“The small gifts of my tears I send by faithful promise in prayer to St. Martin for the ardently desired prosperity of your authority. Let my messenger serve the most pious lord as is fitting; I will pray for the most loved lord as the visitation of the Holy Spirit shall deign to illumine my heart. If the devotion of my mind could have found anything better, I would with ready will offer it towards the increase of your honour.” The messenger was Nathanael, that is, Fredegisus. We learn this from Letter 206, which commences “Albinus greets Nathanael”, and after addressing him as though he were the real Nathanael who was seen under the fig-tree by Jesus, proceeds thus:— [Sidenote: Ep. 206.] “Salute Lucia my sister and Columba our daughter.[231] Pray them to be mindful of my old age in sacred prayers and of their own salvation in good works. And hide not from them the beauty of your wisdom, but irrigate the flower-beds of good will in them. What is more beautiful than the flowers of wisdom, which never fade? What is richer than the wealth of knowledge, which is never exhausted? To this exhort them. Let them live day and night in meditation on the law of God, that they may find Him of whom Moses in the law wrote, and the prophets. Bid them hold Him and not let Him go till they are led into the chambers of the Kings glory to be supported by flowers of eternal blessedness, the Bridegroom’s left hand of present prosperity under their head, and the right hand of eternal bliss embracing them.[232] “Convey the letter of my littleness, with the most holy gift of divine Scripture and peaceful words of salutation, to my lord David. To him we owe as many thanks and praises for all his goodness to me and to my sons as this Book has syllables; to him may God give as many blessings as in this Book there are letters.” The natural supposition is that Alcuin brought—or had sent—from York accurate copies of the Scriptures, from which he corrected the faulty manuscripts of France and Germany, to use modern names. Errors were due, probably, at least as much to mispronunciation on the part of the person who dictated to the writers, or to mis-hearing on their part, as to carelessness in transcribing. We have to remember that the practice was for one monk to read out word by word the sentence which the writers in the scriptorium were to take down, so that in this way twenty or thirty—it is said as many as two hundred—copies of a poem or a book could be written at the same time. This practice gave many opportunities for error.