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 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE 
 
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 1881
 
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 SYLi:.A.BUS 
 
 OF 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 J. M. HART 
 
 (UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI) 
 
 ADAPTED FROM BERNHARD TEN BRINK'S 
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 PR 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KOMAN BRITAIN. 
 
 1. The earliest known inhabitants of England be- 
 longed to the Keltic race, and were called Britons. 
 When Jnlius Caesar invaded the island, 55 B. C, they 
 were still in a barbarous or semi-barbarous state. A 
 serious attempt to annex the island permanently to the 
 Roman empire was not made until 43 A. D., in the reign 
 of Claudius. The work of conquest was continued dur- 
 ing the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, and 
 was complete by 85 A. D. From that time until the 
 5th century Britannia and the southern part of Scotia 
 were administered as a Roman province. Roman law, 
 manners, and letters were introduced. Large towns 
 grew up, e.g., York, London, Lincoln. There was a 
 thriving trade between the island and the continent. 
 Extensive remains of roads, aqueducts, tesselated pave- 
 ments, and the like, still bear witness to the thorough- 
 ness of the conquest. When the Roman world became 
 christianized, Britain also shared in the conversion. 
 By the middle of the 4th century the island had its 
 hierarchy and a well developed system of religious or- 
 ders and monasteries. 
 
 We do not know whether the primitive Britons pos- 
 sessed anything that could be called a literature of their 
 own, and, if so, of what character. Roman literature 
 was imported, so to speak, but we have no means of as- 
 certaining whether it exerted any strong direct influence
 
 2 ANGLO-SAXON LITEEATURE. 
 
 on the mass of the natives. Britain was for tlie Romans 
 nothing more than a military outpost. The garrison 
 consisted usually of 20,000 — 30,000 men, stationed at im- 
 portant strategic points, which were connected by mili- 
 tary roads. The children of the leading native families 
 were probably educated at first in the city of Eome, 
 as hostages, subseqaently at home in Roman schools 
 under the supervision of the Roman governor. The 
 interior population in and around the Roman towns and 
 camps acquired from soldiers and public oflicials a knowl- 
 edge of the Latin tongue sufficient for the ordinary inter- 
 course of life. But the rural population, w^hich must 
 have largel}' predominated, remained in all probability 
 Keltic in habits, tastes, feelings, and speech. Roman 
 administration, it is true, was as energetic and efficient 
 in Britain as elsewhere. It suppressed, for instance, 
 the savage rites and practices of Druidism, and secured 
 to every man protection in the enjoyment of life and 
 property. But we have no warrant for believing that 
 Roman culture ^pervaded and transformed Britain as it 
 pervaded Gaul and Spain. It was at best only an ex- 
 otic, and it was swept away by the first breath of ad- 
 versity. 
 
 2. In consequence of the dangers which threatened 
 the continental and more vital parts of the empire, the 
 Roman army was withdrawn from the island early in 
 the 5th century, and the Britons were left to struggle 
 unaided against their Keltic kinsmen, the Picts and 
 Scots on the north, and the Irish on the west (the coast 
 of Wales), and against the German tribes that came in 
 ever-growing numbers from across the Korth Sea. Tra- 
 dition tells us that these Germans were invited by the 
 Britons to help them against the Picts and Scots ; after 
 defeating the northern invaders in a series of bloody 
 battles, the Germans then turned their arms against
 
 COMING OF THE GEKMANS. S 
 
 their hosts, the Britons. The tradition is to be found in 
 Bede, Nennius, and Geoffrey of Monmouth ; the story 
 of Hengist and Horsa, Yortigern and Rowena, as it has 
 been graphicall}- narrated by Geoffrey, is doubtless fa- 
 miliar to most readers. But it is impossible at the j)res- 
 ent day to unravel the true and the fabulous in the 
 story. There is evidence going to show that Germanic 
 tribes had settled in considerable numbers along the 
 eastern and south-eastern coast, even before the end of 
 the 4th century. The only fact which need concern the 
 student of literature is that German-speaking tribes be- 
 gan a conquest of the island in the course of the 5th 
 century, and had finished it substantially by the end of 
 the 6th century. This second conquest was in every re- 
 spect unlike the first. It was not a iTiere military occu- 
 pation, it was a settlement in mass. The invaders 
 brought with them or sent for their families, and sought 
 to make the land their lasting home. Hence the war be- 
 
 tween them and the Britons could result only in the 
 total subjection and dispossession of the weaker party . 
 The Britons wem finally dispossesspd . Many were slain 
 outright in battle, others kille;! off in petty feuds, others 
 driven across the channel to the Armorican peninsula in 
 France, still others hemmed in among the mountain 
 fastnesses of Wales. B}^ the year GIO the eastern part 
 of the island as far north as the Firth of Forth, all the 
 southern and central parts, and the w^estern part (except 
 Wales, Cornwall, and Devonshire) as far north as the 
 river Mersey, were in the hands of the Germans. It is 
 usually asserted that the war against the Britons was one 
 of utter extermination. But it is more probable that 
 •numerous small isolated communities of Britons sur- 
 vived in the western and south-western portions of what 
 is now England proper, and were only absorbed in the 
 course of centuries, by the slow process of intermarriage.
 
 4 ANGLO SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 Hencefortli the country is called by its German name 
 of England. 
 
 3. The permanent vestiges of the British race in the 
 land that was once their own may be bricflj^ summed up 
 as follows. The Kelto-British tongue has disappeared 
 wholly from England proper, and survives only in 
 Welsh, now spoken by about a million of people. A 
 dialectic variety known as Cornish became extinct early 
 in the present century. According to some scholars, 
 certain peculiarities in the pronunciation of the rural 
 popuhition in the south-western and western counties of 
 England are of Keltic origin. Tlie Britons, in disap- 
 pearing, transmitted to their conquerors a few Latin 
 words imposed upon them by tbe Komans, e.g., castrum, 
 in early English eeaster,in modern English caster, Chester, 
 cester, as in the name Chester, and in the compounds 
 Dorchester, Winchester, Lancaster, Leicester, and the 
 like. Also colonia, in Lincoln ; strata, in our word 
 'street;' 'porta, in J^ewport; milia in 'mile.' Proba- 
 bly also onr words ' tile ' and ' pear ' were derived 
 from the Romans thronsfh the Britons. Concernina: 
 other words of Latin origin, e.g., ' candel,' ' bishop,' 
 ' priest,' ' mass,' it is impossible to decide whether 
 they were transmitted through the Britons, or were bor- 
 rowed by the English directly from Rome. Further- 
 more, the early English adopted and retained some 
 Keltic words. These are not numerous. They are 
 chiefly names of familiar household objects, or names of 
 places, especially rivers. Among the latter are Thames, 
 Trent, Tweed, Severn, Avon (which is Keltic for running 
 water in general), and the group of names Usk, Ux, 
 Wis (in Wisbec), Eske, Ouse — all modifications of the 
 Keltic wise ' water,' which is also found in the High- 
 land usquebagh, corrupted into ' whisky,' and standing 
 for a primitive uisce vaha, meaning ' water of life ;' but
 
 SURVIVAL OF BRITISH WORDS. 5 
 
 this word usquebagh has been introduced into English in 
 quite recent times. To the former class belong the 
 words ' basket,' ' bran,' ' wicket,' ' clout,' ' crag.' An 
 American will readily understand the fate of the 
 Keltic language in England, bj^ comparing it with that 
 of the Indian language in this country. Although the 
 Indians themselves have disappeared from the greater 
 part of the United States, their language survives in 
 Susquehanna, Juniata, Potomac, Mississippi, Ohio, Ni- 
 agara, etc., and in wigwam, wampum, squaw, toma- 
 hawk, moccasin, succotash, etc. 
 
 There are no traces of any influence exerted by the 
 Britons upon early English literature. The invaders 
 brought with them not only their own language, but 
 also their own — still heathen — worship, and the germs 
 and even the beginning of/a distiiifitly^Ly German p oetic 
 lit erature . So long as the contest lasted, and for cen- 
 turies afterward, literature in England was either dis- 
 tinctly German, or was based upon the general Roman 
 Catholic literature of the continent. It is not until the 
 12th century, after England had been conquered by 
 the Kormans, that we observe a sudden and curious 
 outgroAvth of British, i.e., Welsh literature. But this 
 point can be treated only in connection wath the Arthur- 
 ian cycle of romance. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GERMAN CONQUERORS. 
 
 4. The Germans who settled in England came from 
 Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein, and from the coast to 
 the west of the Elbe, known as Friesland. Tlievwere a 
 sturdy, warlike race, inured from childhood to privation 
 and danger. Their home was preeminently a trai ning-
 
 b AXGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 school for sailors. Thev and their successors, the Danes 
 and Xorsemeu, were as sea-robbers the terror of Europe. 
 The 5th century was a turning point in history ; it 
 marked the prostration of the "Western Eoman empire. 
 ISTorthern Gaul was seized by the Franks, Southern Gaul 
 by the Goths, Eastern Gaul by the Burgundians. The 
 Langobards established themselves even in IN^orthern 
 Italy. The Cliristian church itself, which had inspired 
 the noblest hopes and efforts of humanity, appeared in 
 danger of an eclipse. Culture and knowledge were 
 scarcely safe in the refuge of the cloister. Everywhere 
 was to be seen the foot-print of a ruthless heathen in- 
 vader. IsTo wonder, then, that the Latin writers (chiefly 
 ecclesiastics) of the 5th and 6th centuries indulged in 
 bitter lamentations. The Frank and the Saxon, the 
 Goth and the Dane, were in their sight devils sent by an 
 angry God to punish the world for sin. Their sufferings 
 were too recent, their imaginations too heated, for them 
 to think clearly. Yet it is from them that we derive our 
 knowledge of the great Germanic Migration. The Ger- 
 mans themselves were too busy fighting and plundering 
 to think of recording their deeds autobiographicallj^ 
 even had they possessed the literary ability. It is neces- 
 sary, therefore, to receive with caution the statements of 
 Latin writers concerning the character of the German 
 conquerors. That these latter were fierce in battle and 
 eager for booty, is unquestionable. They were further- 
 more given to immoderate eating and drinking, and their 
 seasons of warlike exertion were followed by long spells 
 of idle revelry. But thej^ can not possibly have been the 
 monsters or savages that we read of in early chronicles 
 or even in some modern histories. In comparison with 
 modern civilized man, they were quick to shed blood; 
 but by the side of the Romans of the Republic, they ap- 
 pear almost humane. "We may well doubt if the so- 
 called barbarian Germans during the whole period of the
 
 JUTES, ANGLES, SAXONS. 7 
 
 5th and 6th centuries inflicted in all Europe as mnch 
 misery as was wrought by Julius Csesar alone in the 
 eio-ht vears that he was eno;aged in subduino- Gaul. 
 
 We can trace the movements and study the features of 
 the German migration on the continent with tolerable 
 accurac3\ The records, although sparse and vitiated by 
 prejudice, are in the main intelligible. But the con- 
 quest of England is hopelessly obscure. We do not pos- 
 sess a single contemporary record, nor indeed any record 
 that is self-consistent or even plausible. All that we can 
 do is to note here and there a point in the light afforded 
 by the study of general European history. 
 
 The invaders of England were all of the same race, yet 
 there was diversity enough among them to lead us to es- 
 tablish a threefold grouping into the Jutes (from Jut- 
 land), the Angles (from Schleswig-Holstein), and the 
 Saxons, an offshoot of the great family of that name 
 then occupying the regions along the middle and lower 
 Elbe. The Jutes are said to have seized upon Kent ; the 
 Angles occupied the eastern, the Saxons the western and 
 southern parts of the island. All three groups spoke the 
 same language, but in forms that differeil enough to be 
 called dialects. These main dialects subsist to the present 
 day, and are called the northern, the southern, and the 
 Kentish. Each has its sub-varieties. In general we may 
 say that at no time in the history of England have the 
 inhabitants of one county had much ditheulty in under- 
 standing the inhabitants of any other. There has never 
 been such a dividing line between north and south as ex- 
 ists for instance in continental Germany between High 
 German and Low. The fitting title to be given to the 
 common speech of England in these early days before 
 the Norman Conquest is a question which has been much 
 discussed of late. One set of scholars, including Mr. 
 Sweet, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Morris, Prof, ten Brink, assert 
 that the only rightful title is ' Old-English.' Another
 
 8 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 and more numerous set prefer to call it, for the sake of 
 exactness, ' Anglo-Saxon,' reserving the term ' Old-Eng- 
 lish ' for the period after the Norman Conquest. Each 
 terminology has its advantages and its disadvantages. 
 In the following pages ' Anglo-Saxon ' will be employed 
 wherever it seems desirable. 
 
 5. Anglo-Saxon was an offshoot of Low, i.e. !N"orth- 
 Gcrman speech, and resembled very closely the so-called 
 Old-Saxon, the language which was spoken between the 
 Lower Rhine and the Elbe and of which we possess con- 
 siderable literary remains of the 9th century. Anglo- 
 Saxon and Old-Saxon, in fact, resemble each other 
 so closely that an English monk of those days, removing 
 from Winchester to Padcrborn, must have been able to 
 make himself at home almost immediately. As a matter 
 of history we know that many English monks did emi- 
 grate to this Rhine-Elbe region in the 8th and 9th 
 centuries, to labor as missionaries, and that they exerted 
 a perceptible influence in shaping the ecclesiastical prose 
 form of Old-Saxon. One single fact will be enough to 
 illustrate the kinship of the two lano-uaffes. The Ans-lo- 
 Saxon poem on the creation and fall of man, commonly 
 called Genesis and once attributed to Caedmon,was pub- 
 lished by Franciscus Junius in 1655. Until 1875 it was 
 supposed, as a matter of course, to be perfectly pure 
 Anglo-Saxon. But in 1875 Professor Sievers showed 
 conclusively that about one fifth of the poem is inter- 
 polated, and that this interpolation is a fragment of an 
 Anglo-Saxon version of an earlier Old-Saxon poem on 
 the same subject. Whoever converted the Old-Saxon 
 poem into Anglo-Saxon suffered inadvertently a few 
 words and phrases to remain, that are peculiar to Old- 
 Saxon and are not found elsewhere in Eno-lish literature. 
 Yet the general resemblance of the two languages is so 
 great that these un-English elements escaped the notice
 
 ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE AND INSTITUTIONS. 9 
 
 of scholars and editors for upwards of two centiiries. 
 See § 21. 
 
 A few remarks upon the more general features of 
 Anglo-Saxon speech will not be out of phice. It is rich 
 in Avords for weapons, such as the sword, the shield, the 
 spear, in words descriptive of combat, and in words re- 
 lating to ships and the sea. It impresses us immediately 
 as the speech of a fighting, sea-faring folk. On the 
 other hand it is rich in words expressive of moods and 
 emotions of the mind. We have lost many of these 
 latter terms, having substituted for them words of Nor- 
 man-French or Latin or Greek ori2:in. Those which re- 
 main represent the subtler and more mysterious side of 
 our nature. There is one feature of Anglo-Saxon which 
 does not seem to liave attracted the notice of scholars in 
 England, although German scholars have laid much 
 stress on it. ]Namely, its tendency toward introspection, 
 and the favoring of a sad or at least plaintive dispos- 
 ition. This trait, it may be remarked in passing, still 
 subsists in our modern speech. With all its robustness, 
 its common-sense power of adapting itself to the realities 
 of the world, English, contrasted with the Romance 
 languages and with continental German, still moves 
 with an undercurrent of sadness. See § 18. 
 
