CHAPTER I OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE THE survey of any historical period must needs take an arbitrary point of departure. The closer we press our investigations the more clearly do we see that the apparent origins are really derivative: there were brave men before Agamemnon, there were poets before Homer, and the earliest known document complains of a degenerating age. There needs, therefore, no apology for beginning our illustrations of English Literature with our first great national epic. Before it assumed the form in which we have it Cædmon had written his paraphrase and Ealdhelm his songs; among its contemporaries are such descriptive poems as the Wanderer and the Seafarer; but it remains the greatest example of pre-Conquest poetry, the most typical representative of Old English art. In its present form it consists of two main portions, the earlier written in Mercia, the later in Kent, both probably dating from the eighth century, both incorporating lays which may perhaps be traced back as early as the fifth'. These lays may in all likelihood have come to us from the Baltic shores, among which the whole scenery of the poem is set, and have been fused into a continuous epic by English scribes. At any rate it is noticeable that although the whole poem is English in language, in feeling, and in style, it says no word from beginning to end about our nation and country. Yet it became so thoroughly 1 Müllenhoff holds that there were two original poems, (1) the fight with Grendel, (2) the fight with the fire-drake, both augmented by the interpolations and additions of four more successive authors. Ten Brink holds that there were several primitive versions which were somewhat carelessly edited by a scribe of the eighth century. B HADOW naturalized that it determined the growth of our English speech, and even took root in some of our place-names. A charter of Athelstane, two centuries later, mentions Grendel's pool, and Scyld's tree, and Beowa's land in its description of a single Wiltshire estate. They had become as real as Stonehenge or Amesbury. The poem is partly historic, partly mythological. We can have little doubt that Beowulf was a real hero, a great warrior whose exploits were celebrated round the camp-fire; but some episodes appear to be derived from myths of Beowa, the sun-god, with whom it is very probable that he was confused. It is as full of fighting as the Iliad, and, in Mr. Stopford Brooke's phrase, tells its story' with Homeric directness but not with Homeric rapidity'. There is little portrayal of emotion, and the most passionate moment is Wiglaf's denunciation of his fellow thanes for cowardice in time of need. There is practically no love interest: only once (in the story of Frea waru and Ingeld) does a woman play any prominent part: there is no Andromache, no Nausicaa, no Penelope waiting beside her loom. All the story is concentrated on the vivid presentation of manly deed and adventure, sometimes told with great pictorial power (as the bale-fire, or the hall of Grendel's mother), more often fashioned with a strong plainness and simplicity in which every word rings like the clash of arms. It is the picture of a hard and toilsome life, with few pleasures except rough feasting, few joys except the fierce delight of battle; it is set in a gloomy land where monsters make ravage and the storms shatter against the cliff, and over all hangs the grey pitiless northern sky. The metre is peculiarly English: a line of four 'stresses' divided (like the Latin pentameter) into two parts, of which the second has less metrical variety than the first. The number of unaccented syllables is allowed, within limits, to fluctuate: the essentials are that four syllables should bear the main accents of the voice, and that the first three of them should begin with the same letter. There is no rhyme (except very rarely between the middle and the end of a line): its place is taken by this careful system of alliteration. We may exhibit its characteristics by quoting a few lines from the beginning of our first extract, with as literal a version as modern English admits: Fyrst forð gewât: flota was on ŷðum, Forth fled the hours: floated on the waves |