“When I went as a young man to Rome, and spent some days in the royal city of Pavia, a certain Jew, Lullus by name, had a disputation with Master Peter, and I heard in the same city that there was a written record of the controversy. This was the same Peter who with such clearness taught grammar in your palace[260]. Perhaps our Homer[261] has heard something about it from him. “I have sent to your excellency some modes of expression, supported by examples or verses from venerable fathers, and also some figures of arithmetical subtlety for your amusement, on the blank part of the paper which you have sent to us; in order that what offered itself to our eye naked may come back to you clothed. It seemed right that paper which came to us ennobled by your seal should receive honour from our letters. And if any of the said forms of expression are inadequately supported by examples, Beselel[262] your familiar—yea and ours too—will be able to add others. He can also make out the arithmetical puzzles. “The major and minor distinctions of punctuation add greatly to the beauty of sentences; but the use of them has been almost lost by the rusticity of our scribes. Now that the beauty of all wisdom and the ornament of salutary learning is beginning to be renewed by the exertions of your nobility, so there is good hope that the use of punctuation is to be restored in the hands of scribes. “I for my part, though little proficient, fight daily against rusticity at Tours. Let your authority teach the palace youths to produce in the most elegant manner whatsoever your most lucid eloquence shall have dictated, that documents which circulate in the name of the king may bear on their face the nobility of the royal wisdom.” That appears to be the only case in which Eginhart is spoken of by Alcuin. Curiously enough, it appears that Alcuin is only once spoken of by Eginhart. We might have expected some mention of Alcuin in Eginhart’s statement of Karl’s fondness for foreigners[263]. The remarkable passage in which Eginhart mentions Alcuin forms chapter 25 of the _Vita Caroli Magni_, coming in the course of this fine description of a man clearly worthy to be called Great:—