Anglo-Saxon Literature Part 20

aelfric was the author of the most important educational books of this time that have come down to us--namely, his "Latin Grammar," in English, formed after Donatus and Priscian; his "Glossary of Latin Words"; and his "Colloquium," or conversation in Latin, with interlinear Saxon.[129]

But for us, as for the men of the sixteenth century, the most important of aelfric's works are his Homilies. The English of these Homilies is splendid; indeed, we may confidently say that here English appears fully qualified to be the medium of the highest learning. And their interest has been greatly enhanced of late years by two important additions to our printed Anglo-Saxon library. The first of these was the "Blickling Homilies," edited by Dr. Morris, which threw a new light upon aelfric, and added greatly to the significance of his Homilies.

The circuit of Anglo-Saxon homiletic literature has again been greatly enlarged by a more recent publication, namely, that of the "Homilies of Wulfstan."[130] These homilies are quite distinct in character from all the preceding. There is nothing of controversy, and little in the shape of argument: simply the a.s.sertion of Christian dogma and the enforcement of Christian duty. The one topic that lies beyond these was more practical, in the view of that day, than it is in our view--I mean the repeated introduction of Antichrist and the near approach of the end of the world. In the quotation the and (for th) are kept, as in Mr.

Napier's text.

Uton beon a urum hlaforde holde and getreowe and aefre eallum mihtum his wurscipe raeran and his willan wyrcan, foram eall, et we aefre for rihthlafordhelde do, eal we hit do us sylfum to mycelre earfe, foram am bi witodlice G.o.d hold, e bi his hlaforde rihtlice hold; and eac ah hlaforda gehwylc aes for micle earfe, aet he his men rihtlice healde. And we bidda and beoda, aet G.o.des eowas, e for urne cynehlaford and for eal cristen folc ingian scylan and be G.o.dra manna aelmessan libba, aet hy aes georne earnian, libban heora lif swa swa bec him wisian, and swa swa heora ealdras hym taecan, and began heora eowdom georne, onne maegon hy aeger ge hym sylfum wel fremian ge eallum cristenum folce . and we bidda and beoda, aet aelc cild sy binnan rittigum nihtum gefullad; gif hit onne dead weore butan fulluhte, and hit on preoste gelang sy, onne olige he his hades and daedbete georne; gif hit onne urh maega gemeleaste gewyre, onne olige se, e hit on gelang sy, aelcere eardwununge and wraecnige of earde oon on earde swie deope gebete, swa biscop him taece . eac we laera, aet man aenig ne laete unbiscpod to lange, and witan a, e cildes onfon, aet heo hit on rihtan geleafan gebringan and on G.o.dan eawan and on earflican daedan and a for on hit wisian to am e G.o.de licige and his sylfes earf sy; onne beo heo rihtlice ealswa hy genamode beo, G.o.dfaederas, gif by heora G.o.dbearn G.o.de gestryna.

Homily xxiv.

Let us be always loyal and true to our Lord, and ever by all means maintain his worship and work his will, because all that ever we do out of sincere loyalty, we do it all for our own great advantage, inasmuch as G.o.d will a.s.suredly be gracious to the man who is perfectly loyal to his lord; and likewise it is the bounden duty of every lord, that he his men honourably sustain. And we entreat and command, that G.o.d's ministers, who most intercede for our royal lord, and for all Christian folk, and who live by good men's alms, that they accordingly give diligent attention to live their life as the bookes guide them, and so as their superiors direct them, and to discharge their service heartily; then may they do much good both to themselves and to all Christian people. And we entreat and command that every child be baptised within thirty days; if, however, it should die without baptism and it be along of the priest, then let him suffer the loss of his order and do careful penance; if, however, it happen through the relatives'

neglect, then let him who was in fault suffer the loss of every habitation, and be ejected from his dwelling, or else in his dwelling undergo very severe penance, as the bishop may direct him. Also we instruct you, that none be left unbishopped too long; and they who are sponsors for a child are to see that they bring it up in right belief, and in good manners and in dutiful conduct, and always continually guide it to that which may be pleasing to G.o.d and for his own good; then will they verily be as they are called, "G.o.dfathers," if they train their G.o.d-children for G.o.d.

Hitherto Wulfstan has been represented in print by one sermon only, the most remarkable, indeed, of all his discourses--being an address to the English when the Danish ravages were at their worst, A.D. 1012, the year in which aelfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, was martyred. In this discourse the miseries of the time are ascribed to the vengeance of G.o.d for national sins; and the coming of Antichrist is said to be near.

Wulfstan was Archbishop of York from 1003 to 1023. Beautiful and valuable as his sermons are in themselves, their value is greatly increased by their connexion with the preceding series, and by the continuity they give to this branch of our old literature. With the "Blickling Homilies," in all their variety, and those of aelfric, and those of Wulfstan, in our possession, it is hardly too much to say that we have a vernacular series of sermons that fairly represents the Anglo-Saxon preaching for a period of one hundred and fifty years.

