In Professor Earle's excellent manual on Anglo-Saxon Literature, chapter V is entirely occupied with "the Anglian Period," and begins thus:--"While Canterbury was so important a seminary of learning, there was, in the Anglian region of Northumbria, a development of religious and intellectual life which makes it natural to regard the whole brilliant period from the later seventh to the early ninth century as the Anglian Period.... Anglia became for a century the light-spot of European history; and we here recognise the first great stage in the revival of learning, and the first movement towards the establishment of public order in things temporal and spiritual." Unfortunately for the student of English, though perhaps fortunately for the historian, the most important book belonging to this period was written in Latin. This was the _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, or the Church History of the Anglian People. The writer was Beda, better known as "the Venerable Bede," who was born near Wearmouth (Durham) in 672, and lived for the greater part of his life at Jarrow, where he died in 735. He wrote several other works, also in Latin, most of which Professor Earle enumerates. It is said of Beda himself that he was "learned in our native songs," and it is probable that he wrote many things in his native Northumbrian or Durham dialect; but they have all perished, with the exception of one precious fragment of five lines, printed by Dr Sweet (at p. 149) from the St Gall MS. No. 254, of the ninth century. It is usually called Beda's Death-song, and is here given: Fore there neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit thonc-snotturra than him thar[f] sie, to ymbhycggannae, aer his hin-iong[a]e, huaet his gastae, godaes aeththa yflaes, aefter deoth-daege doemid uueorth[a]e. Literally translated, this runs as follows: Before the need-journey no one becomes more wise in thought than he ought to be, (in order) to contemplate, ere his going hence, what for his spirit, (either) of good or of evil, after (his) death-day, will be adjudged. It is from Beda's _Church History_, Book IV, chap. 24 (or 22), that we learn the story of C{ae}dmon, the famous Northumbrian poet, who was a herdsman and lay brother in the abbey of Whitby, in the days of the abbess Hild, who died in 680, near the close of the seventh century. He received the gift of divine song in a vision of the night; and after the recognition by the abbess and others of his heavenly call, became a member of the religious fraternity, and devoted the rest of his life to the composition of sacred poetry.