you will also learn what you do not know.
If he teaches you nothing, however, and this is because of your negligence, this will displease me. As far as possi ble, I wish you to strive as hard as you can and him to teach you chiefly about Virgil and other authors2 on whom you were not lectured by me, except those in which something indecent is found. Now, if because of any hindrance you are unable to attend his lectures, try particularly to study very diligently the grammar of the books you have read, right from the beginning to the end, as I told you above, and work on as many as you can for as long as you can.
Show this letter to this dearest friend of mine as well; in it, briefly and earnestly, I implore his love for you. I beseech him to show you how much I can rely on his true friend-