Note 51 — Chapter I

In a Latin eclogue quoted by Paschasius Radbert (ob. 865) in the life of St. Adalhard, abbot of Corbie (ob. 826), the romance poets are called upon to join the Latins in the following lines: “Rustica concelebret Romana Latinaque lingua, Saxo, qui, pariter plangens, pro carmine dicat; Vertite huc cuncti, cecinit quam maximus ille, Et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen.” Raynouard, Choix des Poésies, vol. ii. p. cxxxv. These lines are scarcely intelligible; but the quotation from Virgil, in the ninth century, perhaps deserves remark, though, in one of Charlemagne’s monasteries, it is not by any means astonishing. Nennius, a Welsh monk of the same age, who can hardly write Latin at all, has quoted another line; Purpurea intexti tollant aulæa a Britanni; which is more extraordinary, and almost leads us to suspect an interpolation, unless he took it from Bede. Gale, xv. Scriptores, iii. 102.