Baeda never stirred from Jarrow.

"I spent my whole life in the same monastery," he says, "and while attentive to the rule of my order and the service of the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning, or teaching, or writing." The words sketch for us a scholar's life, the more touching in its simplicity that it is the life of the first great English scholar.

The quiet grandeur of a life consecrated to knowledge, the tranquil pleasure that lies in learning and teaching and writing, dawned for Englishmen in the story of Baeda.

While still young he became a teacher, and six hundred monks besides strangers that flocked thither for instruction formed his school of Jarrow.

It is hard to imagine how among the toils of the schoolmaster and the duties of the monk, Baeda could have found time for the composition of the numerous works that made his name famous in the West.