1Bp. Nicholson’s Eng. Lib.2It is pleasing to record a noble instance of the enthusiasm of learned research. “The leisure hours of sixteen years” furnished a comprehensive history of which “two-thirds had not yet appeared.”—Mr. Turner’s Preface.3A sufferer, moreover, fully assures us that some remain, which “must baffle all conjecture;” and another critic has judicially decreed that, in every translation from the Anglo-Saxon that has fallen under his notice, “there are blunders enough to satisfy the most unfriendly critic.” “The Song of the Traveller,” in “The Exeter Book,” was translated byConybeare; a more accurate transcript was given by Mr.Kemblein his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr.Guesthas furnished a third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a fourth may not correct the three.4“Without exception!” is the energetic cry of the translator of Beowulf.5The first line contains two words commencing with the same letter, and the second line has its first word also beginning with that letter. This difficulty seems insurmountable to a modern reader, for our authority confesses that, “In the Saxon poetry; as it is preserved in manuscripts, the first line often contains but one alliterating word, and, from the negligence of the scribes, the alliteration is in many instances entirely lost.”—Dissertation on Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Fraser’s Magazine, xii. 81.6A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr.Grenville Pigottin his “Manual of Scandinavian Mythology.”These warlike barbarians were long reproached that even their religion fomented an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in the future state of their paradisiacal Valhalla, their deceased heroes rejoiced at their celestial compotations,to drink out of the skulls of their enemies.A passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated, is, “Soon shall wedrinkout of thecurved trees of the head;” which Bishop Percy translates, “Soon, in the splendid hall of Odin, we shall drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies.” And thus also have the Danes themselves, the Germans, and the French.The original and extraordinary blunder lies with Olaus Wormius, the great Danish antiquary, to whose authority poets and historians bowed without looking further. Our grave Olaus was bewildered by this monstrous style of the Scalds, and translated this drinking bout at Valhalla according to his own fancy,—“Ex concavis crateribus craniorum;”—thus turning the “trees of the head” into a “skull,” and the skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, was innocent of this barbarous invention; and, in his violent figures and disordered fancy, merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees, from the heads of animals—that is, the curved horns which formed their drinking cups. If Olaus here, like Homer, nodded, something might be urged for his defence; for who is bound to understand such remote, if not absurd conceits? but I do not know that we could plead as fairly for his own interpolating fancy of “drinking out of the skulls of their enemies.”This grave blunder became universal, and a century passed away without its being detected. It was so familiar, that Peter Pindar once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.7HickesandWanleymistook the “Ormulum,” a paraphrase of Gospel history, as mere prose; when in fact it is composed in long lines of fifteen syllables without rhyme.8See “A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology,” by Mr. Grenville Pigott. 1839. “The Northern Mythology” will be found here not only skilfully arranged, but its wondrous myths and fables elucidated by modern antiquaries. It is further illustrated by the translation of the poem of Œhlenschläger, on “The Gods of the North;” whose genius has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version.9Such is the critical decision ofConybeare, a glorious enthusiast. “Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” by John Josiah Conybeare. 1826.The late Mr. Price, the editor of Warton’s History, announced an elaborate work on the Anglo-Saxon poetry. The verse ofConybeareand the disquisitions ofPricewould have completed this cycle of our ancient poetry. But a fatal coincidence marked the destiny of these eminent votaries of our poetic antiquity—both prematurely ceasing to exist while occupied on their works.Conybearehas survived in his brother, whose congenial tastes collected his remains;Price, who had long resided abroad, and there had silently stored up the whole wealth of Northern literature, on his return home remained little known till his valued edition of Warton announced to the literary world the acquisitions they were about to receive. He has left a name behind him, but not a work, for Price had no fraternal friend.Since this chapter was written, Mr. Thos. Wright has published “An Essay on the State of Literature and Learning under the Anglo-Saxons.” It displays a comprehensive view taken by one to whose zealous labours the lovers of our ancient literature are so deeply indebted.
1Bp. Nicholson’s Eng. Lib.
2It is pleasing to record a noble instance of the enthusiasm of learned research. “The leisure hours of sixteen years” furnished a comprehensive history of which “two-thirds had not yet appeared.”—Mr. Turner’s Preface.
3A sufferer, moreover, fully assures us that some remain, which “must baffle all conjecture;” and another critic has judicially decreed that, in every translation from the Anglo-Saxon that has fallen under his notice, “there are blunders enough to satisfy the most unfriendly critic.” “The Song of the Traveller,” in “The Exeter Book,” was translated byConybeare; a more accurate transcript was given by Mr.Kemblein his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr.Guesthas furnished a third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a fourth may not correct the three.
4“Without exception!” is the energetic cry of the translator of Beowulf.
5The first line contains two words commencing with the same letter, and the second line has its first word also beginning with that letter. This difficulty seems insurmountable to a modern reader, for our authority confesses that, “In the Saxon poetry; as it is preserved in manuscripts, the first line often contains but one alliterating word, and, from the negligence of the scribes, the alliteration is in many instances entirely lost.”—Dissertation on Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Fraser’s Magazine, xii. 81.
6A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr.Grenville Pigottin his “Manual of Scandinavian Mythology.”
These warlike barbarians were long reproached that even their religion fomented an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in the future state of their paradisiacal Valhalla, their deceased heroes rejoiced at their celestial compotations,to drink out of the skulls of their enemies.
A passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated, is, “Soon shall wedrinkout of thecurved trees of the head;” which Bishop Percy translates, “Soon, in the splendid hall of Odin, we shall drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies.” And thus also have the Danes themselves, the Germans, and the French.
The original and extraordinary blunder lies with Olaus Wormius, the great Danish antiquary, to whose authority poets and historians bowed without looking further. Our grave Olaus was bewildered by this monstrous style of the Scalds, and translated this drinking bout at Valhalla according to his own fancy,—“Ex concavis crateribus craniorum;”—thus turning the “trees of the head” into a “skull,” and the skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, was innocent of this barbarous invention; and, in his violent figures and disordered fancy, merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees, from the heads of animals—that is, the curved horns which formed their drinking cups. If Olaus here, like Homer, nodded, something might be urged for his defence; for who is bound to understand such remote, if not absurd conceits? but I do not know that we could plead as fairly for his own interpolating fancy of “drinking out of the skulls of their enemies.”