 6, Our knowledge of the institutions and the religion 
 of the Angles and Saxons at the time of their settlement 
 has been obtained almost altogether from a studj^ of kin- 
 dred relations on the continent. The people were divided 
 into three classes : the nobles, cor^as; the simple freemen, 
 ccorlas; and the slaves. The chief among the nobles, 
 the princes, gathered around them a retinue of devoted 
 personal adherents, the thegnas, or ' thanes.' As the 
 princes grew in power and dignity, and — by reason ot 
 greater familiarity with Roman institutions — assumed 
 more and more of the prerogatives of the Roman em-
 
 10 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 perors, these thegnas attained to the position of a court- 
 iiobility, outranking the elder hereditary nobility of the 
 eorlas. They were enriched by gifts of land conquered 
 in war, and held their possessions upon condition of ren- 
 dering military service. We thus lind the outlines of 
 the feudal system clearly marked in England in the 
 Anglo-Saxon period, although the S3'Stem reached its 
 full development only after and in consequence of the 
 Norman Conquest. This feudal or semi-feudal spirit is 
 worthy of especial note, for it pervades all the early 
 poetry of England. In the poetry of heathen origin it 
 is of course conspicuous. The prince is constantly de- 
 scribed as the giver of rings and gold bracelets, of costly 
 helmets and trusty swords. A right-minded prince is a 
 free ^iver ; an ignoble prince is grasping and miserly. 
 On the other hand, a loyal thane is one who sliows him- 
 self worthy of his lord's munificence, standing by him in 
 danger and perishing with him in battle. This notion of 
 giving and receiving, of generosity and personal attach- 
 ment, is the key-note of all early German heroic poetry. 
 In Anglo-Saxon literature we fi.nd it almost as pro- 
 nounced in Christian as in heathen poetr}^ God is the 
 giver of life and health ; life is a loan from the Maker, 
 and death a calUng-iii of the loan. Christ is the prince 
 of glory, and the apostles are his faithful thanes. Satan 
 and his companions are faithless thanes, and their rebel- 
 lion is an ungrateful breach of allegiance. 
 
 7. We know even less of the religion of the Angles and 
 Saxons than of their political institutions. Several quite 
 recent discoveries have shaken the confidence of scholars 
 in former theories based upon the Edda. It is at best 
 doubtful whether the subject of Old-German heathen be- 
 lief can be mad« intelligible to any one not familiar with 
 the general processes and results of comparative mythol- 
 ogy. Only a few of the striking features will be given here,
 
 ANGLO-SAXON MYTHOLOGY. 11 
 
 and even these will be of a negative rather than of a pos- 
 itive character. The Angles and Saxons, like their con- 
 tinental kinsmen, worshi[)ped certain so-called divinities, 
 Othin, Thor, Loki, Freya, &c. These divinities were 
 originally natnre-myths, that is, forces or phenomena of 
 natnre, such as the wind, thunder, fire, the fertility of 
 the earth, personified and invested with human attributes, 
 male or female. There is an unquestionable similarity, 
 or parallelism, between the German divinities, and those 
 of Greece and of India, so much so that scholars are 
 agreed in assigning all three groups to one common prim- 
 itive Indo-European conception of natnre. The difier- 
 ences among the three are due in general to the greater 
 or less thoroughness with which a nature-force or phe- 
 nomenon has been reduced to purely human shape and 
 proportions, or — to use the technical term — has been «n- 
 thro-pomorpliized. In this respect the German group 
 stands midAvay between the Indian and the Greek. The 
 Vedic divinities, e.g. Agni, the god of fire, Vaya, the 
 god of the wind, Indra, the god of the clear sky, Usha, 
 the goddess of the dawn, are still unmistakable nature- 
 forces ; they can scarcely be called ' persons ' at all. On 
 the other hand Jupiter, ISTeptune, Apollo, Yenus, &c., 
 have lost almost every trace of their origin and have be- 
 come mere men and women of extraordinary powers. 
 Whereas the German Othin, Thor and their associates, 
 although no longer mere myths, are not yet mere men 
 and women. Tliej^ lack that sharpness of outline and 
 that perfect intelligibility which constitute the charm of 
 the Olympic gods in Homer. They come down and 
 move among men, they fight side by side with heroes, 
 but they never cease to be misty, supernatural, phantas- 
 magoric. 
 
 We know far less of the Germanic system than of the 
 Greek or the Indian, and the explanation is obvious 
 enough. Both Greeks and Ilindoos developed their
 
 12 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATUKE. 
 
 systems naturally and fully, not onlj' in literature but in 
 painting and sculpture, before coming in contact with 
 Christianity. The Germans, on the contrary, were con- 
 verted to Christianity before they had fairly begun the 
 literary or pictorial expression of their heathen concep- 
 tion. In accepting Christian doctrines they gave up de- 
 liberately their early beliefs. It became a matter of con- 
 science with them to ignore everything anterior to Chris- 
 tianity as crude and barbarous. The priests of the Ro- 
 man Catholic church were inflexible in their efibrts to 
 eradicate whatever savored of heathenism in manners, 
 customs, and even speech. There is more than one pas- 
 ;8age in the poem of Beowulf, for instance, which has 
 ievidently been altered to suit ecclesiastical requirements. 
 jit is not surprising, then, that the remains we possess of 
 early heathen literature should be so fragmentary and 
 confused. The wonder is rather that so much should 
 have escaped the general destruction. 
 
 Concerning the religion of the heathen Germans, we 
 should not be safe in asserting more than the following : 
 it had no priesthood, no distinct order to mediate be- 
 tween men and gods ; it exacted no sacrihce of human 
 blood, although victims, usually captives, were occa- 
 sionally slain upon the altar; it paid great respect to 
 women, investing them with a quasi-prophetic sacred 
 character; it looked upon cowardice and treachery as the 
 basest of vices ; it held out the hope of a future life re- 
 producing the main features of life on earth ; its service 
 consisted chiefly of warlike hymns or chants.
 
 HYMNIC AND HEROIC POETRY. 13 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE EARLY POETRY. 
 
 8. The earliest poetry among the Germans was of a 
 religious kind, in the shape of hymns to the gods upon 
 solemn occasions. Being addressed directly to the gods, 
 it was necessaril}^ an expression of mythological con- 
 ceptions. And as the hymns were sung, or at least 
 chanted, they were composed in short strophes or stanzas. 
 Remains of such hymnic poetry are quite evident in the 
 Edda. In Anglo-Saxon literature tliey are barely dis- 
 cernible. 
 
 In Germany proper and in England, hymnic poetry 
 was superseded by heroic verse. To understand the 
 growth of this latter system, we must keep in view the 
 general tendencies of European history. The fifth cen- 
 tury was a turning-point not only for tlie Roman world 
 but for the German conquerors themselves. It was the 
 beginning of their ' heroic age.' To us, who study the 
 events of the great Migration in a critical spirit, with 
 the aid of contemporary Latin records, such leaders as 
 Theoderic, King of the Goths, are actual men like our- 
 selves, without a trace of tlie supernatural. But it was 
 quite otherwise with the illiterate but imaginative de- 
 scendants of the Goths, the Franks, or the Burgundians, 
 in the 6th and subsequent centuries. Popular imag- 
 ination, stimulated bj- oral tradition, endowed the great 
 chieftains of the 5th century with superhuman strength 
 and courage, and crowned their deeds with the halo of 
 romance. Great men became, in a word, ' heroes,' and 
 their deeds became the theme of popular poetry. This 
 secular poetry, in supplanting the elder hymns, retained 
 not a few of their mythological elements. Attributes
 
 14 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 and actions of the gods were transferred to the heroes, 
 thereb}' making them semi-mythicaL The process will be 
 treated more fully in the remarks upon the Beowulf poem, 
 § 12. For the present it will be enough to say that the 
 new heroic poetry first found expression in short pieces, 
 commemorating a single exploit of some well known 
 hero. The poem places us, without any prelude, in the 
 very midst of the action, and the actors reveal their 
 character and antecedents by what they do and say. A 
 striking instance is the Hildebrands-lied, in Old-German 
 of the 8th century. It begins : " I heard tell that Ililde- 
 brand and Hadabrand, in between the two armies, made 
 ready their armor, girded on their swords. And Eilde- 
 brand, he was the elder, inquired of the other, in few 
 words, who his father might be, &c." He himself is the 
 father; he had fled from home twenty years before, on 
 account of political troubles, and had taken refuge with 
 Dietrich (i.e., Theoderic), at the court of Attila, King ot 
 the Huns. Now he is returning home at the head of an 
 army, to recover his possessions, but is stopped by his 
 son, who has in the meanwhile grown to manhood. By 
 dint of questioning, the father finds out that his foe is 
 his son, and declares himself. But the sou refuses to 
 believe, reviles him for 'an old Hun,' and insists upon 
 fig-htino-. Tlie father's lament at being thus forced to 
 an unnatural combat is extremely touching. The poem 
 breaks ofi" at the first encounter, so that what we have 
 is only a fragment. Most scholars are of the opinion 
 that it ended tragically, with the death of the son. 
 
 The strophe or stanza of the elder hymnic poetry was 
 unsuited to these new heroic poems, which were not 
 sung but recited. It was therefore discarded, except in 
 the literature of Scandinavia, and for it was substituted 
 a continuous flow of verse. The difference between 
 stanza-verse and continuous verse may be readily felt by 
 comparing the Faery Queen with Paradise Lost. In a
 
 FORMATION OF HEROIC POETRY. 15 
 
 narrative piece of any length, it is impossible for the 
 poet to express each successive thought or action in a 
 fixed number of lines. Either he will have too little to 
 say, and consequently will eke out the stanza with a 
 superfluous line or two; or he will have too much to say, 
 and will carry over the sentence into the succeeding 
 stanza, thereby occasioning an awkward enjambement, or 
 'straddling.' 
 
 In the course of time the short episodic poems grouped 
 themselves into longer poems, commemorating a series 
 of deeds by a certain hero, or the fortunes of a hero and 
 his com})anions, or a long chain of events in which 
 many members of a familj' or leaders of a tribe partici- 
 pated. Such longer pieces may be called 'epics.' An 
 instance of a modern poem in imitation of a medieval 
 epic is Tennyson's Enid; on the other hand the Lady of 
 Shalotf, like the HiUlehrands-lied, is episodic. The Iliad 
 and the Odyssey are examples of epic poetry in its perfec- 
 tion. Finally, all the poems, episodic and epic, and all 
 the scattered traditions relatins^ to one set of heroes and 
 events constitute what is called a 'cycle' of fable. 
 Thus, Tennyson's Lady of Shaloii, Sir Galahad, Idylls of 
 the King, &c., are parts of the great medieval cycle of 
 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. 
 
 9. There was not among the early Germans a sepa- 
 rate class of singers or poets. All, from the King down 
 to the simple ccod, had the right to sing in public assem- 
 blies. It was even expected of every one present at the 
 board, wdien the mead-cup and the harp were passed 
 around, that he should contribute his share to the even- 
 ing's entertainment. The custom, which still lingers in 
 the Rundgesang of modern Germany, is well illustrated 
 by the story told of Caedmon, see § 20. These old Ger- 
 man and English ' songs ' were not songs in the modern 
 sense; they were ' recitals' of the great deeds of popu-
 
 16 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 lar heroes. Botli speaker and listener were familiar, 
 through long practice, with the leading events in the 
 histor}' of the tribe or the nation, and wirh the ancestry, 
 life, character, and habits of each hero. Hence the 
 abruptness of such poetry. The singer has a right to 
 take for granted that his hearers are as familiar as him- 
 self with the substance of the story he is to narrate. 
 He not only plunges boldly in medias res, e.g., in the BU- 
 debrands-lied above mentioned, but he interrupts the 
 course of the main narrative with allusions to persons 
 and events indirectly connected with it. Such allusions 
 are often quite brief. Tliey can not in strictness be 
 called obscure, for doubtless they were understood at 
 once by the original hearers. But to a modern reader 
 they are extremely ditficult. 
 
 The substance of the stories handed down to ns in 
 Anglo-Saxon and other Old-German is eminently a pro- 
 duct of the popular mind. Generation after generation 
 labored upon the stories before they assumed the shape 
 in which we have them. 'No less popular is the form of 
 verse. It is at once simple, powerful, and flexible. It 
 was not too difficult for the common man to use, yet in 
 the mouth of an accomplished narrator it was capable of 
 expressing all that the mind of those early days was 
 capable of conceiving. 
 
 This Old-German verse is usually called, after its most 
 striking feature, ' alliterative.' The number of syllables 
 in the verse is not fixed exactly ; nor can we say that the 
 verse is divided into ' feet.' There is no terminal rime. 
 Each fall verse (line), as printed in recent editions, is to 
 be read in two sections nearly but not quite equal. In 
 early editions the sections were printed as separate lines. 
 The two sections produce an effect not unlike that of a 
 modern ' couplet,' for they are coupled together by cer- 
 tain words beginning with the same sound, i.e., they are 
 £iiid to ' alliterate.' Thus :
 
 ALLITERATIVE VERSE. 17 
 
 flota famighals fugle gelicost 
 
 the ship foamy-necked, to a fowl most like 
 
 The three /-soniids alliterate. Any vowel may allit- 
 erate with any other vowel, e.g. 
 
 Tha com in gan ealdor thegna 
 
 Then came in-going the prince of the thanes 
 
 The verb c6m. with the dependent compound infinitive 
 in-gdn is equivalent to the modern ' entered.' The i of 
 the prefix in alliterates with the ea of ealdor. Strictly a 
 consonant can alliterate only with itself; l)ut there are 
 some licenses. In the most correct verse there are two 
 alliterative sounds in the first section of the line and one 
 in the second. But very frequently there is only one in 
 each, and sometimes we find two in each, although not 
 often in Anglo-Saxon poetry. It has been stated above 
 that there is no terminal rime in alliterative verse. This 
 is strictly true of the heathen poetry, and also in general 
 of the Christian poetry until a comparatively late period, 
 when we find rimes creeping in. They are an imitation 
 of the Latin hymns of the Catholic church, and the 
 forerunners of our modern system. Hence they are 
 nearly always to be considered as symptoms of a decline 
 of the early alliterative system. See § 30. 
 
 The alliteration rests usually on the emphatic words 
 of the sentence. Sound and sense, therefore, go hand 
 in hand and help each other. When properly read, an 
 alliterative poem is ensy, flowing, and dignified. It 
 has moreover a peculiar power which the scholar alone 
 will appreciate and which can not be reproduced in any 
 modern imitation. One reason is that our early speech 
 abounded in standing epithets, and set phrases and form- 
 ulae, which have ceased to exist. Besides, modern imi- 
 tators fail to perceive that alliteration is something more 
 than the mere recurrence of a certain sound two or three 
 times in the course of the line. The line itself has a
 
 / 
 
 18 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 structure of its own ; it is, as already stated, a couplet in 
 which the first part is balanced by the second. We need 
 only compare a line from the Beowulf-poem with a line 
 from Tennyson. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon poet says : 
 
 Gewat tha ofer waegholm wipde gefysed 
 Flota famighals fugle gelicost 
 Went then over the wave-top, by the wind urged, 
 The ship &c. 
 
 The ge in gewdt is unaccented and the following lo al- 
 literates with those in icdeg and winde. The whole line 
 makes upon the ear a very difierent etiect from Tenny- 
 son's: 
 
 They wept and wailed but led the way 
 
 Tennyson also gives us, it is true, three w's, but we feel 
 that the phrase 'but led the way' does not 'balance' the 
 preceding, and we wait instinctively for the next line : 
 
 To where a little shallop lay 
 
 to complete the effect, by means of its rime 'way : lay.' 
 But this rime is no alliteration. 
 
