thousand in Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common
letter of salutation to another. In England, Alfred declares that he
could not recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most
civilised part of England) at the time of his accession who understood
the ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother-tongue.
Nor was this better in the time of Dunstan, when it is said, none of the
clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin letter. The homilies which
they preached were compiled for their use by some bishops, from former
works of the same kind, or the writings of the Christian fathers.... If
we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that the
darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished among
their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and
knowledge. A proneness to extol every monk of whose productions a few
letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is
related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of
the Benedictines of St. Maur, the 'Literary History of France,' and, in
a less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in most books of
this class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of inferior
names, become real giants of learning in their uncritical panegyrics.
But one might justly say, that ignorance is the smallest defect of the
writers of these dark ages. Several of these were tolerably acquainted
with books; but that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original
argument or expression. Almost every one is a compiler of scraps from
the fathers, or from such semi-classical authors as Boethius,
Cassiodorus, or Martinus Capella. Indeed, I am not aware that there
appeared more than two really considerable men in the republic of
letters from the sixth to the middle of the eleventh century--John,
surnamed Scotus, or Erigena, a native of Ireland, and Gerbert, who
became pope by the name of Sylvester II.: the first endowed with a bold
and acute metaphysical genius, the second excellent, for the time when