This grave blunder became universal, and a century passed away without its being detected. It was so familiar, that Peter Pindar once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.
7HickesandWanleymistook the “Ormulum,” a paraphrase of Gospel history, as mere prose; when in fact it is composed in long lines of fifteen syllables without rhyme.
8See “A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology,” by Mr. Grenville Pigott. 1839. “The Northern Mythology” will be found here not only skilfully arranged, but its wondrous myths and fables elucidated by modern antiquaries. It is further illustrated by the translation of the poem of Œhlenschläger, on “The Gods of the North;” whose genius has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version.
9Such is the critical decision ofConybeare, a glorious enthusiast. “Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” by John Josiah Conybeare. 1826.
The late Mr. Price, the editor of Warton’s History, announced an elaborate work on the Anglo-Saxon poetry. The verse ofConybeareand the disquisitions ofPricewould have completed this cycle of our ancient poetry. But a fatal coincidence marked the destiny of these eminent votaries of our poetic antiquity—both prematurely ceasing to exist while occupied on their works.Conybearehas survived in his brother, whose congenial tastes collected his remains;Price, who had long resided abroad, and there had silently stored up the whole wealth of Northern literature, on his return home remained little known till his valued edition of Warton announced to the literary world the acquisitions they were about to receive. He has left a name behind him, but not a work, for Price had no fraternal friend.
Since this chapter was written, Mr. Thos. Wright has published “An Essay on the State of Literature and Learning under the Anglo-Saxons.” It displays a comprehensive view taken by one to whose zealous labours the lovers of our ancient literature are so deeply indebted.
CÆDMON AND MILTON.
Cædmon,the Saxonists hail as “the Father of English Song!”
The personal history of this bard is given in the taste of the age. Cædmon was a herdsman who had never read a single poem. Sitting in his “beership,” whenever the circling harp, that “Wood of Joy!” as the Saxon gleemen have called it, was offered to his hand, all unskilled, the peasant, stung with shame, would hurry homewards. Already past the middle of life, never had the peasant dreamt that he was a sublime poet, or at least a poet composing on sublime themes, incapable as he was even of reading his own Saxon.
As once he lay slumbering in a stall, the apparition of a strange man thus familiarly greeted him:—“Cædmon, sing some song to me!” The cowherd modestly urged that he was mute and unmusical:—“Nevertheless thou shalt sing!” retorted the benignant apparition. “What shall I sing?” rejoined the minstrel, who had never sung. “Sing the origin of things!” The peasant, amazed, found his tongue loosened, and listened to his own voice; a voice which was to reach posterity!
He flew in the morning to the town-reeve to announce a wonder, that he had become a poet in the course of a single night. He recited the poem, which, however—for we possess it—only proves that between sleeping and waking eighteen lines of dreamy periphrasis may express a single idea. Venerable Bede held this effusion as a pure inspiration: the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxons indulgently discovers three ideas: Conybeare, more critical, acknowledges that “the eighteen lines expand the mere proposition of ‘Let us praise God, the maker of heaven and earth.’” But this was only the first attempt of a great enterprise—it was a thing to be magnified for the neighbouring monastery of Whitby, who gladly received such a new brother.
For a poet who had never written a verse, it was only necessary to open his vein: a poet who could not readonly required to be read to. The whole monkery came down with the canonical books; they informed him of all things, from “Genesis” down to “the doctrine of the apostles.” “The good man listened,” as saith Venerable Bede, “like a clean animal ruminating; and his song and his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers wrote them down, and learned from his mouth.” These teachers could not have learned more than they themselves had taught. We can only draw out of a cistern the waters which we have poured into it. Every succeeding day, however, swelled the Cædmonian Poem; assuredly they wanted neither zeal nor hands—for the glory of the monastery of Whitby!
Such is a literary anecdote of the seventh century conveyed to us by ancient Bede. The dream of the apparition’s inspiration of this unlettered monk was one more miracle among many in honour of the monastery; and it was to be told in the customary way, for never yet in a holy brotherhood was found a recusant.
Even to this day we ourselves dream grotesque adventures; but in the days of monachism visions were not merely a mere vivid and lengthened dream, a slight delirium, for they usually announced something important. A dream was a prognostic or a prelude. The garrulous chroniclers, and saintly Bede himself, that primeval gossiper, afford abundant evidence of such secret revelations. Whenever some great act was designed, or some awful secret was to be divulged, a dream announced it to the world. Was a king to be converted to Christianity, the people were enlightened by the vision which the sovereign revealed to them; was a maiden to take the vow of virginity, or a monastery to be built, an angelical vision hovered, and sometimes specified the very spot. Was a crime of blood to be divulged by some penitent accessory, somebody had a dream, and the criminal has stood convicted by the grave-side, which gave up the fatal witness in his victim. In those ages of simplicity and pious frauds, a dream was an admirable expedient by which important events were carried on, and mystification satisfactorily explained the incomprehensible.
