Anglo-Saxon Literature Part 11

If I to any thane lordly treasures in former times have given, while we in the good realm all blissful sate, and had sway of our mansions:-- at no more acceptable time could he ever with value my bounty requite.

If now for this purpose any one of my thanes would himself volunteer that he from here upward and outward might go, might come through these barriers and strength in him had that with raiment of feather his flight could take to whirl on the welkin where the new work is standing Adam and Eve in the earthly realm with wealth surrounded-- and we are cast away hither into these deep dales!

Satan rages not so much on account of his own loss as for their gain. If they could only be ruined by the wrath of G.o.d, he declares he could be at ease even in the midst of woes; and whoever would achieve this he will reward to his utmost, and give him a seat by his side. Presently we come to the accoutring of the emissary:--

442 Angan hine tha gyrwan G.o.des andsaca fus on fraetwum: haefde fraecne hyge.

Haeleth helm on heafod asette and thone full hearde geband, spenn mid spangum.

Wiste him spraeca fela wora worda.

Began him then t' equip th' antagonist of G.o.d, prompt in harness:-- he had a guileful mind.

A magic helm on head he set, he bound it hard and tight, braced it with buckles.

Speeches many wist he well, crooked words.

He takes wing and rises in air; and then comes a pa.s.sage like Milton:--

Sw.a.n.g thaet fyr on twa feondes craefte.

he dashed the fire in two with fiendish craft.[71]

Arrived at the garden he takes the shape of a serpent, and winds himself round the forbidden tree. The description recalls the familiar picture so vividly that we cannot doubt the same picture was before the eyes of children in the Saxon period as now. He takes some of the fruit and finds Adam, and addresses him in a speech. He gives a nave reason why he is sent:--

507 Brade synd on worulde grene geardas, and G.o.d siteth on tham hehstan heofna rice ufan. Alwalda nele tha earfethu sylfa habban that he on thisne sith fare, gumena drihten:-- ac he his gingran sent to thinre spraece.

Broad are in the world the green plains, and G.o.d sitteth in the highest heavenly realm above. The Almighty will not the trouble himself have, that He should on this journey fare, the Lord of men:-- but He sends his deputy to speak with thee.

These poems are surrounded by interesting questions which it is barely possible here to indicate. Upon the top of the discussion about Milton, which is not by any means exhausted, there comes a much larger and wider field of inquiry as to the relation existing between this Miltonic part (if I may so speak) and the Old Saxon poem of the "Heliand." The investigation has been admirably started by Mr. Edouard Sievers in a little book containing this portion of the text, and exhibiting in detail the peculiar intimacy of relation between it and the "Heliand,"

in regard to vocabulary, phraseology, and versification. This part of Mr. Sievers' work is complete. Probably no one who has gone through his proofs will be found to question his conclusion, that there is between the "Heliand" and the Saxon "Paradise Lost" such an ident.i.ty as isolates those two works from all other literature, and makes it necessary to trace them to one source. What remains is only to determine the order of their affiliation. His theory is that our "Caedmon" contains a large insertion which has been borrowed, not, of course, from the "Heliand," because the "Heliand" is a poem solely on the Gospel history, but from a sister poem to the "Heliand," a corresponding poem on the Old Testament. Professor George Stephens, of Copenhagen, offered a simpler explanation. He supposed that our piece is a purely domestic remnant of that school of English poetry which Bede described, and that the "Heliand" is a continental offspring of the same school, being a monument of the poetic culture which was planted along the borders of the Rhine by the Anglo-Saxon missionaries.

ALCUIN'S name connects the Anglian period with the great Frankish revival of literature under Charlemagne. And as he bears a prominent part in the establishment of literature in its next European seat, so also he had the grief of witnessing the earlier stages of that devastation which extinguished the light in his own country. This is how he writes on hearing of the invasion of Lindisfarne by the northern rovers in 793, to Bishop Hugibald and the monks of Lindisfarne:--

