, and other books. He
left them to the Bodleian Library. Among them is the unique "Caedmon"
Manuscript, given him by Archbishop Usher, who founded the library of
Trinity College, Dublin. People are now alive to the value of these
great possessions, and we must be glad that scholars have worked at
them, and published many of them, and so made their contents accessible
to everyone. But we must never forget our debt to the earliest writers,
and chiefly to the monks who wrote and who copied, much and long and
well. As we trust, they have their reward.

There are two specially interesting collections of manuscript
Anglo-Saxon poems, known respectively as the Exeter Book and the
Vercelli Book. The Exeter Book is one of some sixty volumes acquired by
Leofric, Bishop of Crediton, when he was making his library for the
cathedral of his new bishopric at Exeter. It is described as "a large
English book of many things wrought in verse." It is one of the few of
Leofric's books that remain at Exeter, where it has been over eight
hundred years. It contains various poems by Cynewulf and others. Several
leaves are missing, and ink has been spilt over part of one page. This
Exeter library was scattered at the "Reformation." Some of its treasures
are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, or at Corpus Christi College, at
Cambrige.

The Vercelli Book is so called because it was discovered in its home in
the cathedral library at Vercelli in Italy a good many years ago. It
contains twenty-two sermons in Anglo-Saxon, and six poems, among which
is our beautiful "Dream of the Holy Rood." Perhaps some English pilgrim
or pilgrims, on the way to Rome, left this book as a gift, or through
inadvertence, at the hospice where hospitality had been received. Or
perhaps Cardinal Guala, who was over here in the days of John and of
Henry III, bought the book for his library at Vercelli. Or perhaps it
was one of the books of which John Bale tells us whole ships-full went
abroad. We have to be very grateful to the scholars whose researches
have recovered for us so much of our old heritage, and to those who have
made their contents in various ways so easy to get at.

CHAPTER XV

Runes. An early love-poem

I said I would tell you a little about runes, which I have had more than
once occasion to mention. The runes were the alphabet used by the
Teutonic tribes, to which the English belonged. This alphabet is very
old, and it is not certain where it ori