had the rhythmic fire within his soul; and when occasion presented itself at the hands of Hilda, the Northumbrian Abbess, Cadmon composed and sang the best paraphrases of the Scriptures which ancient England produced. This was in the last half of the seventh century. Bæda, a great scholar of St. Paul's monastery at Jarrow, Northumberland, during the early years of the eighth century, wrote many treatises in Latin which were used as textbooks in even far-away Italy. The work from his hand which is of more interest to us, however, was the last one he wrote, a translation into English of the Gospel of St. John. The torch of learning passed on to Alcuin in the eighth century, to Ælfred in the ninth, and to Ælfric in the tenth. Alcuin is a prominent figure in the history of education, as it was he whom Charlemagne, the great king of all the Franks, summoned in 782 to come to the continent and take charge of his Palace School. Alcuin was of Northumbria; Ælfred and Ælfric of Wessex. Ælfred sometimes seems to us to have been almost as legendary as Arthur of the Round Table. But he was a very real and human character, a good and wise king, a brave fighter, and an admirable scholar. Most of his scholarly work consisted of translations from the Latin into English. It is to him also that we owe that most interesting book known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Ælfred began the records which we find in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle by directing his helpers to compile from the Ecclesiastical History of Bæda and from the writings of some other chroniclers the events which had occurred in Britain from the time of the Roman invasion. After Ælfred's time the work was continued by writers contemporaneous with the events recorded, until the death of King Stephen in 1154. Ælfric was a grammarian, a glossary maker, a writer of sermons, and a translator of a part of the Old Testament. Dry |