had been the schoolmaster from his youth, a straightforward, kind teacher, very strict in discipline, more rarely than any of his brethren putting his foot out of the cloister, and making one pair of shoes last a twelvemonth. He said that going out was destruction; and frequently admonished Tutilo, who was given to travelling, to mind what he was about. Fully occupied in the schools, he commonly neglected the services and mass; 'for,' said he, we hear good masses while we are teaching how they should be performed.' And although he used to say that impunity was the greatest disgrace of a monastery, yet he never came to the chapter unless he was sent for; because, as he observed, that most painful office of reproving and punishing was laid upon him.

"Such being three of the senators of our republic, they were, as happens to all learned and useful men, exposed to the detraction and backbiting of the idle and frivolous; and chiefly the holy Notker, (as I may truly call him,) because he took less pains to contradict it Tutilo and Ratpert, indeed, who dealt more harshly with such persons, and did not take injuries so patiently, were less frequently attacked; but Notker, who was the meekest of men, learned by his own experience to know what such injuries were; of which I wish to introduce one, that you may learn by a single instance how far Satan presumes in such things.

"There was a monk named Sindolf, who was the Refectorarius, [that is, it was his duty to superintend the refectory, and see that all things belonging to it were properly provided and taken care of;] but at length, with feigned obsequiousness, (his only merit,) telling lies of the brethren, Solomon made him clerk of the works, (decanus operariorum.) While he was refectorary, however, he made himself as annoying as he dared, particularly to Notker. Solomon, however, being much occupied, and unable to attend to everything, when it sometimes happened that the food of the brethren was deficient or bad, many exclaimed against the injustice; and it appeared that, among others, the three whom I have mentioned had said something. Sindolf, who was always making mischief, knowing the cause and origin of the old grudge on the part of these companions, got the ear of Solomon, as if he was going to inform him of something in which his honour was concerned; and he, though he knew that nothing is more mischievous to bishops than listening to the whispers of their inferiors, inquired what news he had to communicate. On this Sindolf falsely told him that those three were always talking against him, and that the day before they had said such things as must be intolerable to God. He believed these tales, and bore malice against those who thought no ill, and at length he shewed it. They, however, not being able to learn from him what was the ground of offence, guessed that they had been brought into it by some trick of Sindolf. The matter being at length discussed among the brethren, when they, with the concurrent testimony of all the rest, proved that they had said nothing against the bishop, every one called for justice against the false informer; but as the bishop would not give him up, they silently acquiesced.

"It was the invariable custom of these three, by permission of the prior, to meet in the night in the interval before lauds in the scriptorium, and to discourse together on such scriptural subjects as were most suited to such an hour. Sindolf, knowing the time and the fact of these conversations, went out one night and came privily to the glass window against which Tutilo was sitting, and, applying his ear to it, listened to catch something which he might carry in a perverted form to the bishop. Tutilo, who had become aware of it, and who was a sturdy man, with full confidence in the strength of his arms, spoke to his companions in Latin, that Sindolf, who did not understand that language, might not know what he said. There he is,' said he, and he has put his ear to the window; but do you, Notker, who are timorous, go out into the church; and you, my Ratpert, catch up the whip of the brethren which hangs in the calefactory, and run out; for when I know that you have got near to him, I will open the window as suddenly as possible, catch him by the hair, drag in his head, and hold it tight; but do you, my friend, be strong and of a good courage, and lay the whip on him with all your might, and take vengeance for God on him.' Ratpert, who was always most alert in matters of discipline, went softly,

As to the mode of spending that interval required by the rule of St. Benedict, see Martene in cap. viii. p. 249.

