demical Colic of Devonshire,’ 1769. He wrote a memoir of his brother, Dr. Nathan Alcock, in 1780, and published his work, ‘The Rise of Mahomet accounted for on Natural and Civil Principles,’ in 1796.
[European Magazine, xxxiv. 214; Memoirs of Dr. Nathan Alcock, 1780.]
ALCOCK, THOMAS (1784–1833), surgeon, was born at Rothbury, Northumberland. After an apprenticeship to a surgeon in Newcastle, he became in 1805 resident medical officer at the Sunderland Dispensary. In 1806 or 1807 he moved to London and became a general practitioner. From 1825 he devoted himself to surgery alone. From 1813 to 1828 he was surgeon to St. James's Workhouse. A visit to Paris in 1823 led him to publish in 1827 an essay upon the use of the chlorides of soda and lime in cases of hospital gangrene, the practice having been extensively applied in France by M. Labarraque. A course of ‘Lectures on Practical and Medical Surgery,’ delivered to the students of the Borough Dispensary, appeared in the ‘Lancet’ in 1825–6, and were republished with additions in 1830. He contributed many papers to medical journals. He died in 1833.
[S.D.U.K. Dictionary, from a manuscript communication.]
ALCUIN, or ALBINUS (735–804), celebrated as a theologian, man of letters, and more especially as the coadjutor of Charlemagne in his great educational reforms, was born at York in the year 735. His English name was Ealhwine. He was educated at the cloister school in his native city, and under the archbishop Egbert, and Ethelbert, the master of the school, a man apparently of wide attainments, acquired a training as many-sided as was possible for the time and with more of a literary tendency than was then usual, except in the Northumbrian and Irish schools. Virgil, in particular, is said to have been the author most studied and most beloved, and the Virgilian influence is distinctly traceable in the Latin poems which form no small part of Alcuin's works. With his master, Ethelbert, Alcuin travelled, as was the custom then, to find something new of books or studies. On his return he began to assist in the conduct of the school, and an increasing share of the labour fell to him when Ethelbert in 767 was raised to the archbishopric of York. On Ethelbert's resignation in 778 the archbishopric fell to one of his former pupils, Eanbald, who was not consecrated till 780, and the conduct of the school and of the rich library connected with it to Alcuin, with the title ‘Magister Scholarum.’ Three years later Alcuin, on his return from Rome, whither he had gone to procure the pallium for Eanbald, met Charlemagne at Parma in 781. Of Charlemagne he is said to have had personal knowledge at an earlier date, though there is no decisive evidence of the fact, and on this occasion the great monarch, who was then planning his organised attempt at elevation of literary studies in his empire, pressed Alcuin to take up his residence at Aachen and lend him the aid of his ability and experience. Alcuin, obtaining the permission of his ecclesiastical superior, yielded to the request and settled on the continent under the protection of Charlemagne, where, with the exception of a two years' visit to England (790–792), he remained to the close of his life. He was sent to England in 790 to arrange a renewal of peace between Charlemagne, and Offa, king of Mercia.
For the first eight years of his long residence with Charlemagne, Alcuin, handsomely endowed by his patron with the abbeys of Ferrières, Troyes, and St. Martin at Tours, was occupied mainly with the education of the members of the royal family itself. The school of the palace was attended by the sons and other near relatives of the emperor, and not unfrequently by the emperor himself. Of the character of the instruction one can judge from the short treatises on grammar, logic, and other elementary disciplines which are extant in Alcuin's works. The matter was the scanty remnant of the older culture that survived in the writings of Augustine and Boethius, in the compendia of Isidore, Capella, Cassiodorus, and in the grammatical writings of Priscian and Donatus. The form was generally the familiar scholastic device of dialogue, in which the master and pupil converse or catechise one another. On the whole there is no originality in these works of Alcuin, but there is a certain freshness which is quite in keeping with his character as not merely a scholastic teacher but a cultivated man of letters, capable of taking a lively interest in general affairs and of advising his great master on topics not ordinarily included in school instruction.
After his return from the brief visit to England, Alcuin was involved in some of the numerous ecclesiastical disputes of the time, and in particular had to exert himself, with pen and personal influence, against a form of the Adoptian heresy which seems to have been troubling the church. He took an important part in the council of Frankfort, at which this heresy was condemned, and compiled a book, ‘Liber Albini quem edidit con-
