Note 12 — THE GATHERER.

Footnote 12: (return)

I do not know whether it be worth while to attempt to refute the opinion which has been founded on an erroneous passage in Eginhard, that Charlemagne could not write. Eginhard understood, as Gibbon says, the court and the world, and the Latin language, it is true; but, nevertheless, we may much more rationally believe that the secretary made use of a vague expression, than suppose that he wished to imply, in one sentence, the manifest contradiction of Charlemagne being in the habit of going through all the abstruse calculations of astronomy, in an age when those calculations were most complicated, without being able to write. The whole of Charlemagne's life renders the supposition absurd. He studied under Alcuin, whose first rule was to teach the most correct orthography in writing. We know that he subscribed many deeds, though his signature was abbreviated, to render it as rapid as possible. Eginhard himself states, that the monarch wrote the history of the ancient kings in verse: and Lambecius, one of the highest antiquarian authorities, declares, that the imperial library still contains a manuscript, corrected by the hand of Charlemagne himself.