12 Mr. Charles L. Barnes on 



these volumes, but they are not to be found at the Reference 

 Library, and I have not been able to discover when or why 

 the Society dissolved, unless it died a natural death on the 

 publication of the Rolls Series. 



II. " Biographia Britannica Literaria," by Thomas 

 Wright. 2 vols. Published for the Royal Society of 

 Literature, 1842. 



III. "Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum," edited 

 by T. Wright. 1863. Rolls Series. 



IV. " Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and Starcraft of 

 Early England," edited by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne. 

 3 vols. 1866. Rolls Series. 



V. " Roger Bacon, Opus Minus, Opus Tertium, and 

 Compendium Philosophise," edited by J. S. Brewer. 1859. 

 Also in the Rolls Series. 



Many fragments have also been gleaned from the 

 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Dictionary of National 

 Biography. 



This country, in its earlier days, lay quite outside the 

 sphere of scientific influence ; remote from Egypt, Rome, 

 or Greece, and the arena of constant struggles between the 

 native races and their invaders, it offered more attractions 

 to warriors and missionaries than to philosophers, conse- 

 quently we may pass over, not only the whole Roman 

 period, but a considerable interval after the invasion of the 

 SaxOns in 449, without finding a single circumstance to 

 dwell upon. The conversion of this people to Christianity 

 was begun in 597 by Augustine, at the instance of Pope 

 Gregory the Great, and the intellectual awakening which 

 followed from this event soon bore fruit in the development 

 of the language and literature. The poems of Caedmon, 

 Cynewulf, and the legendary Beowulf are the earliest 

 specimens of Anglo-Saxon achievements in a most difficult 

 art, and date from 660 to 700 or thereabouts. 



In the 8th century the cultivation of letters was taken 



