Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/426

Rh 40G ENGLISH LITERATURE [SAXON. cosmogony and cosmography, with numerous diagrams and maps. A number of treatises, of which the most important are De Rationc Temporum and De Ratione Computi, fall under the same head ; their general object being to eluci date all questions connected with the ecclesiastical calendar and the right calculation of Easter. Under the second head, that of theological works, fall his Expositions on St Mark s and St Luke s Gospels, on the Acts, and other books of the New Testament, his homilies, forty-nine in number, and a book of Prayers, chiefly made up of verses taken from the Psalms. Under the head of &quot; Historical lives of five abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, a life of St Cuthbert, another of St Felix, bishop of Nola, and a Afartt/rology, which has several times been printed. The Ecclesiastical History opens with a preface, in which, in that tone of calmness and mild dignity which go far to make a perfect prose style, Beda explains in detail the nature and the sources of the evidence on which he has relied in compiling the work. A short introduction then sketches the general history of Britain from the landing of Julius Cfesar to the coming of Augustine, giving special details respecting the martyrdom of St Alban under Diocletian, and the missionary preaching of St Germanus of Auxerre in the 5th century. From the landing of Augustine in 596 to the year 731, the progress of Christianity, the successes and the reverses of the church in the arduous work of bringing within her pale the fiercely warring nations of the Heptarchy, are narrated, fully but unsystematically, for each kingdom of the Heptarchy in turn. A short sketch of &quot; Universal History,&quot; forming the latter portion of the De Ratirme Temporum, has been treated by the editors of the Monu- menta Uist, Brit, as if it were a separate work, and printed, with the title De Sex jfitatibus Mundi, in that useful but unwieldy volume. Among the poetical works are a life of St Cuthbert in Latin hexameters, a number of hymns, most of which are written in the lively iambic metre of which a familiar instance is the hymn beginning &quot; Vexilla regis prodeunt,&quot; a poem on Justin Martyr in a tro chaic metre, and another in hexameters on the Day of Judgment. This last seems to have been much admired ; Simeon of Durham copied it entire into his history. The versification of this remarkable poem has considerable merits ; in that respect it is not more than three hundred years behind Claudian. But when we come to the spirit of the poem, and think of the moral atmosphere which it implies, and aims at extending, we see that ten thousand years would not adequately measure the chasm which divides the monastic poets from the last &quot; vates &quot; of heathen Rome. For the key-note of Beda s poem is the sense of sin ; whatever is expressed by the words compunction, penance, expiation, heart-crushing sorrow for having offended God, trust in the one Redeemer, pervades all his lines ; and we need not say how alien is all this to the spirit of the poets, who, with little thought of individual and personal reformation, staked their all in the future upon the greatness and stability of Rome. &quot; Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.&quot; The letters, most of which are merely the dedications and addresses prefixed to some of his works, refer little to contemporary events ; two or three, however, are of great interest. At the time when Beda died (735), the Angles of North- umbria were beginning to lay aside the use of arms, and zealously to frequent the monastery schools ; among their princes, as among those of Wcssex, some were found to exchange a crown for a cowl and a throne for a cell. But a reaction set in ; perhaps some had tried asceticism who had no vocation for it ; and after the middle of the century Northumbrian history is darkened by the frequent record of dissension among the members of the royal house, civil war, and assassination. On this state of things came the ravages of the Northmen, and made it incurable. Lindisfarne, with all its treasures and collections, was destroyed by them in 793. This is but a sample of the havoc wrought by those barbariars ; yet for a long time many monasteries escaped ; and, in particular, that of York was a centre of learning far on into the 9th century, probably till the disastrous battle occurred before York, described in the Saxon Chronicle under 867. At this monastery Alcuin was educated, and when grown up he had charge of its school and library. In 780 he was sent on a mission to Rome ; on his return, at Parma, he fell in with the emperor Charlemagne, who invited him to settle at Aix-la-Chapelle, at that time the chief imperial residence, to teach his children, and aid in the organization of educa tion throughout his dominions. Having obtained the permission of his superiors at York, Alcuin complied with the request ; and from that time to his death, in 804, resided, with little intermission, either at the imperial court or at Tours. Alcuin s letters, though the good man was of a somewhat dry and pedantic turn, contain much matter of interest. His extant works are of considerable bulk; they arc chiefly educational and theological treatises, which for lack of vigour or originality of treatment have fallen into complete oblivion. What is still of value in the works of Alcuin is, besides the letters, the lives of St Willibrord, the English apostle of Friesland, St Vedast, and St Richer. After the death of Alcuin, the confusion in Northumbria became ever worse and worse, for the Danes forced their way into the land, and many years passed before the two nations could agree to live on friendly terms together side by side. But for the Durham Gospels, a version in the Angle dialect of the four gospels, and a few similar remains, the north of England presents a dead blank to the historian of literature from Alcuin to Simeon of Durham, a period of more than three hundred years. In the south, as we have seen, the resistance to the intrusion of the barbarian element was more successful, and the intellectual atmosphere far less dark. The works of /Elfric, who died archbishop of Canterbury in 1006, are the last subject of consideration in the present section. They are chiefly interesting because they show the growing importance of the native language. /Elfric s Homilies are in Anglo-Saxon ; his Colloquy is a conversation on common things, in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, between a master and his scholar; his Grammar, adapted from Priscian and Donatus, has for its object to teach Latin to Anglo-Saxons ; its editorial and didactic part is therefore in Anglo-Saxon. The annals of public events, to which, as collected and arranged by Archbishop Plegmund at the end of the 9th century, we give the name of the Saxon Chronicle, con- tinued to be recorded at Canterbury in the native language till about the date of the Conquest; after that time the task passed into the hands of the monks of Peterborough, and was carried on by them for nearly a hundred years. A work of collecting and transcribing the remains of the national poetry began, of which the priceless volume known as the Exeter Codex, given by bishop Leofric to the library of Exeter cathedral in the reign of Edward the Confessor, is the monument and the fruit. The collection contained in the manuscript discovered about fifty years ago at Vercelli was probably made about the same time. In these two collections are contained the works of Cynewulf, the Traveller s Sony, Guthlac, Andreas, the poem on the Phoenix, &c. Being thus made more widely known, the ancient poems would soon have found imitators, and a fresh development of Anglo-Saxon poetry would have been the result. Had there been no violent change, England would by slow degrees have got through with the task of Alcuii Saxon Chro- llicle Exeta Codex vercel Codex