e flower of priests," and the king, _Neronior est ipso Nerone_.[39]
But these poems, whether by Walter Mapes or by Philip Gaultier, are now
forgotten. The "Alexandreis" has had a different fortune.

The poem became at once famous. It had the success of Victor Hugo or
Byron. Its author took rank, not only at the head of his contemporaries,
but even among the classics of antiquity, Leyser chronicles no less than
one hundred Latin poets in the twelfth century,[40] but we are assured
that not one of them is comparable to Gaultier.[41] M. Edelestand du
Meril, who has given especial attention to this period, speaks of the
"Alexandreis" as "a great poem," and remarks that its "Latinity is very
elegant for the time."[42] Another authority calls him "the first of the
modern Latin poets who appears to have had a spark of true poetic
genius."[43] And still another says, that, "notwithstanding all its
defects, we must regard this poem, and the 'Philippis' of William of
Brittany, which appeared about sixty years later, as two brilliant
phenomena in the midst of the thick darkness which covered Europe from
the decline of the Roman Empire to the revival of letters in Italy."[44]
Pasquier, to whom I have already referred, goes so far, in his chapter
on the University of Paris, as to illustrate its founder, Peter Lombard,
by saying that he had for a contemporary "one Galterus, an eminent poet,
who wrote in Latin verses, under the title of the 'Alexandreis,' a great
imitator of Lucan"; and the learned writer then adds, that it is in his
work that we find a verse often quoted without knowing the author,[45]
These testimonies show his position among his contemporaries; but there
is something more.

An anonymous Latin poet of the next century, who has left a poem on the
life and miracles of Saint Oswald, calls Homer, Gaultier, and Lucan the
three capital heroic poets. Homer, he says, has celebrated Hercules,
Gaultier the son of Philip, and Lucan has sung the praises of Caesar; but
these heroes deserve to be immortalized in verse much less than the holy
confessor Oswald.[46] In England, the Abbot of Peterborough transcribed
Seneca, Terence, Martial, Claudian, and the "Gesta Alexandri."[47] In
Denmark, Arnas Magnseus made a version in Icelandic of the "Alexandreis
Gualteriana," which has been called "_Incomparabile antiguitatis
septentrionalis monumentum_."[48] It appears that the new poem was
studied, even to the exclusion of ancient masters