The peaceful calm of this sheltered existence, which came to an end before the time of the Danish invasions, is reflected in the writings of Bede. He left a great number of works: interpretations of the Gospels, homilies, letters, lives of saints, works on astronomy, a "De Natura Rerum" where he treats of the elements, of comets, of winds, of the Nile, of the Red Sea, of Etna; a "De Temporibus," devoted to bissextiles, to months, to the week, to the solstice; a "De Temporum Ratione" on the months of the Greeks, Romans, and Angles, the moon and its power, the epact, Easter, &c. He wrote hymns in Latin verse, and a life of St. Cuthberht; lastly, and above all, he compiled in Latin prose, a "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum,"[81] which has remained the basis of all the histories composed after his. In it Bede shows himself as he was: honest, sincere, sedate, and conscientious. He quotes his authorities which are, for the description of the island and for the most ancient period of his history, Pliny, Solinus, Eutropius, Orosius, Gildas. From the advent of Augustine his work becomes his own; he collects documents, memoranda, testimonies, frequently legends, and publishes the whole without any criticism, but without falsifications. He lacks art, but not straightforwardness. Latinist though he was, he did not despise the national literature in spite of its ruggedness. He realised it was truly a literature; he made translations in Anglo-Saxon, but they are lost; he was versed in the national poetry, "doctus in nostris carminibus," writes his pupil Cuthberht,[82] who pictures him on his deathbed, muttering Anglo-Saxon verses. He felt the charm of the poetic genius of his nation, and for that reason has preserved and naively related the episodes of Caedmon in his stable,[83] and of the Saxon chief comparing human life to the sparrow flying across the banquet hall. Bede died on the 27th of May, 735, leaving behind him such a renown for sanctity that his bones were the occasion for one of those pious thefts common in the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century a priest of Durham removed them in order to place them in the cathedral of that town, where they still remain. St. Boniface, on receiving the news of this death, far away in Germany, begged his friends in England to send him the works of his compatriot; the homilies of Bede would assist him, he said, in composing his own, and his commentaries on the Scriptures would be "a consolation in his sorrows."[84] III.