FOOTNOTES:

[118] The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Holy Gospels, ed. Thorpe, 1842.

[119] Edited by Thorpe from the eleventh-century ma.n.u.script at Paris; Oxford, 1835. This contains Psalms li.-cl. in poetry; the first fifty are in prose. Dietrich (in Haupt's "Zeitschrift") pointed out that the prose was eleventh-century work, but the poetical version was much older. He surmised that the prose translation had been made for the purpose of giving completeness to a mutilated book, and that the whole Psalter had once existed in Anglo-Saxon verse. Since then some fragments of the missing psalms have been found. See Grein, "Bibliothek der Angelsachs. Poesie," vol. ii., p. 412.

[120] "The Dialogue of Solomon and Saturnus, with an Historical Introduction." By John M. Kemble, M.A. aelfric Society, 1848, p. 2. See Dean Stanley, "Jewish Church," ii. 170.

[121] Rohde, "Der Griechische Roman," p. 408.

[122] The list may be seen in the "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities"

_v._ Prohibited Books.

[123] The series that goes by the name of Eusebius of Emesa has much general similarity to the required collection.

[124] "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," vol. ii., p. 1143.

[125] This third set of Homilies is now for the first time in course of publication by the Early English Text Society, under the editorship of Professor Skeat.

[126] In like manner the literary revival of the fifteenth century was followed by the religious revival of the sixteenth.

[127] "Heptateuchus," ed. Thwaites, 1698: reprinted by Grein.

[128] "A Collection of all the Ecclesiastical Laws, Canons, &c., &c., of the Church of England, from its First Foundation to the Conquest, that have hitherto been published in the Latin and Saxonic Tongues. And of all the Canons and Const.i.tutions Ecclesiastical, made Since the Conquest and Before the Reformation ... now first translated into English ... by John Johnson, M.A., London, 1720." A New Edition, by John Baron, of Queen's College (now Dr. Baron, Rector of Upton Scudamore), Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1850. In two volumes, 8vo. Vol. i., p. 388.

[129] See above, p. 40. The "Colloquium" is printed in Thorpe's "a.n.a.lecta."

[130] Wulfstan, "Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen uber ihre Echtheit: Herausgegeben von Arthur Napier.

Erste Abtheilung: Text und Varianten. Berlin 1883."

CHAPTER XI.

THE SECONDARY POETRY.

How still the legendary lay O'er poet's bosom holds its sway.

MARMION.

Between the Primary and the Secondary Poetry we must acknowledge a wide borderland of transition. Some poetical works lying in this interval we have already found occasion to notice, and have given them such s.p.a.ce as we could afford. We have spoken of the Caedmon, and of the poetical Psalter; and with these I must group the "Judith," a n.o.ble fragment, which is found in the Cotton Library in the same ma.n.u.script volume with the Beowulf. This fragment preserves 350 long lines at the close of a poem which appears--by the numbering of the Cantos--to have been of about four times that length. This remnant contains what would naturally have been the most vigorous and stirring parts of the poem: the riotous drinking of Holofernes, the trenchant act of Judith, her return with her maid to Bethulia, their enthusiastic reception, the muster for battle, the antic.i.p.ation of carnage by the birds and beasts of prey, the destruction of the invading host.

The poetry which is distinctly Secondary is contained--the best specimens of it--in two famous books, that of Exeter, and that of Vercelli; and in both of these books it is largely connected with the name of a single poet, Cynewulf. Here is at once an indication of the secondary poetry; not merely that we have a poet's name, for we also ent.i.tle poems by Caedmon's name; but that the poet himself supplies us with his name, and has left it--vailed and enigmatic--for posterity to decipher.

Curiously and fancifully did Cynewulf interweave into the lines of his verse the Runes which spelt his name; and it needed the skill of Kemble to explain it to us. There are three of the extant poems in which he has thus left his mark, namely two in the Exeter book and one in the Vercelli book. In two cases out of the three this ingenious contrivance is at the close of the poem. In the Vercelli book it occurs in the Elene, the last of the poems in the ma.n.u.script, and Mr. Kemble remarked that it was "apparently intended as a tail-piece to the whole book."[131] This naturally suggests the inference, which indeed is generally accepted, that all the poems in the Vercelli book are by Cynewulf.