Here called Pyrale. He afterwards says that it was adjoining to the scriptorium, "proximum pyrali scriptorium," cap. xi. p. 52.

and catching up the whip ran quickly out, and came down with all his might like a hailstorm on the back of Sindolf, whose head was dragged in at the window. He, however, struggling with his arms and legs, contrived to get and to keep hold of the whip; on which Ratpert, catching up a stick which he saw at hand, laid on him most lustily. When he found it vain to beg for mercy, I must,' he said, 'ery out; and he roared vociferously. Part of the monks, astounded at hearing such a voice, at such an unwonted time, came running with lights, and asking what was the matter. Tutilo kept crying out that he had caught the devil, and begging them to bring a light, that he might more clearly see whose shape he had assumed; and turning the head of his reluctant prisoner to and fro, that the spectators might the better judge, he asked with affected ignorance whether it could be Sindolf? All declaring that it certainly was, and begging that he would let him go, he released him, saying, 'Wretch that I am, that I should have laid hands on the intimate and confidant of the bishop.' Ratpert, however, having stepped aside on the coming up of the monks, privately withdrew, and the sufferer could not find out who had beaten him."*

I do not undertake to defend all Tutilo's proceedings in this affair; especially his going on to persuade the monks that the flagellator, who had so suddenly vanished, must have been an angel. Notker, it will be observed, had nothing to do with the business, and Ratpert was merely executive in the way of his calling; but, without canvassing the matter too strictly, I am content to feel as a Swedish clergyman did, when a friend of mine, who happened to have been present at the service in his church, remonstrated against what appeared to him to be a prayer that ships might be wrecked on their coast. The good priest assured him, that it was no such thing, and that they were not such wretches as to harbour any wish of the kind; but only prayed, that if ships were to be wrecked, they might have the benefit of it. In like manner, though I doubt the lawfulness of wishing that any Christian man should either give or take such a beating as Sindolf received, yet if somebody was to have it, I am glad that it fell to his share; and that not so much for his dirty tricks which have been just mentioned, as for a villany which I unaccountably omitted to notice in a former paper, where it would have been more in place. I had him (that is, a memorandum of him,) literally pinned down to my desk much longer than Tutilo held him at the window, but somehow he escaped. What do you think he did? Why, when Notker, with great labour and pains (multis sudoribus), had made a fair copy of the Canonical Epistles in Greek-having borrowed them for that purpose from Luitward, Bishop of Vercelli-"behold, Sindolf, now (as I have said) a great man, and of much consequence in the place, [for it was in consideration of the beating that the bishop preferred him to be the decanus operariorum,] lighting by chance on that delicately written book, carried it off, and having cut out all the leaves, tore and spoiled them, as is to be seen at this day, and then folded them up, and put them where he found them.”+

The scriptorium where these three friends used to meet was obviously something very different from what we now call a cell, or what is now sometimes described or shewn as a writing-place of the

Ekkehardus Jun. de Casib. Mon. S. Galli. ap. Gold. Ser. Rer. Alem. i. 24 et Ekkardus Minimus in vita Notkeri, ibid. 226.

↑ Ekk. Jun. ubi sup. p. 29.

old times. And I doubt not, that the twelve expert scribes, to whom, as I have already said,* the Abbot of Hirschau committed the work of transcribing the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the fathers, as well as the indefinite number of inferior scribes, worked in company. Indeed, if we were always to understand that the scribe was sitting alone, it would be difficult to comprehend the direction of the general chapter of the Cistercian Order held in A. D. 1134, directing that the same silence should be maintained in the scriptorium as in the cloister. The same thing appears from the Abbot Heriman's account of the restoration of the monastery of St. Martin at Tournay. He was himself the third abbot, and he tells us that his predecessor, Odo, who was the first, and entered on that office about the year 1093, shewed himself no good manager in temporal things, and was glad to confide the management of them to Ralph the Prior, who shewed peculiar talent and zeal in such matters:

