Page:Historical Works of Venerable Bede vol. 2.djvu/40

 dice; but to play with his book as became his condition."

But the duties pointed out in these extracts do not seem to have satisfied the Venerable Bede; he applied himself to every branch of literature and science then known, and besides study, and writing comments on the Scriptures, he treated on several subjects, on history, astrology, orthography, rhetoric, and poetry; in the latter of which he was not inferior to other poets of that age, as appears by what he has left us on the Life of St. Cuthbert, and some places in his Ecclesiastical History; he wrote likewise two books of the Art of Poetry, which are not now extant; a book of Hymns, and another of Epigrams. Thus this studious and venerable man employed all that little time he could save from the call of his duty, in improving the souls and understandings of men; which he did not only to mankind in general, but more particularly to those pupils immediately under his care, which were no less than six hundred, the number of the brothers of that convent. Of these, several by the influence of his teaching came to make considerable figures in the world, as Eusebius or Huetbert, to whom he inscribed his book, De Ratione Temporum, and his Interpretation on the Apocalypse, and who was