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[40] H. Sweet, "Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon poetry," in Hazlitt's Warton, ii. p. 3.

[41] "De Bello Trojano," iii., line 108. Rhyme, however, commenced to appear in a few Christian poems of the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. On the use, rather rare, of alliteration in old French, which nevertheless has been preserved in several current expressions, such as "gros et gras," "bel et bon," &c., see Paul Meyer, "Romania," vol. xi. p. 572: "De l'allitération en Roman de France."

[42] "His date has been variously estimated from the eighth to the eleventh century. The latter is the more probable." Earle, "Anglo-Saxon Literature," 1884, p. 228.

[43] Grein, "Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie," ed. Wülker; Cassel, 1883 ff., 8vo; "Corpus Poeticum Boreale, The poetry of the old northern tongue, from the earliest to the XIIIth Century," edited and translated by G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Oxford, 1883, 2 vols. 8vo; vol. i., Eddic poetry; vol. ii., Court poetry. Other important monuments of Scandinavian literature are found in the following collections: "Edda Snorri," Ion Sigurdsson, Copenhagen, 1848, 2 vols.; "Norroen Fornkvædi," ed. S. Bugge, Christiania, 1867, 8vo. (contains the collection usually called Edda Sæmundi); "Icelandic Sagas," ed. Vigfusson, London, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo (collection of the "Master of the Rolls"; contains, vol. i., "Orkneinga Saga" and "Magnus Saga"; vol. ii., "Hakonar Saga"); "Sturlunga Saga," including the "Islendiga Saga of Lawman Thordsson, and other works," ed. Vigfusson, Oxford, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo; "Heimskringla Saga, or the Sagas of the Norse Kings, from the Icelandic of Snorre Sturlason," ed. S. Laing, second edition, revised by R. B. Anderson, London, 1889, 4 vols. 8vo. The two Eddas and the principal Sagas will be comprised in the "Saga Library," founded in 1890 by W. Morris and Eirikr Magnusson (Quaritch, London). Edda means great-grandmother; the prose Edda is a collection of narratives of the twelfth century, retouched by Snorri in the thirteenth; the Edda in verse is a collection of poems of various dates that go back in part to the eighth and ninth centuries. Saga means a narrative; the Sagas are narratives in prose of an epic character; they flourished especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

[44] The Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian collections both contain the same kind of poems, and especially epic poems, elegies and laments, moral poems, war songs, aphorisms, riddles, some of which continue to puzzle the wisest of our day.

[45] The most ancient fragments of this epic are found in the Edda in verse; a complete version exists in Icelandic prose ("Volsunga Saga") of the twelfth century; the German version ("Nibelungenlied") is of the end of the same century.

[46] "Lay of Skirni."—"Corpus Poeticum," i. p. 114.

[47] "Alta-Kvida."—"Corpus Poeticum," i. p. 48. This is one of the most ancient poems in the collection.

[48] "Alta-Kvida."—"Corpus Poeticum," i. p. 51.

[49] A single example will be as good as many: "One of the Viking leaders got the nickname of Börn (Child) because he had been so tender-hearted as to try and stop the sport of his followers, who were tossing young children in the air and catching them upon their spears. No doubt his men laughed not unkindly at this fancy of his, and gave him the nickname above mentioned." C. F. Keary, "The Vikings in Western Christendom," 789–888, London, 1891, 8vo, p. 145.

[50] "Hymis-Kvida."—"Corpus Poeticum," i. p. 222.

[51] The most valuable monuments of Anglo-Saxon literature and art are contained in the following MSS.:

I. Poetry.—MS. of "Beowulf," preserved in the British Museum, Cotton. Vitell. A. xv., written towards the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century. It contains also the fine poem of "Judith," &c.

A fragment of a poem on Waldhere, preserved in the Copenhagen Library.

The Exeter MS., "Codex Exoniensis," written in the tenth or eleventh century and given, in 1046, by Leofric, first bishop of Exeter, to the cathedral library of this town, where it is still preserved. It contains a variety of poetic pieces (Christ, St. Guthlac, Phenix, Wanderer, Seafarer, Widsith, Panther, Whale, Deor, Ruin, Riddles, &c.).

The "Codex Vercellensis," preserved at Vercelli in Lombardy, containing: Andreas, The Departed Soul's Address to the Body, Dream of the Holy Rood, Elene, &c., written in the eleventh century.

The Bodleian MS., Junius xi., containing a poetical version of part of the Bible, some of which is attributed to Cædmon, written in the tenth century.