"In which the abbot greatly rejoiced, and used to thank God, who had given him a man that had relieved him from the anxiety and bustle of worldly affairs. For, committing to him the whole charge of the external affairs of our monastery, he gave himself up so entirely to the duties of a monk, and to silence, that frequently he did not go out of the monastery for a month together, but, being devoted to reading, he took the utmost pains to promote the writing of books. He used, in fact, to exult in the number of writers which the Lord had given him; for if you had gone into the cloister, you might in general have seen a dozen young monks sitting on chairs in perfect silence, writing at tables carefully and artificially constructed. All Jerome's Commentaries on the Prophets,' all the works of St. Gregory, and everything that he could find of St. Augustine, Ambrose, Isidore, Bede, and the Lord Anselm, then Abbot of Bec, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, be caused to be diligently transcribed. So that you would scarcely have found such a library at any monastery in that part of the country, and everybody was begging for our copies to correct their own. Our monastery was at that time in great reputation, and in a high state of discipline; for in the whole province of Rheims there were at that period only three monasteries which followed the customs of Clugni—namely, Anchin, Afflighem, and our own. The monastery of Clugni at that time excelled all others belonging to the kingdom of the Francs in monastic order; for the rigour of the Cistercians had not then sprung up, and the Lord Norbert had not as yet been heard of."

No. XIX., March, p. 254.

"In omnibus scriptoriis ubicunque ex consuetudine monachi scribunt, silentium teneatur sicut in claustro."-Cap. lxxxvii. ap. Nomast. Cisterc. 272.

Herimanni Narratio Rest. Abb. S. Martini Torn. § 79. ap. Dach. Spicileg. ii. 913. One of the original companions of Odo was Godfrey, who was, says Heriman, a very skilful scribe, and left many manuscripts in our church-namely, the Morals of St. Gregory on Job in six volumes, an excellent history, which, beginning at the Proverbs, contains the prophets, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, missal from which each mass is every day performed in the convent, a copy of the gospels, Augustine on the City of God, and his Enchiridion, and many other books which may be easily distinguished as his by the handwriting," § 76, p. 912. One of the first who joined Odo was Alulfus, who was, during forty-seven years afterwards, the armarius or librarian of the convent. "He frequently read over all the works of St. Gregory; and, in imitation of Paterius, extracting all the passages of the Old and New Testament which he had expounded, he made three volumes, to which be added a fourth, consisting of miscellaneous and very useful sentences, and entitled the whole work Gregorialis." § 38. It may interest the reader to know, that several MSS. of this period, and this monastery, and in all probability the identical works written in Odo's scriptorium, and in particular the fourth volume (apparently the autograph) of Alulfus's Gregorialis, are now in the hands of a learned friend of mine, a correspondent of the Editor of the British Magazine, who will perhaps favour us with some account of them.

I do not wish unnecessarily to multiply instances or illustrations which must possess a sameness of character which may render them tedious; but there is one idea which I am very desirous to impress on the reader, as applying generally to the whole subject.

We are so familiar with the press, so used to see its rapid multiplication, and so filled with the idea of its almost unlimited powers-so little accustomed to read any large mass of manuscript, or to write continuously anything which could be called a book-we can set the press in motion so easily, and so cheaply, that even a third-rate shopkeeper who is advertising simply because he has nothing to do, would not think of writing a hundred circulars-the question, how much an expert scribe could write in a given time is so seldom presented to our thoughts, that we feel scarcely able to give any opinion-we almost lose sight of the fact, that all the books which are printed have been written (and, if worth printing, more than once) by their authors— we hardly consider what our words express when we say that an author" wrote" such and such works, which were afterwards published in so many volumes folio-though it would not call for the reading, the thinking, the correcting, the rewriting, or any of the intellectual labour which not only produced the most fatigue, but took up the most time, yet would not you feel rather unwilling to undertake such a job as merely writing out a copy of Archbishop Ussher's works, or Lord Bacon's? Thus, I think, we are apt to be led into error by comparing the respective powers of hand-writing and the press. Not perhaps into theoretical error, for, without forming anything like a theory, we may say at once that the things are not to be compared; seeing that the power of multiplication by the press exceeds that of the slower process of handwriting out of all proportion. But we are liable to practical error, because we are apt not to consider the different degree in which those powers are put out. The press does a great deal, and it might do a great deal more. It could easily as far outdo its present self, as it now outdoes manuscript; but it has never been, and probably never will be, called on to do this: and the probability (almost certainty) is, that in proportion as it approximates to anything like it, the works which it produces will have less and less connexion with learning. I believe that the history of printing will bear me out in this; and we come, I think, fairly to the idea that, although the power of multiplication at work in the Dark Ages was infinitely below that which now exists, and even the whole actual produce of the two periods not to be compared, yet, as it regards those books which they considered as the standard works in sacred and secular literature, the difference was not so extreme as may have been supposed. Perhaps I may illustrate my meaning by asking what proportion the copies of Gregory's " Morals," or Augustine's "City of God," printed between the years 1700 and 1800, bear to those written between the years 1100 and 1200?

