The Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of "The Exploits of Beowulf" forms a
striking contrast with the chronological paraphrase of Caedmon. Its
genuine antiquity unquestionably renders it a singular curiosity; but it
derives an additional interest from its representation of the primitive
simplicity of a Homeric period--the infancy of customs and manners and
emotions of that Hero-life, which the Homeric poems first painted for
mankind:--that Hero-life of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but
imperfect conceptions from the fragments he may have collected, while he
metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those of the sentimental
romance of another age and another race.
The northern hordes under their petty chieftains, cast into a parallel
position with those princes of Greece whose realms were provinces, and
whose people were tribes, often resembled them in the like
circumstances, the like characters, and the like manners. Such were
those kinglings who could possess themselves of a territory in a single
incursion, and whose younger brothers, stealing out of their lone bays,
extended their dominion as "Sea-Kings" on the illimitable ocean.[1] The
war-ship and the mead-hall bring us back to that early era of society,
when great men knew only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose
songs are ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.
We discover these heroes, Danes or Angles, as we find them in the
Homeric period, audacious with the self-confidence of their bodily
prowess; vaunting, and talkative of their sires and of themselves; the
son ever known by denoting the father, and the father by his marriage
alliance--that primitive mode of recognition, at a period when, amid the
perpetual conflicts of rival chieftains, scarcely any but relations
could be friends; the family bond was a sure claim to protection. Like
the Homeric heroes, they were as unrelenting in their hatreds as
indissoluble in their partisanship; suspicious of the stranger, but
welcoming the guest; we find them rapacious, for plunder was their
treasure, and prodigal in their distributions of their golden armlets
and weighed silver, for their egotism was as boundless as their
violence. Yet pride and glory fermented the coarse leaven of these
mighty marauders, who were even chivalric ere chivalry rose into an
order. The religion of these ages was wild as their morality; few heroes
but bore some relationship to Woden; and even in their rude paganised
Christianity, some mythological name cast its lustre in their
genealogies. In the uncritical chronicles of the middle ages it is not
always evident whether the mortal was not a divinity. Their mythic
legends have thrown confusion into their national annals, often accepted
by historians as authentic records.[2] But if antiquaries still wander
among shadows, the poet cannot err. BEOWULF may be a god or a nonentity,
but the poem which records his exploits must at least be true, true in
the manners it paints and the emotions which the poet reveals--the
emotions of his contemporaries.
BEOWULF,[3] a chieftain of the Western Danes, was the Achilles of the
North. We first view him with his followers landing on the shores of a
Danish kingling. A single ship with an armed company, in those predatory
days, could alarm a whole realm. The petty independent provinces of
Greece afford a parallel; for Thucydides has marked this period in
society, when plunder well fought for was honoured as an heroic
enterprise. When a vessel touched on a strange shore, the adventurers
were questioned "whether they were thieves?" a designation which the
inquirers did not intend as a term of reproach, nor was it scorned by
the valiant;[4] for the spoliation of foreigners, at a time when the law
of nations had no existence, seemed no disgrace, while it carried with
it something of glory, when the chieftain's sword maintained the swarm
of his followers, or acquired for himself an extended dominion.
Beowulf was a mailed knight, and his gilded ensign hung like a meteor in
the air, and none knew the fate it portended. The warder of the coast,
for in those days many a warder kept "ocean-watch" on the sea-cliffs,
takes horse, and hastens to the invader; fearlessly he asks, "Whence,
and what are ye? Soonest were best to give me answer."
The hero had come not to seek feud, nor to provoke insult, but with the
free offering of his own life to relieve the sovereign of the Eastern
Danes, whose thanes, for twelve years, had vainly perished, struggling
with a mysterious being--one of the accursed progeny of Cain--a foul
and solitary creature of the morass and the marsh. In the dead of the
night this enemy of man, envious of glory and abhorrent of pleasure,
glided into the great hall of state and revelry, raging athirst for the
blood of the brave there reposing in slumber. The tale had spread in
songs through all Gothland. This life-devourer, who comes veiled in a
mist from the marshes, may be some mythic being; but though monstrous,
it does little more than play the part of the Polyphemus of antiquity
and the Ogre of modern fairyism.
