Page:Cambridge Medieval History Volume 3.pdf/562

Rh duction of place-names in large numbers. Many distichs are made up of these here is one enumerating some of the rivers which watered Charlemagne's dominions:

He does not even shun Bagdad:

As amusing as any is his poem on the court (xxv), where he tells how Nardus (Einhard), Erkambald, and Osulf might serve (being all of a size, and that not great) as the three legs of a table, and how, when the poem is read aloud, a wretched Scot (possibly Clement the Irishman, the palace schoolmaster) will be in a miserable state of temper and confusion.

Two pieces of his verse, and only two, were at all commonly copied in later centuries: an extract from his Preface to the Bible finds a place in some thirteenth century Vulgates, and a part of his Palm Sunday hymn, "Gloria, laus, et honor," remains in use in the original and in vernacular versions.

What has been said of his facility in the writing of elegiac verse implies his close study of older models, particularly of Ovid. His compatriot Prudentius was also a well-read source. But on the whole his range of classical reading does not comprise unfamiliar names. We do not learn much from him about the preservation of ancient literature.

A word in conclusion as to his work on the revision of the text of the Bible. That he undertook a recension of it is not to be doubted, and it is generally agreed that we have, at Le Puy and at Paris (B.N. Lat. 9380), two copies, more or less faithful, of that recension. That he made it by the help of old Spanish manuscripts is also the prevailing view: it is probable enough that fragments of some of these survive at Orleans, whither they came from his abbey, Fleury. But neither was it a very remarkable piece of work in itself, nor did it exercise upon the history of the text an influence approaching that attributed to the contemporary Alcuinian revision.

Angilbert–Homer, as he was called – influential as he was personally, takes on the whole a secondary place among the writers. If the fragment of an epic poem on Charlemagne and Pope Leo, which contains a celebrated description of the Emperor and his family out hunting, be not his (but it probably is) there is not much to preserve his name as an author. But as Abbot of St Riquier he was zealous in collecting books–over 200 of them–for his monastery, and, if we may judge by the names of authors whom Mico had at disposal, there was a strong contingent of Latin poets amongst them.