HAMIIvTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 81 



gospels, and in various I^atin service-books of the early 

 church, occasional interlinear Saxon glosses are found ; and 

 these, with a few of the first entries in the Saxon Chronicle, 

 comprise nearly all the written Englsh, from the first ten 

 centuries, that time has spared. Karly Latin manuscripts, 

 the work of that time, there are, which are highly prized. 

 Some of them, of exquisite penmanship, are by Irish copyists. 

 For one or two of these, claim is made that they were written 

 by St. Columba, the great missionary to lona ; and two 

 preserved respectively at Oxford and Cambridge, have been 

 venerated as the very presents sent back by Gregory the 

 Great from Rome by Augustine's messengers who took the 

 news to Rome that King Ethelbert had accepted the Christian 

 faith, and had been baptized on Whit-Sunday of the year of 

 our Ivord 597. Archbishop Parker took care to preserve 

 these documents from destruction when spoliation of the 

 monasteries was made. 



Modern experts take from these early documents a 

 hundred or two of the years assigned to them by legend, but 

 leave them still priceless mementoes of national adolescence. 

 Still, though Augustine and Bede, with their thousands of 

 converts and with their cloisters at Weymouth, Jarrow and 

 Canterbury, show us the beginning of a new England, their 

 inferiors in zeal and learning were soon to follow them ; for 

 King Alfred, at the close of the ninth century, makes sad 

 complaint that already the golden age was in the past. He 

 regretfully looks back to the time when men came to England 

 for instruction, and says: "Now, very few this side the 

 Humber could render their services in English, or translate a 

 Latin letter." And, north of the Humber, he says: "I 

 ween not many could do so." And he further adds : " South 

 of the Thames, when I took the realm, I cannot think of so 

 much as a single one." 



By the middle of the twelfth century, however, most of 

 the scriptures had been translated into Early English. But 

 the full story of who the translators were, and when their 

 translations were made, has never yet been told, and likely 



