BOOK of his contemporaries exhibited. But it must be VI. recollected of him, as of all the writers of the Anglo-Saxon period, that their greatest merit confifted in acquiring and teaching the knowledge which other countries and times had accumulated. They added nothing to the stock themselves. They left it as they found it. But their examples and tuition contributed to preferve it and to tranfmit it unimpaired to others. Unless fuch men had exifted, the knowledge which the talents of mankind had been for ages flowly acquiring would have gradually mouldered away with the few perishing MSS. which contained it. Europe would have become what Turkey is, and mankind would have been now flowly emerging into the infancy of literature and science, instead of rejoicing in that glorious lities, to fow the feeds of learning in the minds of your fubjects in thefe parts; mindful of the faying of the wifest man, In the morning fow thy feed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knoweft not whether shall profper, either this or that. To do this hath been the most delightful employment of my whole life. In my youthful years, I fowed the feeds of learning in the flourishing feminaries of my native foil of Britain, and in my old age I am doing the fame in France; praying to God, that they may fpring up and flourish in both countries. I know alfo, O prince beloved of God, and praifed by all good men! that you • exert all your influence in promoting the interests of • learning and religion; more noble in your actions than in your royal birth. May the Lord Jefus Chrift preferve and profper you in all your great defigus, and at length < bring you to the enjoyment of celestial glory.'—How few princes enjoy the happiness of fuch a correfpondence, or have the wisdom and virtue to encourage it!" v. 4. p. 37. 6 VI. manhood which furrounds us, and the attain- c H A P. ment of which was prepared by the humble labours of the men whom these pages have commemorated, and of those who in these and the fucceeding times pursued their courfe and emulated their ambition. THE hiftory of the literature of the age which fucceeded Alcuin has been already stated in the life of Alfred. The life of Dunftan, who fhone in the following century, has been alfo given. We may therefore dismiss this part of our fubject with a fhort account of Elfric, to whofe labours, in the tenth century, our countrymen at large were much indebted, as his literary efforts were chiefly directed to make learning popular by transferring it to the vernacular tongue. ELFRIC. Of the three Elfrics who are faid to have existed in this century and the next, we fhall only notice the author of the Translations. Very little is known of him accurately; and therefore we shall only cite a few circumftances from his own prefaces and dedications. HE addreffes his tranflation of the book of Ge. nefis to the Ealdorman Ethelweard, who, he tells us, had requested him to tranflate it into English as far as the hiftory of Ifaac, from which period fome other perfon had made a version of it before his time. The addrefs begins, "Elfric, monk, humbly greets the Ealdorman Ethelweard 36" 35 Pref. to Thwaites' Heptateuch. BOOK VI. 37 He calls himself sometimes monk, and sometimes monk and mafs prieft 3, and fometimes abbot 38. He defcribes himself as the alumnus of Athelwold, the Bishop of Winchester, in Edgar's reign 39. He fometimes addreffes the Archbishop Sigeric 40, and fometimes the Archbishop Wulftan"; the one of York, the other of Canterbury. In one preface he fays he was fent "in the days of Ethelred the king, on the death of Athelwold, by the Bifhop "Elfeage, to a monaftery called Cernel, at the request of the Thegn Ethelmer." From the mention of these perfons it is obvious that he was born before the reign of Ethelred, and flourished both during it and beyond it. He compofed or tranflated many homilies and lives of faints and religious treatises. We have his Gloffary and Colloquius of Latin and Saxon. His Excerpta from the Latin Grammarians and from Bede; and his tranflations from the Scriptures. Thefe yet exist in MS. in our public libraries 42. WE must admire, in all his performances, his good intentions, his piety, his induftry, and his utility; but we shall find very little intellectual eminence to appreciate. ABBO, the writer of the life of Edmund King of Eaft Anglia, and Adelhard and Bridferth, the biographers of Dunftan, have been already noticed in 37 MS. B. P. Cant. Wanley, 39 MS. Wanley, 153. 40 MS. Wanley, 156. 153. Bib. Bod. Wanl. p. 22. 4 MS. Wanley, 22. 58. "A long lift of them may be found in Wanley's Catalogue. VI. our preceding volumes. The fermons of Bifhop CHAP. Lupus, and the hiftory of Ethelwerd, have alfo been mentioned. They all belong to the latter part of the Anglo-Saxon period. It would carry us beyond the limits allotted to this history to give a minute detail of the various chronicles which our ancestors compofed before the Norman Conqueft for preferving the moft important of the public events, or to detail the many' Saxon treatifes which were written on religious and other fubjects. The curious reader will find them carefully catalogued by Wanley, in his Appendix to Hickes's Thefaurus. CHAP. VII. The Arts and Sciences of the Anglo-Saxons. **THIS VI. THEIR MUSIC. BOOK HIS delightful art has been as univerfal as poetry; but, like poetry, has every where exifted in different degrees of refinement. Among rude nations, it is in a rude and noify ftate. Among the more civilifed, it has attained all the excellence which fcience, tafte, feeling, and delicate organization can give. WE derive the greateft portion of our most interesting mufic from harmony of parts, and we atain all the variety of expreffion and scientific combination which are familiar to us by the happy use of our mufical notation. The antients were deficient in both these refpects. They had no harmony of parts, and therefore all their inftruments and voices were in unifon, and fo miferable was their notation, that it has been contended by the learned, with every appearance of truth, that they had no other method of marking time than by the quantity of the fyllables of the words placed over the notes. SAINT JEROM might therefore well fay on mufic, "Unless they are retained by the memory "founds perifh, because they cannot be written'." THE ancients, fo late as the days of Caffiodorus, or the fixth century, ufed three forts of mufical Jerom ad Dard, de Muf. Inftr. |