two men. The first of these, ST. WILFRID (634-709), the staunch supporter of the Roman rite, Archbishop of York and apostle of Sussex, passed his stormy life in the endeavour to unite the churches of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. His own writings are lost, but he did for Northumbria what St. Aldhelm did for Wessex. The monasteries of Ripon and Hexham recognised him as their founder. But Wilfrid was essentially a controversialist, his methods were not always of the wisest, and the impression which he effected was, for the most part, temporary. The solid work of the time, the root of the pedigree of Latin learning in Northumbria, is due to BENEDICT BISCOP (d. 690), the founder of religious houses at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, who brought back from his indefatigable roamings on the Continent numberless treasures of literature and art.

The immediate result of Benedict's energy is seen in his pupil the VENERABLE BEDE or BÆDA (673-735), who was a native of Wearmouth, and was placed under Benedict's teaching at the age of seven, six years after the foundation of the monastery. He became a deacon at nineteen, a priest at thirty, and passed his entire life in the house at Jarrow, which had been founded in 682 and formed one monastery together with Wearmouth. We know of one external visit which he paid to Archbishop Egbert at York, but otherwise he seems to have kept within the walls of his monastery. His dying moments were divided between religious exercises and the dictation of the last sentences of a work which he just lived to finish. His works embrace the whole compass of the learning of the age. Numbering more than forty, they may be divided into four classes: Theological, consisting chiefly of allegorical commentaries on the Scriptures, which were completed after 709; Scientific Treatises, exhibiting the imperfect knowledge of science from Pliny to his own time; Grammatical works, which display much learning, with some correct but lifeless Latin poems; and Historical compositions, which

place him in the first rank among medieval writers. These include an early work, De sex ætatibus seculi, written for St. Wilfrid's approbation, and a Life of St. Cuthbert and of the abbots of his own monasteryBenedict and the learned Ceolfrid; but his greatest work is the Ecclesiastical History of the AngloSaxons from their first settlement in England, which was afterwards translated into English by King Alfred. He used the aid of the most learned men of his time in collecting the documents and traditions of the various kingdoms, and there were few great prelates or monks with whom, in collecting these details, he did not correspond.

Bede was surrounded by a number of literary friends. He knew St. Wilfrid; he received Holy Orders at the hands of St. John of Beverley, to whom northern learning was much indebted; and he was the intimate friend of a third Bishop of Hexham, the erudite Acca, to whom he dedicated some of his works. His work, however, was carried on by his pupil EGBERT, Archbishop of York (circ. 678-766), brother of Edbert, King of Northumbria, and founder of the greatest of all the English schools of learning, the School of York. Egbert reformed his distracted diocese, and made York Minster the wonder of the North, placing in it a splendid library and raising round it a school which may be called the first English University. His own writings were chiefly on points of discipline, and two of them, the Confessionale and Pænitentiale, were written in Anglo-Saxon as well as in Latin. His work was carried on and brought to perfection by his kinsman and successor ALBERT or ETHELBERT, archbishop from 776 to 782. Albert entrusted the care of the Cathedral School to a young native of York and pupil of the seminary, who had just been ordained deacon. This was the great ALCUIN (735-804), the most illustrious of our early Latin scholars. Under him the school rose to its greatest fame ; but, when he left, its reputation sank, and, during the troubles of the early part of the ninth century, it died out

altogether. Eanbald, a pupil of Alcuin, succeeded Albert in 782 and sent Alcuin on a mission to Rome. On his way back Alcuin met Charlemagne, and was persuaded to remain at his Court till 790, when he revisited England on a mission to Offa of Mercia. He returned to Charlemagne's Court, and resided there and at Tours till his death, holding a series of magnificent appointments. His works were commentaries, dogmatic and practical treatises, lives of saints, several very interesting letters, and a number of Latin poems, chiefly historical. Among these are an elegy on the destruction of Lindisfarne by the Danes, which took place in 793, when he had settled permanently on the Continent, and a poem on the Bishops and Saints of the Church of York, containing much useful information about the school. What England lost in Alcuin, the Continent gained; but the fact that the School of York was weakened, not so much by internal decay, as by a kind of gradual transplantation to France, is little to his credit as an Englishman. Patriotism was, however, not so much of a virtue in those days of petty kingdoms as it became later on.

