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Previous to the introduction of Christianity, the English possessed no literature worthy of the name. It is not, however, to be supposed that the people were destitute of intellectual power; for when our forefathers began to apply themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, the progress of literature was remarkably rapid. Within one hundred years after the light of knowledge dawned upon the English, Bede appeared, with other men, whose abilities and teaching exerted a marked influence upon the spread of English learning.
The English scholars, though defective in actual knowledge, had just conceptions of the objects of philosophy. Alcuin defines it to be the study of natural things, and the knowledge of divine and human affairs. All the subjects comprised by Alcuin in physics are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. That larger field of science to which we now give the name of physics had not yet been discovered, nor had chemistry, mineralogy, and the other analogous sciences.
FIRST TWO LINES OF HORACE'S ODE TO MÆCENAS.
(From MS. of Horace's Works of the Tenth Century in the National Library, Paris.)
ENGLISH WRITING OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.
A fair idea of the condition of mental and moral science previous to the Norman conquest, may be obtained from an extant dialogue between Alcuin and Pepin, the son of Charles the Great. Some of the questions, with the answers, are subjoined:—
"What is life?—The gladness of the blessed; the sorrow of the wretched; the expectation of death.