‘Good works are better than knowledge’, wrote Charlemagne to his bishops and abbots in a letter of advice, ‘but without knowledge good works are impossible.’ In accordance with this view he commanded that a school should be established in every diocese, in order that the boys of the neighbourhood might receive a grounding in the ordinary education of their day. His own court became a centre of learning; for he himself was keenly interested in all branches of knowledge, from a close study of the Scriptures to mathematics or tales of distant lands. Histories he liked to have read out to him at meals. Eginhard, his biographer, tells us that he never learned to write, but that he was proficient in Latin and could understand Greek. It was his desire to emulate Augustus, the first of the Roman Emperors, and gather round him the most literary men of Europe, and he eagerly welcomed foreign scholars and took them into his service. Chief amongst these adopted sons of the Empire was Alcuin the Northumbrian, a ‘wanderer on the face of the earth’ as he called himself, whom Danish invasions had driven from his native land. Alcuin settled at the Frankish court, organized the ‘palace school’ of which we have already made mention, and himself wrote the primers from which the boys were taught. His influence soon extended beyond this sphere, and he became the Emperor’s chief adviser, inspiring his master with high ideals, while he himself was stirred by the other’s vivid personality to share his passion for hard work. [Sidenote: Character of Charlemagne] It is this almost volcanic energy that gives the force and charm to Charlemagne’s many-sided character. We think of him first, it may be, as the warrior, the hero of romance, or else as a statesman planning his Empire of the West. At another time we see in him the guardian of his people, the king who ‘wills that justice should be done’, but we recall a story such as that of the painted mouse, and instantly his simple, almost schoolboy, side becomes apparent. The ‘Great Charles’ was no saint but a Frank of the rough type of soldiers he led to battle, capable of cruelty as of kindness, hot-tempered, a lover of sport, strong perhaps where his ideals were at stake, but weak towards women, and an over-indulgent father, who let the intrigues of his daughters bring scandal on his court. Yet another contrast to this homely figure is the scholar and theologian, the friend of Alcuin, who believed that without knowledge good works were impossible.