Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/47

18 paint the passions of mankind in more lifelike hues than any Latin writer ever essayed.

But among the many good qualities of ourselves and our kinsmen, tender care for conquered foes has seldom been reckoned; Western Celt and Eastern Slavonian know this full well. Hard times were at hand; the old worn-out Empire of Rome was to receive fresh life-blood from the healthy Teutons. In the Fifth Century, our brethren overran Spain, Gaul, and Italy; becoming lords of the soil, and overlaying with their own words the old Latin dialects spoken in those provinces. To this time belongs the Beowulf, which is to us English (may I not say, to all Teutons?) what the Iliad was to the Greeks. The old Epic, written on the mainland, sets before us the doughty deeds of an Englishman, before his tribe had come to Britain. There is an unmistak&shy;able Pagan ring about the poem; and a Christian tran&shy;scriber, hundreds of years afterwards, has sought to soften down this spirit, which runs through the recital of the feats of Ecgtheow's bairn.

In the same age as the Beowulf were written the Battle of Finsborough and the Traveller's Song. In the latter, Attila, Hermanric, and the wealthy Cæsar are all mentioned. Pity it is that we have not these lays in their oldest form, in the English spoken not long after the first great Teutonic writer had