Alcuin’s literary activity was exerted in various directions.  Two-thirds of all that he wrote was theological in character.  These works are exegetical, like the ‘Commentary on the Gospel of St. John’; dogmatic, like the ‘Writings against Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo,’ his best work of this class; or liturgical and moral, like the ’Lives of the Saints,’ The other third is made up of the epistles, already mentioned; of poems on a great variety of subjects, the principal one being the ‘Poem on the Saints of the Church at York’; and of those didactic works which form his principal claim to attention at the present day.  His educational treatises are the following:  ‘On Grammar,’ ‘On Orthography,’ ‘On Rhetoric and the Virtues,’ ‘On Dialectics,’ ’Disputation between the Royal and Most Noble Youth Pepin, and Albinus the Scholastic,’ and ’On the Calculation of Easter,’ The most important of all these writings is his ‘Grammar,’ which consists of two parts:  the first a dialogue between a teacher and his pupils on philosophy and studies in general; the other a dialogue between a teacher, a young Frank, and a young Saxon, on grammar.  These latter, in Alcuin’s language, have “but lately rushed upon the thorny thickets of grammatical density” Grammar begins with the consideration of the letters, the vowels and consonants, the former of which “are, as it were, the souls, and the consonants the bodies of words.”  Grammar itself is defined to be “the science of written sounds, the guardian of correct speaking and writing.  It is founded on nature, reason, authority, and custom.”  He enumerates no less than twenty-six parts of grammar, which he then defines.  Many of his definitions and particularly his etymologies, are remarkable.  He tells us that feet in poetry are so called “because the metres walk on them”; littera is derived from legitera, “since the littera serve to prepare the way for readers” (legere, iter).  In his ‘Orthography,’ a pendant to the ‘Grammar,’ coelebs, a bachelor, is “one who is on his way ad coelum” (to heaven).  Alcuin’s ‘Grammar’ is based principally on Donatus.  In this, as in all his works, he compiles and adapts, but is only rarely original.  ‘On Rhetoric and the Virtues’ is a dialogue between Charlemagne and Albinus (Alcuin).  The ’Disputation between Pepin and Albinus,’ the beginning of which is here given, shows both the manner and the subject-matter of his instruction.  Alcuin, with all the limitations which his environment imposed upon him, stamped himself indelibly upon his day and generation, and left behind him, in his scholars, an enduring influence.  Men like Rabanus, the famous Bishop of Mayence, gloried in having been his pupils, and down to the wars and devastations of the tenth century his influence upon education was paramount throughout all Western Europe.  There is an excellent account of Alcuin in Professor West’s ‘Alcuin’ (’Great Educators’ Series), published in 1893.