168 CANTERBURY TO EXETER. [VII. the confidential minister of the king, himself no mean adept in the writing of historical dispatches ; Richard of Devizes is there too writing the history of his time ; further on, at Salisbury, another of the eminent ministers is the dean, John of Oxford, a traveller, and lawyer and divine, a man whose very name suggests that he might have been one of the first magistri of his own University : possibly John of Salisbury might be there too, or Reginald, the bishop's son, as archdeacon or bishop, a most intelligent and travelled diplomatist. At Exeter, early in the reign, he would find Bishop Bartholomew, the famous preacher and canonist, Baldwin, the archdeacon and scholasticus, afterwards archbishop and crusader, with his brother Joseph, the poet, who attempted in an Hexameter Epic to rival the glories of Virgil, and in his lost Antiocheis to build up a poetic memorial of the First Crusade ; no mean poet, although ambitious, but considered worthy to rank with the classics edited, in usum serenissimi Delphini, with Dictys of Crete and Dares of Phrygia. But if our friend was bent northwards, we might take him at once to London and introduce him to the Dean and Chapter of S. Paul's or the great Bishop Foliot and the king's court. At S. Paul's he would meet, ten to one, not only the lord mayor, aldermen, and justices, whom the canon in residence was specially bound to entertain, but any distinguished strangers who happened to be in town : the venerable old dean, Ralph de Diceto, would show him the beautiful MS. of his Fmagz'nes; from the canon Richard, the high treasurer, he might learn the history of the Exchequer, or even borrow the precious Tricolumnis before it was lost ; Peter of Blois would be grumbling at the small profits of his archdeaconry, but wisely putting his pen to good interest ; Roger Niger perhaps just flying from the wrath of the king, whom he has exasperated by savage invective; and