ngs of the Fathers. But he was far from confining
himself to theology. In treatises compiled as text-books for his
scholars, Baeda threw together all that the world had then accumulated
in astronomy and meteorology, in physics and music, in philosophy,
grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medicine. But the encyclopaedic character
of his researches left him in heart a simple Englishman. He loved his
own English tongue, he was skilled in English song, his last work was a
translation into English of the gospel of St. John, and almost the last
words that broke from his lips were some English rhymes upon death.

But the noblest proof of his love of England lies in the work which
immortalizes his name. In his 'Ecclesiastical History of the English
Nation,' Baeda was at once the founder of medieval history and the first
English historian. All that we really know of the century and a half
that follows the landing of Augustine, we know from him. Wherever his
own personal observation extended, the story is told with admirable
detail and force. He is hardly less full or accurate in the portions
which he owed to his Kentish friends, Alewine and Nothelm. What he owed
to no informant was his own exquisite faculty of story-telling, and yet
no story of his own telling is so touching as the story of his death.
Two weeks before the Easter of 735 the old man was seized with an
extreme weakness and loss of breath. He still preserved, however, his
usual pleasantness and gay good-humour, and in spite of prolonged
sleeplessness continued his lectures to the pupils about him. Verses
of his own English tongue broke from time to time from the master's
lip--rude rhymes that told how before the "need-fare," Death's stern
"must-go," none can enough bethink him what is to be his doom for good
or ill. The tears of Baeda's scholars mingled with his song. "We never
read without weeping," writes one of then. So the days rolled on to
Ascension-tide, and still master and pupils toiled at their work, for
Baeda longed to bring to an end his version of St. John's Gospel into
the English tongue, and his extracts from Bishop Isidore. "I don't want
my boys to read a lie," he answered those who would have had him
rest, "or to work to no purpose, after I am gone." A few days before
Ascension-tide his sickness grew upon him, but he spent the whole day in
teaching, only saying cheerfully to his scholars, "Learn with what speed
you may; I know not how long I may last." The