The marvellous incident on which the history of Cædmon revolves may only veil a fact which has nothing extraordinaryin itself when freed from the invention which disguises it. Legends like the present one were often borrowed by one monastery from another, and an exact counterpart of the dream and history of our Saxon bard, in a similar personage and a like result, has been pointed out as occurring in Gaul. A vernacular or popular version of the Scriptures being required, it was supplied by apeasant wholly ignorant of the poetic art till he had been instructed in aDREAM.1
Scriptural themes were common with the poets of the monastery.2The present enterprise, judging from thevariety of its fragments from both Testaments and from the Apocrypha, in its complete state would have formed a chronological poem of the main incidents of the Scriptures in the vernacular Saxon. This was a burden of magnitude which no single shoulder could have steadily carried, and probably was supported by several besides “the Dreamer.” Critical Saxonists, indeed, have detected a variation in the style, and great inequalities in the work; such discordances indicate that the paraphrase was occasionally resumed by some successor, as idling monks at a later period were often the continuators of voluminous romances. I would class the Cædmonian poem among the many attempts of the monachal genius to familiarize the people with the miraculous and the religious narratives in the Scriptures, by a paraphrase in the vernacular idiom. The poem may be deemed as equivocal as the poet; the text has been impeached; interpolations and omissions are acknowledged by the learned in Saxon lore. The poem is said to have been written in the seventh century, and the earliest manuscript we possess is of the tenth, suffering in that course of time all the corruptions or variations of the scribes, while the ruder northern dialect has been changed into the more polished southern. If we may confide in a learned conjecture, it may happen that Cædmon is no name at all, but merely a word or a phrase; and thus the entity of the Dreamer of the Monastery of Whitby may vanish in the wind of two Chaldaic syllables!3Be this as it may, for us the poem is an entity, whatever becomes of the pretended Dreamer.
It has become an arduous inquiry whetherMiltonhas not drawn largely from the obscurity of this monkish Ennius? “In reading Cædmon,” saysSharon Turner, “we are reminded of Milton—of a ‘Paradise Lost’ in rude miniature.” Conybeare advances, “the pride, rebellion,and punishments of Satan and his princes have a resemblance to Milton so remarkable thatmuch of this portion might be almost literally translated by a cento of lines from the great poet.”4A recent Saxonist, in noticing “the creation of Cædmon as beautiful,” adds, “it is still more interesting fromits singular correspondence even in expression with ‘Paradise Lost.’”
The ancient, as well as the modern, of these scriptural poets has adopted a narrative which is not found in the Scriptures. The rebellion of Satan before the creation of man, and his precipitation with the apostate angels into a dungeon-gulf of flame, and ice, and darkness, though an incident familiar to us as a gospel text, remains nothing more than a legend unhallowed by sacred writ.
Where are we, then, to seek for the origin of a notion universal throughout Christendom? I long imagined that this revolt in heaven had been one of the traditions hammered in the old rabbinical forge; and in the Talmudical lore there are tales of the fallen angels; but I am assured by a learned professor in these studies, that the Talmud contains no narrative of “the Rebellion of Satan.” The Hebrews, in their sojourn in Babylon, had imbibed many Chaldean fables, and some fanciful inventions. At this obscure period did this singular episode in sacred history steal into their popular creed? Did it issue from that awful cradle of monstrous imaginings, of demons, of spirits, and of terrifying deities, Persia and India? In the Brahminical Shasters we find a rebellion of the angels before the creation, and their precipitation from light into darkness; their restoration by the clemency of the Creator, however, occurs after their probationary state, during millions of years in their metamorphoses on earth. But this seems only the veil of an allegory designed to explain their dark doctrine of the metempsychosis. The rebellion of the angels, as we have been taught it, is associated withtheir everlasting chains and eternal fire; how the legend became universally received may baffle inquiry.5
But the coincidence of the Cædmonian with the Miltonian poem in having adopted the same peculiar subject of the revolt of Satan and the expulsion of the angels, is not the most remarkable one in the two works. The same awful narrative is pursued, and we are startled at the opening of the Pandemonium by discovering the same scene and the same actors. When we scrutinise into minuter parts, we are occasionally struck by some extraordinary similarities.
Cædmon, to convey a notion of the ejection from heaven to hell, tells that “the Fiend, with all his comrades, fell from heaven above, through as long asthree nights and days.” Milton awfully describes Satan “confounded, though immortal,” rolling in the fiery gulf—
Nine times the space that measures day and nightTo mortal men.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men.
Cædmon describes the Deity having cast the evil angel into that “House of perdition, down on that new bed; after, gave him anamethat the highest (of the devils which they had now become) should be calledSatanthenceforwards.” Milton has preserved the same notice of the origin ofthe name, thus—
To whom theArch-Enemy,And thence in heaven calledSatan—
To whom theArch-Enemy,
And thence in heaven calledSatan—
Satan in Hebrew signifying “the Enemy,” or “the Adversary.”
The harangue of Satan to his legions by the Saxon monk cannot fail to remind us of the first grand scenein the “Paradise Lost,” however these creations of the two poets be distinct. “The swart hell—a land void of light, and full of flame,” is like Milton’s—
——yet from these flamesNo light, but rather darkness visible.
——yet from these flames
No light, but rather darkness visible.
The locality is not unlike, “There they have at even, immeasurably long, each of all the fiends a renewal of fire, with sulphur charged; but cometh ere dawn the eastern wind frost, bitter-cold, ever fire or dart.” This torment we find in the hell of Milton—
The bitter changeOf fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,From beds of ragingfireto starve inice.The parching airBurns frore, andcold performs the effect of fire.6
The bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of ragingfireto starve inice.
The parching air
Burns frore, andcold performs the effect of fire.6
The “Inferno” of Dante has also “its eternal darkness for the dwellers in fierceheatand inice.”7It is evident that the Saxon, the Italian, and the Briton had drawn from the same source. The Satan of Cædmon in “the torture-house” is represented as in “the dungeon of perdition.” He lies in chains, his feet bound, his hands manacled, his neck fastened by iron bonds; Satan and his crew the monk has degraded into Saxon convicts. Milton indeed has his
Adamantine chains and penal fire,
and
A dungeon horrible on all sides round.
But as Satan was to be the great actor, Milton was soon compelled to find some excuse for freeing the evil spirit from the chains which Heaven had forged, and this he does—
Chain’d on the burning lake,nor ever thenceHad ris’n or heaved his head, but that the willAnd high permission of all-ruling HeavenLeft him at large to his own dark designs,That with reiterated crimes he mightHeap on himself damnation, while he soughtEvil to others.
Chain’d on the burning lake,nor ever thence
Had ris’n or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others.
