the Irishman. He stands alone for many reasons. He is the finest blossom of that early Irish springtime of culture, which was to be nipped in the bud and miss its summer, owing to fierce frosts from the north. He has the ready tongue, the "scintillations of steely cold wit" of the Irishman at his best, combined with the Scotsman's passion for metaphysics. He is a Platonist among a rabble of scholastic pseudo-Aristotelians. He "deviates from the track of the Latins by keeping his eyes intently fixed on the Greeks."" A philosopher venturing to the verge of Pantheism in a time when philosophy was cumbered with a hopeless dualism; a theologian who dared to express "the larger hope" in a time when the Church and the world declared alike, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus "s; a rationalist before anyone had heard of rationalism; and a man of letters who could neither be persuaded by gold nor brow-beaten by ecclesiastical authority into expressing opinions or using arguments other than his own. "He was a man of shrewd intellect, great eloquence, and great facetiousness," says Malmesbury, "and shared with the king both his serious and his more merry moments, and was the

1 G. Meredith, "Diana."

2 William of Malmesbury, p. 55, Bohn's edition. Malmesbury writes about 200 years later than Alfred's time.

3 "Outside the church there is no salvation."

sole companion both of his table and his retirement."1 It is not difficult to feel the personality of the man wherever he is allowed to speak for himself through the mists of time and tradition, which hang heavily between us and him. There is the well-known story which shows the Irishman seated with his patron at a table where there has been more drinking than usual. "What separates a Scot from a sot?" the king asks, with heavy Frankish wit. Back comes the rapier thrust: "Only the breadth of the table." That reveals the true detachment of humour which forgets, in the delight of the stroke, that a king's complacency is easily hurt, and that a man who immortalises his wit at the expense of his patron is apt to want for patronage. Malmesbury expounds this joke at some length, but leaves the next to speak for itself. At another time, when 'the servant had presented a dish to the king at 'table, which contained two very large fishes, 'besides one somewhat smaller, he gave it to the 'Master (for by that name he was usually called) 'that he might share it with two clerks who were 'sitting near him. They were persons of gigantic 'stature, while he himself was small in person. On 'this, ever devising something merry, in order to cause amusement to those at table, he kept the two 1 William of Malmesbury, p. 53.

'large ones for himself, and divided the smaller one 'between the two clerks. On the king finding fault 'with the unfairness of the division, "Nay," said he, “I have acted right and fairly. For here is a small 'one," indicating himself, "and here are two large 'ones," touching the fishes; then turning to the clerks, "Here are two great ones," said he, pointing at them, ""and here is a small one," touching the fish.'

We see him in a more attractive light in words written with sober premeditation, which are worth quoting both for themselves and as an illustration of the finer spirit of the time. "Hence," he writes in his great book, "De Divisione Naturæ," "it most clearly follows that nothing else is to be desired except the joy which comes from truth, which is direct, and nothing else is to be shunned except His absence, which is the one and sole cause of all eternal sorrow. Take from me Christ, no good will remain to me, and no torment affrights me. The loss and absence of Christ is the torment of the whole rational creation; nor do I think there is any other. . . .1 But if anyone finds anything in this book that is useful, and tends to the building up of the Catholic faith,

1 Cf. Myers' "S. Paul."

1

"Yea through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning,

Christ shall suffice me, for he hath sufficed:

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning;

Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ."

errors.

. .

let him ascribe it to God alone, Who only brings to light the hidden things of darkness, and brings those who seek Him to Himself purged of their And so in peace with all, whether they kindly receive that which we have put together, and behold it with the pure eye of the mind, or whether they unkindly reject it before they know of what kind it is, I commit my work first to God, Who says, 'Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and you shall find,' and next to you, dearest brother in Christ, my fellow-worker in the pursuit of wisdom, to be examined and corrected. Hereafter, when these words shall come into the hands of those who seek wisdom truly, seeing they will conspire with their previous questionings, they will not only receive them with a glad mind, but will kiss them as if they were their own kinsmen come back to them. But if they should fall among those who are quicker in blaming than in sympathising, I would not contend much with them. Let every one use the sense which he has till the light comes, which will make darkness out of the night of those who are philosophising falsely and unworthily, and will bring the darkness of those who welcome it into light."1

While John the Erin-born is in mind, we may deal with the tradition which connected his name

1 Quoted in full in F. D. Maurice's "Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 466-501.

3

with Alfred's in later life. The origin of the tradition has been traced with a good deal of probability to a confusion between this John and another John of Continental fame, whom Alfred in later days placed over the monastery which he built at Athelney1 to commemorate his early difficulties. But the tradition itself is circumstantial, and assigns the date 8822 as the date when John the Irishman came to England. Alfred's love of distinguished foreigners, and the troubles which John fell into at Charles' court through his original views on religious questions, lend some colour to the tradition. It may well rest on the fact of some intercourse of which we have no other record. William of Malmesbury, who confuses the two Johns, after telling of the difficulties. of John the Irishman with the Pope about his translation of St Dionysius the Areopagite, says: "In consequence of this discredit he became tired of France and came to King Alfred, by whose munificence he was appointed a teacher, and settled at Malmesbury, as appears from the king's writings." 1 Asser, p. 80.

2 Cf. Dr Adamson's art. in Encyc. Brit. "Erigena."

* Asser, p. 83.

4 Sir John Spelman says: "When Scotus Erigena was so persecuted by the Pope for having written something contrary to the relish of the See of Rome, as that the Emperor's countenance was no sufficient protection for him in France, the king [Alfred] did notwithstanding send for him and entertain him here."