He is said to have known all languages from Gaul to the Jordan, though he only spoke French and Latin.  Very discreet in all business of the kingdom, and a subtle finder out of legal puzzles, he had “knowledge of almost all histories, and experience of all things ready to his hand.”  Henry was, in fact, learned far beyond the learning of his day.  “The king,” wrote Peter of Blois to the Archbishop of Palermo, “has always in his hands bows and arrows, swords and hunting-spears, save when he is busy in council or over his books.  For as often as he can get breathing-time amid his business cares, he occupies himself with private reading, or takes pains in working out some knotty question among his clerks.  Your king is a good scholar, but ours is far better.  I know the abilities and accomplishments of both.  You know that the King of Sicily was my pupil for a year; you yourself taught him the element of verse-making and literary composition; from me he had further and deeper lessons, but as soon as I left the kingdom he threw away his books, and took to the easy-going ways of the court.  But with the King of England there is school every day, constant conversation of the best scholars and discussion of questions.”

Behind all this amazing activity, however, lay the dark and terrible side of Henry’s character.  All the violent contrasts and contradictions of the age, which make it so hard to grasp, were gathered up in his varied heritage; the half-savage nature which at that time we meet with again and again united with first-class intellectual gifts; the fierce defiance born of a time when every man had to look solely to his own right hand for security of life and limb and earthly regard—­a defiance caught now and again in the grip of an overwhelming awe before the portents of the invisible world; the sudden mad outbreaks of irresponsible passion which still mark certain classes in our own day, but which then swept over a violent and undisciplined society.  Even to his own time, used as it was to such strange contrasts, Henry was a puzzle.  Men saw him diligently attend mass every day, and restlessly busy himself during the most solemn moments in scribbling, in drawing pictures, in talking to his courtiers, in settling the affairs of State; or heard how he refused confession till forced to it by terror in the last extremity of sickness, and then turned it into a surprising ceremony of apology and self-justification.  At one time they saw him, conscience-smitten at the warning of some seer of visions, sitting up through the night amid a tumultuous crowd to avert the wrath of Heaven by hastily restoring rights and dues which he was said to have unjustly taken, and when the dawning light of day brought cooler counsel, swift to send the rest of his murmuring suitors empty away; at another bowing panic-stricken in his chapel before some sudden word of ominous prophecy; or as a pilgrim, barefoot, with staff in hand; or kneeling through the night before