he can quote the Psalter and the Epistles to elucidate a point of grammar.
A remark may be permitted here which is applicable to most of the individual cases we shall meet. Those who had learnt the grammar and machinery of the Greek language were not few in number (and I see no reason for excluding Alcuin's name from the list), but when they had learnt it and were in a position to use Greek books, there were no Greek books for them to use. Literally, as we shall see, hardly any beyond a few copies of parts of the Bible – Psalter, Gospels, Epistles. In other words, there was very little matter which they did not already possess in a form easier to be used and considered equally authoritative. Hence the study was unpopular; it involved great labour, and had little to offer save to those who coveted abstruse learning and took pleasure in the process of acquiring it. For all that, the tradition of the supreme excellence of Greek learning was slow to die; and in every generation some individuals were attracted by it, though the difficulties they had to encounter increased as time went on.
Alcuin's abbey of St Martin at Tours played a great part in the diffusion of that form of writing, the Carolingian minuscule, which was the vehicle of transmission of the main bulk of the ancient literature. Obscured for a time – ousted, indeed – by the Gothic scripts of the later Middle Ages, it emerged again at the revival of learning, took perhaps a more refined shape at the hands of the humanists, and became the parent of the common "Roman" type in which these lines will be read. That the introduction of this clear and beautiful script is one of the most remarkable and beneficial of the reforms of Charlemagne's age, whoever has had to do with Merovingian, Beneventan, or Visigothic hands will readily allow. It would be pleasant if we could point to it as an enduring trace of the influence of Alcuin, as has been commonly done. The trend of expert opinion, however, is against this attribution. The traditions of writing in which Alcuin was brought up were insular, and so good an authority as Traube pronounces that the great Anglo-Saxon scholar had no share in forming the hand of the scriptorium of Tours.
The pupils of Alcuin did not fail to follow his methods and to propagate sound learning to the best of their ability. We shall revert to them and their work. It is now time to leave the great teacher and to notice a few other leading members of the court circle.
Einhard, Theodulf, and Angilbert are three figures of great interest. The Vita Karoli of the first may be unhesitatingly named as the best piece of literature which the Carolingian revival produced. As is well known, it follows the lines of an ancient model, Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars, and especially that of Augustus. A copy of Shetonius, the parent, it seems, of all that we have, was at Fulda: Servatus Lupus of Ferrières writes for a transcript of it in later years. This MS Einhard
