Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England. Being a ...

XXVI] 1
PREFACE.
Now if
an Italian or a Frenchman could acquire Greek,
and translate into Latin, a Saxon might do the same.
Beda' tells of Theodorus the archbishop, and abbot
Hadrianus, that they collected pupils, taught them versification,
astronomy, and the ecclesiastical arithmetic
of the computus, and some remained while Beda wrote
who were acquainted with the Greek and Latin lansruaeres
as well as with their own.^ Further on ^ Beda
gives an example of one of these disciples, Albinus,
who understood Latin not less than his own language,
English, with not a little Greek. Of Tobias, bishop of
Rochester, another of these pupils, he saj^s * that he
knew the Greek and Latin languages as familiarly as
his own.
King /Elfred and .zElfric both lament the decay of
learning consequent upon the invasions of the Danes.
Of the works translated from the Latin, by order of
Alfred and by his confidential servants or by himself,
some are, in scattered passages, turned rather literally
some are executed with great spirit, and
than correctly ;
even improved in the version. ^Elfric himself is a very
pleasing translator, he kept his own faculties alive in
the execution of his tasks ; thus he translates dactyli,
dates, as finger apples, plainly shewing that Greek words
were known to him ; it is also striking to find him correcting
Bedas error, "lutre,"^ otters, the quadrupeds
out of the sea, which came and warmed St. Cu"Sberhts
feet with their breath, into " seals." ^
I have shown, by the curious pieces published in the
preface to the first volume of the Leechdoms, that in
• Beda, Hist. Eccl. IV. ii.
* Beda V. xxiii. Ita Grsecam
^ Beda, V. xx., p. 209, line
* Latinam Grcccamque linguam quoque cum Latina didicit linguam,
aeque ut propriam in qua nati sunt ut tarn notas ac familiares sibi eas,
norunt. The Saxon interpreter quam nativitatis suje loquelam
gives a full emphasis to seque ut ; haberet.
that will bear softening down in this
* Beda, p. 237.
late Latin.
« Hom. I. 138.