but they are lost; he was versed in the
national poetry, "doctus in nostris carminibus," writes his pupil
Cuthberht,[82] who pictures him on his deathbed, muttering Anglo-Saxon
verses. He felt the charm of the poetic genius of his nation, and for
that reason has preserved and naively related the episodes of Caedmon in
his stable,[83] and of the Saxon chief comparing human life to the
sparrow flying across the banquet hall.

Bede died on the 27th of May, 735, leaving behind him such a renown for
sanctity that his bones were the occasion for one of those pious thefts
common in the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century a priest of Durham
removed them in order to place them in the cathedral of that town, where
they still remain. St. Boniface, on receiving the news of this death,
far away in Germany, begged his friends in England to send him the works
of his compatriot; the homilies of Bede would assist him, he said, in
composing his own, and his commentaries on the Scriptures would be "a
consolation in his sorrows."[84]

III.

Anglo-Saxon monks now speak Latin; some, since the coming of Theodore of
Tarsus,[85] even know a little Greek; an Anglo-Saxon king sleeps at
Rome, under the portico of St. Peter's; Woden has left heaven; on the
soil convulsed by so many wars, the leading of peaceful, sheltered
lives, entirely dedicated to study, has become possible: and such was
the case with Bede. Has the nation really changed, and do we find
ourselves already in the presence of men with a partly latinised genius,
such men as the English were hereafter to be? Not yet. The heart and
mind remain the same; the surface alone is modified, and that slightly.
The full infusion of the Latin element, which is to transform the
Anglo-Saxons into English, will take place several centuries hence, and
will be the result of a last invasion. The genius of the Teutonic
invaders continues nearly intact, and nothing proves this more clearly
than the Christian poetry composed in the native tongue, and produced in
Britain after the conversion. The same impetuosity, passion, and
lyricism, the same magnificent apostrophes which gave its character to
the old pagan poetry are found again in Christian songs, as well as the
same recurring alternatives of deep melancholy and noisy exultation.

The Anglo-Saxon poets describe the saints of the Gospel, and it seems as
though the companions of Beowulf stood again before us: "So, we have
learned, in days of yo