THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
In dealing with Anglo-Saxon literature it is well to remember first of
all that comparatively little of it has been preserved; we cannot be
sure, either, that the best things have been preserved, in the poetry
especially. Anglo-Saxon poetry was being made, we know, for at least five
hundred years. What now exists is found, chiefly, in four manuscript
volumes,[1] which have been saved, more or less accidentally, from all
sorts of dangers. No one can say what has been lost. Many manuscripts, as
good as any of these, may have been sold as old parchment, or given to
the children to cut up into tails for kites. One Anglo-Saxon poem,
_Waldere_, is known from two fragments of it which were discovered in the
binding of a book in Copenhagen. Two other poems were fortunately copied
and published about two hundred years ago by two famous antiquaries; the
original manuscripts have disappeared since then. Who can tell how many
manuscripts have disappeared without being copied? The obvious conclusion
is that we can speak about what we know, but not as if we knew everything
about Anglo-Saxon poetry.
With the prose it is rather different. The prose translations due to King
Alfred are preserved; so is the English Chronicle; so are a fair number
of religious works, the homilies of Ælfric and others; it does not seem
likely from what we know of the conditions of authorship in those times
that any prose work of any notable or original value has disappeared.
With the poetry, on the other hand, every fresh discovery—like that of
the bookbinding fragments already mentioned—makes one feel that the
extent of Anglo-Saxon poetry is unknown. Anything may turn up. We cannot
say what subjects were not treated by Anglo-Saxon poets. It is certain
that many good stories were known to them which are not found in any of
the extant manuscripts.
The contents of Anglo-Saxon literature may be divided into two sections,
one belonging to the English as a Teutonic people who inherited along
with their language a form of poetry and a number of stories which have
nothing to do with Roman civilization; the other derived from Latin and
turning into English the knowledge which was common to the whole of
Europe.
The English in the beginning—Angles and Saxons—were heathen Germans who
took part in the great movement called the Wandering of the Nations—who
left their homes and emigrated to lands belonging to the Roman empire,
and made slaves of the people they found there. They were barbarians; the
civilized inhabitants of Britain, when the English appeared there,
thought of them as horrible savages. They were as bad and detestable as
the Red Indians were to the Colonists in America long afterwards.
But we know that the early English are not to be judged entirely by the
popular opinion of the Britons whom they harried and enslaved, any more
than the English of Queen Elizabeth’s time are to be thought of simply
according to the Spanish ideas about Sir Francis Drake. There were
centuries of an old civilization behind them when they settled in
Britain; what it was like is shown partially in the work of the Bronze
and the early Iron Age in the countries from which the English came. The
_Germania_ of Tacitus tells more, and more still is to be learned from
the remains of the old poetry.
Tacitus was not quite impartial in his account of the Germans; he used
them as examples to point a moral against the vices of Rome; the German,
in his account, is something like the ‘noble savage’ who was idealized by
later philosophers in order to chastise the faults of sophisticated
modern life. But Tacitus, though he might have been rather inclined to
favour the Germans, was mainly a scientific observer who wished to find
out the truth about them, and to write a clear description of their
manners and customs. One of the proofs of his success is the agreement
between his _Germania_ and the pictures of life composed by the people of
that race themselves in their epic poetry.
The case of the early English is very like that of the Danes and Northmen
four or five hundred years later. The Anglo-Saxons thought and wrote of
the Danes almost exactly as the Britons had thought of their Saxon
enemies. The English had to suffer from the Danish pirates what the
Britons had suffered from the English; they cursed the Danes as their own
ancestors had been cursed by the Britons; the invaders were utterly
detestable and fiendish men of blood. But luckily we have some other
information about those pirates. From the Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic
historians, and from some parts of the old Northern poetry, there may be
formed a different idea about the character and domestic manners of the
men who made themselves so unpleasant in their visits to the English and
the neighbouring coasts. The pirates at home were peaceful country
gentlemen, leading respectable and beneficent lives among their poorer
neighbours. The Icelandic histories—including the history of Norway for
three or four centuries—may be consulted for the domestic life of the
people who made so bad a name for themselves as plunderers abroad. They
appear there, several varieties of them, as members of a reasonable,
honourable community, which could have given many lessons of civilization
to England or France many centuries later. But the strangest and most
convincing evidence about the domestic manners of the Northmen is found
in English, and is written by King Alfred himself. King Alfred had many
foreigners in his service, and one of them was a Norwegian gentleman from
the far North, named Ohthere (or Ottárr, as it would be in the Norse
tongue rather later than King Alfred’s time). How he came into the King’s
service is not known, but there are other accounts of similar cases which
show how easy it was for Northmen of ability to make their way in the
world through the patronage of kings. Ohthere belonged exactly to the
class from which the most daring and successful rovers came. He was a
gentleman of good position at home in Halogaland (now called Helgeland in
the north of Norway), a landowner with various interests, attending to
his crops, making a good deal out of trade with the Finns and Lapps; and
besides that a navigator, the first who rounded the North Cape and sailed
into the White Sea. His narrative, which is given by Alfred as an
addition to his translation of Orosius, makes a pleasant and amusing
contrast to the history of the Danish wars, which also may have been
partly written by King Alfred himself for their proper place in the
English Chronicle.