 10. Anglo-Saxon poetry differs from modern English 
 in its style also. The language is synthetic, i.e., it de- 
 notes grammatical relations bj' varying the forms of 
 words. It is not tied dow^i to the modern losjical order: 
 subject, copula, predicate. The poet is, in general, free 
 to arrange the Avords with a view to their effect upon the 
 ear and the imagination. Hence inversions are quite 
 common. There is also a marked tendency to amplifi- 
 ' cation. An object is described, an action narrated by suc- 
 cessive sets of phrases, that are not to be taken as repe- 
 '^ titions but as shiftings of the view-point. Thus, in the 
 passage cited, § 9, the ship is spoken of as 'the floating 
 thing,' then as ' the twining or curved stem.' The ap- 
 proach to land is given in three phrases; they (the mari-
 
 STYLE OF HEROIC POETRY. 19 
 
 ners) saw ' the strand-el ift's,' ' the steep hills,' ' the broad 
 sea-promontories.' In modern speech such amplification 
 might be wearisome ; but in primitive poetry it adds life 
 and variety. The poet seems to be reproducing from 
 memory his impressions in the order in which they were 
 made upon his mind. Finallj^ the language is rich in '^' 
 plain and obvious similies, but not in formal comparisons. 
 The body is called bdn-loca, the 'bone-case;' to make a 
 speech is ' to unlock the treasure of words in one's breast.' 
 The scream of the ravens gathering around the corpses 
 after the fight is called the ' evening-song;' the hissing 
 of the sword in battle is also a 'song.' The battle itself 
 is called ecga geldc, the ' play of edges.' 
 
 It was stated, § 9 beginning, tiiat there was no sepa- 
 rate class of poets. Song-craft was the common posses- 
 sion of all. Nevertheless certain men must have been 
 more richly endowed than others with p.oetic gifts. They 
 were sweet singers by eminence. Some few excepted, 
 tliey have not left a record of their names, nor can we 
 identify their names with any of the poems that we 
 possess. But the tradition of such poets was preserved 
 * until late in the Middle Ages. A notable instance is 
 Horant, who figures in the great German epic of Gudrun, 
 and of whom the poem tells us that when he sang, the 
 birds ceased to warble, the sick forgot their pains, the 
 workman stopped, the beasts of the wood, the fish in the 
 water, the very insects in the grass, paused to listen. 
 Horant, then, is the counterpart to Orpheus. Both name 
 and works of at least one poet among the Angles and / 
 Saxons, namely Cynewulf, have been preserved. See § 24. 
 In estimating our early heathen poetry, we should 
 never forget that we have only disjoinjted_reranants af-/^'' 
 what was once a large body of literature. Had we all 
 the popular narrative poems current in England in the 
 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries, our knowledge would be en- 
 hanced a hundred-fold. We must also learn to discrim-
 
 20 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 inate carefully between the part plaj^ed by the folk at 
 large and that played by the individual in the composition 
 of such poetry. The substance of the poem, i.e., the 
 story, the heroes, their character and exploits, were the 
 common tradition of the people. In these respects there 
 was no room for poetic 'invention' in our modern 
 sense. Whoever in Old England undertook to tell in 
 verse of the deeds of the forefathers was not at liberty to 
 add or to change a name, an incident, or a trait of char- 
 acter. All that he could call his own was the maimer of 
 telling. And, as Lowell has put it: — 
 
 He tells it last, who tells it best. 
 
 We can imagine a favorite story passed along from gen- 
 eration to generation, until some one poet arises, Avho 
 succeeds in telling it so well that his version becomes the 
 final one. Plenceforth all that remains to be done is to 
 preserve it in this shape. The name of the poet may 
 disappear utterly; the story itself never was his; but the 
 version is his, even although it bear no name. 
 
 11. One more general feature of our early poetry 
 must be introduced in this place, although it obliges us 
 to anticipate somewhat the course of political events. It 
 was stated, §4, that three varieties of speech, called dia- 
 alects, were spoken in England, viz., the northern dSTorth - 
 umbrian), the southern (West-Saxon., ^ r WegBQ:?^ ) . and 
 the Kentis h. We learn from history that Korthumbri a 
 first rose to eminence in e cclesiastica l . politicaL and lit- 
 erary matters. It took the lead throus'liout the 7th and 
 8th centuries. Most of the conspicuous men of England 
 prior to the 9th century were Northumbrians by birth or 
 by residence and education. Thus B ed e, Caedmon, 
 Cynewulf, &c. It is highly probable, also, that the poem 
 of Beowulf was composed in North umbria. We should 
 expect, therefore, to find the earliest literary remains
 
 NORTHUMBIIIA AND WESSEX. 21 
 
 written in the Nortlmmbrian dialect. But this is not the 
 case. A ll the early poetry, heathen as well as (Jliristian , 
 and ahiiost all the early prose, are in ti^e Wessex dialect- 
 The only specimen of yerse in the Northumbrian dia- 
 lect of this period is a fragment of nine lines at the end 
 of a Latin manuscript of Bede's Historia, see § 19, 20. 
 If the earliest literature in England was composed in 
 Northumbria, how can we account for the phenomenon 
 that it has all been transmitted to us in the speech of 
 Wessex? The explanation usually given is this. From 
 the beginning of the 9th century J ^ orthumbria was rav^ 
 aged more and more by the Danes. At one time it was 
 completel}^ in their power. Being heathens, the}^ acted 
 as the Ano'les and Saxons themselyes had acted three 
 centuries before. They plundered the monasteries, which 
 were the seats of learning and the libraries of those days, 
 and scattered or destroyed the manuscripts. Even Wes- 
 sex was in danger, and was saved only through the 
 genius and energy of King Alfred. It is commonly be- 
 lieved by scholars that in or before the reign of King 
 Alfred a great part of early !N" orthumbrian poetry wa s 
 transcribed and recast in Wessex forms , and that these 
 Wessex vers ions have been handed down to us, wiiile the. 
 ISTorthumbrian originals perishecL In consequence of the 
 Danish invasions, the centre of political and literary 
 activity was shifted from l^orthnmbria to Wessex. The 
 capital of King Alfred and his successors, Winchester, 
 became the seat of learning. And it was here, in and 
 around Winchester , that the lirst English prose literature 
 originated. As will be shown in a subsequent place, 
 King Alfred himself labored indefatigably in shaping 
 this prose. Comparing the two great divisions of the 
 island, then, we may say that Northumbria is entitled to 
 the credit of creating our earliest poetry, Wessex to the 
 two-fold credit of preserving that poetry and of creating 
 our earliest prose.
 
 22 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 BEOWULF AND OTHER HEATHEN POETRY. 
 
 13, The poem of Beowulf is by far the most import- 
 ant and interesting monument of early German poetry, 
 not only by virtue of its length and the variety of inci- 
 dent it aftbrds, but by its vigor of style and the light it 
 throws upon manners and customs. The substance of 
 the story is a blending of myth and history, and aptly 
 illustrates what was stated § 8. 
 
 The germ of the story is mythical. Before the con- 
 querors of England left their continental home, there 
 had sprung up among them the myth of a divine being, 
 Beowi^ . who overcomes a sea-monster, CTrende l. and 
 then a lire-drago n ; in the latter encounter he loses his 
 own life. This Beowa is only another form of Frea, the 
 god of warmth and fertility, and his death symbolizes 
 the disappearance of summer at the approach of winter. 
 The Germans brought the myth with them to Britain, 
 and the names of Beowa and Grendcl became attached 
 to certain hills and lakes, e.g., Beowanham, Grendlcs- 
 mere. Around this mythical germ, or kernel, clustered 
 subsequently the following historical incidents. 
 
 In the early part of th e 6th century , about 515 , Hy- 
 _gelac. King of the Geats (inhabiting the modern Gota- 
 land in s outhern Swede n), made an incursion upon the 
 Frankish lands along the lower Ehine. The Frankish 
 prince Theudebert met him in desperate battle, and 
 routed him utterly by sea and by land. Ilygelac and 
 most of his followers perished, and the booty they were 
 carrying off was retaken. Among the Geats Vv^as a 
 you ng ncyihew of Ilvgelac. name rl Boownlf, n. man of 
 extraordi nary strength and skill in swimming, whc
 
 POEM OF BEOWULF. 23 
 
 made his escape. The story is well authenticated ; it is 
 narrated by Gregory of Tours in his great work, the 
 Gesta Francorum. The fame of the battle and of its 
 hero, Beowulf, must have spread not only among the 
 Danes and Swedes but also to England, where it was 
 probably commemorated in popuhir songs. In the 
 course of time the p erson of the historic Beowulf be- 
 came mers^ed in that of the fiod Beow^aj_and out of this. 
 
 merging: ot mvth a nd history, tlieiy has issued onr Bpo^ 
 ?ult poem. The theme was undoubtedly a favorite 
 among the Angles and Saxons. Even after they were 
 converted to Christianity, they preserved the substance 
 of the Beowulf stories intact. But expressions savoring 
 too strongly of heathenism were expunged one by one, 
 and phrases and passages of a distinctively Christian or 
 monkish character were interpolated. It is believed 
 that the Beowulf poem, in very nearly the shape in 
 which we now tind it, was committed to WM'iting, proba- 
 bly i n yorthnml^ria, about the beginning of the 8th cen- 
 tury. The only existino- T^inmiscriiit of it ia ono of tliA 
 10th century, now in the British Museum. It is illegi- 
 ble in several places, having been injured by lire in 1731. 
 The language is West-Saxon. 7* 
 
 13, As now printed, the poem contains 3,184 full 
 verses (lines). It reads at first sight like one homo- 
 geneous piece; but on closer examination it reveals nu- 
 merous inconsistencies and interpolations. According 
 to the searching investigations of Professor Miillenhotf, 
 it may be reduced to two primitive and independent 
 stories: first, the fight between Beowulf and Grendel; 
 second, the fight between Beowulf and the fire-dragon. 
 These two stories are of equally ancient origin; but 
 whether composed b}^ one and the same poet, can not be 
 made out with certainty. 
 
 The first of the primitive stories is contained in verses
 
 24 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 194-836; the second, in verses 2200-3184. All the 
 rest of the poem is, in Mtillenhofi''s judgment,. nothing 
 but secondary matter. Even those sections of the poem 
 which embody the primitive stories themselves are not 
 free from interpolation. Out of a total of 3184 verses, 
 onl}^ 930 can rightfully be called ' original,' namely, 
 490 verses for the first story, 440 for the second. 
 
 Thus, the introduction, 1-193, is evidently a late ad- 
 dition, and is a rather clumsy attempt on the part of 
 some secondary verse-maker to set forih the pedigrees, 
 &c., of the chief personages who figure subsequently. 
 The first primitive story begins v. 194. Beowulf, thane 
 of Hygelac, King of the Geats, learns of the troubles of 
 Hrothgar, King of the Danes, and resolves to go to his 
 relief. Hrothgar, namel}', having built him a great hall, 
 called Heorot, is grievously molested there by the 
 nightly attacks of a water-monster, Grendel, who kills 
 many of his best knights and carries oft' others. The 
 description of tlie voyage of Beowulf and his com- 
 panions from Geataland to tlie Danish land, although 
 brief, is spirited. They are graciously received by 
 Hrothgar. When the evening banquet is at an end, 
 Hrothgar and his men retire to the inner rooms, leaving 
 the great hall, Avhich is the scene of Grendel's ravages,- 
 in charge of the new-comers. They all fall asleep, ex- 
 cept the leader. Grendel sallies forth as usual from his 
 den in the moor, and coming to the hall tears open the 
 door. Light flashes like fire from his eyes. He laughs 
 to himself at the prospect of gratifying his greed of hu- 
 man flesh. But Fate, the ' weird' sister, no longer de- 
 crees, literally 'weaves,' that he shall carry oft' one of 
 human kind after this night. Beowulf, awake, watches 
 him. Quickly the monster falls upon a sleeping Geat 
 and in an instant has torn him to pieces. The next to 
 be attacked is Beowulf. But the hero, bracing himself 
 on his (left) elbow, clutches Grendel with his right hand.
 
 POEM OF BEOWULF. 25 
 
 The giant finds to his dismay that he has never yet en- 
 countered a man with such a grip. He tries to flee, but 
 can not; he is held too firmly. Then Beowulf remem- 
 bers his promise to King Hrothgar. Eising to his fuil 
 lieight, he takes still firmer hold. The giant's claw is 
 crushed; again he tries to flee. The hall resounds with 
 the din, the ale-cups of tbe Danes clatter to the ground. 
 It is a w^onder that the hall does not shake to pieces ; 
 but it is fastened too strongly within and without wdth 
 iron bands wrought with cunning art. Many a bench 
 is overturned in the desperate fray. The listening 
 Danes are tilled with terror, when they hear the evil one 
 utter his cry of defeat; in the naive wording of the 
 original, he yells his dreary death-song. Many a fol- 
 lower of Beowulf hastens to aid with his sword. But 
 the best of swords would be of no avail against Gren- 
 del's enchanted mail. The combatants close in a su- 
 preme effort; the giant's shoulder is wrenched open, 
 the sinews torn asunder. Victory is with Beowulf. 
 -Grende], leaving his arm behind, flees mortally wounded 
 to his den. And Beowulf, in token of victory, hangs 
 up the giant's arm and claws under the broad roof. 
 
 Here the first story ended, according to Mullenhoff". 
 It lias all the characteristics of an episodic poem ; it is 
 abrupt, concise, straightforward, and intensely vivid. 
 For power, it is worthy of a place among the treasures 
 of any people, ancient or modern. It is followed in the 
 poem by a number of incidents and digressions, the 
 chief of which are these. The next night there is a 
 grand banquet, at which costly gifts are bestowed upon 
 Beowulf by the grateful Hrothgar. The Danes being 
 left in charge of the hall over night, are attacked by a 
 second raonstei', Grendel's mother, who has come to 
 avensre lier son. She carries off Ilroth gar's favorite 
 councillor, Aschere. Once more Hrothgar is disconso- 
 late. But Beowulf comforts him by promising to attack
 
 26 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 the she-monster in her den. He does so, and — after an 
 even more desperate encounter — kills the mother and 
 cnts off and brings back the gigantic head of the dead 
 Grendel himself. Beowulf then returns to his home and 
 is welcomed by Hygelae. 
 
 All this, even including the fight between Beowulf 
 and Grendel's mother, is pronounced by Mlillenhotf to 
 be mere secondary amplification. Bat certain discov- 
 eries, made since the publication of Miillenhoff's essay, 
 put the episode with Grendel's mother in a new light. 
 It has been found that the story of Beowulf's victory 
 over the two water-demons is contained i n Icelandic, in 
 the G-rettis-saqa , composed not much later than the year 
 1250. The hero of the saga^ Grettir Asmundarson, is a 
 historical personage of the 11th century, an outlaw 
 noted for his stren^cth and coura2,-e. To him has been 
 transferred, by the imagination of the Icelandic saga- 
 men, the entire Beowa-myth in the following shape. 
 Grettir, in requital for hospitality shown him, un- 
 dertakes to defend a certain house against the night- 
 attack of ' trolls' by whom it had been disturbed. At 
 midnight a gigantic woman makes her appearance ; the 
 fight which ensues ends in his cutting off her right arm 
 with his sword, and the giantess throws herself over a 
 water-fall near the house and disappears. Some time 
 afterwards Grettir takes with him the village priest, to 
 help in exploring this water-fall. The priest fastens a 
 long rope firmly in the bank, so that the end reaches to 
 the water at the foot of the fall. Grettir plunges ofi" the 
 bank into the Avater, swims up to the fall, and climbing 
 up some rocks succeeds in making his way into a cavern 
 behind the sheet of falling water. Here he espies a 
 huge giant sitting by the fire. A desperate fight ensues, 
 of course, in which Grettir is again victorious. He kills 
 the giant, and finds much treasure in the cave, which he
 
 POEM OF BEOWULF. 27 
 
 carries off, together with the bones of two men, the 
 giant's victims. 
 
