their anxious solicitude after books, without sincere
delight. Those elegant epistles reflect the image of their private
studies, and so to behold Boniface in a student's garb, to behold his
love of books and passion for learning, we must alike have recourse to
his letters.

The epistolary correspondence of the middle ages is a mirror of those
times, far more faithful as regards their social condition than the old
chronicles and histories designed for posterity; written in the
reciprocity of friendly civilities, they contain the outpourings of the
heart, and enable us to peep into the secret thoughts and motives of the
writer; "for out of the fulness of the hearth the mouth speaketh."
Turning over the letters of Boniface, we cannot but be forcibly struck
with his great knowledge of Scripture; his mind seems to have been quite
a concordance in itself, and we meet with epistles almost solely framed
of quotations from the sacred books, in substantiation of some principle,
or as grounds for some argument advanced. These are pleasurable
instances, and convey a gentle hint that the greater plenitude of the
Bible has not, in all cases, emulated us to study it with equal energy;
there are few who would now surpass the Saxon bishop in biblical reading.

Most students have felt, at some period or other, a thirst after
knowledge without the means of assuaging it--have felt a craving after
books when their pecuniary circumstances would not admit of their
acquisition, such will sympathize with Boniface, the student in the wilds
of Germany, who, far from monastic libraries, sorely laments in some of
his letters this great deprivation, and entreats his friends, sometimes
in most piteous terms, to send him books. In writing to Daniel, Bishop of
Winchester, he asks for copies, and begs him to send the book of the six
prophets, clearly and distinctly transcribed, and in large letters
because his sight he says was growing weak; and because the book of the
prophets was much wanted in Germany, and could not be obtained except
written so obscurely, and the letters so confusedly joined together, as
to be scarcely readable _ac connexas litteras discere non possum_.[260]
To "Majestro Lul" he writes for the productions of bishop Aldhelm, and
other works of prose, poetry, and rhyme, to console him in his
peregrinations _ad consolationem peregrinationis meae_.[261] With Abbess
Eadburge he frequently corresponded, and received from her many choice