As the Icelandic sagas and Ohthere’s narrative and other documents make
it easy to correct the prejudiced and partial opinions of the English
about the Danes, so the opinions of the Britons about the Saxons are
corrected, though the evidence is not by any means so clear. The Angles
and Saxons, like the Danes and Northmen later—like Sir Francis Drake, or
like Ulysses, we might say—were occasionally pirates, but not restricted
to that profession. They had many other things to do and think about.
Before everything, they belonged to the great national system which
Tacitus calls _Germania_—which was never politically united, even in the
loosest way, but which nevertheless was a unity, conscious of its
separation from all the foreigners whom it called, in a comprehensive
manner, Welsh. In England the Welsh are the Cambro-Britons; in Germany
Welsh means sometimes French, sometimes Italian—a meaning preserved in
the name ‘walnut’ (or ‘walsh-note’, as it is in Chaucer)—the ‘Italian
nut’. Those who are not Welsh are ‘Teutonic’—which is not a mere modern
pedantic name, but is used by old writers in the same way as by modern
philologists, and applied to High or Low Dutch indifferently, and also to
English. But the unity of _Germania_—the community of sentiment among the
early German nations—does not need to be proved by such philological
notes as the opposition of ‘Dutch’ and ‘Welsh’. It is proved by its own
most valuable results, by its own ‘poetical works’—the heroic legends
which were held in common by all the nations of _Germania_. If any one
were to ask, ‘What does the old English literature _prove_?’ the answer
would be ready enough. It proves that the Germanic nations had a
reciprocal free trade in subjects for epic poems. They were generally
free from local jealousy about heroes. Instead of a natural rivalry among
Goths, Burgundians and the rest, the early poets seem to have had a
liking for heroes not of their own nation, so long as they were members
of one of the German tribes. (The Huns, it may be here remarked, are
counted as Germans; Attila is not thought of as a barbarian.) The great
example of this common right in heroes is Sigfred, Sigurd the Volsung,
Siegfried of the _Nibelungenlied_. His original stock and race is of no
particular interest to any one; he is a hero everywhere, and everywhere
he is thought of as belonging, in some way or other, to the people who
sing about him. This glory of Sigurd or Siegfried is different from the
later popularity of King Arthur or of Charlemagne in countries outside of
Britain or France. Arthur and Charlemagne are adopted in many places as
favourite heroes without any particular thought of their nationality, in
much the same way as Alexander the Great was celebrated everywhere from
pure love of adventurous stories. But Siegfried or Sigurd, whether in
High or Low Germany, or Norway or Iceland, is always at home. He is not
indeed a national champion, like the Cid in Spain or the Wallace in
Scotland, but everywhere he is thought of, apart from any local
attachment, as the hero of the race.
One of the old English poems called _Widsith_ (the Far Traveller) is an
epitome of the heroic poetry of _Germania_, and a clear proof of the
common interest taken in all the heroes. The theme of the poem is the
wandering of a poet, who makes his way to the courts of the most famous
kings: Ermanaric the Goth, Gundahari the Burgundian, Alboin the Lombard,
and many more. The poem is a kind of _fantasia_, intended to call up, by
allusion, the personages of the most famous stories; it is not an epic
poem, but it plays with some of the plots of heroic poetry familiar
throughout the whole Teutonic region. Ermanaric and Gundahari, here
called Eormanric and Guthhere, are renowned in the old Scandinavian
poetry, and the old High German. Guthhere is one of the personages in the
poem of _Waldere_; what is Guthhere in English is Gunnar in Norse,
Gunther in German—the Gunther of the _Nibelungenlied_. Offa comes into
Widsith’s record, an English king; but he has no particular mark or
eminence or attraction to distinguish him in the poet’s favour from the
Goth or the Lombard; he is king of ‘Ongle’, the original Anglia to the
south of Jutland, and there is no room for doubt that the English when
they lived there and when they invaded Britain had the stories of all the
Teutonic heroes at their command to occupy their minds, if they chose to
listen to the lay of the minstrel. What they got from their minstrels was
a number of stories about all the famous men of the Teutonic race—stories
chanted in rhythmical verse and noble diction, presenting tragic themes
and pointing the moral of heroism.
