Page:Leechdoms wortcunning and starcraft of early England volume 3.djvu/15



third volume, now presented to the reader, contains some additions to the records of Saxon learning and study as exhibited in the two preceding volumes, showing that our forefathers, just as we do, made the better knowledge of Rome and Hellas a principal object of their pursuit. Some may decry the picture thus unveiled to view, as fetching up again the old sages, whose names and writings have been ringing in our ears ever since the days of childhood. They want something deep dyed in heathen lore, full of Thor and Woden and the goddess Hel. These more curious morsels, seasonings of the literary dish, have not been altogether absent before, and there is a savoury sprinkling of them now. Historic truth, however, offers us no unmingled colours, no whitewashed wall, no grey stucco, as its portraiture of the past, but a varied picture, such as might be drawn of the present day. For as now the general instruction in some Latin poetry and history, some Greek declensions and sentences, tinges with a foreign complexion the educated classes, and gives them a separate language and different associations from those of the more genuine Englishman; so also in Saxon times, the more inquisitive and leisured men went abroad for increase of knowledge, to the masters of philosophy and science.

It ought to be considered no small gain that in the collection now printed we are allowed an insight into the notions and prepossessions upon scientific subjects of the less instructed portion of Saxon society. The unfounded hopes, scruples, and alarms of the ignorant,