efforts upon his pupils and their successors. Thus,
because of this complexity of elements and the
additional embarrassment caused by the imper-
fection of our records, there have been almost as
many opinions as writers about Alcuin. "Consid-
ering the period in which he lived, he may be
regarded as a universal genius," ¹ is the judgment
of one of his biographers. Another depicts him
as "full of faith in the power and the destiny of
man's intellect," and in fact quite a modern in his
attitude. ² The Abbé Laforêt in his sketch exceeds
all bounds of moderation in eulogizing Alcuin's
learning. "The erudition of Alcuin," he writes,
"from whatever point it be viewed, embraced both
the world of secular and of sacred learning. On
one side he brings before us the most famous phi-
losophers, historians and poets of Greece and
Rome, and on the other exhibits a knowledge of
the whole of ecclesiastical history and Christian
doctrine." ³ Another, with more justice, rates him
as "the most learned man of his age," ⁴ but leaves
the value of this opinion to be further determined
by the character of the learning to which Alcuin had
access. Less complimentary, as well as disappoint-
ing is the judgment which makes him merely "an
estimable man, and a good administrator, but of no

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