The Saxon monk had not the dexterity to elude the difficult position in which the arch-fiend was for ever fixed;he was indissolubly chained, and yet much was required to be done. It is not, therefore, Satan himself who goes on the subdolous design of wreaking his revenge on the innocent pair in Paradise; for this he despatches one of his associates, who is thus described: “Prompt in arms, he had a crafty soul; this chief set his helmet on his head; he many speeches knew of guileful words: wheeled up from thence, hedeparted through the doors of hell.” We are reminded of
The infernal doors, that on their hinges grateHarsh thunder.
The infernal doors, that on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.
The emissary of Satan in Cædmon had “a strong mind, lion-like in air,in hostile mood he dashed the fire aside with a fiend’s power.”8That demon flings aside the flames of hell with the bravery of his sovereign, as we see in Milton—
Forthwith upright he rears from off the poolHis mighty stature;on each hand the flamesDriv’n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll’dIn billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.9
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature;on each hand the flames
Driv’n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll’d
In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.9
Cædmon thus represents Satan:—“Then spoke the haughty king, who of angels erst wasbrightest, fairest in heaven—beloved of his master—so beauteous was his form, he was like to the light stars.”
Milton’s conception of the form of Satan is the same.
His form had not yet lostAll heroriginal brightness, nor appear’dLess than archangel ruin’d.10
His form had not yet lost
All heroriginal brightness, nor appear’d
Less than archangel ruin’d.10
And,
His countenance as themorning starthat guidesThe starry flock, allured them.11
His countenance as themorning starthat guides
The starry flock, allured them.11
Literary curiosity may be justly excited to account for these apparent resemblances, and to learn whether similarity and coincidence necessarily prove identity and imitation; and whether, finally, Cædmon was ever known to Milton.
The Cædmonian manuscript is as peculiar in its history as its subject. This poem, which we are told fixedthe attention of our ancestors “from the sixth to the twelfth century,” and the genius of whose writer was “stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of our country,”12had wholly disappeared from any visible existence. It was accidentally discovered only in a single manuscript, the gift of Archbishop Usher to the learned FrancisJunius. During thirty years of this eminent scholar’s residence in England, including his occasional visits to Holland and Friesland, to recover, by the study of the Friesic living dialect, the extinct Anglo-Saxon, he devoted his protracted life to the investigation of the origin of the Gothic dialects. A Saxon poem, considerable for its size and for its theme, in a genuine manuscript, was for our northern student a most precious acquisition; and that this solitary manuscript should not he liable to accidents, Junius printed the original at Amsterdam in 1655, unaccompanied by any translation or by any notes.
We must now have recourse to a few dates.
Milton had fallen blind in 1654. The poet began “Paradise Lost” about 1658; the composition occupied three years, but the publication was delayed till 1667.
If Milton had any knowledge of Cædmon, it could only have been in the solitary and treasured manuscript of Junius. To have granted even the loan of the only original the world possessed, we may surmise that Junius would not have slept through all the nights of its absence. And if the Saxon manuscript was ever in the hands of Milton, could our poet have read it?
We have every reason to believe that Milton did not read Saxon. At that day who did? There were not “ten men to save the city.” In Milton’s “History of England,” a loose and solitary reference to the Saxon Chronicle, then untranslated, was probably found ready at hand; for all his Saxon annals are drawn from the Latin monkish authorities: and in that wonderful list of one hundred dramatic subjects which the poet had set down for the future themes of his muse, there are many on Saxon stories; but all the references are to Speed and Hollinshed. The nephew of the poet has enumerated all the languages in which Milton was conversant—“theHebrew, (and I think the Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, the Spanish, and French.” We find no allusion to any of the northern tongues, which that votary of classical antiquity and of Ausonian melody and fancy would deem—can we doubt it?—dissonant and barbarous. The Northern Scalds were yet as little known as our own Saxons. A recent discovery that Milton once was desirous of reading Dutch may possibly be alleged by the Saxonists as an approach to the study of the Saxon; but at that time Milton was in office as “the Secretary for Foreign Tongues,” and in a busy intercourse with the Hollanders.13
“Secretary Milton” at that moment was probably anxious to con the phrases of a Dutch state-paper, to scrutinise into the temper of their style. Had Milton ever acquired the Dutch idiom for literary purposes, to study Vondel, the Batavian Shakspeare,14from whom someforeigners imagine our poet might have drawn his “Lucifer,” it could not have escaped the nephew in the enumeration of his uncle’s philological acquirements. But even to read Dutch was not to read a Saxon manuscript, whose strange characters, uncouth abbreviations, and difficult constructions, are only mastered by long practice. To have known anything about the solitary Cædmon, the poet must have been wholly indebted to the friendly offices of its guardian; a personal intimacy which does not appear. The improbability that this scholar translated the manuscript phrase by phrase is nearly as great as the supposition that the poet could have retained ideas and expressions to be reproduced in that epic poem, which was not commenced till several years after.
The personal habits of Junius were somewhat peculiar; to his last days he was unrelentingly busied in pursuits of philology, of which, he has left to the Bodleian such monuments of his gigantic industry. Junius was such a rigid economist of time, that every hour was allotted to its separate work; each day was the repetition of the former, and on a system he avoided all visitors. Such a man could not have submitted to the reckless loss of many a golden day, in hammering at the obscure sense of the Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed text he could not always master; nor is it more likely that Milton himself could have sustained his poetic excitement through the tedious progress of a verbal or cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered those “elastic rhythms,” which solicit the ear of a more modern Saxon scholar in his studies of Cædmon,15butwhich we entirely owe to the skill, and punctuation, and accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe.
Be it also observed, that Milton published his “Paradise Lost” in the lifetime of Junius, the only judge who could have convicted the bard who had daringly proposed
————to pursueThings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme—
————to pursue
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme—
of concealing what he had silently appropriated.
There are so many probabilities against the single possibility of Milton having had any knowledge of Cædmon, that we must decide by the numerical force of our own suggestions.