Of this old poetry there remains one work nearly complete. _Beowulf_,
because it is extant, has sometimes been over-valued, as if it were the
work of an English Homer. But it was not preserved as the _Iliad_ was, by
the unanimous judgement of all the people through successive generations.
It must have been of some importance at one time, or it would not have
been copied out fair as a handsome book for the library of some
gentleman. But many trashy things have been equally honoured in
gentlemen’s libraries, and it cannot be shown that _Beowulf_ was nearly
the best of its class. It was preserved by an accident; it has no right
to the place of the most illustrious Anglo-Saxon epic poem. The story is
commonplace and the plan is feeble. But there are some qualities in it
which make it (accidentally or not, it hardly matters) the best worth
studying of all the Anglo-Saxon poems. It is the largest extant piece in
any old Teutonic language dealing poetically with native Teutonic
subjects. It is the largest and fullest picture of life in the order to
which it belongs; the only thing that shows incontestably the power of
the old heroic poetry to deal on a fairly large scale with subjects taken
from the national tradition. The impression left by _Beowulf_, when the
carping critic has done his worst, is that of a noble manner of life, of
courtesy and freedom, with the dignity of tragedy attending it, even
though the poet fails, or does not attempt, to work out fully any proper
tragic theme of his own.
There is a very curious likeness in many details between _Beowulf_ and
the _Odyssey_; but quite apart from the details there is a real likeness
between them in their ‘criticism of life‘—i.e. in their exhibition of
human motives and their implied or expressed opinions about human
conduct. There is the same likeness between the _Odyssey_ and the best of
the Icelandic Sagas—particularly the _Story of Burnt Njal_; and the
lasting virtue of _Beowulf_ is that it is bred in the same sort of world
as theirs. It is not so much the valour and devotion of the hero; it is
the conversation of the hosts and guests in the King’s hall, the play of
serious and gentle moods in the minds of the freeborn, that gives its
character to the poem. _Beowulf_, through its rendering of noble manners,
its picture of good society, adds something distinct and unforgettable to
the records of the past. There is life in it, and a sort of life which
would be impossible without centuries of training, of what Spenser called
‘vertuous and gentle discipline’.
_Beowulf_ is worth studying, among other reasons, because it brings out
one great difference between the earlier and later medieval poetry,
between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English taste in fiction. _Beowulf_ is a
tale of adventure; the incidents in it are such as may be found in
hundreds of other stories. Beowulf himself, the hero, is a champion and a
slayer of monsters. He hears that the King of the Danes is plagued in his
house by the visits of an ogre, who night after night comes and carries
off one of the King’s men. He goes on a visit to Denmark, sits up for the
ogre, fights with him and mortally wounds him. That does not end the
business, for the ogre’s mother comes to revenge her son, and Beowulf has
a second fight and kills her too, and is thanked and goes home again.
Many years afterwards when he is king in his own country, Gautland (which
is part of modern Sweden), a fiery dragon is accidentally stirred up from
a long sleep and makes itself a pest to the country. Beowulf goes to
attack the dragon, fights and wins, but is himself killed by the poison
of the dragon. The poem ends with his funeral. So told, in abstract, it
is not a particularly interesting story. Told in the same bald way, the
story of Theseus or of Hercules would still have much more in it; there
are many more adventures than this in later romances like _Sir Bevis of
Southampton_ or _Sir Huon of Bordeaux_. What makes the poem of _Beowulf_
really interesting, and different from the later romances, is that it is
full of all sorts of references and allusions to great events, to the
fortunes of kings and nations, which seem to come in naturally, as if the
author had in his mind the whole history of all the people who were in
any way connected with Beowulf, and could not keep his knowledge from
showing itself. There is an historical background. In romances, and also
in popular tales, you may get the same sort of adventures as in
_Beowulf_, but they are told in quite a different way. They have nothing
to do with reality. In _Beowulf_, the historical allusions are so many,
and given with such a conviction of their importance and their truth,
that they draw away the attention from the main events of the story—the
fights with the ogre Grendel and his mother, and the killing of the
dragon. This is one of the faults of the poem. The story is rather thin
and poor. But in another way those distracting allusions to things apart
from the chief story make up for their want of proportion. They give the
impression of reality and weight; the story is not in the air, or in a
fabulous country like that of Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_; it is part of
the solid world. It would be difficult to find anything like this in
later medieval romance. It is this, chiefly, that makes _Beowulf_ a true
_epic_ poem—that is, a narrative poem of the most stately and serious
kind.
