Note 124 — Chapter XXXVII

R. L. Poole (1884), p. 348, (1920) p. 299, concluded from this, “The dialogue was written therefore some time, probably some years, before Henry was of an age to be knighted, in 1149; and we shall certainly not be far wrong if we place it about the year 1145.” As, however, Henry was knighted when only about sixteen, and as the remark “quos ... studio literarum tenera aetate imbuisti” may be retrospective, and as one can scarcely argue with any chronological exactness from these medieval phrases denoting time of life—Henry, for example, is addressed as “vir optime atque liberalis” in the preface of the collection of ethical maxims which William made for him before he was seventeen,——it seems to me that there is no sufficient reason for fixing on 1145 as the date of the Dragmaticon.