Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have remained justly celebrated in the literary history of the age.  Alcuin was the principal director of the school of the palace, and the favorite, the confidant, the learned adviser of Charlemagne.  “If your zeal were imitated,” said he one day to the emperor, “perchance one might see arise in France a new Athens, far more glorious than the ancient—­the Athens of Christ.”  Eginhard, who was younger, received his scientific education in the school of the palace, and was head of the public works to Charlemagne, before becoming his biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate adviser of his son Louis the Debonnair.  Other scholars of the school of the palace, Angilbert, Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were abbots of St. Riquier or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of Orleans.  They had all assumed, in the school itself, names illustrious in pagan antiquity; Alcuin called himself Flaeens; Angilbert, Homer; Theodulph, Pindar.  Charlemagne himself had been pleased to take, in their society, a great name of old, but he had borrowed from the history of the Hebrews—­he called himself David; and Eginhard, animated, no doubt, by the same sentiments, was Bezaleel, that nephew of Moses to whom God had granted the gift of knowing how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials which served for the construction of the ark and the tabernacle.  Either in the lifetime of their royal patron, or after his death, all these scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or ended their lives in monasteries of note; but, so long as they lived, they served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the devotion of faithful advisers, but also as followers proud of the master who had known how to do them honor by making use of them.

It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne had inspired them with such sentiments; for he, too, really loved sciences, literature, and such studies as were then possible, and he cultivated them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest.  It has been doubted whether he could write, and an expression of Eginhard’s might authorize such a doubt; but, according to other evidence and even according to the passage in Eginhard, one is inclined to believe merely that Charlemagne strove painfully, and without much success, to write a good hand.  He had learned Latin, and he understood Greek.  He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, himself commenced the drawing up of the first Germanic grammar.  He ordered that the old barbaric poems, in which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were celebrated, should be collected for posterity.  He gave Germanic names to the twelve months of the year.  He distinguished the winds by twelve special terms, whereas before his time they had but four designations.  He paid great attention to astronomy.  Being troubled one day at no longer seeing in the firmament one of the known planets, he wrote to Alcuin, “What