The Paris Anglo-Saxon Psalter (Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 8824), written in the eleventh century, 50 psalms in prose, 100 in verse.

II. Prose.—The Epinal MS. containing an Anglo-Saxon glossary (eighth century according to Mr. Sweet, ninth according to Mr. Maunde Thompson).

The Bodleian MS., Hatton 20, containing King Alfred's translation of St. Gregory's "Regula Pastoralis" (the copy of Werferth, bishop of Worcester).

The MS. of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," the Winchester text, in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. lxxiii.

The MSS. of the homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan, Junius xxii. and Junius xcix., in the Bodleian, and the MS. of the Blickling homilies (Blickling Hall, Norfolk).

III. Miniatures.—See especially, the Lindisfarne Gospels, MS. Cotton. Nero, D. iv., in the British Museum, eighth-ninth century, in Latin with Anglo-Saxon glosses. Reproductions of these miniatures and other examples of the same art are to be found in J. O. Westwood, "Facsimiles of the Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS." London, Quaritch, 1868, fol., and "Palæographia Sacro Pictoria," London, 1844, fol. See also the fine pen-and-ink drawings in the above-mentioned MS. Junius xi., in the Bodleian Library.

[52] Cf. Tacitus, who says of the Germans: "Celebrant carminibus antiquis (quod unum apud illos memoriæ et annalium genus est). … " "De Moribus," i. Eginhard in the ninth century notices the same sort of songs among the Franks established in Gaul: "Item barbara et antiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bella canebantur. … " "Vita Karoli," cap. xxix. (ed. Ideler, "Leben und Wandel Karl des Grossen," Hamburg and Gotha, 1839, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 89).

[53] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (Rolls), i. p. 200; ii. p. 86; year 937. The song on the battle of Brunanburh, won by the Anglo-Saxons over the Scotch and Danes, has been translated by Tennyson. Other war songs, a few out of a great many, have come down to us, some inserted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (like the song on the death of Byrhtnoth, defeated and killed by the Danes after a hard fight, at the battle of Maldon, 991), some in separate fragments. Among the more remarkable is the very old fragment on the "Battle of Finnsburg," discovered, like the Waldhere fragment, in the binding of a book. This battle is alluded to in "Beowulf." The fragment has been printed by Grein in his "Bibliothek," vol. i., and by Harrison and Sharp with their "Beowulf," Boston, third ed., 1888.

[54] G. Stephens, "Two leaves of King Waldere's lay," Copenhagen and London, 1860, 8vo; R. Peiper, "Ekkehardi primi Waltharius," Berlin, 1873, 8vo.

[55] "Autotypes of the unique Cotton MS. Vitellius, A. xv. in the British Museum," with transliteration and notes, by J. Zupitza, Early English Text Society, 1882, 8vo. "Beowulf" (Heyne's text), ed. Harrison and Sharp, Boston, third ed. 1888, 8vo. "Beowulf, a heroic Poem of the VIIIth Century, with a translation," by T. Arnold, London, 1876, 8vo. "The deeds of Beowulf … done into modern prose," ed. Earle, Oxford Clarendon Press, fifth ed., 1892, 8vo. On English place names recalling personages in "Beowulf," see D. H. Haigh, "Anglo-Saxon Sagas," London, 1861, 8vo (many doubtful conclusions). The poem consists of 3,183 long lines of alliterative verse, divided into 41 sections; it is not quite equal in length to a third of the Æneid.

[56] Such is the opinion of Mr. Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," vol. ii., London, 1893, p. 1.

[57] This explains how we find them used in Scandinavian literature as part of the life of totally different heroes; the Icelandic saga of Gretti tells how Glam, another Grendel, is destroyed by Gretti, another Beowulf. On these resemblances, see Excursus iii. in the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," vol. ii. p. 501; and H. Gering, "Der Beówulf und die Islaendische Grettisaga," in "Anglia," vol. iii. p 74.

[58] In Gregory of Tours, book iii. chap. 3 ("Historia Ecclesiastica Francorum," Société de l'histoire de France, vol. i. p. 270); in "Beowulf" II. 1202 et seq.—

Gehwearf thá in Francna fæthm feorh cynninges;—

"The life of the king [Higelac] became the prey of the Franks." Grundtvig was the first to identify Higelac with the Chlochilaicus of Gregory of Tours. The battle took place about 515; the Scandinavians led by "Chlochilaicus" were plundering lands belonging to Thierri, king of Austrasia (511–534), eldest son of Clovis, when he sent against them his son Theodebert, famous since, who was to die on his way to Constantinople in an expedition against the Emperor Justinian. Theodebert entirely routed the enemy, and took back their plunder, killing their chief, the Chlochilaicus of Gregory, the Huiglaucus "qui imperavit Getis, et a Francis occisus est" of an old "Liber monstrorum," the Higelac of our poem. See H. L. D. Ward, "Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum," vol. ii. 1893, pp. 6 ff.