 The resembhmce between this saga and the Old-English 
 poem is too great to be a mere coincidence. We may 
 even say that the story of Grettir exphiins one or two 
 points in the description of Beowulf's encounter with 
 Grendel's mother, Avhich have been quite obscure until 
 now. And both the Icelandic and the English texts 
 employ one peculiar word which occurs nowhere else in 
 the two languages. Everything indicates that the Ice- 
 landic and the English stor}' proceeded from a common 
 original which contained both encounters. All readers 
 of the Beowulf-poem will probably be glad to have the 
 claims of this part to 'originality' successfully vindi- 
 cated, for it embodies one of the most thrilling episodes 
 — namel}", where Beowulf, weary, stumbles and falls. 
 The poet says, simply but powerfully : ' Then sat shf 
 upon the hall-guest and drew her short sword, broad 
 brown-edged ; she purposed avenging her bairn, her onl} 
 oft'spring. But on his shoulder lay the woven breast- 
 net, protecting the body, refusing an entrance to point 
 and to edge.' Beowulf's armor is woven of links ol 
 steel, without any joints or seams through which a 
 sword or a dagger might be thrust. 
 
 14. The second primitive story, v. 2200—3184, con- 
 tained in its original shape about 440 verses, i.e., was 
 about equal in length to the first. It was probably 
 equally vivid. But the interpolations and corruptions 
 of the text are so numerous that it is difficult to give a 
 satisfactory statement of it without going into intricate 
 details. The chief points seem to be these. After the 
 fall of Ilygelac and his immediate family in battle, 
 Beowulf becomes king. This total destruction of the 
 direct line of succession is evidently a reminiscence of 
 the overthrow and death of the historic Ilygelac.
 
 28 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 Beowulf reigns fifty years with great renown. One of 
 his servants, having incnrred his anger, flees and liides 
 himself in a cave that he accidentally discovers. The 
 cave proves to he the den of a fire-dragon, who is absent 
 for the moment, and is filled w-ith rare treasures. Hop- 
 ing to propitiate his master, the servant takes one of 
 them, a costly drinking-cup, and returns home, Beow^nlf 
 with eleven companions sets out to attack and plunder 
 the cave. But this time he is less successful. On the 
 one hand, the monster is a j/ire-dragon, and therefore 
 more formidable than Grendel ; on the other, Beowulf 
 is well on in years and less vigorous. All his followers 
 except one, ."W"^"'^^^? desert their master. "Wiglaf and 
 Beowulf together succeed at last in killing the dragon, 
 but not until Beowulf has been mortally wounded. Un- 
 able to explore the cave himself, he sends Wiglaf in, 
 who comes back loaded wdth vessels of gold and silver. 
 Making his dying speech, Beowmlf nominates Wiglaf 
 his successor. The other knights returning, Wiglaf up- 
 braids them bitterly wnth cowardice, and bids them pre- 
 pare for troublous times. Now that their great king is 
 gone, their enemies, the Franks and the Frisians, will 
 not spare them. This passage is doubtless a post-factum 
 prophecy of the breaking-up of the power of the historic 
 Geat s. The wdiole folk is then convened. The corpse 
 of the hero is laid upon a stately pyre, the smoke of 
 wliich ascends to heaven amid universal weeping and 
 wailins:. 
 
 ISText to the Nibelun gen-lied, the poem of Beowulf has 
 received the most attention from scholars. Editions of 
 it are numerous; it has been translated into English 
 prose by Kemble, and into modern German alliteration 
 by Grein. Yet despite all such efforts, much of the 
 poem still remains and will probably always remain ob- 
 scure. Purely descriptive and narrative passages do not 
 offer serious difficulty. But the genealogies, the epic
 
 FINNSBURG, WALDERE, WiDSlTH. 29 
 
 'asides,' and the passages where an originally heathen 
 conception or allusion has been effaced to make room 
 for some monkish moralizing, are enough to puzzle the 
 wits and weary the patience of the best scholars. 
 
 15. Three other heroic poems (or fragments) remain 
 to be mentioned. The Fkiht of Finnsburq commemorates 
 an episode wdi'ich is alluded to in the Beowulf-ipoem . 
 sixty Danes with their leaders, Hnaef and Ilengcst, while 
 lodged in the castle of Finn, King of the Frisians, are 
 treacherously attacked by their host. Hnaef falls, but 
 the Danes hold out for Hve days, when a truce is made. 
 But it is not kept long. The fighting is renewed and 
 Heugest and Finn both perish. The beginning of the 
 piece is very graphic in its abruptness; it describes the 
 first onslaught. Then exclaimed the king (Ilengest), 
 young in battle : That is not the dawn coming from the 
 east, neither is it the flight of a dragon, nor the blaze of 
 the horns of the hall. Thev are coming to surnrise us. 
 The birds are singing, the cricket chirps, the shields ring, 
 shield answers to arrow. IsTow the full moonshineth be- 
 hind clouds, now start up deeds of woe that the hate of 
 this folk is minded to do. But arouse you, my warriors, 
 lift up your hands, be mindful of your might, figiit in 
 the front, be heroes ! 
 
 The fragment called Waldere, in High German ' "Wal- 
 ter,' is connected with the well known continental epic 
 of Walther of Acpiitaine, preserved in a Latin-hexameter 
 version of the 10th century. Waltlier is eloping with 
 his bride, Hiklegund, from the court of Attila, King of 
 the Huns, when he is intercepted and attacked by Hagen 
 and Gunther (characters that reappear in another form 
 in the Nibelangenliecl). The English Waldere proves that 
 the conquerors of Britain were familiar with the cycle of 
 Theodcric of Bern (Verona). 
 
 The most interesting of these minor pieces is the one 
 called Widstth, or 'Traveler' (literally ' wide-farer ').
 
 30 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 'HCn composition it is probably the oldest extant specimen 
 Lof Anglo-Saxon verse. The chief person, Widsith, is a 
 type of the restless, roaming poet-knight of those early 
 days, singing of his wanderings. He tells of Angles and 
 Saxons, Goths, Swabians, Langobards, and Biirgundians. 
 What makes the poem peculiarly interesting is that it 
 speaks of many of these peoples, notably the Angles, as 
 still in their early homes before setting out on their mi- 
 gration over the Roman empire. 
 
 Of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry in general it is to be 
 observed that its personages and events all antedate the 
 conquest of Britain. JSTowhere do we iind an allusion to 
 this great event, or to the exploits by which it must have 
 been attended. In other words, although the poems 
 themselves were put into shape on English soil, the 
 themes must have been brougjit from the continent. 
 This phenomenon has not yet been sufficiently accounted 
 for. Probably we shall never be able to account for it, 
 unless manuscripts be discovered containing poems now 
 unknown. 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY — BEDE, ALDHELM, BONIFACE. 
 
 16. The conversion of the Angles and Saxons to 
 Christianity is the first great event in their history, our 
 knowledge of which rests on a satisfactory basis. 
 
 It is the office of the political and ecclesiastical histo- 
 rian to discuss this movement in its details. But the his- 
 torian of our literature is called upon to show at least 
 liow the conversion affected the habits of thou2:ht of the 
 people, and gave to it new motives, new hopes and fears, 
 new standards of right and wrong, and new forms of ex- 
 pression.
 
 BRITISH, IRISH, SCOTCH CHURCH. 31 
 
 The Keltic inhabitants of England had accepted Chris- 
 tianity in the times of the Romans. Ireland was con- 
 verted in the 5tli century. The chnrch of Ireland be- 
 came in the course of the 6th and 7th centuries conspic- 
 uous for zeal and learning. Among its leaders maj' be 
 mentioned Columba, founder of the celebrated monastery 
 of lona (one of the Hebrides) ; Gallus, founder of the 
 still more celebrated monastery of St. Gall (Switzerland), 
 and Colambanus, founder of Bobbio (Piedmont). But 
 the Irish church was viewed with some jealousy and 
 mistrust by the general Western church. It was charged 
 with certain quasi heretical tenets, and with want of suf- 
 ficient deference to the supremacy of the pope. As to 
 the Britains, although they had been converted as early 
 as the 3d century, we know but little of their church, 
 and that little does not inspire respect. It seems to have 
 been, a prey to ecclesiastical and political dissensions; 
 the British rulers were given up to intrigues and degrad- 
 ing vices. Yet, feeble as it was, the British church 
 might have developed a healthier life, had it not been 
 hopelessly ruined, together with the British people, by 
 the Anglo-Saxon conquest. At the end of the 6th cen- 
 tury a line drawn due south from Abercorn (near Edin- 
 burgh) to "Weymouth (in Dorsetshire), would have repre- 
 sented not unfairly the two great divisions of the island. 
 All to the east, Germanic and heathen ; all to the west, 
 Keltic and Christian, in name at least. The Keltic in- 
 habitants of the greater part of Scotland had been con- 
 verted in the 6th century by missionaries from Ireland. 
 
 The mission of converting the Angles and Saxons was 
 conducted from two sides simultaneously: from the 
 north, by Irish-Scotch missionaries ; from the south, by 
 missionaries sent direct from Rome. In the early part 
 of the year 597, Augustine and his companions landed on 
 the shores of Kent. They had been sent by the then pope, 
 Gregory the Great. Ethelberht, ruler of Kent, accepted
 
 32 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 the new doctrine. Canterbury became the center of the 
 Roman Catholic propaganda, and Augustine was conse- 
 crated first archbishop. On the north the district of 
 Northumbria was overrun by missionaries from lona, 
 chief among whom was the celebrated Aidan. The 
 monastery of Lindisfarn (subsequently called Holy Isle), 
 not far from the mouth of the Tweed, became the centre 
 of the northern propaganda. The middle portion of the 
 countr}^, Mercia, under King Penda, held out the longest. 
 But Penda's defeat by Oswi, King of l^orthumbria, in 
 655, sealed the fate of heathenism. -Henceforth there 
 was but one God acknowledged in England, Scotland, 
 "Wales, and Ireland, but one church, and but one faith. 
 The worship of Thor and of Othin once broken, its frag- 
 ments were soon swept away, or lingered only as idle, 
 harmless superstitions among the uneducated h^wer 
 classes. The conversion was not only rapid, but thor- 
 ough ; so thorough, indeed, that in little more than a 
 hundred years, say about the beginning of the 8th cen- 
 tury, England became the foremost branch of the church 
 in western Europe. The prestige and influence of the 
 Irish church was already on the decline. For this there 
 were several reasons. The Irish princes were at odds 
 among themselves, and the island became a prey to Kor- 
 wegian and Danish pirates. 
 
 17. During the 8th and 9th centuries the doctrines of 
 the Roman Catholic Church became more and more sys- 
 tematized and its organization perfected. In fact it 
 ceased to be for the most part a missionary church, and 
 assumed gradually the character of a highly organized 
 corporation for the management of public and private 
 morals, not infrequently also of politics. The aim of the 
 church, at least in western Europe, was steadily fixed 
 upon the concentration of its power in the hands of the 
 pope, ajid upon the obliteration of everything that sa-
 
 POLICY OF THE CHURCH. 83 
 
 vorecl of heresj^, schism, and national or local dissent. 
 Italy, Spain, France, Western Germany, and the British 
 Isles were made distinctively i^o»?rt?i-Catholic. 
 
 ISTot even the power of the church could eradicate race- 
 hatred. In Great Britain, for instance, the Saxon and 
 the Kelt continued to look upon each other as foes. The 
 process of conquering and Germanizing the surviving 
 Britons in western and southwestern England and in 
 Wales went on for centuries. In the north the Gaels 
 were crowded farther and farther back into the High- 
 lands. Yet, as Christians, all the races and inhabitants 
 of the British Isles acknowledged allegiance to Rome 
 and in so far were on a footing of equality. Moreover, 
 they were united by at least one bond, viz., the Latin 
 church-ritual. To us in the 19th century this may not 
 seem much. But it behooves us to do justice to the past. 
 Whatever views we may hold of the church of Rome as 
 it now is, we must not forget that it was the mainstay of 
 society and of culture from the 3d century to the 13th. 
 It did what no other power could have done, it taught 
 the peoples of Europe that they were brothers before 
 God. Its methods and practices may not seem to us per- 
 fectly proper. But it never for an instant lost sight of 
 its mission, it never forgot that it was the divinely ap- 
 pointed arbiter between king and king, between nation 
 and nation. It summoned rulers and subjects before its 
 tribunal and made them understand that there were such 
 things as international justice and international sympa- 
 thies. From the 3d century to the 13th, then, the work 
 of the church was one of beneficence. But from the 
 13th century on, we observe symptoms of discontent, 
 which culminated in the Protestant Reformation of the 
 16th century. 
 
 It does not seem to have cost the Anglo-Saxon people 
 much of a struggle to give up their heathen gods. 
 What opposition there was, came chiefly from a few
 
 34 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 princes who distrusted the missionaries because they 
 were foreigners. The gods of Germanic mythok^gy 
 were too crude and vague to maintain themselves before 
 the simplicity and unity of the Christian creed. Be- 
 sides, the old mythology oiFered no well developed sys- 
 tem of ethics. It recognized little virtue beyond brute 
 force and brute valor. It was incapable of suggesting 
 high ideals of daily life. To abjure Othin and worship 
 Christ, then, was a comparatively slight task. The 
 diihculty lay on the other side, in adopting the ritual. 
 The early Britons had accepted Roman })riests and a 
 Latin ritual as a matter of course, for Latin was the 
 language of their military rulers. But the Angles and 
 Saxons recognized no such supremacy. Latin was to 
 them a wholly foreign tongue, and — unlike the Britons 
 — they had never had a separate class of priests. They 
 were called upon not only to worship a new God, but to 
 worship him publicly in a language which they could 
 not speak nor even understand, and to consent to the 
 establishment of a close corporation of priests, of whom 
 many, if not most, were at the outset foreigners. Yet 
 hierarchy and ritual were matters in which the church 
 could not aftbrd to make concessions. They were estab- 
 lished. Precisely in what way and with what prompt- 
 ness, we are unable to ascertain. All we can say is that 
 through the adoption of Christianity Latin became once 
 more a language of England. It was the sole acknowl- 
 edged and official language of the church in all matters 
 of doctrine and ritual, and in intercourse between Eng- 
 land and the papal see. As the church was in those 
 days the sole depository of learning, Latin became also 
 the vehicle of imparting knowledge. All the teachers 
 were members of the clergy or of religious orders, and 
 all the schools were cathedral or cloister-schools. Text- 
 books were in Latin, and most of the pupils were candi- 
 dates for the priesthood. Throughout the Middle Ages
 
 LATIN RE-ESTABLISHED IN ENGLAND. 85 
 
 the cliiircli claimed jurisdiction in cases relating to mar- 
 riage and divorce, parentage, church property, and the 
 validity of oaths. Bishops exercised the functions of 
 judges, and in their courts, officers and counsel were ec- 
 clesiastics. Bulls of the pope aud decrees of the ecu- 
 menical councils, together with the decisions of the 
 pope's court of appeals, supplied the largest share of the 
 ecclesiastical law and rule of procedure. As a matter 
 of course, Latin was the language used in these episco- 
 pal courts. What has been said of England will apply 
 with even greater force to the rest of Europe. We can 
 watch this building-up of an elaborate system of church 
 jurisprudence simultaneously all over Europe, until it 
 assumed definite shape in the Corpus Juris Canonici. 
 An example being thus set by the church, we need not 
 be surprised to see the political rulers of England enact- 
 ing and codifying their secular laws — purely Germanic 
 in character — in a Latin form. Deeds for the convey- 
 ance and leasing of property, royal edicts, municipal 
 charters, and other private and public documents were 
 drawn up in Latin. 
 