(d) It must not be forgotten that these writers of Latin prose had certain predecessors, who were not Saxons, but belonged to the old Celtic race. The great Christian activity of Ireland made it a centre of learning while England was still a pagan country, and the efforts of Irish missionaries, and notably of the great St. Columba, reached the West Coast of Scotland at an early date, and afterwards spread to the North of England. GILDAS, a noble Celt, lived from about 493 to 570, and, like so many of the British Celts after the Saxon invasion, fled to Armorica and founded the monastery of St. Gildas de Ruis, of which, five centuries later, Abelard became abbot. He wrote a Latin letter to his fellowcountrymen, declaiming against the vices of the day, and a History of Britain. A similar history, of doubtful authenticity, was written in the ninth century by NENNIUS.

ST. COLUMBANUS (circ. 543-615) was an Irish Celt from the monastery at Bangor, on Belfast Lough, who set out thence at the head of a mission to the eastern parts of Gaul, Switzerland, and the south-west of Germany. He was the founder of the monasteries of Luxeuil in the Vosges, and Bobbio in Lombardy. He wrote in Latin several theological treatises, six poems, and some letters. Another writer of the same period was ST. ADAMNANUS, Abbot of Iona, who wrote the Life of St. Columba. Nearly two centuries later Ireland sent forth JOHANNES SCOTUS (d. 877), surnamed from his native land ERIGENA, who settled in France and became, by his dialectic skill and his acquaintance with ancient philosophy, one of the founders of the philosophical sect of Realists. The story of his coming to England on Alfred's invitation is more than doubtful. The work of these writers cannot be said to have much to do with English literature; but by Gildas and Nennius in Brittany were propagated the popular myths which in time were collected into the legend of King Arthur.

III. The VERNACULAR ANGLOSAXON PROSE LITERATURE contains few but great names. Above all shines that of KING ALFRED (849-901), the story of whose early training and life-long self-discipline needs not to be recounted here. His early love for the old national poetry, the growing neglect of Latin even by the priests, and the eager desire, of which he himself tells us, that the people might enjoy the treasures of learning collected in the churches for security from the invaders, urged him to the culture of the native tongue for popular instruction. While inviting over learned men to repair the decay of scholarship, the king himself set the example of translating existing works into the vernacular. Having learned Latin only late in life, he did not disdain the help of scholars like Asser in clearing up grammatical difficulties, while he brought to the work untiring industry, great capacity of comprehending the author's general meaning, and sound judgment upon

points needing illustration. His most important translations were those of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Ancient History of Orosius, Boëthius' De Consolatione Philosophia, and, for the use of the clergy, the Pastorale of St. Gregory. According to William of Malmesbury, Alfred had begun an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalms shortly before his death. Among other works which have been attributed to him without much authenticity, are Alfred's Proverbs, a translation of Esop's Fables, and a metrical version of the Metres of Boëthius. Many works were translated by his order or after his example-for instance, the Dialogues of Gregory, by Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester; but few of these remain. The new intellectual impulse, given by Alfred's policy of calling foreign scholars into the realm, was followed by other kings down to the eve of the Conquest, and sustained the activity of Anglo-Saxon literature for some time.

The English prose, inaugurated by Alfred, was brought a step further by ALFRIC (circ. 955-1025), a monk of Winchester and pupil of Ethelwold. He became Abbot of Eynsham about 1005, and died there, but most of his work in English was produced at Winchester. While in charge of the monastery at Cerne Abbas, from 987 to 989, he seems to have practised himself in writing, and his eighty Homilies were published before 994 His chief work was the translation of the Pentateuch and of other books of the Old Testament, including Judith, which had also been treated in verse by the continuators of Cadmon. He wrote numerous other theological treatises both in English and Latin. As a grammarian and as a teacher at Winchester, he laboured to revive the neglected study of Latin by his Latin Grammar (from Donatus and Priscian), his Glossary, and his Colloquium (a conversation book). This last was republished by his name. sake and pupil ALFRIC BATA, (Al. 1005). To catalogue Alfric's numerous English and Latin works would be a long task. After he

went to Eynsham he wrote chiefly in Latin, and his most important work during his later life was the life of his master, the great Ethelwold. He must not be confounded with Alfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1006, with Alfric Puttoc, Archbishop of York, who died in 1051, or with Alfric, Bishop of Crediton, who died in 994. Alfric was the second creator of English prose; modelling himself at first on Alfred, he developed a manner of his own which became the chief force in English style during the eleventh century. The principal writer of the eleventh century, other than Alfric, was WULFSTAN (d. 1023), Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York, who wrote some homilies and a passionate Appeal to the Angles, blaming their vices and irreligion for the disasters they were suffering at the hands of the Danes.