[59] According to the poem, the line of succession was: Scyld, Beowulf (not our hero), Healfdene, Heorogar, Hrothgar.

[60] "Beowulf," 1876, T. Arnold's translation.

[61] This last opinion has been put forward with great force by Fahlbeck, and accepted by Vigfusson. See Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," ii. p. 15, and Appendix.

[62] They are numerous especially in the province of Finmarken; they are to be found further south in winter.

[63] According to the account of a Scandinavian burial left by Ahmed Ibn Fozlan (tenth century, see above, p. 27), the custom was to bury with the dead ornaments and gold embroideries to the value of a third part of what he left.

[64] "Chanson de Roland," line 2804.

[65] "Talis mihi videtur, vita hominum præsens in terris ad comparationem ejus, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad cœnam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio et calido effecto cœnaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniensque unus passerum, citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore quo intus est, hiemis tempestati non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita hæc vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidve præcesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si hæc nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit merito esse sequenda videtur." "Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum," book ii. cap. 13, year 627.

[66]

Je voudrais qu'à cet âge,

On sortît de la vie ainsi que d'un banquet,

Remerciant son hôte. (viii. 1.)

[67] Ragnar Lodbrok, thrown among serpents in a pit, defies his enemies, and bids them beware of the revenge of Woden ("Corpus Poeticum Boreale," vol. ii. pp. 341 ff.). In the prisons, at the time of the Terreur, the guillotine was a subject for chansons. The mail steamer la France caught fire, part of the cargo being gunpowder; the ship is about to be blown up; a foreign witness writes thus: "Tous jusqu'aux petits marmitons rivalisaient d'élan, de bravoure et de cette gaieté gauloise dans le péril qui forme un des beaux traits du caractère national." Baron de Hübner, "Incendie du paquebot la France," Paris, 1887. This account was written, according to what the author told me, on the day after the fire was unexpectedly mastered.

[68] "Codex Exoniensis," "Seafarer," p. 306, "Wanderer," p. 291. See also "Deor the Scald's Complaint," one of the oldest poems in "Codex Exoniensis," the "Wife's Complaint," the "Ruin," also in "Codex Exoniensis"; the subject of this last poem has been shown by Earle to be probably the town of Bath.

[69] T. Arnold's "Beowulf," p. 118, l. 1820.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

I.

Augustine, prior of St. Martin of Rome, sent by Gregory the Great, arrived in 597. To the Germanic pirates established in the isle of Britain, he brought a strange teaching. The ideas he tried to spread have become so familiar to us, we can hardly realise the amazement they must have caused. To these fearless warriors who won kingdoms at the point of their spears, and by means of their spears too won their way into Walhalla, who counted on dying one day, not in their beds, but in battle, so that the Valkyrias, "choosers of the slain," might carry them to heaven on their white steeds, to these men came a foreign monk, and said: Be kind; worship the God of the weak, who, unlike Woden, will reward thee not for thy valour, but for thy mercy.

Such was the seed that Rome, ever life-giving, now endeavoured to sow among triumphant sea-rovers. The notion of the State and the notion of the Church both rose out of the ruins of the Eternal City; ideas equally powerful, but almost contradictory, which were only to be reconciled after centuries of confusion, and alternate periods of violence and depression. The princes able to foresee the necessary fusion of these two ideas, and who made attempts, however rude, to bring it about were rare, and have remained for ever famous: Charlemagne in France and Alfred the Great in England.

The miracle of conversion was accomplished in the isle, as it had been on the Continent. Augustine baptized King Æthelberht, and celebrated mass in the old Roman church of St. Martin of Canterbury. The religion founded by the Child of Bethlehem conquered the savage Saxons, as it had conquered the debauched Romans; the difficulty and the success were equal in both cases. In the Germanic as in the Latin country, the new religion had to stem the stream; the Romans of the decadence and the men of the North differed in their passions, but resembled each other in the impetuosity with which they followed the lead of their instincts. To both, the apostle came and whispered: Curb thy passions, be hard upon thyself and merciful to others; blessed are the simple, blessed are the poor; as thou forgivest so shalt thou be forgiven; thou shalt not despise the weak, thou shalt love him! And this unexpected murmur was heard each day, like a counsel and a threat, in the words of the morning prayer, in the sound of the bells, in the music of pious chants.

