We have already mentioned in an earlier chapter the interest which Charles always showed in art and letters, an interest which had been very rare among the Frankish kings, whether of his own house or of the Merovings. Of all the two dynasties the ruffian Chilperich I. is—curiously enough—the only one who is recorded to have shown any literary tastes. Charles, however, atoned for the neglect of his predecessors. [Sidenote: Encouragement of learning.] He collected learned men from all quarters: the Northumbrian Alcuin and the Lombards Peter of Pisa and Paul the Deacon were the best-known names among them: at first his scholars were mostly foreigners, but by the end of his reign he had seen a generation of learned Franks arise in response to his encouragement. Two of his proclamations, the _Epistola de litteris colendis_ and the _Encyclica de emendatione librorum_, set forth his purpose. He complains that the letters addressed to him by bishops and abbots from all parts of his realm are ‘very correct in sentiment but very incorrect in grammar,’ so that he has begun to fear whether his clergy have enough knowledge of Latin to understand the whole sense of the Scriptures. Wherefore he will have schools established in every monastery for the perfect teaching of the Latin tongue, ‘because it is useful that men of God should not only live by the rule and dwell in holy conversation, but should devote themselves to literary meditations, each according to his ability, that they may be able to give themselves to the duty of teaching others.’ [Sidenote: Multiplication of books.] Under the fostering hand of Charles all the greater monasteries became centres of learning: we owe to his care the preservation of many of the classical authors, for he was incessantly causing the old volumes, ‘almost worn out,’ as he says, ‘by the carelessness of our ancestors,’ to be fairly copied out and multiplied. Each monastery was urged to have its own treasures preserved by several copies, and to interchange them with those of its neighbours. He paid special attention to the books of the Old and New Testaments, was shocked at the diverse readings which he found to exist—due, as he asserts, to the extreme ignorance of copyists—and set Paul the Deacon to construct a new lectionary, corrected according to the best texts, and destined to be used in all the Churches in his realm. It was not only to religious books that he turned his attention: he had the old heroic epics of the Franks—the prototypes, we may suppose, of such works as the _Nibelungenlied_—collected and written out: unfortunately his pious son Lewis destroyed this invaluable _corpus_ of Frankish poetry, because he deemed it heathenish. He is also found setting his scholars to work on the compilation of grammars—both Latin and German—biographies, and even of works of secular history. It is, no doubt, to his inspiration that we owe the sudden expansion and multiplication of the Frankish chronicles.