ÆGINHARD, the celebrated secretary and supposed son-in-law of Charlemagne. He is said to have been carried through the snow on the shoulders of Imma, to prevent his being traced from her apartments by the emperor her father; a story which the elegant pen of Addison has copied and embellished in the third volume of the Spectator. There is a letter of Æginhard's still extant, lamenting the death of his wife, written in the tenderest strain of connubial affliction; but it does not say that this lady was the affectionate princess; and indeed some late critics have proved that Imma was not the daughter of Charlemagne. He was a native of Germany, and educated by the munificence of his imperial master, of which he has left the most grateful testimony in his preface to the life of that monarch. Æginhard, after the loss of his wife, is supposed to have passed the remainder of his days in religious retirement, and to have died soon after the year 840. His life of Charlemagne, his annals from 741 to 889, and his letters, are all inserted in the 2d volume of Duchesne's Scriptores Francorum. An improved edition of this valuable historian, with the annotations of Hermann Schmincke, in 4to, was published in 1711.