converted.

Upon this, when they were prepared to profit by it, supervened the
mission of Theodore and Hadrian, who implanted the seed of learning,
with great ability, at an opportune moment, and with the most abundant
results. Under the warmth of a first love, all these advantages were
moulded together, and resulted in making Northumbria for three or four
generations the centre of European culture. The seat of this culture was
York, the old Roman capital, and its culmination was under Archbishop
Egbert (734-766), and his successor Albert. The great writings of this
period are in Latin, and the chief names are Aldhelm, Eddi, Winfrid
(Bonifacius), Danihel, Beda, Alcuin. Of vernacular prose the chief
remnant is a series of Northern Annals, between A.D. 737 and
806, which have been embodied in some of the Southern Chronicles. But
what specially characterised this period was a rich development of
sacred poetry, some remnants of which are perhaps extant in our
"Cædmon." But our fullest knowledge of this old poetic strain comes back
to us from Old Saxony, where it was propagated by the Anglian
missionaries, and it survives under a thin disguise in the poem called
the "Heliand."

In Aldhelm we see that this new learning was not solely ecclesiastical,
but that there was something in it which aimed at recovery of classical
learning. He was distinguished for his elaborate study of Latin metres,
and his commendation of the pursuit. He wrote poems in Latin hexameters,
and among these a Collection of Enigmas, which bore fruit in the later
Anglo-Saxon literature.

The latter part of the Anglian period produced Alcuin, the distinguished
scholar who was engaged by Charles the Great to organise his new