The history in it is not English history; the personages in it are Danes,
Gauts, and Swedes. One of them, Hygelac, the king whom Beowulf succeeded,
is identified with a king named by the Frankish historian Gregory of
Tours; the date is about A.D. 515. The epic poem of _Beowulf_ has its
source pretty far back, in the history of countries not very closely
related to England. Yet the English hearers of the poem were expected to
follow the allusions, and to be interested in the names and histories of
Swedish, Gautish, and Danish kings. As if that was not enough, there is a
story within the story—a poem of adventure is chanted by a minstrel at
the Danish Court, and the scene of this poem is in Friesland. There is no
doubt that it was a favourite subject, for the Frisian story is mentioned
in the poem of Widsith, the Traveller; and more than that, there is an
independent version of it among the few remains of Anglo-Saxon heroic
poetry—_The Fight at Finnesburh_. Those who listened to heroic songs in
England seem to have had no peculiar liking for English subjects. Their
heroes belong to _Germania_. The same thing is found in Norway and
Iceland, where the favourite hero is Sigurd. His story, the story of the
Volsungs and Niblungs, comes from Germany. In _Beowulf_ there is a
reference to it—not to Sigfred himself, but to his father Sigemund.
Everywhere and in every possible way the old heroic poets seem to escape
from the particular nation to which they belong, and to look for their
subjects in some other part of the Teutonic system. In some cases,
doubtless, this might be due to the same kind of romantic taste as led
later authors to place their stories in Greece, or Babylon, or anywhere
far from home. But it can scarcely have been so with _Beowulf_; for the
author of _Beowulf_ does not try to get away from reality; on the
contrary, he buttresses his story all round with historical tradition and
references to historical fact; he will not let it go forth as pure
romance.
The solid foundation and epic weight of _Beowulf_ are not exceptional
among the Anglo-Saxon poems. There are not many other poems extant of the
same class, but there is enough to show that _Beowulf_ is not alone. It
is a representative work; there were others of the same type; and it is
this order of epic poetry which makes the great literary distinction of
the Anglo-Saxon period.
It is always necessary to remember how little we know of Anglo-Saxon
poetry and generally of the ideas and imaginations of the early English.
The gravity and dignity of most of their poetical works are
unquestionable; but one ought not to suppose that we know all the
varieties of their poetical taste.
It is probable that in the earlier Middle Ages, and in the Teutonic
countries, there was a good deal of the fanciful and also of the comic
literature which is so frequent in the later Middle Ages (after 1100) and
especially in France. One proof of this, for the fanciful and romantic
sort of story-telling, will be found in the earlier part of the Danish
history written by Saxo Grammaticus. He collected an immense number of
stories from Danes and Icelanders—one of them being the story of
Hamlet—and although he was comparatively late (writing at the end of the
twelfth century), still we know that his stories belong to the North and
are unaffected by anything French; they form a body of Northern romance,
independent of the French fashions, of King Arthur and Charlemagne. The
English historians—William of Malmesbury, e.g.—have collected many things
of the same sort. As for comic stories, there are one or two in careful
Latin verse, composed in Germany in the tenth century, which show that
the same kind of jests were current then as in the later comic poetry of
France, in the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, and in the _Canterbury Tales_.
The earlier Middle Ages were more like the later Middle Ages than one
would think, judging merely from the extant literature of the Anglo-Saxon
period on the one hand and of the Plantagenet times on the other. But the
differences are there, and one of the greatest is between the Anglo-Saxon
fashion of epic poetry and the popular romances of the time of Edward I
or Edward III.
The difference is brought out in many ways. There is a different choice
of subject; the earlier poetry, by preference, is concentrated on one
great battle or combat—generally in a place where there is little or no
chance of escape—inside a hall, as in _The Fight at Finnesburh_, and in
the slaughter ‘grim and great’ at the end of the _Nibelungenlied_; or, it
may be, in a narrow place among rocks, as in the story of Walter of
Aquitaine, which is the old English _Waldere_. This is the favourite sort
of subject, and it is so because the poets were able thus to hit their
audience again and again with increasing force; the effect they aimed at
was a crushing impression of strife and danger, and courage growing as
the danger grew and the strength lessened. In _Beowulf_ the subjects are
different, but in _Beowulf_ a subject of this sort is introduced, by way
of interlude, in the minstrel’s song of _Finnesburh_; and also _Beowulf_,
with a rather inferior plot, still manages to give the effect and to
bring out the spirit of deliberate heroic valour.
