Latin and even Greek learning, we have seen, found footing in southern England with the arrival of Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian at Canterbury in 669. Latin had never been quite extinct. A non-English writer in Latin, in Scotland, is Adamnan (died 704), author of a Life of the Irish St. Columba, who brought Christianity to the Picts of Scotland, while later from his little holy Isle of Iona missionaries reached Northumbria. Adamnan's book may be read with more pleasure than any other of the time; it is so rich in pictures of Highland life and sport on sea and land, and in tales of magic and the second sight. This was one of the works used by Bede in writing his "History". The numerous books which were within the reach of Bede were brought, in five journeys, by Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, from Rome to Northumberland. Before Bede, such books had been studied by Aldhelm (Bishop of Sherborne, died 709). He wrote poetry in the native language, which King Alfred greatly admired, but none of the extant poems are attributed to him. His Latin would have surprised Cicero; he delighted in strange words, and in strings of alliterations. He wrote edifying treatises on Christian virtues as exemplified by Biblical characters and by saints, some of them rather fabulous personages. He knew many early Christian authors, and Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, and Lucan, but his own style was as absurdly bombastic as that of many of the ancient Irish romances. He had disciples in style, who manufactured acrostics in Latin verse. The Latin literature of the southern Anglo-Saxons thus fell for a time into full decadence; very different was the learning of the northern Bede. His taste was uncorrupted by the sudden arrival of ancient literature among a people almost barbarous. He wrote in plain Latin without affectation concerning things worthy to be known and remembered: he gave us a frank and charming picture of the great St. Cuthbert; he had, no doubt, too great a love of miracles, and rather exaggerated some which he found in earlier lives of early English saints, such as the said Cuthbert, the saint of the Border, whose body sleeps in Durham Cathedral. The authors whom he quotes are mainly Christian, including many of the chief Fathers of the Church, and he is not certain about the propriety of studying the heathen classics, though he cannot abstain from Virgil, who, it was fancied, predicted the coming of Christ. He had Greek enough to read the Greek New Testament, but this learning was lost, in England, in later times. The translation of Bede's "History" into Anglo-Saxon under King Alfred was not the least of his gifts to his people. Alcuin.