Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/37

Rh can only be a selection of what he thought the most important. Among them appear the Greek fathers, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Basil, – partly perhaps in their original tongue; – with a good number of the Latins. Of classical poets are named Virgil, Statius, and Lucan; of their degenerate successors, Sedulius, Juvencus, Arator, and Fortunatus. History is represented by Pompeius Trogus, that is, in the abridgement which we know as Justin, and Bede; natural history by Pliny. Cicero is named only as an orator. For logic Alcuin mentions Aristotle, – certainly in a Latin guise, – and the translators and commentators, Victorinus and Boëthius; for grammar Donatus, Priscian, and Servius. These are the better known of the authors recited in this interesting poem. Alcuin studied them with the simple purpose of fitting himself to be a teacher. He adopts and adapts, as he thinks most appropriate to his scope; but he creates nothing. On the problems which were so soon to agitate the schools, the nature of being, and the relation of objects to thought, he has little to say of his own; his psychology is directly derived from saint Augustin, his logic from the abbreviators of Aristotle. Learning in England had indeed begun to decline, but before the process had gone too far, Alcuin transplanted it; and, whatever his intellectual limitations, just such a man was needed to set on foot a sound system of education in the Frankish realm.

It has been maintained that Alcuin, at least in his later years, and the Scots with whom he worked held opposed positions in this movement; that Alcuin remained true to the tradition of saint Gregory, while the