The startling similarities which have led away critical judgments, if calmly scrutinised, may be found to be those apparent resemblances or coincidences which poets drawing from the same source would fall into. There is a French mystery of “The Conception,” where the scene is hell; Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long address. This Satan of “The Conception” strikingly reminds us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton, and indeed has many creative touches; and had it been written after the work of Milton, it might have seemed a parody.16
Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove identity and imitation. Nor is the singular theme of “the Rebellion of the Angels” peculiar to either poet, since those who never heard of the Saxon monk have constructed whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.17
We may be little interested to learn, among all the dubious inquiries of “the origin of ‘Paradise Lost,’” whether a vast poem, the most elaborate in its parts, and the most perfect in its completion—a work, in the words of the great artist—
——who knows how longBefore had been contriving?—P. L., ix. 138.
——who knows how long
Before had been contriving?—P. L., ix. 138.
was or could be derived from any obscure source. The interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially indebted even to his prototype.
If we may still be interested in watching the primitive vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow ourselves, as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre, squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature of Cædmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime. We have seen the ideal being,
Whose stature reach’d the sky, and on his crestSat Horror plumed—
Whose stature reach’d the sky, and on his crest
Sat Horror plumed—
by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, “fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet bound.”
Cædmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam with the apples,—
Some in her hands she bare,Some in her bosom lay,Of the unblest fruit.
Some in her hands she bare,
Some in her bosom lay,
Of the unblest fruit.
However natural or downright may be this specification, it is what could not have occurred with “the bosom” of our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical conception eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples—
————from the tree returning, in her handA bough of fairest fruit.—ix. 850.
————from the tree returning, in her hand
A bough of fairest fruit.—ix. 850.
In Cædmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the sturdy Adam, an honest Saxon, to “the dark deed;” and her prudential argument that “it were best to obey the pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion,” however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may be certain of Adam’s fall—for
————in her face excuseCame prologue, and apology too prompt,Which with bland words at will, she thus address’d.
————in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology too prompt,
Which with bland words at will, she thus address’d.
A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of the old Saxon monk!
We dare not place “the Milton of our forefathers” by the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognise. We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for that was too deplorable; but, to place Cædmon in a parallel with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he was not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well compare the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of the original manuscript of Cædmon,18with the noble conceptions and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel.
1Sir Francis Palgrave’s “Dissertation on Cædmon,” in the Archæologia.In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part of Cædmon’s history by “natural causes;” and such a principle of investigation is truly philosophical; but we must not look over imposture in the search for “natural causes.” “Cædmon’s inability to perform his task,” observes our learned expositor, “appears to have arisen rather from the want of musical knowledge than from his dulness, and therefore it is quite possible that,allowing for some little exaggeration, his poetical talents may have beensuddenly developed in the manner described.”—“Hist. of England,” i. 162. Thus the Saxon Milton rose in one memorable night after a whole life passed without the poet once surmising himself to be poetical; and thus, for we consent not to yield up a single point in the narrative of “the Dream,” appeared the patronising apparition and the exhilarating dialogue. A lingering lover of the Mediæval genius can perceive nothing more in acircumstantial legendthan “a little exaggeration.” I seem to hear the shrill attenuated tones of Ritson, in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming, “It is aLieand anImpostureof the stinkingMonks!”The Viscount de Chateaubriand is infinitely more amusing than the plodders in the “weary ways of antiquity.” The mystical tale of the Saxon monk is dashed into a glittering foam of enigmatical brevity. “Cædmon rêvait en vers et composait des poèmes en dormant; Poésie est Songe.” And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams!—“Essai sur la Litérature Anglaise,” i. 55.2“The Six Days of the Creation” offered a subject for an heroic poem to Dracontius, a Spanish monk, in the fifth century, and who was censured for neglecting to honour the seventh by a description of the Sabbath of the Divine repose. It is preserved in “Bib. Patrum,” vol. viii., and has been published with notes. Genesis and Exodus—the fall of Adam—the Deluge—and the passage of the Red Sea, were themes which invited the sacred effusions of Avitus, the Archbishop of Vienne, who flourished in the sixth century. His writings were collected by Père Sirmond. This Archbishop attacked the Arians, but we have only fragments of these polemical pamphlets; as these were highly orthodox, what is wanting occasioned regrets in a former day. Other histories in Latin verse drawn from the Old Testament are recorded.3Among our ancestors all proper names were significant; and when they are not, we have the strongest presumptive reasons for suspecting that the name has been borrowed from some other tongue. The piety of many monks in their pilgrimages in the Holy Land would induce them to acquire some knowledge of the Hebrew or even the Chaldee—Bede read Hebrew. A scholar who has justly observed this, somewhat cabalistically has discovered that “the initial word of Genesis in Chaldee,” and printed in Hebraic characters בהדסין, exhibits the presumed name of the Saxon monk.4This sort of cento seems to have been a favourite fancy with this masterly versifier; for of another Anglo-Saxon bard who composed on warlike subjects, this critic says—“If the names of Patroclus and Menelaus were substituted for Byrthnoth and Godric, some of the scenes might be almost literally translated into a cento of lines from Homer.” Homer’s claim to originality, however, is secure from any critical collation with the old Saxon monk.5Notwithstanding the information with which I was favoured, I cannot divest myself of the notion that “the rebellion of the angels” must be more explicitly described among the Jewish traditions than yet appears; because we find allusions to it in two of the apostolical writings. In the epistle of Jude, ver. 6: “The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” And in Peter, ii. 4: “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Hell, and delivered them unto chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment.” These texts have admitted of some dispute; but it seems, however, probable