There Beowulf bound on his back his war-burnie, [armor] [armor] [nevertheless] [giants] And seized it and smote on her neck through the bone-rings. And he hewed off the head from the limbs that lay lifeless, But so hot was the blood that the sword-blade was melted The fetters of frost that the winter has welded. For fifty years ruling the people of Jutland, One of Beowulf's slaves stole a cup from his gold-hoard, Till evil arrived in the form of a fire-drake, Fearsome, unfriendly, an old twilight-spoiler. And the dragon, revengeful, harried his people, Till the king rich in honor came to his cavern. Forth from its arch blew the breath of the monster, The coiling-one came, and fled from his fury [dragon] [Beowulf] Burned to the boss was the shield of young Wiglaf; The fangs of the worm seized the throat of the hero; [big sword] [princes] The metre of Beowulf is based on alliteration, instead of rhyme. Each line has four accented syllables and one alliterative letter. This verse-form persisted until Chaucer's day as the standard of English poetry and it has been revived in our own by Tennyson in "Merlin and the Gleam" and in the " Battle of Brunanburgh." Several attempts have been made to interpret the story of Beowulf. Professor Skeat argues that Grendel was a bear. His name means grinder of bones. He never uses weapons, but trusts to his grip, the bear's hug. He is solitary and an excellent swimmer, as are bears. Like them, he seeks his food at night and always returns to his lair. Beowulf's dive to reach Grendel's mother was his swim across to the bear's cave. Neither Grendel nor his mother speaks. Beowulf (beewolf) means bear, the hero being so named because he slew bears. Henry Morley says that Professor Skeat's etymology is sound and his arguments ingenious but that he does not believe Grendel was a beast except in his behavior. He thinks that a chief's power in battle is poetically typified by putting the power of thirty men into his hand-grip. Hrothgar is attacked by a foreign foe from oversea, who is lost under the image of a superhuman monster, Grendel. The drop of a day into the sea is plainly a journey of a day to the other shore for the purpose of carrying the war into the enemy's territory. Some German critics suggest that Grendel is a mist that causes malaria, in which case Beowulf may be a wind that drives the mist away. Morley says of this idea: "Here let us pause. Enough of rain and mist. One more of these ingenious turns of the mythologic screw might convert Beowulf into the myth of a mining engineer if not of a drainpipe." At all events, Beowulf is an excellent story and as it stands gives us a noble picture of the Saxons who came to England in 449 a.d. They were not slow to pick a quarrel with their Celtic allies. Then began a struggle for the control of the island which, so far as the low and fertile portions are concerned, resulted practically in the extermination of the Celtic population. The survivors were pushed back into the mountains of Wales and Scotland. But it was a slow process. It lasted on and off for over 200 years. Traces of its bitterness still exist in the cordial hatred which certain Scotch, Welsh, and Irish gentlemen to this day entertain for the English. Among the misty figures of that fierce struggle, itself a mist and a myth, moves the form of the Welsh king, Arthur, the hero of Tennyson's" Idylls of the King." This series of poems is fairly entitled to be called the great national epic of the English people. No student of English literature can afford to omit reading it. It is best to read it at this point in the story, as familiarity with it will in some measure give life and definite color to the study of this period. In 597 A.D. occurred an event which did much, no doubt, to soften the ferocity of this struggle. A Roman monk named Augustine began the process of converting the Saxons to Christianity and, once begun, the work was pushed with fervor and success. The student who wishes to gain a vivid idea of some of the experiences of these early missionaries should read Rudyard Kipling's charming story, the "Conversion of St. Wilfrid." By 664 their work had progressed so far that we find at Whitby a great monastery and a great English poet named Caedmon devoting his genius to the teaching of Christian doctrine. How he came to write is told by the Venerable Bede in a passage which perhaps has been quoted as often as any that an English historian has written: His power of song was the gift of God. He could never compose any idle or false song. Up to an advanced age he had never composed any poetry. As he often attended feasts where all of the guests in turn were expected to take the harp and sing, whenever he saw the harp come near him he arose out of shame and went home. On one of these occasions, he retired to the stables, as he had charge of the horses for that night. When after a time he slept, a man appeared to him in a dream and said: 'Caedmon, sing me something.' 'I cannot,' replied Caedmon. 'You are mistaken,' said the man. 'You can sing.' 'What shall I sing?' 'Sing to me the beginnings of all things!' On receiving this answer, Caedmon began to sing, in praise of God the Creator, verses and words which he had never heard. When he arose from his sleep he had firmly fixed in his memory all that he had sung while asleep." Thus Caedmon discovered his poetic gift. The rest of his life apparently was devoted solely to its exercise in the cause of religion. His chief works are paraphrases of the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, written in the same metrical form as Beowulf and evidently designed, like Beowulf, to be chanted at feasts. Their value as a means of familiarizing the people with the gospels in that unlettered age must have been immense. A more artfully sugar-coated literary pill has seldom been administered to a nation in need of spiritual regeneration. Caedmon did on a large scale indeed for his age exactly what Lew Wallace with his " Ben-Hur " has done for ours. He put the stories of the Bible into the literary form which was fitted to impress, entertain, and instruct the largest number of his contemporaries. His success was unquestionable. We have the testimony of Bede that it was so great as to produce a host of imitators. Though it is not to be inferred that he was as great a genius as the masters of English verse who wrote in later ages, he must be regarded as a genuine poet of no mean power. It is possible that, a thousand years From the Caedmon MS (Tenth Century). The courtesy of the Macmillan Company, from "English Literature, An Illustrated Record" hence, when our language has become obsolete, his name will stand as high in the temple of fame as those of Longfellow or Lowell. His subject in some respects resembles that of "Paradise Lost." First printed in 1655, his book probably was familiar to Milton, who published his great epic in 1667. Probably no higher praise has ever been paid to Caedmon than the charge made by certain critics that in Paradise Lost" the Puritan poet was guilty of stealing some passages from the old Saxon. There are certainly enough resemblances to justify the title which has been given Caedmon of the Anglo-Saxon Milton." As Henry Morley finely says: "We have seen in Caedmon one green shoot from the tree that is mounting Miltonward.” In his biographer Bede we see a worthy forerunner of Gibbon and Carlyle. He was born about 673 at Jarrow; at seven years of age was given to Abbot Benedict to be educated in the monastery there; and there spent all the rest of his life in studying and in writing Latin prose. Though Bede wrote in Latin, his motives and ideas are as English as Caedmon's. As we have seen, the common people in his day could be reached only by oral means. Verse being easier to remember than prose, we find our oldest English literature in verse. But the number of educated people who could read English was small and the number of complicated ideas that could be preserved orally was not great. The same situation existed at this time throughout Europe. At the same time throughout Europe the monks, who were the only educated class, were all able to write and read Latin. It was, therefore, a kind of accident, but a perfectly natural accident, that Bede, English as was his temper, should choose Latin as his vehicle of expression. In no other way could he get an audience for his prose. It must be remembered also that, though the greatest, he was by no means the only writer of Latin in his age. There was a host of others. Fashion doubtless had some influence in his choice of a language. His works form a nearly complete encyclopædia of the knowledge of his day. His style is clear and simple, his object being to teach. Among his subjects are grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, lives of saints, Scriptural commentary. His best-known work is, however, his "Ecclesiastical History of England." It is really a political history of the nation during the period when the chief interest of its best men lay in the diffusion of Christianity. Its chief merit is its accuracy. Bede was one of the most careful of historians. He himself says to his reader: "If you shall in this that we have |