We confess, answers little Discipulus, that we love happiness, but know not whether it can exist in this world. And the dialogue rambles on in discursive comment upon the superiority of the lasting over the transitory, with some feeble echoing of notes from Boëthius’s _De consolatione_. There is talk to show that man, a rational animal, the image of his Creator, and immortal in his better part, should seek what is truly of himself, and not what is alien, the abiding and not the fugitive. In fine, one should adorn the soul, which is eternal, with wisdom, the soul’s true lasting dignity. There is some coy demurring over the steepness of the way; but the pupil is ardent, and the Master confident that with the aid of Divine Grace they will ascend the seven grades of philosophy, by which philosophers have gained honour brighter than that of kings, and the holy doctors and defenders of our Catholic Faith have triumphed over all heresiarchs. “Through these paths, dearest son, let your youth run its daily course, until its completed years and strengthened mind shall attain to the heights of the Holy Scriptures upon which you and your like shall become armed defenders of the Faith and invincible assertors of its truth.” This means, of course, that the Liberal Arts are the proper preparation for the study of Scripture, that is, theology. But Alcuin’s discourse seems to tarry with those studies as if detained by some love of them for their own sake. The body of this treatise is in form a disputation between two youthful pupils, a Frank and a Saxon. A _Magister_ makes a third interlocutor, and sets the subject of the argument. These _personae_ discuss letters and syllables in definitions taken from Donatus, Priscian, or Isidore; and whenever Alcuin permits any one of them to stray from the words of those authorities, the language shows at once his own confused ideas regarding the parts of speech. He uses terms without adequately comprehending them, and thus affords one of the myriad examples of how, under decadent or barbarized conditions, phrases may outlive an intelligent understanding of their meaning. “Grammar,” says the _Magister_, when solicited to define it, “is the science of letters, and the guardian of correct speech and writing. It rests on nature, reason, authority, and custom.” “In how many species is it divided?” “In twenty-six: words, letters, syllables, clauses, dictions, speeches, definitions, feet, accent, punctuation, signs, spelling, analogies, etymologies, glosses, differences, barbarism, solecism, faults, metaplasm, schemata, tropes, prose, metre, fables and histories.”[249] The actual treatise does not cover these twenty-six topics, but confines itself to the division of grammar commonly called Etymology.