The story of how Cadmon became a poet has an interest beyond the national one. It is the English version of a legend found in many lands which seeks to explain the source of the poet's inspiration. There has always seemed to men to be something supernatural in this, and the vision of the cowherd is an attempt to express the divine origin of poetry. The story also gives us a vivid picture of the way in which the church was encouraging literature and learning. It is now in the monastery rather than the chieftain's hall that men gather to hear stories sung; and it is in the monastery that even a poor cowherd may receive the education needful for the cultivation of his gift of song. English literature for a long time to come was mainly the production of the clergy.

Cædmonian Poems. When a manuscript containing AngloSaxon verse paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel was discovered, it was natural that it should be concluded that they were Cadmon's; but now it is agreed that nothing that survives can be safely assigned to him but the hymn we have quoted, though the paraphrases are still called for convenience the Cædmonian poems. Though their material is drawn from the Bible, their manner makes it clear that their unknown authors were familiar with such pagan heroic poetry as Beowulf, and the most vigorous and poetical passages have in general the characteristics of Anglo-Saxon epic style. In these also we find kennings and understatements; and the battles of the Israelites are described in terms very similar to those used of the contests of Saxons and Danes.

Cynewulf. Of the personal history of Cynewulf, the other great name in Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry, nothing is certainly known except that he lived in the eighth century; but we are more fortunate with his works. He wrote Crist, an elaborate religious poem, by turns lyrical, devotional, dramatic, and allegorical; The Fates of the Apostles; Elene, the story of the finding of the true cross by Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine; and Juliana, a saint's legend. Other

poems have with less certainty been assigned to him or his imitators, a miraculous account of St. Andrew; Judith, the story of the killing of Holofernes from the Apocrypha ; The Dream of the Holy Rood; The Phoenix, a religious allegory on the bird which lived five hundred years, and, having been consumed by fire, sprang renewed from its own ashes; and a group of Riddles.

Cynewulf was a man of true religious fervor, a rich imagination, and the master of a style of great eloquence. A few lines from that part of Crist which deals with the Day of Judgment will exemplify some of these qualities.

Therewith from the four, far-off corners of the world,
From the regions uttermost of the realm of earth,
All aglow the Angels blow with one accord

Loudly thrilling trumpets. Trembles middle-garth;
Earth is quaking under men! Right against the going
Of the stars they sound together, strong and gloriously.
Sounding and resounding from the south and north;
Over all creation, from the east and from the west;
Bairns of doughty men from the dead arising,
All aghast from the gray mould, all the kin of men,
To the dooming of the Lord.

Trans. Brooke.

Alfred. The most interesting figure in Anglo-Saxon prose is King Alfred (849-901). Though much of his life was spent in a life-and-death struggle against the Danes, he found time and energy to care for the intellectual and religious interests of his people. The invaders had destroyed the culture of Northumbria, where literature had first flourished; but now in the ninth century he tried to relight the lamp of learning in the southern kingdom of Wessex. Here, at his court at Winchester, he gathered round him a group of scholars with whose aid he translated books on history and geography, a book of instructions for parish priests, and the famous Latin work of Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy. But, as has been said, the chief writers of the period were the clergy, and among them the

most noted were Elfric and Wulfstan, who have left numbers of sermons and other religious writings.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It was in the monasteries, too, that there was carried on from the middle of the ninth century till the middle of the twelfth, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Beginning as mere jottings recording the accessions and deaths of kings, the Chronicle developed into a fairly continuous prose

history, but its development is by no means uniform. During the troublous times of the Danish invasions, the monasteries themselves almost disappeared, in spite of the efforts of Alfred to maintain and reëstablish them; but Elfric's influence was more successful, and from his time in the end of the tenth century they began once more to be literary centers. Much that was written in them was naturally in Latin, since that was the language of the church; but both Alfred and Elfric realized that culture could reach the people only in their own tongue.

The Battle of Brunanburh. Embedded in the prose of the Chronicle, which is more valuable as history than as literature, are some passages of poetry, the best of which is the splendid war-song of The Battle of Brunanburh, celebrating the defeat of an army of Danes, Welsh, and Scots, by Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred, in 937. The opening stanzas of Tennyson's translation give some idea of the vigor of this early battlepoem, though it suggests rather than reproduces the meter of the original.

I.

Athelstan King,

Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and

Baron of Barons,

He with his brother,

Edmund Atheling,

Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,

Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,

Brake the shield-wall,

Hew'd the lindenwood,

Hack'd the battle shield

Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

II.

Theirs was a greatness

Got from their grandsires

Theirs that so often in

Strife with their enemies

Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

The Battle of Maldon.

Of a similar kind, but preserved

separately, is the fragmentary Battle of Maldon, describing a victory of the Danes in 991. Here, as powerfully as in Beowulf, are expressed the primitive Teutonic virtues of courage and loyalty. The English leader, Byrhtnoth, is wounded to death, and thus utters his last breath:

The mind must be the firmer, the heart must be the keener,
The mood must be the bolder, as our might lesseneth.

Here our lord lieth, all to pieces hewn,

Goodly on the ground. Ever may he grieve

Whoso from this war-play thinketh now to wend.
I am old in years, never hence will I,

But here I, by the side of my well-beloved lord,
By the man so dear, mean in death to lie.

Summary. Such are the most important literary productions of the oldest period of our language. Some have of necessity been omitted, early lyrics like The Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Ruin, and much religious and moral writing. But to know Beowulf among the relics of the pagan times, something of the Cadmonian and Cynewulfian Christian poetry, and something of the prose of Alfred, Ælfric, and Wulfstan, is to know what is of most significance. The spirit of these writers is in many respects far remote from that of our day, and their literary ornaments may easily seem to us simple and even childish; but it is worth while to exercise our imaginations to get into sympathy with them, both because as artists they are greater than may at first appear, and because they help to give us a conception of how our remote forefathers lived and thought. The writings that have been mentioned represent the chief survivals of several centuries during which civilization ebbed and flowed more than once. Almost by accident the handful of manuscripts in which they are preserved has escaped the risks of war and neglect, and we can only guess how many are altogether lost. It has required the long study of many scholars to regain a mastery of the language in which they are written, to decipher the faded script of the old monks, and to edit in modern print these fragmentary records of the life and thought of a thousand years ago.

GUIDES TO STUDY

Reading. Beowulf: the whole poem as translated by Child, Cook and Tinker, or Gummere, with special attention to the Flyting, 499-606;

C