But when a like inference is drawn for the Exeter book, inasmuch as the same Runic device is there found in two pieces, that therefore the book is simply a volume of Cynewulf's poems, there seems less reason to acquiesce. That a large part of the book is Cynewulf's poetry will be generally thought probable. The first thirty-two leaves of the ma.n.u.script, which correspond to the first 103 pages in Thorpe's edition, contain a series of pieces which are really parts of one whole, as was shown by Professor Dietrich, of Marburg;[132] and, as one of these connected pieces has Cynewulf's Runic mark, it seems to follow that the whole "Christian Epic" is by him. Again in the middle of the volume from the 65th to the 75th leaf there is the poem of St. Juliana with the Runes of Cynewulf's name at its close, and this is therefore undoubtedly his. This brings us to Mr. Thorpe's 286th page. The four pieces which lie between the above, more especially two of them, St. Guthlac and the Phnix, may well be his. But from the close of St. Juliana (Thorpe, p.

286) the pieces become shorter and more miscellaneous, exhibiting greater diversity both of subject and of quality, being altogether such as to suggest that they have been collected from various sources and are of different ages. So that on this view the volume might be interpreted as containing (1) Poems by Cynewulf; and (2) a miscellaneous collection.

Thus Cynewulf's part would close with "St. Juliana," which ends with the Runic device, like the Elene closing his poems in the Vercelli book.[133] About the person of this poet nothing is known, beyond what the poems themselves may seem to convey. His date has been variously estimated from the 8th to the 11th century. The latter is the more probable. If we look at his matter, we observe its great affinity with the hagiology of the tenth century, the high pitch at which the poetry of the Holy Rood has arrived, and the expansion given to the subject of the Day of Judgment. If we consider his language and manner, we remark the facility and copious flow of his poetic diction, but with a something that suggests the retentive mind of the student; his c.u.mulation of old heroic phraseology not unlike the romantic poetry of Scott, joined occasionally with a departure from old poetic usage which seems like a slip on the part of an accomplished imitator.[134]

Occasionally he has a Latin word of novel introduction.

All these signs forbid an early date, but they agree well with Kemble's view of the time and person of Cynewulf. He proposed to identify our poet with that Kenulphus who in 982 became abbot of Peterborough, and in 1006 became (after aelfheah) bishop of Winchester. To this prelate aelfric dedicated his Life of St. aethelwold, and he is praised by Hugo Candidus as a great emender of books, a famous teacher, to whom (as to another Solomon) men of all ranks and orders flocked for instruction, and whom the abbey regretted to lose when after fourteen years of his presidency he was carried off to the see of Winchester by violence rather than by election.[135]

The Canto in the "Christian Epic" in which the Cynewulf-Runes appear, is on the near approach of Domesday. This piece closes with a prolonged and detailed Simile, such as occurs only in the later poetry. Life is a perilous voyage, but there is a heavenly port and a heavenly pilot:--

Nu is thon gelicost swa we on laguflode ofor cald waeter ceolum lithan geond sidne sae sund hengestum flod wudu fergen.

Now it is likest to that as if on liquid flood over cold water in keels we navigated through the vast sea with ocean-horses ferried the floating wood.

Is thaet frecne stream ytha ofermaeta the we her onlacath geond thas wacan woruld windge holmas ofer deop gelad.

A frightful surge it is of waves immense that here we toss upon through this uncertain world-- windy quarters over a deep pa.s.sage.

Waes se drohtath strong aer thon we to londe geliden haefdon ofer hreone hrycg-- tha us help bicwom thaet us to haelo hythe gelaedde G.o.des gaest sunu:

It was discipline strong ere we to the land had sailed (if at all) o'er the rough swell-- when help to us came, so that us into safety portwards did guide G.o.d's heavenly Son:

And us giefe sealde thaet we oncnawan magun ofer ceoles bord hwaer we saelan sceolon sund hengestas ealde yth mearas ancrum faeste.

And he gave us the gift that we may espy from aboard o' the ship, place where we shall bind the steeds of the sea, old amblers of water, with anchors fast.

Utan us to thaere hythe hyht stathelian tha us gerymde rodera waldend halge on heahthum the he heofnum astag.

Let us in that port our confidence plant, which for us laid open the Lord of the skies, (holy port in the heights) when he went up to heaven.

The grandest of the allegorical pieces is that on the Phnix. Of the pedigree of the fable we have already spoken; as also of the Latin poem which the Anglo-Saxon poet followed. It is rather an adaptation than a translation, and it has a second part in which the allegory is explained. At the close there is a playful alternation of Latin and Saxon half-lines, which does not at all lessen the probability that the poet may have been the ingenious Cynewulf.

Hafa us alysed lucis auctor, aet we motun her merueri, G.o.d daedum begietan gaudia in celo, aer we motun maxima regna secan, and gesittan sedibus altis, lifgan in lisse lucis et pacis, agan eardinga alma let.i.tiae, brucan blaed daga;-- blandem et mitem geseon sigora frean sine fine, and him lof singan laude perenne, eadge mid englum alleluia.