Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/203

 Saxon orthography would not of itself constitute a reason for rejecting Junius's conclusion, as we know that in other instances Northumbrian poetry was transcribed into the southern dialect. Modern criticism, however, has shown that the various portions of the so-called Cædmon poetry exhibit diversities of style inconsistent with the supposition of common authorship, and many passages indicate on the part of their authors an amount of learning which the monk of Streaneshalch cannot have possessed. The most probable conclusion seems to be that the rude Northumbrian verses of Cædmon were regarded by the writers of the Ælfredian and later ages as raw material, which they elaborated with unequal degrees of poetic skill. On the assumption that the Anglo-Saxon ‘sacred epics’ are more or less based upon the songs of Cædmon, there is reason for believing that, with the marked exception of the ‘Exodus,’ they are in general greatly inferior to their originals. Their authors seem to have been men to whom religious edification was more important than poetry, and who often substituted a mere paraphrase of the scriptural text for the free and imaginative handling of the Northumbrian poet.

There is, however, among the poetry contained in the Bodleian manuscript one long passage which seems to be essentially the product of Cædmon's daring and original genius. This is the fragment describing the temptation and fall of man, which the scribe has abruptly interpolated in the middle of the dreary metrical prose of the ‘Genesis.’ This fragment, which includes the lines 235–370 and 421–851 of Grein's edition (the lines 371–420 are by another hand), bears a striking resemblance in style to the Old-Saxon poem of the ‘Heliand,’ previously referred to. This resemblance, indeed, is so close, extending to very minute points of diction, that the two works cannot possibly be regarded as unconnected. The only question is what is the precise nature of the relation between them. Professor Sievers, who was the first to call attention to the facts, has endeavoured to prove that this portion of the ‘Genesis’ is a translation of an Old-Saxon poem by the author of the ‘Heliand.’ His principal argument is that several words and idioms characteristic of this passage are good Old-Saxon, but are found nowhere else in Anglo-Saxon. It is needless to say that the judgment of this distinguished scholar is deserving of the highest respect; but his conclusion appears to be open to grave objection. We must remember that the continental Saxons were evangelised by English missionaries; and, as Professor Stephens has forcibly urged, it is highly improbable that an ancient and cultured church like that of England should have adopted into its literature a poem written by a barbarian convert of its own missions. Moreover, Professor Sievers's linguistic arguments are not of overwhelming force. The Old-Saxon dialect is known to us almost exclusively from the ‘Heliand’ itself; and the extant remains of early Northumbrian are confined to a few insignificant fragments. It is therefore quite possible that the expressions which are common to the ‘Heliand’ and to the fragment under discussion, and peculiar to them, may have been derived from the old poetic vocabulary of Northumbria. Some of the phrases which distinguish the ‘Story of the Fall’ from the rest of the ‘Genesis’ occur also in Cædmon's ‘Hymn to the Creator,’ and the fervid and impassioned style which the former composition shares with the ‘Heliand’ reminds us strongly of that of ‘The Dream of the Holy Rood.’ It seems, therefore, a reasonable conclusion that the ‘Heliand,’ and its sister poem in Anglo-Saxon, are both of them translations (largely amplified, possibly, but retaining much of the original diction and spirit) from the verses of the Northumbrian poet. This result is confirmed by the testimony of the Latin preface to the ‘Heliand,’ which, as has been previously stated in this article, virtually ascribes the authorship of the poem to Cædmon himself.

Notwithstanding the astonishing general resemblance between the ‘Heliand’ and the Anglo-Saxon poem, there is one point of difference between the two works which is worthy of careful note. The ‘Story of the Fall,’ while following in the main the biblical narrative and the Latin poem of Avitus ‘De Origine Mundi,’ exhibits such deviations from these original sources as might be expected from a poet who, like Cædmon, had obtained his knowledge of them by hearsay and not by reading. It is surely the peasant Cædmon, and not any poet of literary and theological culture, who represents the transgression of Adam and Eve as an almost unavoidable error, deserving rather pity than blame, and who expresses his simple-hearted wonder that God should have permitted his children to be so terribly deceived. In the ‘Heliand’ touches of this kind are scarcely to be found. It would seem that the missionaries who adapted the work of Cædmon to the needs of their German converts were, as might naturally be expected, careful to bring its teaching into accord with the received standard of theological orthodoxy.

The ‘Exodus,’ though disfigured by a taste-