Quite late in the Anglo-Saxon period—about the year 1000—there is a poem
on an English subject in which this heroic spirit is most thoroughly
displayed: the poem on the Battle of Maldon which was fought on the Essex
shore in 993 between Byrhtnoth, alderman of East Anglia, and a host of
vikings whose leader (though he is not mentioned in the poem) is known as
Olaf Tryggvason. By the end of the tenth century Anglo-Saxon poetry had
begun to decay. Yet the Maldon poem shows that it was not only still
alive, but that in some respects it had made very remarkable progress.
There are few examples anywhere of poetry which can deal in a
satisfactory way with contemporary heroes. In the Maldon poem, very
shortly after the battle, the facts are turned into poetry—into poetry
which keeps the form of the older epic, and which in the old manner works
up a stronger and stronger swell of courage against the overwhelming
ruin. The last word of the heroic age is spoken, five hundred years after
the death of Hygelac (above, p. 26), by the old warrior who, like the
trusty companion of Beowulf, refused to turn and run when his lord was
cut down in the battle:
Thought shall be the harder, heart the keener,
Mood the more, as our might lessens.
It is one of the strange things in the history of poetry that in another
five hundred years an old fashion of poetry, near akin to the
Anglo-Saxon, comes to an end in a poem on a contemporary battle The last
poem in the Middle English alliterative verse, which was used for so many
subjects in the fourteenth century—for the stories of Arthur and
Alexander and Troy, and for the Vision of Piers Plowman—is the poem of
_Scottish Field_ A.D. 1513, on the battle of Flodden.
This alliterative verse, which has a history of more than a thousand
years, is one of the things that are carried over in some mysterious way
from the Anglo-Saxon to the later medieval period. But though it survives
the great change in the language, it has a different sound in the
fourteenth century from what it has in _Beowulf_; the older verse has a
manner of its own.
The Anglo-Saxon poetical forms are difficult at first to understand. The
principal rule of the verse is indeed easy enough; it is the same as in
the verse of _Piers Plowman_; there is a long line divided in the middle;
in each line there are _four_ strong syllables; the first _three_ of
these are generally made alliterative; i.e. they begin with the same
consonant—
Wæs se grimma gæst Grendel haten
mære mearcstapa, se the móras heold
fen and fæsten.
Was the grievous guest Grendel namèd
mighty mark-stalker, and the moors his home
fen and fastness.
or they all begin with _different_ vowels—
Eotenas and ylfe and orcneas.
Etins and elves and ogres too.
But there is a variety and subtilty in the Anglo-Saxon measure which is
not found in the Middle English, and which is much more definitely under
metrical rules. And apart from the metre of the single line, there is in
the older alliterative poetry a skill in composing long passages, best
described in the terms which Milton used about his own blank verse: ‘the
sense variously drawn out from one line to another’. The Anglo-Saxon
poets, at their best, are eloquent, and able to carry on for long periods
without monotony. Their verse does not fall into detached and separate
lines. This habit is another evidence of long culture; Anglo-Saxon
poetry, such as we know it, is at the end of its progress; already
mature, and with little prospect in front of it except decay.
The diction of Anglo-Saxon poetry is a subject of study by itself. Here
again there is a great difference between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English
poetry. Middle English poetry borrows greatly from French. Now in all the
best French poetry, with very few exceptions, the language is the same as
that of prose; and even if there happen to be a few poetical words (as in
Racine, for example, _flammes_ and _transports_ and _hymenée_) they do
not interfere with the sense. Middle English generally copies French, and
is generally unpretentious in its vocabulary. But Anglo-Saxon poetry was
impossible without a poetical dictionary. It is very heavily ornamented
with words not used in prose, and while there are hardly any similes, the
whole tissue of it is figurative, and most things are named two or three
times over in different terms. This makes it often very tiresome, when
the meaning is so encrusted with splendid words that it can scarcely
move; still more, when a poet does not take the trouble to invent his
ornaments, and only repeats conventional phrases out of a vocabulary
which he has learned by rote. But those extravagances of the Anglo-Saxon
poetry make it all the more interesting historically; they show that
there must have been a general love and appreciation of fine language,
such as is not commonly found in England now, and also a technical skill
in verse, something like that which is encouraged in Wales at the modern
poetical competitions, though certainly far less elaborate. Further,
these curiosities of old English verse make it all the more wonderful and
admirable that the epic poets should have succeeded as they did with
their stories of heroic resistance and the repeated waves of battle and
death-agony. Tremendous subjects are easily spoilt when the literary
vogue is all for ornament and fine language. Yet the Anglo-Saxon poets
seldom seem to feel the encumbrances of their poetic language when they
are really possessed with their subject. The eloquence of their verse
then gets the better of their ornamental diction.
