Fray Luis de León

er for the academic year 1551-1552, but it recurs in the University books for the years 1552-1553 and 1554-1555. He there figures still as a student of theology.[19] He would seem, therefore, to have shown no amazing precocity in the schools; but his application, we may be sure, was intense, and there is nothing rash in assuming that during part of the two years that he was absent, as he tells us,[20] from Salamanca, he was lecturing at Soria. The remaining eighteen months he probably devoted to exegetical studies at Alcalá de Henares, where he matriculated in 1556.[21] He was about thirty when he rather unexpectedly graduated as a bachelor of Arts at the University of Toledo.[22] Why he preferred to take his degree at Toledo instead of at Salamanca is not clear; it is plausibly conjectured that economy may have been his motive, as the obtaining of a bachelor's degree at Salamanca was an expensive business.[23] Confirmation of this conjecture is afforded by the fact that he speedily returned to his allegiance