handled would be worth much.

There is a link between the library of Cassiodorus and our own country. A famous Latin Bible now at Florence, the Codex Amiatinus, is known to have been once in England, at Wearmouth or Jarrow, and to have been taken abroad by Ceolfrid, Abbot of those monasteries, in 716 as a present to the Pope, whom it never reached, for Ceolfrid died at Langres on his way to Rome. The story has often been told, and needs not to be dwelt upon here; but a view has been broached, and is stoutly maintained by Sir Henry Howorth, which does deserve mention and is not yet familiar. It is that the first quire in the Amiatine Bible, which contains pictures and lists of Biblical books, is actually a portion of a Bible written for Cassiodorus. There is much to be said for this, and at the least we may be sure that it is a direct copy from such a Bible. Sir Henry would go farther, and claim the whole book as Cassiodorian. I do not know that expert opinion is prepared to endorse this.

The mention of Cassiodorus has led us below the date of the "classical" period, for he died in 583. For one moment I revert to the earlier time to record an interesting example of wandering. Illustrated books of the early centuries are the greatest of rarities. The two Virgils, the Vienna and the Cotton Genesis, the Homer at Milan, the Gospels of Rossano in Calabria and those of Sinope now at Paris, the Dioscorides at Vienna, the Pentateuch of Tours, the Joshua-roll at the Vatican—these are the most famous, and there are very few beside them. Among those few are some pieces of a Latin Bible written in the fourth century, and containing parts of Samuel and Kings, with paintings which, when fresh, must have been of high excellence. They have unhappily suffered grievous damage, for they were used in the seventeenth century to make covers for municipal documents at the royal and ancient abbatial town of Quedlinburg (the scene of Canning's Rovers). The painted leaves are now at Berlin; a leaf of plain text remains at Quedlinburg. No one doubts that the book to which they belonged was made in Italy, and the likeliest history that can be imagined for it is that it was brought as a gift to the abbey by a German prince, say in the tenth century. It is hard to explain the neglect and mutilation of so noble a book, in whose contents there was nothing to offend Protestant or other religious susceptibilities. Only we find, by numerous examples, that the MSS. we should most prize now, those written in capitals or uncials with the words undivided, or in Irish or English scripts which became unfamiliar, were uniformly despised and neglected by the readers of later centuries. We meet with notes of this kind in monastic catalogues: "It cannot be read," "Old and useless," and the like. Still, one would have thought that the pictures of the Quedlinburg book would have saved it, even in a German nunnery.

Chronological Survey

Since this little book is not a treatise on palæography, a manual of art, or a history of learning, and yet has to touch upon all three provinces, it is important to keep it from straying too far into any of them, and this is one of the most difficult tasks that I have ever enterprised. The temptation to dilate upon the beauty and intrinsic interest of the MSS. and upon the characteristic scripts of different ages and countries is hard to resist. And, indeed, without some slight elucidation of such matters my readers may be very much at fault.

I had begun a geographical survey of the field, taking countries as the units, and had written upon Italy and Spain, and attempted France. But I found that when the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were reached my tract was becoming a disquisition upon palæography, art, and learning, and, of course, was failing to do justice either to any one of them or to what it had promised in its title. I now think that a chronological survey will be more practicable, and that it will be best to take first the subject of book-production, looking at each country in turn in a single period, instead of following the course taken by each, from the sixth century to the fifteenth.

Sixth and Seventh Centuries.—Italy, France, and Spain are the main centres. Ireland is active in learning, and in the second half of the seventh century England, under Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian, produces schools which rival the Irish, and, in the person of Bede, has the greatest scholar of the time. Some of the great Irish monasteries, such as Bobbio, Luxeuil, St. Gall, are founded on the Continent.

Books are produced in considerable numbers in Italy, France, Spain; and from Italy they are exported, especially by English pilgrims, such as Benedict Biscop. The Gospel harmony written in 546 by or for Bishop Victor of Capua comes to England, and goes abroad again, with St. Boniface, perhaps, and now rests at Fulda, where also his body lies. A copy of St. Jerome on Ecclesiastes, written in Italy in the sixth or seventh century, has in it the Anglo-Saxon inscription, "The book of Cuthsuuitha the Abbess." The only Abbess Cuthsuuitha we know of presided over a nunnery in or near Worcester about 690-700. Her book travelled to Germany with some British or English missionary, and is at Würzburg. Würzburg is an Irish foundation; its apostle and patron, St. Kilian, is said to have been assassinated in 689. From Italy, too, came (most likely) the illustrated Gospels now at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (286), which belonged once to Christchurch, Canterbury; and the beautiful little copy of St. John's Gospel at Stonyhurst College, which was found in the coffin of St. Cuthbert (d. 687) when it was opened in 1104. And St. Gall must have acquired its ancient Virgil from Italy also—when, we do not know.

Spain kept her books very much to herself, one would guess, judging from the very few Spanish MSS. of this age which are to be met with in the rest of Europe. The guess, however, would not be quite correct. There was one great Spanish scholar in the seventh century, Isidore of Seville (636), and his encyclopædia (The Etymologies or Origins), which fed many later centuries with learning, made its way all over educated Europe very quickly. Not only so, but we find English scholars (Aldhelm and Bede) quoting Spanish writers on grammar and Spanish poets who were almost their own contemporaries.

Eighth Century.—This sees the last part of Bede's career (d. 734)—the zenith of English scholarship, the mission of St. Boniface (d. 758) to Germany, the meeting of Alcuin with Charlemagne (781), and the beginning of the Carolingian Renaissance. But, on the other hand, Spain is overrun by the Moors, Italy is inert, England begins to be harried by the Northmen. On the whole, if there really was a Dark Age, the middle of the eighth century seems to answer the description best. But, of course, there were points of light. The great centres of Northern France, such as Corbie and Laon, particularly Corbie, were beginning their activities of collecting and copying books. Ireland was capable of producing such a work as the Book of Kells—whether it actually falls within the century or not I will not be positive, but work of the same amazing beauty was carried out before 800. Nor was the export of treasures from Italy to England quite stopped, in spite of difficulties. At the Plantin Museum at Antwerp is a copy of the writings of the Christian poet Sedulius, which has pictures of the old Italian sort, such as we find in the frescoes of the Roman catacombs. In it is a note connecting it with a Bishop of the name of Cuthwin, who held the East Anglian see and died about 754. Another MS., at Paris, has a note describing an