The subjects of Anglo-Saxon poetry were taken from many different sources
besides the heroic legend which is summarized by Widsith, or contemporary
actions like the battle of Maldon.
The conversion of the English to Christianity brought with it of course a
great deal of Latin literature. The new ideas were adopted very readily
by the English, and a hundred years after the coming of the first
missionary the Northumbrian schools and teachers were more than equal to
the best in any part of Europe.
The new learning did not always discourage the old native kind of poetry.
Had that been the case, we should hardly have had anything like
_Beowulf_; we should not have had the poem of Maldon. Christianity and
Christian literature did not always banish the old-fashioned heroes.
Tastes varied in this respect. The Frankish Emperor Lewis the Pious is
said to have taken a disgust at the heathen poetry which he had learned
when he was young. But there were greater kings who were less delicate in
their religion. Charles the Great made a collection of ‘the barbarous
ancient poems which sung the wars and exploits of the olden time’. Alfred
the Great, his Welsh biographer tells us, was always ready to listen to
Saxon poems when he was a boy, and when he was older was fond of learning
poetry by heart. That the poems were not all of them religious, we may
see from some things in Alfred’s own writings. He was bold enough to
bring in a Northern hero in his translation of the Latin philosophical
book of Boethius. Boethius asks, ‘Where are the bones of Fabricius the
true-hearted?’ In place of the name Fabricius, Alfred writes, ‘Where are
now the bones of Wayland, and who knows where they be?’ Wayland Smith,
who thus appears, oddly, in the translation of Boethius, is one of the
best-known heroes of the Teutonic mythology. He is the original craftsman
(like Daedalus in Greece), the brother of the mythical archer Egil and
the harper Slagfinn—the hero of one of the finest of the old Scandinavian
poems, and of many another song and story.
The royal genealogies in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are an example of the
conservative process that went on with regard to many of the old beliefs
and fancies—a process that may be clearly traced in the poem of
_Beowulf_—by means of which pre-Christian ideas were annexed to
Christianity. The royal house of England, the house of Cerdic, still
traces its descent from Woden; and Woden is thirteenth in descent from
Noah. Woden is kept as a king and a hero, when he has ceased to be a god.
This was kindlier and more charitable than the alternative view, that the
gods of the heathen were living devils.
There was no destruction of the heroic poetry through the conversion of
the English, but new themes were at once brought in, to compete with the
old ones. Bede was born (672) within fifty years of the baptism of King
Edwin of Northumbria (625), and Bede is able to tell of the poet Cædmon
of Whitby who belonged to the time of the abbess Hild, between 658 and
670, and who put large portions of the Bible history into verse.
Cædmon the herdsman, turning poet late in life by a special gift from
Heaven and devoting himself exclusively to sacred subjects, is a
different sort of minstrel from that one who is introduced in _Beowulf_
singing the lay of Finnesburh. His motive is different. It is partly the
same motive as that of King Alfred in his prose translations. Cædmon made
versions of Bible history for the edification of Christian people.
Anglo-Saxon poetry, which had been heathen, Teutonic, concerned with
traditional heroic subjects was drawn into the service of the other world
without losing its old interests. Hence comes, apart from the poetical
value of the several works, the historical importance of Anglo-Saxon
poetry, as a blending of _Germania_, the original Teutonic civilization,
with the ideas and sentiments of Christendom in the seventh century and
after.
Probably nothing of Cædmon’s work remains except the first poem, which is
paraphrased in Latin by Bede and which is also preserved in the original
Northumbrian. But there are many Bible poems, _Genesis_, _Exodus_, and
others, besides a poem on the Gospel history in the Saxon language of the
Continent—the language of the ‘Old Saxons’, as the English called
them—which followed the example and impulse given by Cædmon, and which
had in common the didactic, the educational purpose, for the promotion of
Christian knowledge.