 The details of this change may be left to the political 
 historian ; its general significance for the history of our 
 literature may be summed up in a few words. Such 
 wholesale use of a foreign idiom drew a sharp dividing 
 line, which had never before existed, between the learned 
 and the unlearned. On the one side there was a small 
 class of secular and clerical dignitaries and officials ; on 
 the other, the great mass of peasants and artizans. 
 Both classes spoke, in every-day matters, the vernacular. 
 But the former class had a jargon all to itself, a monkish 
 book-Latin, of which the latter class had no understand- 
 ing. Thus Latin came to be regarded as more learned, 
 more elegant, more literary. The folk-speech, even at 
 its best, could not claim equality ; it was always more 
 or less open to the charge of being vulgar. This state
 
 36 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 of opinion lasted in England until tlie Reformation in 
 the 16th century, and even later. Whoever wished to 
 write as a scholar for scholars must perfoi'oe write in 
 Latin. English might he good enough for peasants, 
 v.orking-men, soldiers, even for writers of verse and 
 popular tales, but it was not good enough for science. 
 Lord Bacon evidently thought that it was not in the 
 17th century. 
 
 This prevalence of Latin was not an unmixed evil. It 
 established an international language, as the church had 
 established an international code of manners and morals. 
 Men of letters of different countries could converse and 
 correspond with one another. The evil lay chiefly in its 
 retarding the growth of the popular tongue. The 
 church everywhere absorbed the best talents, and the 
 folk-speech was left to be cultivated by men of inferior 
 ability. Herein England will compare most favorably 
 with continental nations, at least in the times anterior to 
 the N^orman Conquest. Kings and bishops in England 
 encouraged the translation of useful works from Latin 
 into English, and also the composition of religious 
 pieces in English. The result was that the vernacular 
 literature of Eugland from 750 to 1050 exceeded in vol- 
 ume and imjoortance that of France and that of Ger- 
 -jinany. 
 
 18. It was stated, near the close of § 5, that English 
 thought and speech, even in the earlier heathen period, 
 was marked by a tone of soberness or sadness. This 
 tone was confirmed and deepened by the conversion to 
 Christianity. In becoming Christians, the Angles and 
 Saxons, it is true, did not immediately cease to be pug- 
 nacious. There were still feuds enough between neigh- 
 bor and neighbor, between prince and prince. The so- 
 called Heptarchy might almost be called a period of an- 
 archy. But as time wore on, the supreme power was
 
 GENERAL FEATURES OF CHRISTIAN POETRY. 37 
 
 gradually concenti-ated in the royal family of Wessex. 
 The habits of the folk became peaceful ; so peaceful, in 
 fact, that the laud was barely able to defend itself from 
 the Danes. In |>roportion, then, as the primitive war- 
 like zeal of the folk abated, its tendency to melancholy 
 manifested itself more strongly in its literature. The 
 disposition assumes so many shapes that it is impossible 
 to characterize it in a sinarle word. 'Melancholy' is 
 perhaps too strong. We may call it 'brooding,' or 
 ' yearning,' or ' plaintive.' A musician would probably 
 speak of the religious poetry (about to be mentioned) as 
 composed in the minor key. Not only is its aim didactic — 
 religious poetry can scarcely be otherwise — but it dwells 
 upon the gentle and contemplative moods of the soul, 
 rather than upon the impassioned. Hence it prefers 
 sentiments and reflections to deeds. If we compare, for 
 instance, our early versions of the legends of the saints 
 with the Latin originals from which they were adapted, 
 we shall perceive that the English poet has usually 
 abridged the action of the story and sketched to exces- 
 sive lengtli those passages in which the saint gives vent 
 to his feelings. The earliest poems, e.r/., the metrical 
 paraphrase of Genesis, § 21, are comparatively free from 
 such diffuseness. But the later we come down, the more 
 of it we shall find. And hand in hand with sentiment- 
 ality of tone goes a fondness for such rhetorical forms 
 as Visions, Dreams, Allegories, and the like. Medieval 
 literature in general exhibits a great variety of visions 
 and allegories, written by ecclesiastics of all nations. 
 But nowhere does this sort of writing a[>pear to have 
 taken such firm hold of the popular imagination as in 
 England. Other European nations, e.g., France and 
 Germany, have produced allegorical and diffusely didactic 
 poets ; but England alone pays them peculiar honor. 
 The taste, once acquired, has withstood the Norman 
 Conquest, the Italian Renaissance, and the Protestant 
 
 158892
 
 38 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 Reformation, aucl subsists at the present day. We find, 
 in the 14th century, the author of Piers Plowman divid- 
 ing the honors with Chaucer; in the IGth, the Faery 
 Queen overshadows every rival ; in the ITth, Pilgrim's 
 Progress has no rival but Paradise Lost. In the 18th 
 century no one poet predominates; and the acknowl- 
 edged autocrat of letters is Dr. Johnson, not a poet at 
 all but a moral philosopher. In our own time we ob- 
 serve no less a critic than Matthew Arnold asserting that 
 our greatest [)oet after Shakespeare and Milton is Words- 
 worth. Many, perhaps most, of us will dissent from 
 this. Yet the mere utterance of the opinion is signifi- 
 cant; it reveals the innate bias of the English mind, in- 
 fluencing, some of us would say, warping the judgment 
 of our most cultured critic. 
 
 Extreme soberness of tone was not the only fault of 
 our pre-Norman literature. It was Jacking in color, in 
 grace, in ability to catch the more delicate play of 
 thouo:ht and character. And it was also lacking in 
 what is called the ' historic sense.' Having led for cen- 
 turies a life of comparative isolation, the irJiabitants of 
 England were, by the middle of the 11th century, in 
 danger of vegetating in insular exclusiveness. They 
 took no direct active part in the general movement of 
 continental politics. They were absorbed in domestic 
 affairs, and seemed to be disengaging themselves little 
 by little from the great family ot nations. In these two 
 respects the changes wrought by the Korman Conquest 
 were not merely salutary but even necessary. For the 
 iN'ormans brought with them from France a fondness for 
 light literature, and also a disposition to enter into for- 
 eign politics and to treat the facts and phases of politi- 
 cal life in a spirit of philosophic inquiry. 
 
 19, The chief seat of the activity of the church in 
 the 8th century was in Korthumbria, although the
 
 BEDE. S9 
 
 archbisllop of Canterbury was primate of England. 
 Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian founded the 
 celebrated cloister-school of Canterbury near the end of 
 the 7th century. One of the pupils of the school, Aid- 
 helm, subsequently bishop of Sherborn, directed the 
 studies in the school of Malmesbury, in Wessex. About 
 this time Benedict Biscop established the schools of 
 Wearmouth and Yarrow, in Northumbria, which were 
 soon to overshadow all the others. Bede, the most illus- 
 trious name in the annals of the early English church, 
 was born at Wearmouth in 672, and was educated partly 
 there, partly at Yarrow. His whole life was passed in 
 these two schools, in learning, teaching, and preaching. 
 He never rose to a higher rank than that of simple 
 priest. He died, 735, at the age of 62, with the well 
 earned reputation of being the most learned man of his 
 times. His life was in the ordinary sense uneventful. 
 To quote his own words : " I spent my whole life in the 
 same monastery, and while attentive to the rules of my 
 order and the service of the church, my constant pleas- 
 ure lay in teaching, in learning, or in writing." Yet his 
 fame was European ; more than any other one man 
 probabl}' did he influence the literature of the church. 
 His scholars numbered upwards of 600, yet he found 
 time to compose forty-five treatises. The founders 
 of the monastery having provided a tolerably good li- 
 brary of Latin manuscripts, he had an opportunity of 
 acquiring a taste for Cicero and Seneca, Ovid and Lucre- 
 tius. From the followers of Archbishop Theodore of 
 Canterbury, who was a Greek of Tarsos, he even ac- 
 quired some knowledge of the Greek language, which 
 was a very rare accomplishment in those days. The en- 
 cyclopedic knowledge which he concentrated in himself 
 and imparted freely to his pupils, or else stored up in 
 his writings, is justly regarded as the foundation of 
 scholarship in England.
 
 40 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 No less conspicuous than his learning was his per- 
 sonal character. It was so honorable and so attractive 
 that it won for him the designation of "Venerable 
 Bede." There is nothing brighter in the early history 
 of England than the sight of this simple, sweet-tempered 
 priest, filled with love for his fellow-men, gifted with an 
 intelligence far ahead of his times, toiling on patiently 
 and modestly, 3^ear after year, in the least obtrusive of 
 vocations. 
 
 Bede was fond of his mother-tongue and its verse. 
 Lying on his death-bed he ejaculated, in alliterative 
 lines : Before the inevitable journey no thought can 
 there be more prudent than that man must consider, 
 before his departure, what of good or of evil may be 
 adjudged to his soul after the day of death. Whether 
 the lines were of his own composition or not, is left un- 
 decided in the account of his death, written by his friend 
 and disciple, Cuthbert. The same account adds that on 
 the very day of his death he was at work upon a trans- 
 lation of the gospel of John into English, dictating to 
 an amanuensis. Towards evening the young scribe 
 said: -"There is yet one more sentence." "Write 
 quickly," replied the dying man. "It is finished now, 
 at last." "You speak truth," said the master, "all is 
 finished." And his spirit passed away, singing the Glo- 
 ria in Excelsis. 
 
 None of Bede's writings in the vernacular have been 
 preserved ; at least, none in an independent shape, foi* it 
 is possible that the above-mentioned rendering of the 
 fourth gospel may have been recast subsequently and 
 merged in the general collection of gospel-translations, 
 see § 28. The works of Bede that we possess are in 
 Latin. Those which treat of biblical exeo;esis and dos^- 
 matic theology may be passed over here. But there is 
 one of his works which will interest directly every 
 English-speaking man, viz., his Historia Ecclesiae Gcntis
 
 bede's historia. 41 
 
 Anglorum, a moderate-sized volume narrating the story 
 of the conversion of the Angles and Saxons. Its style 
 
 1 is clear, concise, forcible, and remarkably elegant for the 
 8th century. It is the chief, almost the only, source of 
 our knowledge of the period to which it relates, and it 
 is to this day a very readable book. The simplicity and 
 earnestness of the author are stamped on every page. 
 But not all the parts of the work are of equal value. It 
 is divided into five books. The first twenty-two chap- 
 ters of Book I give a brief resume of the history of the 
 island from the invasion by Julius Caesar down to the 
 
 .^coming of Augustine in 597. They are a mixture of 
 fact and fable, the latter element predominating. The 
 facts they contain are of no value to us, because our 
 knowledge of them is now derived from independent 
 and better sources. Bede borrowed most of his state- 
 ments concerning the Romans from Orosius, see § 26. 
 His account of the Britons and the Anglo-Saxon con- 
 quest is based upon a Latin treatise, usually called Gil- 
 das, after its supposed author. This Gildas is of such 
 questionable antecedents that we can put no faith in it. 
 Bede's real work begins with the twenty-third chapterif 
 His account of the mission of Aua-ustine and all that 
 follows is undoubtedly authentic. It was based upon 
 documents then existing in England, and upon copies of 
 papal documents, made for him by one of his friends in 
 the archives at Rome. The work ends with a survey off 
 the organization of the Englisli church in the year 731, 
 and a list of the author's writings. A later hand has 
 appended a meagre list of church events, names of bish- 
 ops, &c., year by year, from 731-766. At the end of one \ 
 of the manuscripts of the Historia are to be found the 
 Northumbrian verses by Caedmon, mentioned § 11, 20. 
 Although Bede's work is in the main genuine history, 
 it is not wholly free from the superstitions in vogue in 
 the Middle Ages. Even Books IV and V, which treat
 
 42 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 • 
 
 of persons and events contemporary with or just prior to 
 Bede himself, are not wanting in 'visions' and 'won- 
 ders.' It is worthy of note that the story of Caedmon, 
 see § 20, is preceded and followed in Book IV by other 
 stories equally marvelous. 
 
 One of Bede's contemporaries has been already men- 
 tioned, Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborn and teacher in the 
 school at Malmesbury. Aldhelm lived from about 650 
 to 709. His reputation for learning was inferior only to 
 that of Bede. Some of his works are in prose, others in 
 verse ; they are all of a religious nature except one, a 
 collection of one hundred riddles, imitated from the rid- 
 dles of Symposius, a late Latin writer of the 4th or 5th 
 ceutur3^ Although composed chiefly for entertainment, 
 Aldhelm's riddles are rather serious in tone. They are 
 written in various metres, having been designed by their 
 author to serve as illustrations of Latin prosodv. For 
 the connection between them and the English riddles of 
 Cynewulf, see § 23. 
 
 Aldhelm is said to have been an excellent poet in his 
 mother-tongue, but none of his English pieces have been 
 preserved. By way of compensation we find allitera- 
 tion in many of his Latin verses. He was also fond of dis- 
 jdaying his knowledge of Greek by interlarding his Latin 
 with phrases evidently reproduced from Greek idioms. 
 This trait of pedantry is worth noting; it shows how 
 zealously Greek was studied at that early day in England, 
 and it will moreover prepare us for recognizing the phe- 
 nomenon that some of the legendary poems of the 8th, 
 9th, or 10th centuries, in the vernacular of England, 
 see § 25, were based upon primitive Greek versions and 
 not upon secondary Latin ones. 
 
 Besides the great schools already mentioned, there was 
 one scarcely less noted, at York. Among the teachers here 
 w^as Bede'syoungfriend Ecgberht. And in this school was 
 trained the celebrated AJouin, who afterwards removed
 
 BONIFACE. 43 
 
 to France and became the bosom friend and adviser of 
 Charlemagne, and his assistant in the great plan of re- 
 forming education throughout Europe. Another famous 
 Englishman was Winfrid, better known by his Latin 
 name of St. Boniface. After teaching in several schools 
 in his native country, he entered upon his missionary 
 labors in Bavaria, Thuringia, Ilesse, Saxony, and Fries- 
 land. In 732 he was consecrated archbishop and primate 
 of Germany. lie established the bishoprics of Ratisbon, 
 Erfurt, Paderborn, Wiirzburg, Salzburg, and others, and 
 also the famous abbey of Fulda. It was lie who, in 752, 
 at the deposition of Chilperic, the last of the Merowings, 
 consecrated his deposer, Pepin the Short, King of the 
 Franks. The subsequent development of the English 
 church is a matter of general history. Enough has been 
 said in this place to illustrate the promptness and thor- 
 oughness of the conversion. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN POETRY — CAEDMON — GENESIS, EXODUS, DANIEL. 
 
 30, The Christian poetry of early England is scarcely 
 less interesting than the heathen ; it is much more abund- 
 ant, and is easier to interpret. Like the heathen poetry, 
 it is written in alliterative verse. For the survival of 
 heathen notions, see § 6. For the creeping-in of rime, 
 see § 9, § 30. The poets were sometimes monks, some- 
 times laymen. We have grounds for suspecting that 
 more than one worldly singer, growing weary of wander- 
 ing and fighting, found refuge and rest within the 
 cloister-walls and sang there of Moses and Abraham as 
 he had formerly sung of Theoderic and Wieland. 
 