The conversion was at first superficial, and limited to outward practices; the warrior bent the knee, but his heart remained the same. The spirit of the new religion could not as yet penetrate his soul; he remained doubtful between old manners and new beliefs, and after fits of repentance and relapses into savagery, the converted chieftain finally left this world better prepared for Walhalla than for Paradise. Those who witnessed his death realised it themselves. When Theodoric the Great died in his palace at Ravenna, piously and surrounded by priests, Woden was seen, actually seen, bearing away the prince's soul to Walhalla.

The new converts of Great Britain understood the religion of Christ much as they had understood that of Thor. Only a short distance divided man from godhood in heathen times; the god had his passions and his adventures, he was intrepid, and fought even better than his people. For a long time, as will happen with neophytes, the new Christians continued to seek around them the human god who had disappeared in immensity, they addressed themselves to him as they had formerly done to the deified heroes, who, having shared their troubles, must needs sympathise with their sorrows. For a long time, contradictory faiths were held side by side. Christ was believed in, but Woden was still feared, and secretly appeased by sacrifices. Kings are obliged to publish edicts, forbidding their subjects to believe in the ancient divinities, whom they now term "demons"; but that does not prevent the monks who compile the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" from tracing back the descent of their princes to Woden: if it is not deifying, it is at least ennobling them.[70]

Be your obedience qualified by reason, St. Paul had said. That of the Anglo-Saxons was not so qualified. On the contrary, they believed out of obedience, militarily. Following the prince's lead, all his subjects are converted; the prince goes back to heathendom; all his people become heathens again. From year to year, however, the new religion progresses, while the old is waning; this phenomenon is brought about, in the south, by the influence of Augustine and the monks from Rome; and in the north, owing mainly to Celtic monks from the monastery of Iona, founded in the sixth century by St. Columba, on the model of the convents of Ireland. About the middle of the seventh century the work is nearly accomplished; the old churches abandoned by the Romans have been restored; many others are built; one of them still exists at Bradford-on-Avon in a perfect state of preservation[71]; monasteries are founded, centres of culture and learning. Some of the rude princes who reign in the country set great examples of devotion to Christ and submission to the Roman pontiff. They date their charters from the "reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, reigning for ever."[72] The Princess Hilda founds, in the seventh century, the monastery of Streoneshalch, and becomes its abbess; Ceadwalla dies at Rome in 689, and is buried in St. Peter's, under the Porticus Pontificum, opposite the tomb of St. Gregory the Great.[73] Æthelwulf, king of the West Saxons, goes also on a pilgrimage to Rome "in great state, and remains twelve months, after which he returns home; and then Charles, king of the Franks, gave him his daughter in marriage."[74] He sends his son Alfred to the Eternal City; and the Pope takes a liking to the young prince, who was to be Alfred the Great.

The notion of moderation and measure is unknown to these enthusiasts, who easily fall into despair. In the following period, after the Norman Conquest, when manners and customs were beginning to change, the chronicler, William of Malmesbury, trying to draw a correct picture of the ancient owners of the land, is struck by the exaggerations of the Saxons' temperament. Great numbers of them are drunkards, they lead dissolute lives, and reign as ferocious tyrants; great numbers of them, too, are pious, devout, faithful even unto martyrdom: "What shall I say of so many bishops, hermits, and abbots? The island is rendered famous by the relics of native saints, so numerous that it is impossible to visit a borough of any importance without hearing the name of a new saint. Yet the memory of many has vanished, for lack of writers to preserve it!"[75]

The taste for proselytism, of which the race has since given so many proofs, is early manifested. Once converted, the Anglo-Saxons produce missionaries, who in their turn carry the glad tidings to their pagan brothers on the Continent, and become saints of the Roman Church. St. Wilfrith leaves Northumberland about 680, and goes to preach the Gospel to the Frisians; St. Willibrord starts from England about 690, and settles among the Frisians and Danes[76]; Winfrith, otherwise called St. Boniface (an approximate translation of his name), sojourns in Thuringia and Bavaria, "sowing," as he says, "the evangelical seed among the rude and ignorant tribes of Germany."[77] He reorganises the Church of the Franks, and dies martyrised by the Frisians in 755. Scarcely is the hive formed when it begins to swarm. The same thing happened with all the sects created later in the English land.

II.