But while there was this common purpose in these poems, there were as
great diversities of genius as in any other literary group or school.
Sometimes the author is a dull mechanical translator using the
conventional forms and phrases without imagination or spirit. Sometimes
on the other hand he is caught up and carried away by his subject, and
the result is poetry like the _Fall of the Angels_ (part of _Genesis_),
or the _Dream of the Rood_. These are utterly different from the regular
conventional poetry or prose of the Middle Ages. There is no harm in
comparing the _Fall of the Angels_ with Milton. The method is nearly the
same: narrative, with a concentration on the character of Satan, and
dramatic expression of the character in monologue at length. The _Dream
of the Rood_ again is finer than the noblest of all the Passion Plays. It
is a vision, in which the Gospel history of the Crucifixion is so
translated that nothing is left except the devotion of the young hero (so
he is called) and the glory; it is not acted on any historical scene, but
in some spiritual place where there is no distinction between the Passion
and the Triumph. In this way the spirit of poetry does wonderful things;
transforming the historical substance. It is quite impossible to dismiss
the old English religious poetry under any summary description. Much of
it is conventional and ordinary; some of it is otherwise, and the
separate poems live in their own way.
It is worth remembering that the manuscripts of the _Dream of the Rood_
have a history which is typical of the history in general, the progress
of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and the change of centre from Northumberland to
Wessex. Some verses of the poem are carved in runic letters on the
Ruthwell Cross (now in the Parish Church of Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire) in
the language of Northumberland, which was the language of Cædmon and
Bede. The Ruthwell Cross with the runic inscription on it is thus one of
the oldest poetical manuscripts in English, not to speak of its
importance in other ways.
The Ruthwell verses are Northumbrian. They were at first misinterpreted
in various ways by antiquaries, till John Kemble the historian read them
truly. Some time after, an Anglo-Saxon manuscript was found at Vercelli
in the North of Italy—a regular station on the old main road which
crosses the Great St. Bernard and which was commonly used by Englishmen,
Danes, and other people of the North when travelling to Rome. In this
Vercelli book the _Dream of the Rood_ is contained, nearly in full, but
written in the language of Wessex—i.e. the language commonly called
Anglo-Saxon—the language not of Bede but of Alfred. The West Saxon verses
of the _Rood_ corresponding to the old Anglian of the Ruthwell Cross are
an example of what happened generally with Anglo-Saxon poetry—the best of
it in early days was Anglian, Northumbrian; when the centre shifted to
Wessex, the Northern poetry was preserved in the language which by that
time had become the proper literary English both for verse and prose.
Cynewulf is an old English poet who has signed his name to several poems,
extant in West Saxon. He may have been the author of the _Dream of the
Rood_; he was probably a Northumbrian. As he is the most careful artist
among the older poets, notable for the skill of his verse and phrasing,
his poetry has to be studied attentively by any one who wishes to
understand the poetical ideals of the age between Bede and King Alfred,
the culmination of the Northumbrian school. His subjects are all
religious, from the Gospel (_Crist_) or the lives of saints (_Guthlac_,
_Juliana_, _Elene_, probably _Andreas_ also). The legendary subjects may
be looked on as a sort of romance; Cynewulf in many ways is a romantic
poet. The adventure of St. Andrew in his voyage to rescue St. Matthew
from the cannibals is told with great spirit—a story of the sea. Cynewulf
has so fine a sense of the minor beauties of verse and diction that he
might be in danger of losing his story for the sake of poetical ornament;
but though he is not a strong poet he generally manages to avoid the
temptation, and to keep the refinements of his art subordinate to the
main effect.
There is hardly anything in Anglo-Saxon to be called lyrical. The epic
poetry may have grown out of an older lyric type—a song in chorus, with
narrative stuff in it, like the later choral ballads. There is one old
poem, and a very remarkable one, with a refrain, _Deor’s Lament_, which
may be called a dramatic lyric, the utterance of an imaginary personage,
a poet like Widsith, who comforts himself in his sorrow by recalling
examples of old distresses. The burden comes after each of these records:
That ancient woe was endured, and so may mine.
_Widsith_ in form of verse is nearer to this lyric of _Deor_ than to the
regular sustained narrative verse of _Beowulf_. There are some fragments
of popular verse, spells against disease, which might be called songs.
But what is most wanting in Anglo-Saxon literature is the sort of poetry
found at the close of the Middle Ages in the popular ballads, songs and
carols of the fifteenth century.