"As your beloved society was wont to delight me when I was with you, so does the report of your tribulation sadden me continually now that I am absent from you. How have the heathen defiled the sanctuaries of G.o.d, and shed the blood of the saints round about the altar. They have laid waste the dwelling-place of our hope; they have trodden down the bodies of the saints in the temple of G.o.d like mire in the street. What can I say? I can only lament in my heart with you before the altar of Christ, and say: Spare, Lord, spare Thy people, and give not Thy heritage to the heathen, lest the pagans say, Where is the G.o.d of the Christians? What confidence is there for the churches of Britain if Saint Cuthbert, with so great a company of saints, defends not his own? Either this is the beginning of a greater sorrow, or the sins of the people have brought this upon them."[72]

Thus we have arrived at the verge of that catastrophe which closes for ever the singular greatness of Anglia. Charles brought learning to France by drawing from Anglia and from Italy the best plants for his new field; he inherited the civilising labours of the Saxon missionaries in his dominions beyond the Rhine; he founded a centre of power and a centre of education together; and France remained the chief seat of learning throughout the Middle Ages.[73] The glory of a European position in literature can no longer be claimed for England. Through the remainder of our narrative we must be content with a provincial sphere; and our compensation must be found in the fact that the vernacular element is all the more freely developed.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] In the famous ma.n.u.script of the "Ecclesiastical History" of Bede, which is commonly known as the Moore ma.n.u.script, because it pa.s.sed with the library of Bishop Moore (Ely) to the University of Cambridge, is in a hand which is thought to be as old as the time of Bede, who died in 735.

[65] Bede gives the "sense" of this first hymn as follows:--"Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam creatoris et consilium illius, facta patris gloriae; quomodo ille, c.u.m sit aeternus deus, omnium miraculorum auctor ext.i.tit, qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro culmine tecti, dehinc terram custos humani generis omnipotens creavit."--"Ecclesiastical History," iv. 24.

[66] Adolf Ebert's account of Bede in "History of Christian-Latin Literature," translated by Mayor and Lumby in their admirable edition of the third and fourth books of Bede's "Church History" (Pitt Press Series), 1878, p. 11.

[67] The general correctness of our translation is a.s.sured by the fact that the Latin text in which it is embodied supplies a Latin translation, thus:--"quod ita latine sonat: 'ante necessarium exitum prudentior quam opus fuerit nemo exist.i.t, ad cogitandum videlicet antequam hinc proficiscatur anima, quid boni vel mali egerit, qualiter post exitum judicanda fuerit.'"--"Bedae Hist. Eccl.," iii., iv. (Mayor and Lumby), p. 177.

[68] Page 14.

[69] There has been a recent discussion of this question by Professor Wulcker in "Anglia," with a negative result. But the conclusion rests on too slight a basis.

[70] "Milton has the same idea in a kindred pa.s.sage, but it is not so terse, so condensed, as Caedmon's:--

'Yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe.'

"In Job x. 22 we also find a similar idea:--'A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness.' They are all powerful, all dreadful, but Caedmon's 'without light, and full of flame,' is much the strongest. It is an Inferno in a line."--ROBERT SPENCE WATSON, "Caedmon," p. 44.

[71] "Paradise Lost," i., 221:--

"Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames, Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale."

[72] Wright, "Biographia Literaria," Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 353.

[73] The new start of literature under Charles is briefly and brilliantly stated in the first paragraph of Adolf Ebert's second volume.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PRIMARY POETRY.

We have now seen something of a culture that was introduced from abroad, and guided by foreign models. But our people had a native gift of song, and a tradition of poetic lore, which lived in memory, and was sustained by the profession of minstrelsy. The Christian and literary culture obtained through the Latin tended strongly to the suppression and extinction of this ancient and national vein of poetry. But happily it has not all been lost, and it will be the aim of this chapter to present some specimens of that poetry which is rooted in the native genius of the race, and which we may call the primary poetry. The poetry which is manifestly of Latin material we will call the secondary poetry. It is not a.s.serted that we have two sorts of poetry so entirely separate and distinct the one from the other, that the one is purely native and untinged with foreign influence, while the other springs from mere imitation. The two sorts are not so utterly contrasted as that. Even the secondary poetry is not without originality. On the other hand the primary poetry betrays here and there the Latin culture and the Christian sentiment; and yet if is quite sufficiently distinct and characterised to justify the plan of grouping it apart from the general body of the poetical remains.

