He arose like a luminary, and when the light of his learning disappeared, but one other star appeared to irradiate the gloom which followed his setting; and that was in the person and the reign of Alfred.
OTHER WRITERS OF THIS AGE .-- Among names which must pass with the mere mention, the following are, after Bede, the most illustrious in this time.
_Aldhelm_, Abbot of Malmesbury, who died in the year 709, is noted for his scientific computations, and for his poetry: he is said to have translated the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon poetry.
_Alcuin_, the pride of two countries, England and France, was born in the year of Bede's death: renowned as an Englishman for his great learning, he was invited by Charlemagne to his court, and aided that distinguished sovereign in the scholastic and literary efforts which render his reign so illustrious.

Alcuin died in 804.
The works of Alcuin are chiefly theological treatises, but he wrote a life of Charlemagne, which has unfortunately been lost, and which would have been invaluable to history in the dearth of memorials of that emperor and his age.
_Alfric_, surnamed Grammaticus, (died 1006,) was an Archbishop of Canterbury, in the tenth century, who wrote eighty homilies, and was, in his opposition to Romish doctrine, one of the earliest English reformers.
_John Scotus Erigena_, who flourished at the beginning of the ninth century, in the brightest age of Irish learning, settled in France, and is known as a subtle and learned scholastic philosopher.

His principal work is a treatise "On the Division of Nature," Both names, _Scotus_ and _Erigena_, indicate his Irish origin; the original _Scoti_ being inhabitants of the North of Ireland.
_Dunstan_, (925-988,) commonly called Saint Dunstan, was a powerful and dictatorial Archbishop of Canterbury, who used the superstitions of monarch and people to enable him to exercise a marvellous supremacy in the realm.

He wrote commentaries on the Benedictine rule.
These writers had but a remote and indirect bearing upon the progress of literature in England, and are mentioned rather as contemporary, than as distinct subjects of our study.
THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE .-- We now reach the valuable and purely historical compilation known as the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, which is a chronological arrangement of events in English history, from the birth of Christ to the year 1154, in the reign of Henry the Second.

It is the most valuable epitome of English history during that long period.
It is written in Anglo-Saxon, and was begun soon after the time of Alfred, at least as a distinct work.