 First in interest, probably also in time, is the poem
 
 44 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 called Genesis. It is contained in the Ms. Junian XL, of 
 the Bodleian library, Oxford, together with three others, 
 called respectively Exodus., Daniel, and Christ and Satan. 
 All four poems were formerly ascribed to one author, 
 namely Caedmon. But at present scholars are agreed 
 upon the following points. First, that Christ and Satan 
 is much later, both in penmanship and style, than the 
 other three, and mnst be assigned to a different era. 
 Second, that Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, althongh writ- 
 ten in the manuscript by one and the same scribe, ex- 
 hibit too much diversity of style and language to be the 
 work of the same author. The authorship of Exodus 
 and Daniel is generally conceded to be unknown. The 
 only point not yet detinitively settled is the authorship 
 of Genesis. 
 
 The following story is told by Bede, in his Historia, 
 Bk. IV, ch. 24. In the latter part of the 7th century 
 (not many years, therefore, before the birth of Bede him- 
 self) there lived near the cloister of Streoneshalh (better 
 known by the subsequent Danish name Whitby) in 
 ITorthumbria, a man, well on in years, named Caedmon. 
 The gift of song had been denied him, so that, when at 
 table the harp Avas passed to him in turn, he was wont 
 to retire in shame. One evening, after being thus dis- 
 graced, he fell asleep in the stable of wdiich lie had 
 charge. Then appeared to him in his dream a vision, 
 and a voice called upon him to sing of the beginning of 
 created things. So he sang in his dream a song in praise 
 of the Lord, thus: JSTow shall we laud the author of 
 heaven, the might of the creator and his counsel, the 
 deeds of the father of glory, how he, the eternal God, 
 was the author of all wonders, who first made for the 
 children of men her.ven for a roof, he the holy creator, 
 and afterwards established the middle region, the earth, 
 for men, the almighty Lord. Upon awaking, Caedmon 
 repeated this and added much thereto. The news of the
 
 CAEDMON. 45 
 
 wonder soon spread to the cloister, where he was called 
 upon to give specimens of his newlj acquired gift. Ths 
 abbess Hild received him into the cloister and made her 
 learned men recite the bible story to him. Whatever 
 they told him, he elaborated in his mind and turned it 
 into glorious songs, so that his teachers soon became his 
 Hsteners And thus, says Bede, he sang of the creation 
 of the world and the origin of the human race, and the 
 whole story of Genesis; of the Exodus of the children 
 of Israel from Egypt and their entry into the promised 
 land; of many other sacred stories; of the incarnation 
 of our Lord, his sufferings, resurrection, and ascension ; 
 of the coming of the Holy Ghost and the preaching of 
 the apostles; of the terrors of the last judgment and the 
 pangs of hell and the bliss of heaven. Also many other 
 songs of God's grace and God's judgments, and in them 
 all he strove to lead men from sin and incite them to 
 virtue. 
 
 Professor ten Brink, one of the soundest judges of 
 our early literature, is disposed to concede some basis of 
 fact to this story, but observes shrewdly that it implies 
 an extraordinarily wide range of poetic powers and ac- 
 tivity. If we take Bede's words literally, this Caedmon 
 must have been not only an epic but a lyric and a di- 
 dactic poet of the highest order, and his productions 
 must have comprised every subject and style of compo- 
 sition in the whole range of our religious poetry. Per- 
 haps we are to regard Bede's Caedmon (like Widsith, § 
 15) as a typical rather than a real character. He seems 
 to stand for the entire class of humble but zealous con- 
 verts. Besides, we must remember that the story of 
 Caedmon is not the only wonder that Bede tells in this 
 connection, see § 19. 
 
 Bede says that^ he gives only the ' substance' of Caed- 
 mon's dream-song, in Latin prose, beginning thus: 
 Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni coelestis, &c. King
 
 46 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 Alfred, in his "West-Saxon translation of Bede's Historia, 
 see § 26, when he comes to this point, uses the following 
 language : Then he (Caedraon) began straightway to 
 sing these words and verses, which he had never heard, 
 the ' order ' of which is : 
 
 - Kii we sceolon herian heofonrices weard, 
 Metodes mihte ond his modgethonc, 
 &c., &G. 
 
 In all, nine alliterative full lines, corresponding exactly 
 to Bede's Latin prose. 
 
 At the end of one of the Latin MSS. of Bede are 
 found nine lines in the vernacular, beginning thus : 
 
 Nu scylun liergan hefaenricaes uard, 
 Metudaes maecti end his modgedanc, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 The diiFerence between the two sets of verse is merely 
 one of dialect. King Alfred's passage is in Wessex, the 
 other in Northumbrian, but otherwise the two passages 
 agree absolutely. 
 
 But the beginning of the Junian Genesis (which is 
 also iu Wessex dialect) is different, and is worded thus : 
 
 Us is riht micel thaet wp rodera weard, 
 Wereda wuldorcining wordum herigen 
 Modum lufien : he is maegna sped, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 Which may be rendered : It is our bounden duty that 
 we the lord of glory, the wonder-king of peoples, with 
 our words should praise, with our hearts should love ; 
 he is the promoter of strength, &c. 
 
 The question naturally suggests itself: In what rela- 
 tion do the Latin prose lines in the text of Bede, the 
 Northumbrian verses appended to Bede, and King Al- 
 fred's verses stand to one another, and how are they all 
 three related to the poem of Genesis ? 
 
 The problem is complicated, and some of the points
 
 GENESIS. 47 
 
 are still in dispute. But opinion seems to be gradually 
 settling down to tliese conclusions: 1. That the Latin 
 MS. of Bede is of the early part of the 8th century, say 
 737. Consequently it was penned almost immediately 
 after Bedc's death. 2. That the metrical fragment in 
 Northumbrian appended to this MS. is of the same date 
 as the body of the MS. 3. That Bede's Latin '■ninie 
 laudare debemus,' &c., is translated from the Northum- 
 brian. 4. That King Alfred's verses are merely a later 
 Wessex form of the same Northumbrian. We have in 
 this Northumbrian fragment, then, the remains of a very 
 old poem of the 7th century, which nothing prevents us 
 from ascribino; to the Caedmon of whom Bede writes. 
 The further point, viz., the relation between the North- 
 umbrian fragment and the Junian Genesis is not yet 
 fully cleared up. Probably w^e shall be safe in taking a 
 middle position. We may assert, on the one hand, that 
 the Junian Genesis is not a direct Wessex version of the 
 Northumbriam poem of which the Bede MS. has pre- 
 served a fragment. On the other hand, we may admit 
 that the substance of the early Northumbrian poem has 
 been embodied in the Junian Genesis. According to 
 Professor ten Brink, the style of Genesis gives unmis- 
 takable evidence of high antiquity. It suggests an art 
 of versification in its infancy, not on the decline. 
 
 21, Genesis, as we have it in the Junian MS., is a 
 poem of 2935 full verses. Originally it must have been 
 much longer, for there are six large gaps in the MS., and 
 the narrative ends abruptly at the sacrifice of L=;aac. 
 The MS. is of the 10th centur}^, but the language is that 
 of the 9th, if not earlier. 
 
 We have to distinguish in the poem two portions of 
 unequal length and dissimilar character. Namely, 
 verses 245 to 851 are an interpolation. See § 5. Pro- 
 fessor Sievers, who established this fact in the year 1875,
 
 48 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 regards the interpolated passage as an English transla- 
 tion from an Old-Suxon poem on the same subject, now 
 lost, and composed in the latter half of the 9th century, 
 probably by the author of the famous Old-Saxon He- 
 liand. Professor ten Brink has given to the interpolated 
 passage the title of Younger Genesis, and to the older 
 and main portion the title of Elder Genesis. 
 
 The poem opens with an invocation to God, and pro- 
 ceeds to sing of the bliss of the angels in heaven and tlie 
 rebellion and fall of the angels. These notions concern- 
 ing the ten orders of angels and the rebellion of Lucifer 
 are wholly foreign to the bible-text, and are derived from 
 the writings of Gregory the Great and the compendium 
 made by Isidor from the writings of Gregory and St. 
 Augustine. Tliej recur with endless variation all 
 through medieval literature, see § 24. The poem goes 
 on to state that after the bad angels have been thrust 
 out of heaven and peace restored, the Lord is moved 
 with sorrow at the sight of so many vacant seats. By 
 way of compensation he proceeds to create earth and 
 man. The description of the creation conforms strictly 
 to the bible, except that the two accounts of man's crea- 
 tion (Gen. i. 26 ; ii. 7) are thrown into one. Some of 
 the passages are extremely forcible. In describing the 
 creation of light, the poet bursts forth : 
 
 The earth was yet, 
 The grass all imgreen; the sea covered 
 By swarthy night far and wide, 
 The wan waves. Then came beaming in glory 
 The spirit of heaven's warder borne o'er the waves 
 With mighty blessing. The lord of the angels, 
 The giver of life, bade the light come forth 
 Over the wide ground; quickly was obeyed 
 The high king's behest. Holy light 
 Was oyer the wastes, as the worker commanded. 
 
 The iirsi: part of the Elder Genesis stops at v. 245, with 
 the naming of the four rivers of Paradise, Gen. ii. 14.
 
 YOUNGER GENESIS. 49 
 
 Passing over the Younger- Genesis interpolation for the 
 present, we iind the ekler poem resuming the story at 
 the point where the Lord calls to Adam in Paradise just 
 after Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit, 
 Gen. ill. 9, The poet adheres closely to the text. Occa- 
 sionally he abridges a pedigree; occasionally, on the 
 other hand, he amplifies a passage in accordance with 
 Old-German notions. Thus his description of the flood, 
 although not much longer than that in the original, 
 creates the impression that it must have been adapted 
 to the experience of a sea-faring people. The flood be- 
 comes more of a tempest. 
 
 The Younger- Genesis interpolation is interesting in 
 more than one respect. It repeats, but in a much fuller 
 form, the fall of the angels, and introduces the tempta- 
 tion and fall of man. It describes the fallen angels as 
 they lie bound in the fire of the bottomless pit. Their 
 leader, Satan, delivers a speech in which he declares his 
 unconqnered hate and announces his intention to ruin 
 the newly created race of man. The resemblance be- 
 tween this Old-English Satan and Milton's archfiend is 
 striking. But the most significant trait in the interpo- 
 lated passage is the peculiar character it gives to the 
 temptation. In the bible and in all the ecclesiastical 
 literature of the middle ages Adam and Eve are repre- 
 sented as overcome by the evil spirit's appeal to their 
 idle cariosity or some such improper feeling. 
 
 Here, the tempter is a veritable father of lies. He an- 
 nounces himself as a messenger sent from God to com- 
 mand them to eat of the tree of knowledge, and threatens 
 them with divine wrath if they refuse. This of course 
 places the conduct of our first parents in a better light; 
 it diminishes their guilt, if it does not remove it alto- 
 gether. It is contrary to the rigorous doctrine of the 
 medieval church, which sought to enhance its own 
 efficacy by deepening man's sinfulness. The only work
 
 50 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 in whicli we find a like disposition to touch lis^htly upon 
 sin and the fall is in the Old-Saxon poem of the Heliand, 
 above mentioned. We may account for such a disposi- 
 tion by assuming that the Old-Saxons, who had just been 
 forcibly converted to Christianity by Charlemagne, were 
 unwilling to acceftt the doctrine of total depravity be- 
 cause it seemed to them an unmanly belief. 
 
 22. The next poem in the Junian Ms. is called 
 Exodus. This title is too extensive for the matter, 
 which does not include all the events in the biblical 
 Exodus, but merely the march of the children of Israel 
 through the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptian 
 army. It is only 589 verses long; at verse 445 there is 
 a gap of two pages in the ms. According to Professor 
 ten Brink, the author must have been an epic singer 
 turned bible-poet and retaining his old love for heroes 
 and weapons. J^owhere in the Christian poetry is the love 
 of fighting so marked. This is all the more striking as 
 the narrative does not have any battle to describe, but 
 can merely tell of preparations for battle and the great 
 danger threatening the Hebrews. The descriptions are 
 more detailed than in Genesis, more imaginative, and 
 more poetical. 
 
 The third poem, Daniel, contains 765 verses ; there is 
 one considerable gap in the ms. Like Exodus, it does 
 not give all the contents of the biblical book ; it ends 
 abruptly at Dan v. 22, in the midst of the prophet's 
 interpretation of Belshazzar's dream. It selects only 
 important incidents, especially such as inculcate submis- 
 sion to God and trust in him, and distrust of one's own 
 powers. The style is simpler and less graphic than that 
 of Exodus. 
 
 The last poem of this ms., usually called Christ and 
 Satan, is not one homogeneous piece, but is a mere col- 
 lection, carelessly put together, of fragments of three
 
 MINOR POEMS. 51 
 
 separate poems, treating respectively of the pangs of the 
 Fallen Angels, Christ's Descent into Hell and Ascension, 
 and Christ's Temptation. All three fragments are evi- 
 dently much later in date than Genesis, Exodus, and 
 Daniel, and also much inferior. 
 
 Not much if any later than Exodus and Daniel are 
 various short pieces, e.g. a metrical paraphrase of the 
 50th psalm (in the Kentish dialect), a poem on the Day 
 of Judgment, descriptions of Hell and Heaven, and the 
 speeches of the Soul to the Body after Death. 
 
 These last mentioned pieces, one for the condemned 
 soul, one for the blessed soul, exemplify the curious 
 medieval belief that the soul after death, see § 26, visits 
 the body every week, until the two shall be reunited at 
 the judgment-day and consigned together to final bliss 
 or final woe. There is no lack of similar pieces, prose 
 and verse, in the medieval literature of every European 
 nation. 
 
 Equally curious are the traces of so-called 'animal 
 svmbolism.' In the earlier centuries of the Christian 
 era it became a custom among Christians to regard cer- 
 tain animals as symbolizing certain mysteries of the faith. 
 Compendiums were made for ready reference ; such a 
 compendium was called a physiologus. We possess re- 
 mains of an Anglo-Saxon yhysiologas in the short poems 
 which treat of the panther and the whale, and in the 
 fragment of a poem on a curious bird entitled by Grein 
 * The Partridge.' The Panther, who retires to a se- 
 cluded spot in the mountain-valley, sleeps three days, and 
 on awaking utters sweet cries and exhales a delicious 
 odor, symbolizes Christ, the risen Lord. The Whale, 
 who beguiles unwary mariners into mistaking him for 
 an island and climbing on his back, only to open his 
 jaws and devour them, symbolizes Hell. We find rem- 
 iniscences of superstitious belief in such treacherous 
 floating islands even in modern literature. ,
 
 52 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CTNEWULF — RIDDLES, CHRIST, ELENE, &C. 
 
 33. The person and writings of Caeclmon, see § 20, 
 are involved in uncertainty. But our knowledge of an- 
 other of the great poets of early England is somewhat 
 more definite. Cynewulf was born about the middle of 
 the 8th century. He is usually held to be a native of 
 Northumbria. He belonged in early life to the class of 
 singers who wandered from court to court. His educa- 
 tion had been got at a convent-school ; at all events he 
 had some knowledge of Latin. 
 
