a biography of him in Latin. This book is of great value as an
authority, and as illustrating the history of the later seventh and
early eighth century. Wilfrid died in 709, the same year as Aldhelm.

Wilfrid was the master-spirit of this age. He represented the best aims
of his nation; he understood the needs of the time; he worked for them,
and he suffered for them. With an overbearing spirit, fantastic too
often in his conduct, he saw what was needed--he saw the necessity for
unity with Rome. This was a necessity, not for one country alone, but
for the whole West at that time. Protestant writers have looked at
Wilfrid through a distorting medium. Nowhere, perhaps, is there more
need to allow for difference of times than in estimating Wilfrid. He had
great faults; he quarrelled with the best men; but, on the other hand,
Theodore, the most important of all his adversaries, sought
reconciliation at last, and accused himself of injustice. Wilfrid
initiated the German missions; he impressed on that great field of Saxon
activity the policy of his agitated life, and that policy was ever
militant in Boniface, the chief apostle of Germany, and may be said to
have triumphed when the Roman Empire was renewed in harmony with the
Holy See, and Charles was crowned in 800. Wilfrid, more than any other
man, appears as the ideal representative of that varied influence,
religious, literary, political, which the Anglo-Saxon Church exercised
upon the Western world.

The beginning of our vernacular literature, so far as it can be treated
chronologically, lies between the years 658 and 680. For these are the
years of the abbacy of Hild at Whitby, and it was in her time that
Cædmon appeared, who had received the gift of divine song in a vision
of the night. When this heavenly call was recognised, the herdsman
became a brother of the religious fraternity, and devoted his life to