that the apostles, just released from their Jewish bondage, had not emancipated themselves from the received Hebraical doctrines.6Paradise Lost, ii. 594.7Inferno, Canto iii. 5.8Cædmon, p. 29.9Paradise Lost, i. 221.10Paradise Lost, i. 592.11Paradise Lost, v. 798.12Guest’s “History of English Rhythms,” ii. 23.13This curious literary information has been disclosed byRoger Williams, the founder of the State of Rhode Island, who was despatched to England in 1651, to obtain the repeal of a charter granted to Mr. Coddington. I give this remarkable passage in the words of this Anglo-American:—“It pleased the Lord to call me for some time and with some persons to practise the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French and Dutch.The secretary of the council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages.Grammar rules begin to be esteemed a tyranny. I taught two young gentlemen, a parliament-man’s sons, as we teach our children English—by words, phrases, and constant talk, &c.” This vague &c. stands so in the original, and leaves his “wondrous tale half-told.” “Memoirs of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode Island, by James D. Knowles, Professor of Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theological Institution,” 1834, p. 264.I am indebted for this curious notice to the prompt kindness of my most excellent friendRobert Southey; a name long dear to the public as it will be to posterity; an author, the accuracy of whose knowledge does not yield to its extent.14Mr.Southeyobserves, in a letter now before me, that “Vondel’s‘Lucifer’ was published in 1654. His ‘Samson,’ the same subject as the ‘Agonistes,’ 1661. His ‘Adam,’ 1664.Cædmon,Andreini, andVondel, each or all, may have led Milton to consider the subject of his ‘Paradise Lost.’ But Vondel is the one who is most likely to have impressed him. Neither the Dutch nor the language were regarded with disrespect in those days. Vondel was the greatest writer of that language, and theLuciferis esteemed the best of his tragedies. Milton alone excepted, he was probably the greatest poet then living.”This critical note furnishes curious dates. Milton was blind when theLuciferwas published; and there is so much of the personal feelings and condition of the poet himself in his “Samson Agonistes,” that it is probable little or no resemblance could be traced in the Hollander. The “Adam” of Milton, and the whole “Paradise” itself, was completed in 1661. As for Cædmon, I submit the present chapter to Mr. Southey’s decision.No great genius appears to have made such free and wise use of his reading as Milton has done, and which has led in several instances to an accusation of what some might term plagiarism. We are not certain that Milton, when not yet blind, may not have read some of those obscure modern Latin poets whom Lauder scented out.15Guest’s “History of English Rhythms.”16This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his Infernals, may be read in Parfait’s analysis of the Mystery.—Hist. du Théâtre François, i. 79.17L’AngeleidaofValvasone, theAdamoofAndreini, and others.—Hayley’s Conjectures on the Origin of “Paradise Lost.” See also Tiraboschi, and Ginguéné.18These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty plates, in the Archæologia, vol. xx. We may rejoice at their preservation, for art, even in the attempts of its children, may excite ideas which might not else have occurred to us.
1Sir Francis Palgrave’s “Dissertation on Cædmon,” in the Archæologia.
In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part of Cædmon’s history by “natural causes;” and such a principle of investigation is truly philosophical; but we must not look over imposture in the search for “natural causes.” “Cædmon’s inability to perform his task,” observes our learned expositor, “appears to have arisen rather from the want of musical knowledge than from his dulness, and therefore it is quite possible that,allowing for some little exaggeration, his poetical talents may have beensuddenly developed in the manner described.”—“Hist. of England,” i. 162. Thus the Saxon Milton rose in one memorable night after a whole life passed without the poet once surmising himself to be poetical; and thus, for we consent not to yield up a single point in the narrative of “the Dream,” appeared the patronising apparition and the exhilarating dialogue. A lingering lover of the Mediæval genius can perceive nothing more in acircumstantial legendthan “a little exaggeration.” I seem to hear the shrill attenuated tones of Ritson, in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming, “It is aLieand anImpostureof the stinkingMonks!”
The Viscount de Chateaubriand is infinitely more amusing than the plodders in the “weary ways of antiquity.” The mystical tale of the Saxon monk is dashed into a glittering foam of enigmatical brevity. “Cædmon rêvait en vers et composait des poèmes en dormant; Poésie est Songe.” And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams!—“Essai sur la Litérature Anglaise,” i. 55.
2“The Six Days of the Creation” offered a subject for an heroic poem to Dracontius, a Spanish monk, in the fifth century, and who was censured for neglecting to honour the seventh by a description of the Sabbath of the Divine repose. It is preserved in “Bib. Patrum,” vol. viii., and has been published with notes. Genesis and Exodus—the fall of Adam—the Deluge—and the passage of the Red Sea, were themes which invited the sacred effusions of Avitus, the Archbishop of Vienne, who flourished in the sixth century. His writings were collected by Père Sirmond. This Archbishop attacked the Arians, but we have only fragments of these polemical pamphlets; as these were highly orthodox, what is wanting occasioned regrets in a former day. Other histories in Latin verse drawn from the Old Testament are recorded.
3Among our ancestors all proper names were significant; and when they are not, we have the strongest presumptive reasons for suspecting that the name has been borrowed from some other tongue. The piety of many monks in their pilgrimages in the Holy Land would induce them to acquire some knowledge of the Hebrew or even the Chaldee—Bede read Hebrew. A scholar who has justly observed this, somewhat cabalistically has discovered that “the initial word of Genesis in Chaldee,” and printed in Hebraic characters בהדסין, exhibits the presumed name of the Saxon monk.
4This sort of cento seems to have been a favourite fancy with this masterly versifier; for of another Anglo-Saxon bard who composed on warlike subjects, this critic says—“If the names of Patroclus and Menelaus were substituted for Byrthnoth and Godric, some of the scenes might be almost literally translated into a cento of lines from Homer.” Homer’s claim to originality, however, is secure from any critical collation with the old Saxon monk.
5Notwithstanding the information with which I was favoured, I cannot divest myself of the notion that “the rebellion of the angels” must be more explicitly described among the Jewish traditions than yet appears; because we find allusions to it in two of the apostolical writings. In the epistle of Jude, ver. 6: “The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” And in Peter, ii. 4: “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Hell, and delivered them unto chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment.” These texts have admitted of some dispute; but it seems, however, probable that the apostles, just released from their Jewish bondage, had not emancipated themselves from the received Hebraical doctrines.
6Paradise Lost, ii. 594.
7Inferno, Canto iii. 5.
8Cædmon, p. 29.
9Paradise Lost, i. 221.
10Paradise Lost, i. 592.
11Paradise Lost, v. 798.
12Guest’s “History of English Rhythms,” ii. 23.
