CHAPTER IV

Prose-writing. St Bede the Venerable. His love of truth. His industry
and carefulness. Cuthbert's account of his last days. "Bede whom God
loved."


We leave our poets now for a time, and go to the writers of prose in
early days. We want first to think about a beautiful-souled religious,
who gave us the first great historical work done in England. We know him
as St Bede, the Venerable Bede, as he has been called from the epithet
inscribed on his tomb in Durham Cathedral, which bears the words

Hac sunt in fossa
Bedæ Venerabilis ossa.

"In this grave are the bones of Venerable Bede." We know the old story
how the pupil who was writing his dear master's epitaph could not find
the right word, as it has happened to many a one for the time being; and
how he slept and awoke to find the word supplied by the gracious angel
hand.

In his Benedictine cell at Jarrow, St Bede read and thought and wrote;
and all that he wrote was done in noble sincerity of purpose, springing
from the dedication of his whole soul to Him who is truth itself. He
told as history what he believed to be true, and collected his materials