 Only one of his secular works has been preserved, viz., 
 a collection of riddles in alliterate verse. The suo-^'es- 
 tions for these riddles he borrowed partly from Aldhelm, 
 see § 19, partly from oral traditions of the folk. The 
 Angles and Saxons, like the other Germans, had an in- 
 born liking for oracular utterances and plays on w^ords. 
 One of the most celebrated encounters of wit is that 
 narrated in the Vafthrudnismal of the elder Edda. Here 
 the god Othin, assuming the form of a man and the 
 name Gangradr, visits the giant Vafthrudnir in his hall. 
 The two propound to each other the most difficult rid- 
 dles, until at last Gangradr asks the giant what Othin 
 had whispered in the ear of Balder when the latter was as- 
 cending the funeral pile. At this the giant perceives 
 that his antagonist is none other than the father of the 
 gods and acknowledges himself overcome. His head is 
 the forfeit. In this respect the Eddaic story resembles 
 the Greek myth of Oedipus and the Sphinx. 
 
 Cynewulf 's riddles are marked by imagination, a close 
 observation of nature and the realities of life, and also a
 
 RIDDLES POEM OF CHRIST. 53 
 
 relish for social enjoyment. Tlie following may serve as 
 a specimen : 
 
 Me a while ago for dead gave up 
 
 My father and mother; 1 had no body as yet, 
 
 Nor life within. Then a woman began, 
 
 Well disposed, to cover me with garments, 
 
 Kept and cherished me, enfolded me 
 
 As faithfully as she did her own bairns, 
 
 Until, under her lap, as my nature was. 
 
 Under her foster lap I waxed in spirit. 
 
 Me the jprotectress fed then 
 
 Until I grew and was able 
 
 To fly afar. She had the less 
 
 Of sons and daughters of her own for thus doing. 
 
 [Answer: A Cuckoo. 
 
 Cynewulf, it is believed, passed the latter part of his 
 life in a convent. His subsequent writings are all of a 
 religious character. The poem called Chrid, containing 
 1690 verses, is composed in three parts : tirst, the Birth 
 of Christ; second, the Ascension; thii^d, the Coming at 
 the Last Day. (Of part first the beginning is lost.) 
 According to Professor ten Brink the substance of the 
 poem is taken from Latin homilies, especially from those 
 of Gregoi'y the Great. The effect of the whole is that 
 of a cycle of hymns, but liberally intermixed with epic 
 and dramatic elements. In form it passes back and 
 forth from narration to dialogue, from dialogue to 
 ejaculations of praise. To quote Professor ten Brink's 
 words, it is a majestic monument of deep religions feel- 
 ing and keen, lofty intellect. The feeling of love and 
 adoration for Christ and the Virgin reaches the highest 
 pitch of expression, but without breaking into that 
 sentimental strain which the later Christian poets of the 
 12th and IStli centuries caught from the Ilinneswger. 
 Nowhere is the love of Christ described more earnestly, 
 more touchingly, nowhere are the terrors of the last 
 judgment depicted more forcibly. Among all our early
 
 54 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 English poems of religion, Cj'newulf s Christ is the one 
 ill which the spirit of the Latin church is exliibited at 
 its best. On the other hand the Old-German conception 
 of the comitatus, retinueship, or vassalage, is conspicu- 
 ous, and we even seem to detect here and there a faint 
 echo of those old pagan hymns that once must have 
 celebrated the glories of Othin's Walhalla. 
 
 34. The best known and most popular of Cynewulf 's 
 works is the Elene, a legendary story of the expedition 
 sent by the emperor Constantine to recover from the 
 Holy Land the cross upon wdiich Christ was put to 
 death. The poem contains 1321 verses; the last 85 are 
 personal. In them the poet speaks of himself as having 
 been troubled in spirit at the recollection of a misspent 
 life, until he is comforted by the contemplation of the 
 Cross and its glory. He then introduces a passage in 
 which, line by line, the runic names of the single letters 
 composing his name are made to bear the alliteration 
 and tlius reveal the author. The passage has the effect 
 of an acrostich. 
 
 The story of the Finding of the Cross is one of the 
 most interesting and characteristic legends of the early 
 church, and has been preserved in a great variety of ver- 
 sions in many languages. In Cynewulf's version the 
 main points are these. In the year 233 Constantine, 
 still a heathen, is attacked by his enemies, chiefly the 
 Huns. (The date 233 is, of course, impossible. By 
 slightly changing the order of words in Anglo-Saxon, 
 we can get 332, which would come much nearer to the 
 probable date of the emperor's conversion. But the 
 Latin original followed by Cynewulf has the same fig- 
 ures, 233.) In his sleep, on the eve of the battle which 
 is to decide the fate of his empire, an angel of the Lord 
 appears and bids him shake off fear and look aloft for a 
 sign of victory. He looks and beholds in the sky a glit-
 
 ELENE. 55 
 
 tering cross bearing the inscription : With this sign 
 shalt thou conquer thy enemies. (A translation of the 
 familiar ill hoc signo vinces.) Awaking, tlie emperor or- 
 ders a cross to be made immediately and carried before 
 him. Wherever tliis cross is borne in tlie fight, tlie 
 enemy is dismayed and routed. Having gained a com- 
 plete victory, Constantino summons his wise men and 
 bids them interpret this unknown symbol. They are at 
 a loss for an answer. But at last some Christain sokliers 
 venture to tell the story of Christ's life and death. The 
 emperor accepts joyfully the new doctrine and is bap- 
 tized. Being furtlier instructed in bible-histor}^, he 
 learns that Christ was put to death in Judea. There- 
 upon he fits out an expedition, at the head of which he 
 puts his mother Helena, to find if possible where the 
 Cross had been hid. As soon as the empress reaches 
 Jerusalem, she convenes the wise men learned in the 
 law of Moses. They evade in various ways her persist- 
 ent questionings. After meeting them thus four times 
 without success, she throws one of their number, Judas, 
 into prison and keeps him tliere six days without food. 
 On the seventh day his resolution gives way and he 
 promises to aid in the search. 
 
 He guides the Christians to Calvary, but is unable to 
 find the spot where the Cross has been hid. In his 
 emergency he prays to God. This prayer, says Pro- 
 fessor ten Brink, is a curious blending of Old-Hebrew 
 fervor and Old-German pathos, tinged with Talmudic 
 ideas of a hierarchy of angels surrounding the glory of 
 the Father, § 21. He begs that the spot may be indi- 
 cated by a cloud of smoke. His prayer is granted. He 
 returns thanks, and they dig down twenty feet, when 
 they discover three crosses. That is, they have found 
 also the two on which the thieves were put to death. 
 Returning to the city, they lay the three before the em- 
 press, who rejoices with them but wishes to know which
 
 56 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 is the Savior's, Judas is completely at fault. Tliey sing 
 hymns to God until the ninth hour, when a company of 
 mourners pass by, carrying to the grave the body of a 
 young man. Judas orders them to stop and set the bier 
 down. He holds, one after the other, two of the crosses 
 over the corpse ; but it remains motionless as before. 
 He then holds the third cross; instantly the dead man 
 arises, body and soul re-united. 
 
 Messengers are sent to Constantine to inform him of the 
 discovery. He returns word to erect a church on the 
 spot where the cross was found. The cross is set in 
 gold and precious stones and deposited in the church, in 
 a silver casket. Judas is baptized. By order of the em- 
 press. Bishop (Pope) Eusebius of Rome visits Jerusalem 
 and consecrates Judas bishop of the new diocese. 
 Henceforth Judas is known as Cyriacus. 
 
 But Helena is not yet satisfied. She wishes to have 
 the nails with which the feet and hands of the Savior 
 were pierced. Once more Cyriacus proceeds to Calvary 
 and prays. A bright flame shoots out of the ground. 
 The nails are dug up and brought to the empress. Cy- 
 riacus advises her to have them made into a bit for the 
 emperor's bridle ; so long as the emperor shall guide his 
 horse with this bit, so long shall he be victorious. The 
 empress remains a while longer in Jerusalem, helping to 
 build up the new Christian community. Cyriacus per- 
 forms many miracles of healing. At her departure the 
 empress bestows rich gifts on him and enjoins the church 
 to celebrate the anniversary of the day on which the 
 cross was found. It was the last day but six of spring. 
 As summer began on the 9th of May, according to the 
 Anglo-Saxon calendar, this day would be the 3d of May. 
 
 25, Another of Cynevvulf's poems, Juliana^ narrates 
 the martyrdom of a noble Christian woman of that 
 name, supposed to have lived in the reign of the Roman
 
 PHOENIX. 57 
 
 emperor Maximinian. Juliana refuses to wed a heathen 
 husband, and for her steadfast resistance is frightfully 
 tortured and put to death. Cynewult's version is 
 adapted from the Latin. 
 
 The metrical Life of St. Gathlac is only in part the 
 work of Cynewulf. It tells of the trials and tempta- 
 tions of Gutlilac, a hermit of Eng-land, who died 714. 
 Cynewulf 8 share, the latter part, follows closely a Latin 
 life of the saint by the monk Felix of Croyland. 
 
 These four works, viz., the Biddies, Christ, Elene, and 
 Juliana, with the portion of Guthlac, are all that can be 
 safely claimed for Cynewulf. Several other works were 
 formerly ascribed io him, which are now disputed, viz : 
 Andreas, The Phoenix, The Vision of the Hood, and vari- 
 ous shorter pieces. Ihe Vision of the Hood is rather a fee- 
 ble copy of the conclusion of Cynewulf's Christ (see be- 
 ginning of § 24) than a work by the same author. It is 
 monotonous and verbose. Andreas is the legendary (and 
 extremely fabulous) story of the adventures and suffer- 
 ing of St. Andrew, who is sent by God to rescue St. 
 Matthew from captivity in the land of the Mermedons, 
 The poet, whoever he may have been, followed a Greek, 
 not a Latin, version, as is shown by certain peculiar lo- 
 cutions. The Phoenix, a poem of 677 verses, is a metri- 
 cal rendering of a Latin poem ascribed to Lactantius, a 
 church-father of the 4tli century. Herodotus, who got 
 the fable from the Egyptians, was the first to tell of this 
 wonderful bird. The next writer of importance was 
 Ovid. During the first century of the Christian era two 
 slightly different versions sprang up. According to one, 
 when the phoenix dies, a new bird arises from the dead 
 body and buries it. According to the other, the phoenix 
 burns liimself, and a new bird arises from the ashes. 
 The latter version is more usual, and is the one followed 
 by Lactantius in his De Phoenice and by our early Eng- 
 lish poet. -But the English poem, from v. 380 on, de-
 
 58 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 velops an idea which is not in the Latin original at all, 
 i.e., it applies the phoenix-myth to the Christian doc- 
 trine of the resurrection. Tlie new-born phoenix is 
 made to symbolize the risen Lord and the elect. This 
 added part is of course the most interesting. 
 
 Among the minor poems of this period, although not 
 to be connected with Cynewulf, are Tke Liament of Deor, 
 remarkable for its being the only poem composed in 
 strophes (or stanzas), The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The 
 Ruin, The llessage of the Husband to his Wife, and a col- 
 lection of pithy sayings, usually called 'gnomic' verses. 
 All except the gnomic verses are marked by a strong 
 undercurrent of sadness. It is impossible to discover 
 their authors, or even to determine accurately the times 
 when they were composed. But in all probability they 
 are anterior to the reign of King Alfred. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 KING ALFRED — OROSIUS, BOETHIUS, PASTORAL CARE — 
 
 CHRONICLE. 
 
 26. Mention has been made in § 11 of the troubles 
 caused in the early part of Alfred's reign by the Danish 
 invasions. Li 878 a treaty was concluded at Wedmore, 
 which practically divided England into a northeastern 
 portion under Danish overrule, and a southwestern, 
 Wessex, under Alfred. 
 
 Having conquered peace, Alfred bent his energies to 
 the task of repairing the terrible damages that had been 
 wrought. He paid as much attention to restoring pnety 
 and learning as to political and military reform. Not 
 content with rebuilding and endowing schools and 
 churches, he set in his own person an extraordinary ex-
 
 ORosius. 69 
 
 ample of unceasing literary activity. Late in life he be- 
 gan the study of Latin and translated numerous works 
 into the vernacular. Nearly all his writings have been 
 preserved. They fully establish his claim to be regarded 
 as the father of our English prose. 
 
 The first work that he translated was a Latin history 
 of the world, composed about 418 by a Spanish monk 
 named Orosius. The Latin original is a mere compila- 
 tion, immethodical and uncritical. But it has one merit; 
 it is the first attempt to write history from an interna- 
 tional point of view. Its spirit is orthodox-christian, 
 but its tone, we might say, is cosmopolitan. It is cer- 
 taiidy not exclusively Greek or exclusively Latin. The 
 seven books of Orosius were a favorite work throughout 
 the early middle ages. We have seen, § 19, that Bede 
 consulted them. In translating the first chapter of the 
 first book, Alfred inserted some materials of his own, 
 viz., a description prepared by himself of all the coun- 
 tries that were then occupied by German-speaking tribes, 
 and tAvo reports of exploring voyages, written dow-n by 
 him from the dictation of the men who had made the 
 voyages. Ohthere, starting from his home on the western 
 coast of Norway, had doubled the North Ca[)e and ex- 
 plored the AYhite Sea as far as the mouth of the river 
 Dwina. He was undoubtedly the first man of Germanic 
 descent to discover those regions. The other traveler, 
 Wulfstan, starting from what is now the town of Sles- 
 wig, explored the coast of the Baltic as far as Danzig 
 and Konigsberg. These two reports and Alfred's de- 
 scription are the most interesting and valuable contribu- 
 tions that we possess to the ethnography of the times. 
 
 Alfred's next translation was from Bede's Historia, 
 see § 19. This was followed by a free rendering of the 
 celebrated work by Boethius, De Consolatione Philoso- 
 phiae. Boethius, often called the ' Last of the Romans,^ 
 was a prominent statesman and philosopher of the 6th
 
 60 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 century. Being charged, unjustly it is now believed, 
 with complicity in a conspiracy against the Gothic king, 
 Theoderic, hewasthrowninto prison andfinally executed, 
 525. It was during his imprisonment that he composed 
 his Consolatio. The work is in the main an embodiment 
 of Neo-Platonic doctrines, but with a considerable ad- 
 mixture of Stoicism. Its Christianity is rather superfi- 
 cial, for Boethius was only a Christian in name. But by 
 reason of its clear and elegant style and the good sense 
 of its teachings, it became almost immediately a popular 
 work among churchmen and exerted a wonderful influ- 
 ence upon all medieval writers, lay no less than clerical. 
 Chaucer, for instance, never wearies of citing Boethius, 
 and for several centuries after Chaucer we may observe 
 the Consolatio still maintaining its hold upon men of 
 learning. Alfred's translation, or rather paraphrase, can 
 make no pretense to the elegance of the original. 
 
 The work upon which Alfred bestowed most pains is 
 the translation of Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, a 
 treatise by the great pope upon the true nature of the 
 priestly vocation and the proper way of fullilling its 
 duties. Gregory's teachings were peculiarly applicable 
 to the English clergy in Alfred's reign, who were very 
 imperfectly trained. Hence the King ordered a copy of 
 his translation to be kept in every cathedral church of 
 his realm. Two of these very manuscripts still remain ; 
 one is much injured, the other is entire except a single 
 leaf at the end. They exhibit the actual language of the 
 south of England in the 9th century, as it was written 
 down under the eyes of the King, and are consequently 
 of the highest philological value. Alfred's Preface, in 
 the form of a letter to Bishop "Werferth, gives a forcible 
 account of the disorganization and ignorance of the 
 country during the early part of his reign, and the ener- 
 getic measures he employed to disseminate knowledge. 
 