The chief features of the Saxon poetry may conveniently be arranged under three heads: 1. The mechanical formation. 2. The rhetorical characteristics. 3. The imaginative elements.

1. Of these the first turns on Alliteration, Accent, and Rhythm; and this part, which is generally held to belong rather to grammar than to literature, I have described elsewhere.[74]

2. The Rhetorical characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry which is most prominent, is a certain repet.i.tion of the thought with a variation of epithet or phrase, in a manner which distinctly resembles the parallelism of Hebrew poetry.

3. The Imaginative element resides chiefly in the metaphor, which is very pervading and seems to be almost unconscious. It seldom rises to that conscious form of metaphor which we call the Simile, and when it does it is laconically brief, as in the comparison of a ship with a bird (fugle gelicost). The later poetry begins to expand the similes somewhat after the manner of the Latin poets. In Beowulf we have four brief similes and only one that is expanded; namely, that of the sword-hilt melting like ice in the warm season of spring (line 1,608).

We will begin with the "Beowulf," the largest and in every sense the most important of the remaining Anglo-Saxon poems. It has much in it that seems like antic.i.p.ation of the age of chivalry. The story of the "Beowulf" is as follows:[75]--

Hrogar, king of the Danes, ruled over many nations with imperial sway.

It came into his mind to add to his Burg a s.p.a.cious hall for the greater splendour of his hospitality and the dispensing of his bounty. This hall was named Heorot. But all his glory was undone by the nightly visits of a devouring fiend; Hrogar's people were either killed, or gone to safer quarters. Heorot, though habitable by day, was abandoned at night; no faithful band kept watch around the seat of Danish royalty; Hrogar, the aged king, was in dejection and despair.

Higelac was king in the neighbouring land of the Geatas, and he had about him a young nephew, a sister's son, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow.

Beowulf had great bodily strength, but was otherwise little accounted of. The young man loved adventure, and hearing of Hrogar's misery, he determined to help him. He embarked with fourteen companions, and reached the coast of the Danes, where he was challenged by the coast-warden in a tone of mistrust. After a parley, that officer sped him on his way, and Beowulf's company stood before Hrogar's gate. Asked the meaning of this armed visit, the leader answers: "We sit at Higelac's table: my name is Beowulf. I will tell mine errand to thy master, if he will deign that we may greet him." Hrogar knew Beowulf's name, remembered his father Ecgtheow,[76] had the visitor to his presence, heard his high resolve, was ready to hope for deliverance, and prompt to see in Beowulf a deliverer. Festivity is renewed in the deserted hall, and tales of old achievements revive forgotten mirth--mirth broken only by the gibes of the eloquent Hunferth, which give Beowulf occasion to tell the tale of an old swimming-match when he slew sea-monsters; and all is harmony again. But night descends, and with it the fears that were now habitual. Beowulf shrinks not from his adventure; the guests depart, and the king, retiring to his castle, commits to his visitor the night-watch of Heorot.

Naefre ic aenegum men aer alyfde, sian ic hond and rond hebban mihte, thryth aern Dena:-- buton the nu tha!

Hafa nu and geheald husa selest; gemyne maertho, maegen ellen cyth; waca with wrathum!

ne bith the wilna gad, gif thu thaet ellen weorc aldre gedigest.

Never I to any man ere now entrusted, (since hand and shield I first could heave) the Guardhouse of the Danes:-- never but now to thee!

Have now and hold the sacred house; of glory mindful main and valour prove; watch for the foe!

no wish of thine shall fail, if thou the daring work with life canst do.

Beowulf and his companions have their beds in the hall.

They sleep; but he watches. It was not long before the depredator of the night was there, and a lurid gleam stood out of his eyes. While Beowulf cautiously held himself on the alert, the fiend had quickly clutched and devoured one of the sleepers. But now Grendel--such was the demon's name--found himself in a grasp unknown before. Long and dire was the strife. The timbers cracked, the iron-bound benches plied, and work deemed proof against all but fire was now a wreck. Grendel finding the foe too strong, thought only of escape. He did escape, and got away to the moor, but he left an arm in Beowulf's grip.