In the timber-palace chambers were but small and few, and the guests of
the petty sovereign slept in the one great hall, under whose echoing
roof the Witenagemot assembled, and the royal banquet was held; there
each man had his "bed and bolster" laid out, with his shield at his
head, and his helmet, breastplate, and spear placed on a rack beside
him--"at all times ready for combat both in house and field."
This scene is truly Homeric; and thus we find in the early state of
Greece, for the historian records this continual wearing of armour,
_like the barbarians_, because "their houses were unfenced, and
travelling was unsafe."[5]
The watchman of the seas leaves not the coast, duteous in his lonely
cares; while Beowulf, with his companions, marches onwards. They came to
where the streets were paved; an indication in that age of a regal
residence. The iron rings in their mailed coats rang as they trod in
their "terrible armour." They reach the king's house; they hang up their
shields against the lofty wall. They seat themselves on a bench, placing
in a circle their mailed coats, their bucklers, and their javelins. This
warlike array called forth an Ulysses, "famed for war and wisdom;" they
parley; the thane hastens to announce the warlike but the friendly
visitor; and the hero, so famed for valour, yet would not obtrude his
person, standing behind the thane, "for he knew the rule of ceremony."
The prince of the East Danes joyfully exclaims, that "he had known
Beowulf when a child; he remembered the name of his father, who married
the only daughter of Hrethel the Goth. It is said that he has the
strength of thirty men in the grip of his hand. God only could have
sent him."
Beowulf, he whose beautiful ship had come over "the swan-path," may now
peacefully show himself in his warlike array. Beowulf stood upon the
dais; his "sark of netted mail" glittered where the armourer's skill had
wrought around the war-net. Here we discover the ornamental artist as in
the Homeric period. He found the prince of the East Danes, "old and
bald" like Priam, seated among his earls. Our hero, whom we have
observed so decorous in "his rule of ceremony," now launches forth in
the commendation of his own prowess.
He who had come to vanquish a fiend exulted not less in a swimming-match
in the seas, "when the waves were boiling with the fury of winter,"
during seven whole days and nights, combating with the walruses.
The exploits of Beowulf are of a supernatural cast; and this
circumstance has bewildered his translator amid mythic allusions, and
thus the hero sinks into the incarnation of a Saxon idol,--a protector
of the human race. It is difficult to decide whether the marvellous
incidents be mythical, or merely exaggerations of the northern poetic
faculty. We, however, learn by these, that corporeal energies and an
indomitable spirit were the glories of the hero-life; and the outbreaks
of their self-complacency resulted from their own convictions, after
many a fierce trial.
Such an heroic race we deem barbarous; but what are the nobler spirits
of all times but the creatures of their age? who, however favoured by
circumstances, can only do that which is practicable in the condition of
society.
Henforth, the son of Eglaff, sate at the feet of the king; jealousy
stirred in his breast at the prowess of "the proud seafarer." This
cynical minister of the king ridicules his youthful exploits, and
sarcastically assured the hero, that "he has come to a worse matter now,
should he dare to pass the space of one night with the fiend." This
personage is the Thersites of our northern Homer--
With witty malice studious to defame,
Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.
And like Thersites, the son of Eglaff receives a blasting reproach:--"I
tell thee, son of Eglaff, drunken with mead, that I have greater
strength upon the sea than any other man. We two (he alludes to his
competitor), when we were but boys, with our naked swords in our hands,
where the waves were fiercest, warred with the walruses. The whale-fish
dragged me to the bottom of the sea, grim in his gripe; the mighty
sea-beast received the war-rush through my hand. The sea became calm, so
that I beheld the ocean promontories, as the light broke from the east.