But, as I have said, we have perhaps a very imperfect idea of what may be done by the labour of an individual. We must think of writing as a business; as one generally taken up by choice, and very commonly pursued with a degree of zeal and indefatigable perseVOL. XII.-August, 1837.

T

verance which in the present day seems almost incredible. We find notices on the subject, which appear to me very interesting; and the point is so important to our getting a clear idea of the subject, that I will mention two.

Othlonus, a monk of St. Emmeram's, at Ratisbon, was born about the year 1013; and in his book, "De ipsius tentationibus, varia fortuna, et scriptis," he has given us an account of his literary labours, and of the circumstances which led to his writing the various works of his which we possess. Of his original compositions, however, it is not to our present purpose to speak; but, after enumerating a good many, and saying, "As the Lord commanded the Dæmoniac in the gospel to go to his own house, and shew how great things God had done for him, I also would relate how great benefits God has vouchsafed to me," he goes on—

"For the same reason I think it proper to add an account of the great knowledge and capacity for writing which was given me by the Lord in my childhood. When as yet a little child, I was sent to school, and quickly learned my letters; and I began, long before the usual time of learning, and without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing. But in a furtive and unusual manner, and without any teacher, I attempted to learn that art. From this circumstance I got a habit of holding my pen in a wrong manner; nor were any of my teachers afterwards able to correct me in that point; for I had become too much accustomed to it to be capable of altering. Many who saw this unanimously decided that I should never write well; but, by the grace of God, it turned out otherwise, as is known to many persons. For, even in my childhood, and at the time when, together with the other boys, the tablet was put into my hands, that I might learn to write, it appeared that I had some notion of writing, to the no small surprise of those who saw it. Then, after a short time, I began to write so well, and was so fond of it, that in the place where I learned, that is, in the monastery of Tegernsee, [in Bavaria, almost in a line between Munich and Innspruck,] I wrote many books. And being sent into Franconia while I was yet a boy, I worked so hard at writing while I was there, that before I returned I had nearly lost my sight. This I resolved to mention, in the hope that I may excite some others to a similar love of labour; and that, by recounting to others the grace of God which has granted to me such benefits, I may lead them to magnify that grace of God with me. And the better to do this I think it proper to relate how I laboured in writing afterwards, when I had returned from Franconia, for I was there when the Emperor Henry died, and Conrad came to the throne [in the year 1024.]

"Then, after I came to be a monk in the monastery of St. Emmeram, I was soon induced, by the request of some of them, again to occupy myself so much in writing that I seldom got any interval of rest, except on festivals, and at such times as work could not be performed. In the meantime, there came more work upon me; for, as they saw that I was generally reading, or writing, or composing, they made me the schoolmaster. By all which things I was, through God's grace, so fully occupied, that I frequently could not allow my body the necessary rest. And when I had a mind to compose anything, I very commonly could not find time for it, except on holydays, or by night, being tied down to the business of teaching the boys, and the transcribing which I had been persuaded to undertake. Therefore, beside the books which I composed myself, which I wrote to give away for the edification of those who asked for them, and of others to whom I gave them unasked, I wrote nineteen missals-ten for the abbots and monks in our own monastery, four for the brethren at Fulda, five for those in other places; three books of the Gospels, and two with the Epistles and Gospels, which are called Lectionaries; beside which I wrote four service books for matins. Afterwards, old age and infirmity of various kinds hindered me; especially the tedious interruption which lasted for a very long time through various anxieties, and the grief which was caused by the destruction of our monastery; but to Him who is the Author of all good, and who alone governs all things, and who has vouchsafed to give many things to me unworthy, be praise eternal, be honour everlasting