This prelate, in his account of the Council of Nismes, remarks: “We have often heard the courtiers of King Charles say that this prince, who excelled all the other kings of France in knowledge of the Scriptures and of the civil and ecclesiastical law, always had at his bed’s head _tablets and pens_, to note down, whether by day or night, any thoughts that occurred to him that might be useful to Church or State.” He also presented to the Church of Strasburg a Psalter, in which his name was written with his own hand;[81] and it is to be presumed that he himself transcribed his numerous letters to Alcuin. Among the works of that scholar we find thirty letters addressed to the king, containing answers to his questions on theological and scientific subjects. These letters show that Alcuin had no easy task in satistying the intellectual requirements of a man who thought of everything, and busied himself equally with history, chronology, morals, astronomy, grammar, theology, and law. He took a very special delight in the study of astronomy, and on serene nights was fond of observing the stars from the roof of his palace. In the year 798 considerable anxiety was felt both by the king and his academicians, in consequence of the erratic movements of the planet Mars, whose disappearance for a whole year it passed their powers to account for. Alcuin was written to, and entreated to explain the phenomenon, and his reply shows that he had tested the statements found in his books by careful astronomical observations. “What has now happened to Mars,” he says, “is frequently observed of all the other planets, viz., that they remain longer under the horizon than is stated in the books of the ancients. The rising and setting of the stars vary from the observations of those who live in the southern and eastern parts of the world, where the masters chiefly flourished who have set forth the laws of the universe.” From these words it may be gathered that Alcuin was acquainted with the globular form of the earth, and comprehended the phenomena depending on it. Charlemagne had some claims to the reputation of a poet, and nine pieces of Latin poetry from his pen are printed in his works, which are given in the collection of the Abbé Migne.[82] One of these was an epitaph on his friend Pope Adrian I., which he desired to have placed over the tomb of that pontiff, and caused it therefore to be engraved in letters of gold on a marble tablet, and sent to Rome. These verses, thirty-eight in number, have attained a singular kind of immortality. The tablet has been preserved in the portico of St. Peter’s Basilica, where it may still be seen by the pious visitor, together with another inscription containing the ancient grant from Pope Gregory II. of a wood of olives to supply the oil for the lamps burning round the Apostle’s tomb. All ancient writers are unanimous in declaring these verses to have been the genuine composition of the emperor, and not of Alcuin, as some pretend.