Never since have the sea-sailors been hindered of their way; never have
I heard of a harder battle by night under the concave of heaven, nor of
a man more wretched on the ocean-streams. Of such ambushes and fervour
of swords I have not heard aught of thee, else had the fiend I come to
vanquish never accomplished such horrors against thy prince. I boast
not, therefore, son of Eglaff! but never have I slaughtered those of my
kin, for which hast thou incurred damnation, though thy wit be good."
In this state of imperfect civilization, we discover already a right
conception of the female character. At the banquet the queen appears;
she greeted the young Goth, bearing in her own hand the bright sweet
liquor in the twisted mead-cup. She went among the young and the old
mindful of their races; the free-born queen then sate beside the
monarch. There was laughter of heroes. A bard sung serene on "the origin
of things," as Iopas sang at the court of Dido, and Demodocus at that of
Alcinous. The same bard again excites joy in the hall by some warlike
tale. Never was banquet without poet in the Homeric times.
Here our task ends, which was not to analyse the tale of Beowulf, but
solely to exhibit the manners of a primeval epoch in society. The whole
romance, though but short, bears another striking feature of the mighty
minstrel of antiquity; it is far more dramatic than narrative, for the
characters discover themselves more by dialogue than by action.
The literary history of this Anglo-Saxon metrical romance is too
remarkable to be omitted. It not only cast a new light on a disputed
object in our own literary history, but awoke the patriotism of a
foreign nation. Beowulf had shared the fate of Caedmon, being preserved
only in a single manuscript in the Cottonian Library, where it escaped
from the destructive fire of 1731, not, however, without injury. In
1705, Wanley had attempted to describe it, but he did not surmount the
difficulty. Our literary antiquaries, with Ritson for their leader,
stubbornly asserted that the Anglo-Saxons had no metrical romance, as
they opined by their scanty remains. The learned historian of our
Anglo-Saxons, in the progress of his ceaseless pursuit, unburied this
hidden treasure--which at once refuted the prevalent notions; but this
literary curiosity was fated to excite deeper emotions among the honest
Danes.
The existing manuscript of "The Exploits of Beowulf" is of the tenth
century; but the poem was evidently composed at a far remoter period;
though, as all the personages of the romance are Danes, and all the
circumstances are Danish, it may be conjectured, if it be an original
Anglo-Saxon poem, that it was written when the Danes had a settlement in
some parts of Britain. At Copenhagen the patriotism of literature is
ardent. The learned there claimed Beowulf as their own, and alleged that
the Anglo-Saxon was the version of a Danish poem; it became one of the
most ancient monuments of the early history of their country, and not
the least precious to them for its connexion with English affairs. The
Danish antiquaries still amuse their imagination with the once Danish
kingdom of Northumbria, and still call us "brothers;" as at Caen, where
the whole academy still persist in disputations on the tapestry of
Bayeux, and style themselves our "masters."
It was, therefore, a national mortification to the Danes that it was an
Englishman who had first made known this relic; and further, that it
existed only in the library of England. The learned THORKELIN was
despatched on a literary expedition, and a careful transcript of the
manuscript of Beowulf was brought to the learned and patriotic Danes. It
was finished for the press, accompanied by a translation and a
commentary, in 1807. At the siege of Copenhagen a British bomb fell on
the study of the hapless scholar, annihilating "Beowulf," transcript,
translation, and commentary, the toil of twenty years. It seemed to be
felt, by the few whose losses by sieges never appear in royal Gazettes,
as not one of the least in that sad day of warfare with "our brothers."
THORKELIN was urged to restore the loss. But it was under great
disadvantages that his edition was published in 1815. Mr. Kemble has
redeemed our honour by publishing a collated edition, afterwards
corrected in a second with a literal version. Such versions may supply
the wants of the philologist, but for the general reader they are doomed
to be read like vocabularies. Yet even thus humbled and obscured,
BEOWULF aspires to a poetic existence. He appeals to nature and excites
our imagination--while the monk, CAEDMON, restricted by his faithful
creed, and his pertinacious chronology--seems to have afforded more
delight by his piety than the other by his genius--and remains renowned
as "the Milton of our forefathers!"