Thus we have arrived at the verge of that catastrophe which closes for ever the singular greatness of Anglia. Charles brought learning to France by drawing from Anglia and from Italy the best plants for his new field; he inherited the civilising labours of the Saxon missionaries in his dominions beyond the Rhine; he founded a centre of power and a centre of education together; and France remained the chief seat of learning throughout the Middle Ages.[73] The glory of a European position in literature can no longer be claimed for England. Through the remainder of our narrative we must be content with a provincial sphere; and our compensation must be found in the fact that the vernacular element is all the more freely developed.
[64] In the famous manuscript of the “Ecclesiastical History” of Bede, which is commonly known as the Moore manuscript, because it passed with the library of Bishop Moore (Ely) to the University of Cambridge, is in a hand which is thought to be as old as the time of Bede, who died in 735.
[65] Bede gives the “sense” of this first hymn as follows:—“Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam creatoris et consilium illius, facta patris gloriae; quomodo ille, cum sit aeternus deus, omnium miraculorum auctor extitit, qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro culmine tecti, dehinc terram custos humani generis omnipotens creavit.”—“Ecclesiastical History,” iv. 24.
[66] Adolf Ebert’s account of Bede in “History of Christian-Latin Literature,” translated by Mayor and Lumby in their admirable edition of the third and fourth books of Bede’s “Church History” (Pitt Press Series), 1878, p. 11.
[67] The general correctness of our translation is assured by the fact that the Latin text in which it is embodied supplies a Latin translation, thus:—“quod ita latine sonat: ‘ante necessarium exitum prudentior quam opus fuerit nemo existit, ad cogitandum videlicet antequam hinc proficiscatur anima, quid boni vel mali egerit, qualiter post exitum judicanda fuerit.’”—“Bedæ Hist. Eccl.,” iii., iv. (Mayor and Lumby), p. 177.
[68] Page 14.
[69] There has been a recent discussion of this question by Professor Wülcker in “Anglia,” with a negative result. But the conclusion rests on too slight a basis.
[70] “Milton has the same idea in a kindred passage, but it is not so terse, so condensed, as Cædmon’s:—
‘Yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe.’