the world: that is one side of it. The island and its saint became powers in the world; the relations of Iona with larger places are practically important, and can be explained to any reasonable man. There is something besides piety in the mind of the visitor to Iona, even from the days when the first settlers, and Columcille himself among them, were apt to be disturbed by the voices of pilgrims calling for the ferry across the sound. Iona was a real place, with a calculable value, much occupied in affairs. On the other hand, there are certain lights and certain conditions of the mind when Iona becomes again like one of the isles of Maelduin or St Brandan. The beauty of Adamnan's work is that it represents truly, one cannot but feel, both the serious solid life of Iona, such as makes it important in history, and also the vaguer atmosphere about the island. It is not a fairy story, for all the wonders in it. Yet it is not mere common-sense. The restlessness of the sea is in it, the sea that drew the Irish saints on toward the desert refuge it seemed to offer them; such as was Cormac MacLethan who, from voyages far to the North, to the Orkneys and even beyond, was twice brought back, and touched at Iona and was greeted by Columba. And in a more familiar way, many things are considered by Adamnan and Columba besides the fame of their house they have to think of the harvest, the cows, salmon, seals. A seal-poacher from Colonsay was brought up before Columba, who told him not to be a thief, but to come and ask if he wanted supplies: and sent him away with some sheep instead. Swine, : fed on the autumn mast, are admired by the saint, as they are by the Irish poets. Nothing in Adamnan ist better known than the story of Columba's last days and of the old white horse that came to say good-bye to him the old horse that used to carry the milk-pails. Not less beautiful is Columba's thoughtfulness for the tired heron blown over from Ireland, a guest on the island for three days, then returning, as Columba foretold, to "the sweet land whence she came." All Adamnan's stories are true to Iona, and her very sands are dear to him. Between Bede and Alcuin there is an interval of a generation, during which few books were published -a period of study, especially in Italy and Boniface. in the Northumbrian school of York, from which the learning of the Carolingian age was drawn. It was a time also of missionary enterprise. St Boniface had a share in both kinds of labour, and his house of Fulda made a new station in the forest of barbarism, from which the ideas and methods of York were dispensed in due time for the proper training of the Old Saxons. In his own writings Boniface followed the English manner: he has the same tastes as Aldhelm and Bede, shown in his Latin riddles, his tale of a vision like that of Drihthelm, and his general encouragement of literature. In the later part of the eighth century begins the great age of medieval learning, the educational work The Carolingian of Charles the Great, which in spite of political troubles is continued through the century following. The variety of Latin books which Age. appeared in those times is proof that their learning was more than spiritless repetition. There was some leisure and freedom, and much literary ambition. The Latin poets of the court of Charlemagne have an enthusiasm and delight in classical poetry, and also that good conceit of their own immortal works which is common in later humanists. In prose there was no less activity. Besides the scientific treatises and the commentaries, the edifying works of Alcuin and others, there were histories written with different motives. Two authors especially stand out, Einhard and Paul the Lombardthe one distinguished for political sense, the other for his gift of narrative, both of them fresh and independent minds. The scholarly spirit of the ninth century, represented in the letters of Lupus of Ferrières, is not limited to the orthodox routine. One of the chief scholars, with more Greek than most others, Erigena, is famous for more than his learning; as a philosopher who, whatever his respect for the Church, acknowledged no authority higher than Reason. Alcuin is the name that in general history represents the learning and literature of the age of Charlemagne.1 His own works hardly equal his Alcuin. fame as a teacher, though their very faults, their want of orginal substance, their excess of commonplace, may be due to his educational virtues and his faculty for making things clear to an audience of pupils. Alcuin certainly has nothing like the strong independent mind of Bede, and never takes up any 1 Migne, P. L., 100; Monumenta Alcuiniana, ed. Jaffé, 1873. research for its own sake and the scientific pleasure of the work. His ideas are all diluted; the audience is always with him. Of his professional writings, the dialogues on the Trivial Arts are more attractive than his morality or theology. In the Grammar a Frank and a Saxon pupil take the parts of Sandford and Merton; in Rhetoric and Dialectic the pupil is Charles the Emperor himself. Alcuin's Latin poems, like those of his contemporaries generally, are greatly influenced by Fortunatus ; they have the same artifice, the same courtly good humour. Some of his poems are historical-the Life of his kinsman St Willibrord (which Alcuin also described in prose), the history of York, the elegy on the ruin of Lindisfarne. But, as with Fortunatus, the historical poems have less interest than the occasional pieces, epigrams and epistles, in which is expressed the life of the poet and the familiar conversation of other accomplished gentlemen, their various polite diversions, their game of literature, their ornamental names. These pastoral vanities of the great Emperor and his household remain in the memory, an inseparable accident of the heroic story. Of all the poems of Alcuin the most notable is the Contention of Winter and Spring, with its affinities to widely distant families in literary history; recalling the debates of the classical eclogues, anticipating the later mediæval "disputisons" in different languages, and mingling with the classical type of verse and expression a thoroughly Northern sort of sentiment. Here, as in Anglo-Saxon poetry, it is the cuckoo that breaks the silence of winter, a bird of good omen, though Winter in the dialogue does not think so. Winter loves the rest, the good cheer, the fire in hall, and is slow to wake to the business of spring. There is no peace when once the voice of the cuckoo has been heard.1 Alcuin's letters are full of the same domestic interest as his occasional verse; but his prose rhetoric, like the prose of Fortunatus, runs into greater extravagance than his not over temperate poems, and the levities. are sometimes depressing. He writes to his friend. Bishop Arno of Strassburg by his affectionate name of "Aquila" (" Earn ")—“ venerando volucri et vere amantissimo Aquila Albinus salutem "-and the Emperor is treated with the same kind of florid style as Cassiodorus had used in the service of Theodoric. Theodulfus. Theodulfus,2 Bishop of Orleans (+821), a Goth by birth, was the principal poet of the court of Charles the Great. Perhaps his value as a representative person and (in a sense) official poet is gained at the expense of his poetry. He has already been spoken of along with Fortunatus, but he does not come up to the measure of the earlier poet. He has not the same life, the same glorious use of adjectives, or sense of the value of syllables; he is more respectable and correct. Theodulfus was a great personage. One of his longer poems, his admonition to judges, contains a long and amusing account of his journey in the South as Missus Dominicus in 798, and 1 Dümmler, Poetæ Latini Evi Carolini, i. 270 (Mon. Germ. Hist.) 2 Theodulfi Carmina, ed. Dümmler, P. Lat. Carol., i. pp. 437-581. |