To make up for the want of true lyric, there are a few very beautiful
poems, sometimes called by the name of elegies—akin to lyric, but not
quite at the lyrical pitch. The _Wanderer_, the _Seafarer_, the _Ruin_,
the _Wife’s Complaint_—they are antique in verse and language but modern
in effect, more than most things that come later, for many centuries.
They are poems of reflective sentiment, near to the mood of a time when
the bolder poetical kinds have been exhausted, and nothing is left but to
refine upon the older themes. These poems are the best expression of a
mood found elsewhere, even in rather early Anglo-Saxon days—the sense of
the vanity of life, the melancholy regret for departed glories—a kind of
thought which popular opinion calls ‘the Celtic spirit’, and which indeed
may be found in the Ossianic poems, but not more truly than in the _Ruin_
or the _Wanderer_.
When the language of Wessex became the literary English, it was naturally
used for poetry—not merely for translations of Northumbrian verse into
West Saxon. The strange thing about this later poetry is that it should
be capable of such strength as is shown in the Maldon poem—a perpetual
warning against rash conclusions. For poetry had seemed to be exhausted
long before this, or at any rate to have reached in Cynewulf the
dangerous stage of maturity. But the Maldon poem, apart from some small
technical faults, is sane and strong. In contrast, the earlier poem in
the battle of Brunanburh is a fair conventional piece—academic laureate
work, using cleverly enough the forms which any accomplished gentleman
could learn.
Those forms are applied often most ingeniously, in the Anglo-Saxon
riddles; pieces, again, which contradict ordinary opinion. Few would
expect to find in Anglo-Saxon the curious grace of verbal workmanship,
the artificial wit, of those short poems.
The dialogue of _Salomon and Saturnus_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon things
belonging to a common European fashion; the dialogue literature, partly
didactic, partly comic, which was so useful in the Middle Ages in
providing instruction along with varying degrees of amusement. There is
more than one Anglo-Saxon piece of this sort, valuable as expressing the
ordinary mind; for, generally speaking, there is a want of merely popular
literature in Anglo-Saxon, as compared with the large amount later on.
The history of prose is continuous from the Anglo-Saxon onwards; there is
no such division as between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English poetry. In
fact, Middle English prose at first is the continuation of the English
Chronicle, and the transcription of the homilies of Ælfric into the later
grammar and spelling.
The English had not the peculiar taste for prose which seems to be dealt
by chance to Hebrews and Arabs, to Ireland and Iceland. As in Greece and
France, the writing of prose comes after verse. It begins by being
useful; it is not used for heroic stories. But the English had more
talent for prose than some people; they understood it better than the
French; and until the French influence came over them did not habitually
degrade their verse for merely useful purposes.
Through the Chronicle, which probably began in King Alfred’s time, and
through Alfred’s translations from the Latin, a common available prose
was established, which had all sorts of possibilities in it, partly
realized after a time. There seems no reason, as far as language and
technical ability are concerned, why there should not have been in
English, prose stories as good as those of Iceland. The episode of King
Cynewulf of Wessex, in the Chronicle, has been compared to the Icelandic
sagas, and to the common epic theme of valorous fighting and loyal
perseverance. In Alfred’s narrative passages there are all the elements
of plain history, a style that might have been used without limit for all
the range of experience.
Alfred’s prose when he is repeating the narratives of his sea-captains
has nothing in it that can possibly weary, so long as the subject is
right. It is a perfectly clean style for matter of fact.
The great success of Anglo-Saxon prose is in religious instruction. This
is various in kind; it includes the translation of Boethius which is
philosophy, and fancy as well; it includes the Dialogues of Gregory which
are popular stories, the homilies on Saints’ Lives which are often prose
romances, and which often are heightened above prose, into a swelling,
chanting, alliterative tune, not far from the language of poetry. The
great master of prose in all its forms is Ælfric of Eynsham, about the
year 1000. Part of his work was translation of the Bible, and in this,
and in his theory of translation, he is more enlightened than any
translator before Tyndale. The fault of Bible versions generally was that
they kept too close to the original. Instead of translating like free men
they construed word for word, like the illiterate in all ages. Ulphilas,
who is supposed by some to have written Gothic prose, is really a slave
to the Greek text, and his Gothic is hardly a human language. Wycliffe
treats his Latin original in the same way, and does not think what
language he is supposed to be writing. But Ælfric works on principles
that would have been approved by Dryden; and there is no better evidence
of the humanities in those early times than this. Much was lost before
the work of Ælfric was taken up again with equal intelligence.