13This curious literary information has been disclosed byRoger Williams, the founder of the State of Rhode Island, who was despatched to England in 1651, to obtain the repeal of a charter granted to Mr. Coddington. I give this remarkable passage in the words of this Anglo-American:—“It pleased the Lord to call me for some time and with some persons to practise the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French and Dutch.The secretary of the council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages.Grammar rules begin to be esteemed a tyranny. I taught two young gentlemen, a parliament-man’s sons, as we teach our children English—by words, phrases, and constant talk, &c.” This vague &c. stands so in the original, and leaves his “wondrous tale half-told.” “Memoirs of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode Island, by James D. Knowles, Professor of Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theological Institution,” 1834, p. 264.
I am indebted for this curious notice to the prompt kindness of my most excellent friendRobert Southey; a name long dear to the public as it will be to posterity; an author, the accuracy of whose knowledge does not yield to its extent.
14Mr.Southeyobserves, in a letter now before me, that “Vondel’s‘Lucifer’ was published in 1654. His ‘Samson,’ the same subject as the ‘Agonistes,’ 1661. His ‘Adam,’ 1664.Cædmon,Andreini, andVondel, each or all, may have led Milton to consider the subject of his ‘Paradise Lost.’ But Vondel is the one who is most likely to have impressed him. Neither the Dutch nor the language were regarded with disrespect in those days. Vondel was the greatest writer of that language, and theLuciferis esteemed the best of his tragedies. Milton alone excepted, he was probably the greatest poet then living.”
This critical note furnishes curious dates. Milton was blind when theLuciferwas published; and there is so much of the personal feelings and condition of the poet himself in his “Samson Agonistes,” that it is probable little or no resemblance could be traced in the Hollander. The “Adam” of Milton, and the whole “Paradise” itself, was completed in 1661. As for Cædmon, I submit the present chapter to Mr. Southey’s decision.
No great genius appears to have made such free and wise use of his reading as Milton has done, and which has led in several instances to an accusation of what some might term plagiarism. We are not certain that Milton, when not yet blind, may not have read some of those obscure modern Latin poets whom Lauder scented out.
15Guest’s “History of English Rhythms.”
16This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his Infernals, may be read in Parfait’s analysis of the Mystery.—Hist. du Théâtre François, i. 79.
17L’AngeleidaofValvasone, theAdamoofAndreini, and others.—Hayley’s Conjectures on the Origin of “Paradise Lost.” See also Tiraboschi, and Ginguéné.
18These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty plates, in the Archæologia, vol. xx. We may rejoice at their preservation, for art, even in the attempts of its children, may excite ideas which might not else have occurred to us.
BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE.
TheAnglo-Saxon poetical narrative of “The Exploits of Beowulf” forms a striking contrast with the chronological paraphrase of Cædmon. Its genuine antiquity unquestionably renders it a singular curiosity; but it derives an additional interest from its representation of the primitive simplicity of a Homeric period—the infancy of customs and manners and emotions of that Hero-life, which the Homeric poems first painted for mankind:—that Hero-life of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but imperfect conceptions from the fragments he may have collected, while he metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those of the sentimental romance of another age and another race.
The northern hordes under their petty chieftains, cast into a parallel position with those princes of Greece whose realms were provinces, and whose people were tribes, often resembled them in the like circumstances, the like characters, and the like manners. Such were those kinglings who could possess themselves of a territory in a single incursion, and whose younger brothers, stealing out of their lone bays, extended their dominion as “Sea-Kings” on the illimitable ocean.1The war-ship and the mead-hall bring us back to that early era of society, when great men knew only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose songs are ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.
We discover these heroes, Danes or Angles, as we find them in the Homeric period, audacious with the self-confidence of their bodily prowess; vaunting, and talkative of their sires and of themselves; the son ever known by denoting the father, and the father by his marriage alliance—that primitive mode of recognition, at a period when, amid the perpetual conflicts of rival chieftains, scarcely any but relations could be friends; the family bondwas a sure claim to protection. Like the Homeric heroes, they were as unrelenting in their hatreds as indissoluble in their partisanship; suspicious of the stranger, but welcoming the guest; we find them rapacious, for plunder was their treasure, and prodigal in their distributions of their golden armlets and weighed silver, for their egotism was as boundless as their violence. Yet pride and glory fermented the coarse leaven of these mighty marauders, who were even chivalric ere chivalry rose into an order. The religion of these ages was wild as their morality; few heroes but bore some relationship to Woden; and even in their rude paganised Christianity, some mythological name cast its lustre in their genealogies. In the uncritical chronicles of the middle ages it is not always evident whether the mortal was not a divinity. Their mythic legends have thrown confusion into their national annals, often accepted by historians as authentic records.2But if antiquaries still wander among shadows, the poet cannot err.Beowulfmay be a god or a nonentity, but the poem which records his exploits must at least be true, true in the manners it paints and the emotions which the poet reveals—the emotions of his contemporaries.
Beowulf,3a chieftain of the Western Danes, was the Achilles of the North. We first view him with his followers landing on the shores of a Danish kingling. A single ship with an armed company, in those predatory days, could alarm a whole realm. The petty independent provinces of Greece afford a parallel; for Thucydides has marked this period in society, when plunder well fought for was honoured as an heroic enterprise. When a vessel touched on a strange shore, the adventurers were questioned “whether they were thieves?” a designation which the inquirers did not intend as a term of reproach, nor was it scorned by the valiant;4for the spoliation of foreigners, at a time when the law of nations had no existence, seemed no disgrace, while it carried with it something of glory, when the chieftain’s sword maintained the swarm of his followers, or acquired for himself an extended dominion.
Beowulf was a mailed knight, and his gilded ensign hung like a meteor in the air, and none knew the fate it portended. The warder of the coast, for in those days many a warder kept “ocean-watch” on the sea-cliffs, takes horse, and hastens to the invader; fearlessly he asks, “Whence, and what are ye? Soonest were best to give me answer.”