 Another work of Gregory's, the so-called Dialogues,
 
 Gregory's dialogues. 61 
 
 was not translated by Alfred himself, but by his friend 
 Werferth, bishop of Worcester. These Dialogues era- 
 body the views of the pope upon the lives and miracles 
 of the early Italian saints. They owe their title to the 
 circumstance that they are put into the shape of a series 
 of imaginary conversations between Gregory and his 
 archdeacon Peter. The fourth (last) book exerted a re- 
 markable influence upon medieval literature. It treats 
 of the life of the soul after death, see § 22, and recounts 
 many of the 'visions' of spiritual and supernatural 
 things vouchsafed to holy men in the early church. 
 Closely connected with the visions was the doctrine of 
 'purgatory,' which was in process of establishment in 
 Gregory's day. From Gregory's Latin Dialogues these 
 visions and purgatorial wonders passed into early Irish 
 literature, where they were developed freely and trans- 
 fused with Keltic superstition, forming a department by 
 themselves. The doctrine of purgatory became perma- 
 nently associated with the name of Patrick, the patron 
 saint of Ireland. As retold and modified by Irish monks, 
 the literature of visions spread over all Europe, assum- 
 ing a more popular shape in the Arthurian romances. 
 
 37, For a statement of the general relations between 
 Wessex and ISTorthumbria, in the matter of prose and 
 poetrj^, see § 11. 
 
 Wessex is entitled to the additional credit of having 
 originated the beginnings of national historiography in 
 the vernacular. It had long been a custom among 
 monks throughout Europe to jot down, in Latin, year 
 by year, brief notices of important events, such as royal 
 births, deaths, marriages, great battles, and other changes, 
 especially in the monastic order itself and in the church. 
 These notices are usually as meagre and matter-of-fact as 
 memoranda entered in a private diary. But it seems 
 that the monk-s of Canterbury and Winchester must have
 
 62 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 begun at an early date to write their notices, not in Latin 
 but in the vernacular. During the reign of Ethelwulf, 
 \ Alfred's father, the first attempt was made to work up 
 ' these scattered items into somethiug like a continuous 
 narrative. The history of the Angles and Saxons was 
 carried back to the days of Hengist and Ilorsa, and 
 King Ethelwulf's pedigree traced through Othin to Noah 
 and Adam. All that part of this first Winchester redac- 
 tion which deals with persons and events anterior to the 
 7th century is of <(uestionable value, and is probably, to 
 a large extent, mere popular tradition. Passages here 
 and there read like scraps of ancient poetry turned into 
 prose. But the part dealing with the 7th century and 
 
 j 8th century is authentic, being probably taken in sub- 
 
 1 stance from early monkisli records. 
 
 Towards the end of Alfred's reign the annals under- 
 went a second redaction, which continued the thread of 
 narrative down to 891. The new matter consists chiefly 
 of the events of Alfred's wars with the Danes, and has 
 therefore all the valne of a contemporary record. But 
 those who had the second redaction in charge interpo- 
 lated a good many passages in the preceding part, i.e., in 
 the fabulous history of early Britain. They carried the 
 narrative back as far as 60 B. C. These interpolations 
 are not taken from popular tradition but from Bede's 
 Historia. Probably the respect thus shown to Bede was 
 due to Kins' Alfred's wishes. 
 
 After Alfred's death the record was resumed — we can 
 not say where or by whom — and continued to 924, the 
 year in which Alfred's son, Edward, was at the height of 
 his power and rnler over nearly all England. Professor 
 ten Brink ascribes this entire section of thirty years, 
 891-924, to the pen of a single writer, who mnst have 
 been a man of great ability and the best prosaist of Old- 
 England. His style is unusually clear and vigorous. 
 Tlie annals for the next half century, 924-975, are
 
 CHRONICLE. 63 
 
 meagre and dry. They are enlivened only by the inser- 
 tion of four episodes, narrated in alliterative verse. 
 First, the victory of Athelstan over the Scotch and 
 Northmen, at Brunanburh; second, the annexation of 
 the five Danish 'boroughs' of Leicester, Lincoln, IsTot- 
 tinghara, Stamford, Derby, 924; third, Edgar's corona- 
 tion at Bath, 973; fourth, Edgar's death, 975. 
 
 About 1000 the annals seem to have been trans- 
 ferred from Winchester to Canterbury, Worcester, and 
 Abingdon. In Worcester, about 1016, a further redaction 
 was made, by interpolating many facts and dates relating 
 to Northumbria and Mercia, which had been collected in 
 the course of the 9th and lOtli centuries. Another re- 
 daction was made in Abingdon, about 1046. The two 
 versions, the Worcester and the Abingdon, then con- 
 tinue, between them, the story of England under the 
 Danish king Knut, under Edward the Confessor, Good- 
 win, and Harold, down to the battle of Hastings. 
 
 After the J^orman Conquest, composition of every sort 
 in the language of the conquered was neglected. The 
 annals merely shared in the general decay, until at last 
 they died a natural death, 1154, when Henry IL ascended 
 the throne. The additions made from 1066-1154 are 
 meagre enough. Some were made at Canterbury ; a few 
 more at Worcester. The principal redaction of this pe- 
 riod was made at Peterborough. In 1116 the cathedral 
 and nearly all the adjacent buildings, with their books 
 and other documents, were destroyed by fire. This fur- 
 nished the occasion for rewriting the entire record. The 
 writers consulted the earlier records of Winchester, 
 Worcester, Canterbury, and Abingdon ; also the local 
 records of Peterborough. They interpolated some 
 forged charters purporting to convey gifts to the abbey, 
 and brought the story down to 1121. From 1121-1131 
 this Peterborough record was kept up year by year.
 
 64 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 The section from 1132-1154, as it now stands, was prob- 
 ably added by a single scribe, in 1154. 
 
 The entire record, wiiether. early or late, whether pre- 
 pared at Winchester, Canterbury, Worcester, Abingdon, 
 or Peterborough, is usually entitled the Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle. It is in the main dry and tedious reading, 
 imperfect, abrupt, not always intelligible or accurate. 
 Yet it is a most valuable document to the historian and 
 to the grammarian ; it is moreover worthy of honor for 
 being the first great and sustained effort on the part 
 of a modern folk to tell its own history in its own speech. 
 
 CHAPTEIi IX. 
 
 ALFRIC — SOLOMON & SATURN, &C. — DECLINE OF POETRY. 
 
 28. For the sake of unity, all the parts of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle have been mentioned in § 27, although 
 many of them belong in point of time to the present 
 chapter. 
 
 The literature of England from the death of Alfred 
 to the Norman Conquest is more abundant than the 
 earlier literature, but is in general much less interesting. 
 It is almost altogether a prose literature, and is dry and 
 didatic in style. It bears witness to the dying out of the 
 great creative impulse in poetry. 
 
 Among the more curious productions of the period is 
 the Laece Boc (Leech Book), a compilation of rales and 
 prescriptions for the treatment of various diseases. As 
 might be expected from the low state of medical study in 
 the middle ages, the compilation swarms with fantastic 
 notions. Many forms of disease are attributed to evil 
 spirits, for which the cure consists in incantations and ex- 
 orcisms. Some of the formulas are in verse, and date
 
 ALFRIC. 65 
 
 perhaps from Leathen times. N'ot a few of the supersti- 
 tions still survive among English rustics. The Lacce 
 jBoc is based upon a Latin compilation, supposed to be 
 the work of one Apulejus, a Roman physician of the last 
 days of the Empire. 
 
 The chief prose writings are of a religious character, 
 and may be regarded as a continuation of the work of 
 instruction begun by Alfred. The great reformer of the 
 10th century was St. Dunstan, Arclibishop of Cantor- 
 bury, whose eftbrts were directed to winning back the 
 priests from worldly amusements, to enforcing celibacy 
 among them, and to establishing the strict rule of St. 
 Benedict in the monasteries. But St. Dunstan has left no 
 writings in English. What he neglected to do, was more 
 than made good by Alfric, Abbot of Enshani. Alfric, 
 who died about 1020, was a pupil of the celebrated 
 school at Winchester and the most indefatigable writer 
 of his times. The more important of his works are: 
 1. A collection of 80 and more homilies, entitled Catholi- 
 cae. 2. An interlinear version of selections from Pris- 
 cian's Latin grammar, and an intev\meiir' CoUoqidum, or 
 dialogue between teacher and pupil, so planned as to 
 facilitate the learning of Latin words and phrases. 3. A 
 collection of homilies on the lives of the saints, entitled 
 Passiones Sanctorum. 4. A translation of the Pentateuch 
 (omitting passages here and there), of Joshua, Judges, 
 and Job. 5. An Introduction to the Study of the Old 
 and New Testament. Several of these writings are in 
 alliteration, e.g., the greater part of the Passiones, and 
 the books of Numbers, Joshua, and Judges. The allit- 
 eration is, to say the least, a mistake on the author's 
 part. It has not the power of the old heathen poetry 
 nor the grace of C3'ne\vulf 's poetry. It does not con- 
 form to the rules of alliterative verse; in fact it is little 
 more than slightly versified prose, and is much inferior 
 to his regular prose. But, notwithstanding this weak-
 
 66 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 ness, Alfrie was the model of an industrious scholar, and 
 indisputably the most influential writer of English after 
 King Alfred. The above list gives but a fraction of his 
 numerous writings. 
 
 Somewhat earlier in time than Alfrie is the Northum- 
 brian interlinear version of the gospels, made in Lindis- 
 farn and transferred to Durham when that city became 
 the seat of the bisliopric. Also earlier than Alfrie by a 
 few years is a collection of homilies preserved in the 
 Blickling MS. Later probably than Alfrie, certainly 
 not by him, is the Wessex translation of the gospels. 
 
 29. An interesting poem of this period is one entitled 
 Solomon and Saturn. Solomon symbolizes Christian, 
 Saturn heathen wisdom ; the poem is in the form of 
 a dialoswe or encounter of wits, in Avhich — as mis^ht be 
 expected — Solomon comes oii" victorious. The theme 
 was a favorite one in the middle ages ; but, although it 
 must have originated in the east, we have no version, 
 Latin, Greek, or otherwise, earlier than the Anglo-Saxon. 
 Solomon as representative of christian doctrine calls for 
 no explanation. But it is not so easy to account for the 
 introduction of Saturn. It is believed that there was a 
 Jewish tradition according to which Solomon figured as 
 the champion of Jewish wisdom against Marcolis, an 
 oriental divinity corresponding to the classic god Mer- 
 cury. Among German-speaking nations the oriental 
 name Marcolis was converted into Marculf; and this 
 form is still retained in the continental-German versions 
 of the story. But in England the name Marcolis seems 
 to have been confounded with Malcol (Milcol), i.e., 
 Moloch, the name of another oriental divinity corres- 
 ponding to Saturn. Thus the word Saturn came to be 
 substituted in England for Marculf. The old English 
 version is quite fragmentary, and — like all mystical writ- 
 ings — is obscure. A large part of it consists in Solo-
 
 BATTLE OF MALDON. 67 
 
 moil's going through the Fater Nosier for Saturn's edifi- 
 Ccition, interpreting each letter as if it were a rune. The 
 continental versions, notably the French, diifer from the 
 Eno-lisli in giving to the dialogue a burlesque tone, and 
 the wit not infrequently becomes profane and scurrilous. 
 
 Another and more important production is the metri- : 
 cal paraphrase of the book of Psalms, made not later i 
 than the middle of the 10th century. (An earlier ver-^ 
 sion of the 50th Psalm has been mentioned, § 22). For 
 the songs inserted in the Chronicle, see § 27. Superior 
 in every way to these chi'onicle-songs is one composed 
 near the end of the 10th century. It is a poem of 325 
 verses, (both introduction and conclusion are wanting), 
 in commemoration of Bvrhtnoth, and is called either 
 Byrhtnoth'' s Death or The Battle of 3Ialdon. In the year 
 991 a band of Northmen landed on the eastern coast of 
 England. The}^ were attacked near Maldon by Byrht- 
 noth at the head of a few hastily gathered troops. The 
 contest was long and desperate. Byrhtnoth fell, but the 
 invaders were checked. The poem is one of the most 
 spirited in the language and fully worthy of a place beside 
 Beowulf and the Battle of Fiiinshurh. It must have been 
 composed immediately after the battle, for the author 
 appears not to have known the name of the Danish 
 leader, which is given as Anlaf in the Chronicle. 
 
 80. The poetry of the 11th centuiw exhibits unmis- ; 
 takable signs of a transition period. It is the business 
 of the grammarian to examine these changes in detail. 
 All that can be attempted in this p>lace is to mention 
 some of the most marked. 1. The alliteration becomes ( 
 more and more careless ; almost any similarit}^ of sound 
 is regarded as sufficient. 2. Less care is taken to let the 
 alliteration rest on the emphatic words in the line. 3. 
 There is a tendency to make the transitions of uicniiiiig 
 coincide with the end of the fnll line. This is in direct
 
 68 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 
 
 opposition to the style of the earlier poetry, which 
 usually carries the syntactic meaning over from one line 
 to the next. Inasmuch as the caesura, or half-way 
 pause, is still kept u[), the full line is thus divided mo- 
 notonously into two halves. 4. These halves are fre- 
 quently made to rime. This is a decisive step towards 
 the riming eight-syllable or ten-syllable ' couplets ' which 
 were the predominant metre of France and Germany 
 from the 10th to the 14th century. The following pas- 
 sage, taken from the Chronicle, sub anno 1036, will make 
 all these points clear. It describes the fate of Alfred, 
 son of Ethelrcd. 
 
 Sona swa he lende, on scype mon hine blende 
 And hine swa blindne " bvohte to tham munecon, 
 And he thaei" wunode tha hwile the he leofode. 
 Syththan hine man byrigde, swa him wel gebyrde, 
 Aet tham westende . tham stypele ful-gehende 
 On tham suthportice ; seo sawul is mid Christe. 
 
 As soon as he landed, on the ship they him blinded, 
 And hina tlius blind brought (they) to the monks 
 And there he dwelt (all) the while he lived. 
 Afterwards they him buried, as him well befitted, 
 At the west end, the steeple (tower) hard by, 
 In the south portal ; his soul is with Christ. 
 
 Rimes like lende: blende, wunode : lufode, byrigde: 
 gebyrde, ende: gehende, portice: Christe, are nnmis- 
 takable, and the two halves of each line make a couplet. 
 
 It is important to note these symptoms. They show 
 how erroneous it would be to attribute the disintegra- 
 tion of the- early language and literature solely to the 
 ISTorman Conquest. The truth is that tendencies to 
 chancre had lonsr been at work in Ens^land, no less 
 than in Germany. Thus there are several riming pas- 
 sages in Cynewulfs p'oems and in the Phoenix. But 
 the English maintained their primitive system longer 
 than the GcrniMus, for the victoi-y of rime over allit-
 
 SIGNS OF TRANSITION'. 69 
 
 eration was complete in German}' by the end of the 
 9th century. Even had the Normans never invaded 
 England, the English would have developed eight and 
 ten-syllable riming couplets in imitation of the French, 
 just as the Germans did. And they would also have 
 patterned their literature after the Frencli romances 
 that were then fast becoming the fashion. The Nor--' 
 man Conquest accelerated the substitution of rime for 
 alliteration, and the importation of romance-literature.- 
 But the process would have gone on, more slowly, it 
 is true, without the Normans. 
 
 In evidence that literary taste in England was chang- 
 ing, it will sutRce to cite the fact that the story of 
 ApoUoniiis of Tyre and the Letters of Alexander the 
 Great to Aristotle, fabulous subjects taken from the 
 later Greek prose romances, were translated into English 
 before the Conquest. The Old-German heroic spirit 
 and heroic verse were doomed .to pass away before the 
 new era of sentimentality and adventure.
 
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