It remains to notice two great monuments of Anglo-Saxon prose literature, the Chronicle and the Laws. The Saxon Chronicle is a record of the history of the people, compiled at first, according to one statement, by Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. Down to 891, it is written by one hand-some conjecture that of Alfred himself, who had certainly encouraged its compilation. Thence it was continued, as a contemporary record, in various styles, to the middle of the twelfth century, and breaks off abruptly, after a career of increasing dulness, in the first year of Henry II (1154). The three main portions are known as the Winchester Annals, which go down to 1070 and then begin to be written in Latin, the Worcester Annals, which go down to 1079, and the Peterborough Annals, which collated previous editions and completed the work. As a whole, the Chronicle is dry and lifeless, full of gaps, and displays towards the end a singular want of historical talent or selection.

The fragments of the AngloSaxon Laws go back as early as the reign of Ethelbert, King of Kent, but the laws of this date are reduced to the language of a later age. Alfred, who began the work, collating the three separate

of the new learning before the Conquest, although she helped to prepare its way by sending forth such men as Erigena and Alcuin. Erigena, indeed, as early as the ninth century, had employed philosophical methods in religious discussion. But he was a neo-Platonist: the Schoolmen were Aristotelians. The new learning not only entered in the train of the Conqueror, but was fostered by his personal influence. William, and nearly all his successors down to Henry III, were themselves well educated, and patronised literature and art. It seems to have been the illiteracy of the Saxon bishops and abbots, and not merely political motives, that caused their deposition; their places were filled by the most learned of the Norman ecclesiastics. Lanfranc and St. Anselm themselves occupied the see of Canterbury. HERMAN, Bishop of Salisbury, founded a great library; GODFREY, prior of St. Swithun's at Winchester, wrote Latin epigrams in the style of Martial; and GEOFFREY, an eminent scholar from the University of Paris, founded a school at Dunstable, and acted, with his scholars, a drama of his own on the Life of St. Katharine. Numerous as were the Saxon monasteries, no less than 557 new religious houses were founded between the Conquest and the reign of John. All of these, as well as the great secular cathedrals like Lincoln, had schools for those who were destined to the Church, while general schools were founded in the towns and villages. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge sprang into existence, by a series of political and social circumstances, in the course of the twelfth century. The origin of Oxford seems to have been the quarrel between Henry II and the University of Paris on account of the support given by the Parisian doctors to Becket. Henry issued a statute prohibiting Englishmen from studying at Paris, and, as the first mention of Oxford as a University occurs soon after this, the theory 'seems more than merely probable. Similarly, Cambridge is supposed to have originated in a quarrel between John

and the Oxford students, which caused a migration. The importance of Oxford during the Middle Ages was much greater than that of Cambridge; but it is obvious that, when the prohibition on Parisian study was removed, the prestige of the English University remained inferior to that of Paris. Oxford, in fact, during the first century of its existence, was regarded as a portal to the great continental Universities of Paris and Bologna. English students resorted to these in large numbers, and formed at Paris one of the "four nations." Classical learning revived in the Universities, and was extended in the thirteenth century from the Latin poets to Greek and even Hebrew. This was in a great measure due to the influence of the great Schoolman, ROBERT GROSSETESTE, Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1253, in whose immense diocese the University of Oxford was situated. About the same time the invention of the art of making paper from linen rags more than made up for the growing lack of parchment and gave a new mechanical impulse to litera

ture.

Meanwhile, the tenacity with which the English language held its ground among the common people caused the ultimate fruit of these movements to appear in the formation of a truly English literature during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

It remains to mention the classes of literature and the chief writers of the period. As literature was cultivated almost entirely by the clergy and the minstrels, nearly all the prose works were in Latin and the poetry in Norman-French, excluding, however, the contemporaneous SemiSaxon literature (see below, C). An age of violence and oppression permitted but little popular literature, in the proper sense.

I. ANGLO-NORMAN AND ANGLOSAXON LITERATURE IN LATIN.1. Theologians and Schoolmen.LANFRANC (circ. 1005-1089) was a Lombard of Pavia, where, after studying in other Italian Universities, he practised as a pleader. Removing