Page:The Dream of the Rood - ed. Cook - 1905.djvu/21

Rh to have been derived from the latter, and to have been corrupted in the process.

2. Cædmon's name has never been on the Cross.

3. Linguistic considerations would refer the inscription to the tenth century, and probably to the latter half of that century.

4. Archaeological considerations are to the same effect as those drawn from the language.

Accordingly, there is no shadow of proof or probability that the inscription represents a poem written by Cædmon.

We pass now to the second hypothesis with respect to the Dream of the Rood, that which assigns its authorship to Cynewulf. Kemble was the first to make the suggestion that all the poems of both the Exeter and Vercelli Books might be by Cynewulf, whom, however, he conceived to be an Abbot of Peterborough, living at the beginning of the eleventh century. Thorpe believed that Cynewulf, the Abbot of Peterborough, was the author of the Juliana and perhaps all the Vercelli poetry. In all this, it will be observed, there is no specific attribution of the Dream to Cynewulf, but merely a conjectural assignment of the whole body of poetry in the manuscript which contains it. For an attempt to show why Cynewulf might be reasonably regarded as the author of the Dream of the Rood in particular, we must refer to the celebrated scholar Franz Dietrich.

Dietrich's view. Dietrich, in 1865, adduced a variety Rh