The following lines are from the description of the deluge: Cadmon flourished in the seventh century, somewhere in the period from 657 to 680. 700-710 His successors were a line of worthy monks, who for centuries kept alive in monasteries the faint flame of learning and literature. In the early part of the eighth century appeared the first English biography, that of Bishop Wilfrid, who built York Minster, written by his pious chaplain, Eddius; about this time, too, came the first autobiography known to our literature, written by Bishop Egwin. Text-books in the various sciences began to appear. Aldhelm, a learned monk of the seventh century, was both a musician and a poet, and assumed the garb and character of a gleeman, singing his verses in English, that it might thus attract and teach the people. Unfortunately, for a very long time the language of books and of learning was Latin, and the good every-day speech of our forefathers, the homely English, was crowded out of use. This was partly because English was not much esteemed, and partly because Latin was the language of scholars all over Europe; and being thus a universal tongue, it was the most convenient one for authors. But it was a misfortune for the English language and literature that a foreign speech should for centuries have held such a sway over the speech of the people. V. TELLING OF THE VENERABLE BEDA AND OF KING ALFRED THE GOOD, AND OF THE WORK THEY DID IN LITERATURE. BEDA, a and whose, EDA, a good and pious priest, whose epitaph gave him 66 673-735 next to Cadmon as one of the great writers of this early time. Like the rest of his learned brethren, he wrote almost wholly in Latin. His best-known work is a church history of England. He wrote also text-books on natural philosophy, grammar, astronomy, music, and many other branches, which would be very amusing in this age of new fashioned school-books and modern discoveries. All these were in Latin; but in his last days he began the translation of the Gospels into English, and died just as he finished dictating the translation of Saint John's Gospel. There is a beautiful account of his death by his favorite scholar, Cuthbert, who wrote down from his master's dictation this English version of a portion of the New Testament. As they drew near the last chapters of John, Beda ordered Cuthbert to write with all speed; but his breath came so painfully that the good old priest had to pause frequently in his dictation. As the day drew near its close, the writer said, "Most dear master, there is yet one chapter wanting: do you think it troublesome to be asked any more questions?" He answered: "It is no trouble; take the pen, make ready, and write fast." In the evening Cuthbert said: "Dear master, there is yet one sentence unwritten." Beda said: "Write it quickly." Soon after the boy said: "It is written." "It is well," answered Beda; and sitting upright on the floor of his cell, he breathed his last in a song of rejoicing. A little more than a century after the death of Beda, Alfred the Great was born, one of the best and noblest of English kings, who for the work he did. in literature alone, deserves a high place in our remem 849-901 not this time-encrusted old poem of Beowulf have celebrated the deeds of some Teutonic hero in a prehistoric past? When it was first written down by the old poet, a thousand years ago, he might easily have embellished an older story with incidents of his own time and the scenery of the more modern dwelling-place of the Teutons, but he could not entirely lose, in telling the story, that atmosphere of antiquity which carries us back, as we read it, to the time when western Europe was filled with fens and waste places peopled by men living in caves and lake-dwellings, with whom the Teutons may have battled when they were wandering through Europe before they had fixed their homes on the borders of the North and Baltic Seas. But let me tell you here simply and briefly the story of the poem. Beowulf is a chief of the Goths, a "deedbold" warrior, the old poem calls him, accustomed all his life to war. At the opening of the poem he is going to the help of Hrothgar, a chief of the Danes, who is "old and hairless" when the poem begins. Hrothgar has built a great hall, or "folkstead," in which he sits at feast with his warriors. It is probably much such a hall as that in which the ancient gleeman or scald first sang the deeds of Beowulf. Imagine a long room, fifty by two hundred feet, with nave and side aisles formed by two rows of pillars. Down the centre of the hall is the great stone hearth on which burn huge fires of wood. Between the pillars curtains of skins or rudely woven tapestry are sometimes hung, and then they form sleeping-places for the warriors. In others of these alcoves are set great vats, from which the mead and ale are dealt out to the drinkers. On a raised dais at the upper end of the hall sits the chief with his wife, at a table placed transversely to the long tables that run lengthwise through the hall on each side the central hearth. At the chief's tables are the most favored guests, or those of highest rank. The apartments of the women, when there were women in the household, were behind the dais, shut off by thick hangings. If you will read the description in Scott's Ivanhoe of the hall of Cedric the Saxon, you will see that it was a hall similar to this, with appliances of a more advanced civilization, in which the English chiefs held revel and counsel as late as the coming of their Norman conquerors. Such a hall, adorned with barbaric pomp, Hrothgar the Dane built for himself and his warriors, and called Heorot. There the gleeman sang, the warriors feasted, the mead flowed in the cups, and all went happily, until a "grim guest called Grendel came up from his dismal dwelling in neighboring fens, where lurked giants, dwarfs, and all sorts of misshapen creatures, and each night seized and bore off his prey from among Hrothgar's dearest warriors. On this account Beowulf had been summoned to subdue Grendel. He embarked, therefore, on his "wide-bosomed" ship, and went to the help of the old thane; or, to quote the most poetical translation of the old poem, When they had landed, the "sea-weary men" marched straight for the hall of Hrothgar. Leaning their round shields of hard wood against the wall, they entered. The Danes asked who they were and whence they came. Beowulf answered proudly that he was a chieftain, the "board sharer of the king of the Goths." On this he was made welcome; and as soon as he was rested and refreshed, he entertained them with tales of his prowess. "The women," says the poets and prophets. And if we believe that literature, like everything else, grows rich, the greater the number and variety of things that are added to form it, then we must regard it as a great good fortune to English literature to have this rare old book of the Hebrews so early brought to England. I want you to think of the Old Testament now only as a great literary work, full of wonderful poetry and rich imagination, coming from an entirely different race, to be grafted upon the rude poetry and traditions of this our Northern people. Imagine this poetry of the South, with its odors of spices, its music of sounding harp and tinkling cymbal, its visions of green pastures and still waters, all at once mingled with the songs of the gleemen who sang at barbaric feasts where warriors, clothed in skins, spilled mead to the memory of dead heroes, and celebrated the glories of bloody warfare. Think of the unmelodious rhythm of this English singer blending all at once with the melody of the harp-strings that the Hebrew bard had struck by the rivers of Judæa, under the glowing skies of the Orient. Picture how the kindling imagination of the Northern poet, who had hardly known the language of tenderness or love, would be inspired by such ardent strains as these, from the Songs of the great Solomon: "Behold, thou art fair, my love, Behold, thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes within thy locks, Thy hair is like a flock of goats That appear from Mount Gilead; Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, And thy speech is comely. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, As a seal upon thine arm, For love is strong as death, And jealousy is cruel as the grave. The coals thereof are coals of fire, If you are able to imagine all this, you will see what a rich flood of poetry and imagery this great book of this Eastern |