at which turns grey,
however fair a grey, to green, and purest pallor to the glory of
whiteness. It is beautiful, is it not, to think how various kinds of men
and women can help to complete one another by giving and taking what
each has to give, and each needs to take? It is the same with nations:
each has its own gifts, its own needs; and for a great and noble
world-literature we need the gifts of all.

[Footnote C: I have not, of course, forgotten the mission of St
Paulinus; but, as history shows, this does not affect the question here.
Glow and fervour permeate life, and literature being its outcome could
not but keep the mark of what had been set upon that life.]

CHAPTER IV

Prose-writing. St Bede the Venerable. His love of truth. His industry
and carefulness. Cuthbert's account of his last days. "Bede whom God
loved."

We leave our poets now for a time, and go to the writers of prose in
early days. We want first to think about a beautiful-souled religious,
who gave us the first great historical work done in England. We know him
as St Bede, the Venerable Bede, as he has been called from the epithet
inscribed on his tomb in Durham Cathedral, which bears the words

Hac sunt in fossa
Bedae Venerabilis ossa.

"In this grave are the bones of Venerable Bede." We know the old story
how the pupil who was writing his dear master's epitaph could not find
the right word, as it has happened to many a one for the time being; and
how he slept and awoke to find the word supplied by the gracious angel
hand.

In his Benedictine cell at Jarrow, St Bede read and thought and wrote;
and all that he wrote was done in noble sincerity of purpose, springing
from the dedication of his whole soul to Him who is truth itself. He
told as history what he believed to be true, and collected his materials
from sources acknowledged to be trustworthy; and he is always careful to
tell us when he gives a story on evidence only hearsay.

St Bede refused to be Abbot of Jarrow, because "the office demands
household care, and household care brings with it distraction of mind,
which hinders the pursuit of learning."

He wrote many things, and it has been said that his writings form nearly
a complete encyclopaedia of the knowledge of his day; but the work of St
Bede by which he is best known is the "Church History of the English
Race." It is of greater value than we can tell, and has been used for
many generations for know