Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/30

12 letters in verse, now in the rhymed couplets of his own day, now m hexameters. Sometimes k the initials of the an acrostich : once the saint writes a long letter composed of a string of adonics. Meagre as his performances may appear, if judged by ancient models. Columban's more serious poems are neither awkward nor ungraceful. All of them are full of conceits and mythological allusions; they read as the work of an entire pagan. Equally they prove the breadth and freedom of the training which he had received at Banchor and which was the peculiar possession of the Scots. There is a vein of poetry running through the whole lives of these Irish confessors, a poetry of which the stories of their acts are indeed better witnesses than their practical essays in verse-making. They brought imagination, as they brought spiritual force, into a world well-nigh sunk in materialism.

Their lighter productions shew one side of the Scottish nature: their earnest, single-hearted pursuit of learning in the widest sense attainable, their solid hard work as