Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/424

Rh 404 ENGLISH LITERATURE [SAXON. in the 1 1th century; but it is far more probable, whatever weight we may attach to Grimm s hypothesis that he was a pupil of St Aldhelm, that Cynewulf was a West-Saxon writer, and lived in the first half of the 8th century. Crist is a poem of nearly 1700 lines, incomplete at the beginning. When first edited by Mr Thorpe along with the other contents of the Exeter Codex, it was believed to be a string of disconnected poems. Dietrich was the first who pointed out the internal connection of these, and showed that they constituted one organic whole. Cynewulf seems to revel in the task of expressing in his mother tongue the new religious ideas which had come to his race. Beginning from the Annunciation, he expatiates on the various and inestimable benefits which Christ by his incarnation bestowed on men, concluding with a vivid picture of the last great day of account. The key-note of the poem seems to be found in the 15th canto, where the six &quot; leaps,&quot; or movements, of Christ are enumerated : the first, when He became incarnate: the second, when He was born ; the third, when He mounted on the cross, and so on. The name &quot;Cynewulf&quot; is given in runes in the 16th canto ; it occurs in the same way in the other poems attributed to this writer. Elena, is the legend of the dis covery of the true cross at Jerusalem by the empress Helena, the mother of Constantino ; Juliana is the story of the martyrdom of the saint so named, under Maximian. Guthlac, a free version of the Latin life of St Guthlac (who died in 714) by Felix, a monk of Croyland, is probably the w r ork of a Mercian writer, w r hose language was altered by a West-Saxon transcriber into conformity with that of the poems already mentioned. Andreas, a poem of more than 1700 lines, ascribed by Grimm, as we have seen, to Sfc Aldhelm, but at any rate a West-Saxon poem of the 8th century, is founded on an apocryphal Greek narrative of the &quot;Acts of Andrew and Matthew.&quot; The first-named apostle, after rescuing the second from confinement in a barbarous land named Mermedonia, and working numerous miracles of an amazing character, converts the entire nation, and departs after committing them to the charge of a pious bishop named Plato. Allitera- All the poems hitherto named, and indeed the great mass of Anglo-Saxon poetry, are written in that alliterative metre which was the favourite rhythm of the whole Teutonic north, and of which one variety may be seen in the famous poems of the Edda. Each line is in two sections, balanced the one against the other, and containing usually from four to eight syllables and two accents. The general rule of the metre is that the two accented words in the first section, and one of those in the second section, begin upon the same letter, if a consonant, but, if the accented words begin with vowels, then upon different letters. Beowulf. The preponderance of opinion is now in favour of ascribing to Beowulf, the most important surviving monu ment of Anglo-Saxon poetry, a West-Saxon origin, and a date not later than the middle, nor earlier than the first decade, of the 8th century. Yet the difficulty of the problem may be estimated from the facts, that Thorkelin, the first editor, described Beowulf as a &quot; Danish poem,&quot; that Mr Kemble, wrongly identifying the Geatas with the Angles, believed it to have been composed in Anglen before the migration, and brought over to Wessex before the end of the 5th century, and that Mr Thorpe considered it to be merely a translation of a Swedish poem of the llth century. Notwithstanding this discrepancy, the general view taken above is that of Grein, Miillenhoff, and other eminent scholars, and we are convinced that the further investigation is carried the more firmly will its soundness be established. Founded on a single MS., which, as originally written, was full of errors, and now is much tion. defaced, the text of Beowulf can never, unless another MS. should be discovered, be placed on a thoroughly satisfactory footing ; much, however, has been done for its improve ment by the labours of German and Danish critics. The general drift of the poem is to celebrate the heroic deeds of Beowulf, who, originally of Swedish race, was adopted by the king of Gautlaud, or Gotland (as the southern portion of Sweden is still called), and brought up with his own sons. Hearing that the Danish king Hrothgar is harassed by the attacks of a man-eating monster called Grendel, he sails to Zealand to his aid, and after various adventures kills both Grendel and his mother. After this Beowulf is chosen king of Gotland, and reigns many years in great prosperity, till in his old age, undertaking to fight with a fiery dragon that has been making great ravages among his subjects, he succeeds in killing it, but receives a mortal injury in the struggle. The burning of his body, and the erection of a huge mound or cairn over his ashes, as a beacon &quot; easy to be seen far off by seafaring men,&quot; conclude the poem, and form a passage of remarkable beauty. Towards the end of the 8th century the descents of the Tie piratical heathens known by the general name of Danes, Danci but probably born for the most part in Scandinavian countries lying to the north of Denmark, began to plague the English coasts. These destroying savages resembled the modern Turks in possessing fine military qualities, and above all indomitable courage ; they were also like the Turks in this respect that, wherever they set their foot, progress of every kind was arrested, culture was blasted, and the hopes of civilization died away. Fortunately they were not, like the Turks, absolutely deaf to the voice of the Christian missionary, though their natural brutishness made them difficult to convert and prone to relapse. With incredible pains, and a charity that nothing could disgust or deter, the church gradually won over these Scandinavian Calibans to the Christian creed; and when once converted their immense natural energy and tenacity were turned into right and beneficial channels, at least in great measure. But for 230 years, from the sack of Lindisfarne to the accession of Canute, the so-called Danes were the curse of England, destroying monasteries and the schools maintained by them, burning churches and private houses, making life and property everywhere insecure, and depriving the land of that tranquillity without which literature and art are im possible. After a long prevalence of this state of things, society in Wessex having been, one would think, almost reduced to its first elements, Alfred arose, and after Alfra obtaining some successes in battle over the Danes, lead ing to a treaty and the conversion of part of them to Christianity, obtained a period of peace for his harassed and dejected countrymen. History tells us how well he wrought to build up in every way the fallen edifice of West-Saxon society. Among his labours not the least meritorious was his translation of Beda s Historia Ecclesiastica, Pope Gregory s work De Cura Pastorali, the famous treatise of Boethius De Consolation &amp;lt;e, and the Universal History of Orosuis. He also founded several schools, and made a beginning in the work of restoring monasteries. Yet in spite of his generous efforts, the evils caused by the Danes could not be repaired. A sort of blight seemed to have passed over the Anglo-Saxon genius; the claims of material existence suddenly seemed to engross their thoughts, perhaps because their sufferings had taught them that, however it may be with individuals, for nations all higher developments must have a basis of material prosperity to rest upon. Now and then a great man ap peared, endowed with a reparative force, and with a courage which aimed at raising the fallen spirit of the people, and turning them back again into the old paths of nobleness.