The letters of Alcuin, great as is their number and reach, form but a small part of his writings. His collected works are six times as large as his letters. His commentaries and treatises on the Holy Scriptures are much more lengthy than his collected letters, more than two-thirds as long again. His dogmatic writings are not far from half as long again as his letters. His book on Sacraments and kindred subjects is about two-thirds as long as his letters. His biographies of saints, his poems, his treatises on teaching and learning, are all together nearly as long as the letters; and there is almost the same bulk of works which are attributed to him on evidence of a less conclusive character. Put briefly, this was his life. He was a boy at my own school, the Cathedral School of York, a school which had the credit of educating, 800 years later, another boy who made a mark on history, Guy Fawkes. The head master in Alcuin’s time was Ecgbert, Archbishop of York and brother of the reigning king of Northumbria; and the second master was Albert, Ecgbert’s cousin, and eventually his successor in the chief mastership and in the archbishopric. Alcuin succeeded to the practical part of the mastership on Ecgbert’s death in 766, the new archbishop, Albert, retaining the government of the school and the chief part of the religious teaching. In 778 Alcuin became in all respects the head master of the school, and in the end of 780 Albert died, leaving to Alcuin the great collection of books which formed the famous library of York. Alcuin had for some years travelled much on the continent of Europe, and he was well acquainted with its principal scholars. They were relatively few in number, learning having sunk very low on the continent, while in Northumbria it had been and still was at a very high level. Alcuin had also made acquaintance with Karl, not yet known as Karl der Grosse, Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, the son of Pepin, king as yet of the Franks, emperor in the year 800, a man about seven years younger than Alcuin. On a visit to the continent in 781 he again met Karl, who proposed to him that he should enter his service as master of the school of his palace, and practically minister of education for all parts of the vast empire over which Karl ruled. In 782 he joined Karl, having obtained leave of absence from the Northumbrian king Alfweald, Archbishop Ecgbert’s great-nephew, and from the new archbishop, Eanbald I. From that time onwards he was Karl’s right-hand man, in matters theological as well as educational; and in some matters of supreme political importance too. The leave of absence lasted some nine or ten years; at the end of that time Alcuin came back for a short time, but he soon after terminated his official connexion with York, and spent the rest of his life in the dominions of Karl.