Necham, Alexander

, who flourished in the twelfth century, was probably born, and certainly educated at St. Alban’s abbey, of which period of his life he speaks with pleasing recollection in his poem “De Laude sapientiae Divinae.” He completed his education at Paris, and took the order of St. Augustine. He became the friend, associate, and correspondent of Peter of Blois, or Petrus Blesensis, and was afterwards abbot of Cirencester, in which office he died in 1217. He was much attached to the studious repose of the monastic life, yet he frequently travelled into Italy. His compositions are various, and, as Mr. Warton observes, crowd the department of Mss. in our public libraries. He has left numerous treatises of divinity, philosophy, and morality, and was also a poet, a philologist, and a grammarian. He wrote a tract on the mythology of the ancient poets, Esopian fables, and a system of 'grammar and rhetoric. Mr. | Warton, who examined his elegiac poem “De vita motiastica,” says it contains some finished lines; but gives the highest praise to the poem already mentioned, “De divina sapientia.” ¹