of school-learning. The poems have a lesser value,
but contain important help for the history of the
school at York, where Alcuin was bred, and for his
later career in Frankland. But the chief interest
centres in his specifically didactic writings, for
they contain most fully his general views on edu-
cation as well as separate treatises on some of the
liberal arts.

Let it be remarked at the outset that Alcuin is
rarely an original writer, but usually a compiler and
adapter, and even at times a literal transcriber of
other men's work. He adds nothing to the sum of
learning, either by invention or by recovery of what
has been lost. What he does is to reproduce or
adapt from earlier authors such parts of their writ-
ings as could be appreciated by the age in which
he lived. Accordingly, while he must be refused
all the credit that belongs to a courageous mind
which advances beyond what has been known, he
must yet be highly esteemed for the invaluable ser-
vice he rendered as a transmitter and conserver of
the learning that was in danger of perishing, and
as the restorer and propagator of this learning in a
great empire, after it had been extinct for genera-
tions. A passage from the letter dedicating his com-
mentary on the Gospel of John to Gisela and Rotrud,
states so aptly the timorously conservative attitude
which appears in all his literary efforts, educational
or otherwise, that it is worth citing here. He
writes: "I have reverently traversed the store-
houses of the early fathers, and whatever I have

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