Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/28

10 preferment to tempt them to stay at home: poverty was their natural lot, and it might be met with as little inconvenience abroad. Thus they poured forth upon the continent, the most devoted, the least self-seeking of missionaries: how poor they were we may learn from the fact that special hostelries were founded for their reception in many places of the Frankish realm by the charity of their wealthier fellow-countrymen.

It is not however with the religious work of the Scots that we are immediately concerned: their literary tradition is still more remarkable and characteristic. Isolated in a remote island, the stream of classical learning had remained pure while the rest of Roman Europe had suffered it to be corrupted or dried up in the weary decay of the empire that followed the Teutonic influx. In Ireland it was still fresh and buoyant; and from the Irish it passed back to the continent in greater and greater waves. Of the means by which their education was acquired at home we are but scantily informed. In the seventh century, Bede tells us, the Northumbrian nobles, and others too of middle rank, flocked to the schools of Ireland; and while some faithfully dedicated themselves to the monastic life, others chose rather to pass in turn through the cells of the masters and give their labour to study: and the Scots most readily received them, and provided them daily their food without charge, and books also to read, and free instruction. But we have to guess from a variety of scattered notices and suggestions the precise way in which the Irish tradition of learning differed from that current on the continent. At one moment we read of saint Caimin, a teacher on an island