With religion had come Latin letters. Those same Anglo-Saxons, whose literature at the time of their invasion consisted in the songs mentioned by Tacitus, "carmina antiqua," which they trusted to memory alone, who compiled no books and who for written monuments had Runic inscriptions graven on utensils or on commemorative stones, now have, in their turn, monks who compose chronicles, and kings who know Latin. Libraries are formed in the monasteries; schools are attached to them; manuscripts are there copied and illuminated in beautiful caligraphy and splendid colours. The volutes and knots with which the worshippers of Woden ornamented their fibulæ, their arms, the prows of their ships, are reproduced in purple and azure, in the initials of the Gospels. The use made of them is different, the taste remains the same.

The Anglo-Saxon missionaries and learned men correspond with each other in the language of Rome. Boniface, in the wilds of Germany, remains in constant communication with the prelates and monks of England; he begs for books, asks for and gives advice; his letters have come down to us, and are in Latin. Ealhwine or Alcuin, of York, called by Charlemagne to his court, freely bestows, in Latin letters, good advice on his countrymen. He organises around the great Emperor a literary academy, where each bears an assumed name; Charlemagne has taken that of David, his chamberlain has chosen that of Tyrcis, and Alcuin that of Horatius Flaccus. In this "hôtel de Rambouillet" of the Karlings, the affected style was as much relished as at the fair Arthénice's, and Alcuin, in his barbarous Latin, has a studied elegance that might vie with the conceits of Voiture.[78]

Aldhelm (or Ealdhelm, d. 709) writes a treatise on Latin prosody, and, adding example to precept, composes riddles and a Eulogy of Virgins in Latin verse.[79] Æddi (Eddius Stephanus) writes a life, also in Latin, of his friend St. Wilfrith.[80]

The history of the nation had never been written. On the Continent, and for a time in the island, rough war-songs were the only annals of the Anglo-Saxons. Now they have Latin chronicles, a Latin which Tacitus might have smiled at, but which he would have understood. Above all, they have the work of the Venerable Bede (Bæda), the most important Latin monument of all the Anglo-Saxon period.

Bede was born in Northumbria, about 673, the time when the final conversion of England was being accomplished. He early entered the Benedictine monastery of Jarrow, and remained there till his death. It was a recently founded convent, established by Benedict Biscop, who had enriched it with books brought back from his journeys to Rome. In this retreat, on the threshold of which worldly sounds expired, screened from sorrows, surrounded by disciples who called him "dear master, beloved father," Bede allowed the years of his life to glide on, his sole ambition being to learn and teach.

The peaceful calm of this sheltered existence, which came to an end before the time of the Danish invasions, is reflected in the writings of Bede. He left a great number of works: interpretations of the Gospels, homilies, letters, lives of saints, works on astronomy, a "De Natura Rerum" where he treats of the elements, of comets, of winds, of the Nile, of the Red Sea, of Etna; a "De Temporibus," devoted to bissextiles, to months, to the week, to the solstice; a "De Temporum Ratione" on the months of the Greeks, Romans, and Angles, the moon and its power, the epact, Easter, &c. He wrote hymns in Latin verse, and a life of St. Cuthberht; lastly, and above all, he compiled in Latin prose, a "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum,"[81] which has remained the basis of all the histories composed after his. In it Bede shows himself as he was: honest, sincere, sedate, and conscientious. He quotes his authorities which are, for the description of the island and for the most ancient period of his history, Pliny, Solinus, Eutropius, Orosius, Gildas. From the advent of Augustine his work becomes his own; he collects documents, memoranda, testimonies, frequently legends, and publishes the whole without any criticism, but without falsifications. He lacks art, but not straightforwardness.

Latinist though he was, he did not despise the national literature in spite of its ruggedness. He realised it was truly a literature; he made translations in Anglo-Saxon, but they are lost; he was versed in the national poetry, "doctus in nostris carminibus," writes his pupil Cuthberht,[82] who pictures him on his deathbed, muttering Anglo-Saxon verses. He felt the charm of the poetic genius of his nation, and for that reason has preserved and naïvely related the episodes of Cædmon in his stable,[83] and of the Saxon chief comparing human life to the sparrow flying across the banquet hall.

Bede died on the 27th of May, 735, leaving behind him such a renown for sanctity that his bones were the occasion for one of those pious thefts common in the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century a priest of Durham removed them in order to place them in the cathedral of that town, where they still remain. St. Boniface, on receiving the news of this death, far away in Germany, begged his friends in England to send him the works of his compatriot; the homilies of Bede would assist him, he said, in composing his own, and his commentaries on the Scriptures would be "a consolation in his sorrows."[84]

III.