His
great work was the establishment of the Benedictines in the place of the
regular clergy: and the reform at any rate insured the rise of a number
of new monasteries, each with its busy 'scriptorium,' out of which the
library would grow. We must say a word in remembrance of Archbishop
AElfric, the author of a great part of our English Chronicle. He was
trained at Winchester, where the illuminators, it is said, were 'for a
while the foremost in the world.' He enacted that every priest should
have at least a psalter and hymn-book and half a dozen of the most
important service-books, before he could hope for ordination. His own
library, containing many works of great value, was bequeathed to the
Abbey of St. Alban's. We end the story of the Anglo-Saxon books with a
mention of Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter, who gave a magnificent
donation out of his own library to the Cathedral Church. The catalogue is
still extant, and some of the volumes are preserved at Oxford. There were
many devotional works of the ordinary kind; there were 'reading-books for
winter and summer,' and song-books, and especially 'night-songs'; but the
greatest treasure of all was the 'great book of English poetry,' known as
the Exeter Book, in which Cynewulf sang of the ruin of the 'purple arch,'
and set forth the Exile's Lament and the Traveller's Song.
CHAPTER III.
ENGLAND.
A more austere kind of learning came in with the Norman Conquest.
Lanfranc and Anselm introduced at Canterbury a devotion to science, to
the doctrines of theology and jurisprudence, and to the new discoveries
which Norman travellers were bringing back from the schools at Salerno.
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