The hero had come not to seek feud, nor to provoke insult, but with the free offering of his own life to relieve the sovereign of the Eastern Danes, whose thanes, for twelve years, had vainly perished, struggling with a mysterious being—one of the accursed progeny of Cain—a fouland solitary creature of the morass and the marsh. In the dead of the night this enemy of man, envious of glory and abhorrent of pleasure, glided into the great hall of state and revelry, raging athirst for the blood of the brave there reposing in slumber. The tale had spread in songs through all Gothland. This life-devourer, who comes veiled in a mist from the marshes, may be some mythic being; but though monstrous, it does little more than play the part of the Polyphemus of antiquity and the Ogre of modern fairyism.
In the timber-palace chambers were but small and few, and the guests of the petty sovereign slept in the one great hall, under whose echoing roof the Witenagemot assembled, and the royal banquet was held; there each man had his “bed and bolster” laid out, with his shield at his head, and his helmet, breastplate, and spear placed on a rack beside him—“at all times ready for combat both in house and field.”
This scene is truly Homeric; and thus we find in the early state of Greece, for the historian records this continual wearing of armour,like the barbarians, because “their houses were unfenced, and travelling was unsafe.”5
The watchman of the seas leaves not the coast, duteous in his lonely cares; while Beowulf, with his companions, marches onwards. They came to where the streets were paved; an indication in that age of a regal residence. The iron rings in their mailed coats rang as they trod in their “terrible armour.” They reach the king’s house; they hang up their shields against the lofty wall. They seat themselves on a bench, placing in a circle their mailed coats, their bucklers, and their javelins. This warlike array called forth an Ulysses, “famed for war and wisdom;” they parley; the thane hastens to announce the warlike but the friendly visitor; and the hero, so famed for valour, yet would not obtrude his person, standing behind the thane, “for he knew the rule of ceremony.” The prince of the East Danes joyfully exclaims, that “he had known Beowulf when a child; he remembered the name of his father, who married the only daughter of Hrethel the Goth. It is said that he has the strength ofthirty men in the grip of his hand. God only could have sent him.”
Beowulf, he whose beautiful ship had come over “the swan-path,” may now peacefully show himself in his warlike array. Beowulf stood upon the dais; his “sark of netted mail” glittered where the armourer’s skill had wrought around the war-net. Here we discover the ornamental artist as in the Homeric period. He found the prince of the East Danes, “old and bald” like Priam, seated among his earls. Our hero, whom we have observed so decorous in “his rule of ceremony,” now launches forth in the commendation of his own prowess.
He who had come to vanquish a fiend exulted not less in a swimming-match in the seas, “when the waves were boiling with the fury of winter,” during seven whole days and nights, combating with the walruses.
The exploits of Beowulf are of a supernatural cast; and this circumstance has bewildered his translator amid mythic allusions, and thus the hero sinks into the incarnation of a Saxon idol,—a protector of the human race. It is difficult to decide whether the marvellous incidents be mythical, or merely exaggerations of the northern poetic faculty. We, however, learn by these, that corporeal energies and an indomitable spirit were the glories of the hero-life; and the outbreaks of their self-complacency resulted from their own convictions, after many a fierce trial.
Such an heroic race we deem barbarous; but what are the nobler spirits of all times but the creatures of their age? who, however favoured by circumstances, can only do that which is practicable in the condition of society.
Henforth, the son of Eglaff, sate at the feet of the king; jealousy stirred in his breast at the prowess of “the proud seafarer.” This cynical minister of the king ridicules his youthful exploits, and sarcastically assured the hero, that “he has come to a worse matter now, should he dare to pass the space of one night with the fiend.” This personage is the Thersites of our northern Homer—
With witty malice studious to defame,Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.
With witty malice studious to defame,
Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.
And like Thersites, the son of Eglaff receives a blastingreproach:—“I tell thee, son of Eglaff, drunken with mead, that I have greater strength upon the sea than any other man. We two (he alludes to his competitor), when we were but boys, with our naked swords in our hands, where the waves were fiercest, warred with the walruses. The whale-fish dragged me to the bottom of the sea, grim in his gripe; the mighty sea-beast received the war-rush through my hand. The sea became calm, so that I beheld the ocean promontories, as the light broke from the east. Never since have the sea-sailors been hindered of their way; never have I heard of a harder battle by night under the concave of heaven, nor of a man more wretched on the ocean-streams. Of such ambushes and fervour of swords I have not heard aught of thee, else had the fiend I come to vanquish never accomplished such horrors against thy prince. I boast not, therefore, son of Eglaff! but never have I slaughtered those of my kin, for which hast thou incurred damnation, though thy wit be good.”
In this state of imperfect civilization, we discover already a right conception of the female character. At the banquet the queen appears; she greeted the young Goth, bearing in her own hand the bright sweet liquor in the twisted mead-cup. She went among the young and the old mindful of their races; the free-born queen then sate beside the monarch. There was laughter of heroes. A bard sung serene on “the origin of things,” as Iopas sang at the court of Dido, and Demodocus at that of Alcinous. The same bard again excites joy in the hall by some warlike tale. Never was banquet without poet in the Homeric times.
Here our task ends, which was not to analyse the tale of Beowulf, but solely to exhibit the manners of a primeval epoch in society. The whole romance, though but short, bears another striking feature of the mighty minstrel of antiquity; it is far more dramatic than narrative, for the characters discover themselves more by dialogue than by action.
The literary history of this Anglo-Saxon metrical romance is too remarkable to be omitted. It not only cast a new light on a disputed object in our own literary history, but awoke the patriotism of a foreign nation. Beowulf had shared the fate of Cædmon, being preserved onlyin a single manuscript in the Cottonian Library, where it escaped from the destructive fire of 1731, not, however, without injury. In 1705, Wanley had attempted to describe it, but he did not surmount the difficulty. Our literary antiquaries, with Ritson for their leader, stubbornly asserted that the Anglo-Saxons had no metrical romance, as they opined by their scanty remains. The learned historian of our Anglo-Saxons, in the progress of his ceaseless pursuit, unburied this hidden treasure—which at once refuted the prevalent notions; but this literary curiosity was fated to excite deeper emotions among the honest Danes.
The existing manuscript of “The Exploits of Beowulf” is of the tenth century; but the poem was evidently composed at a far remoter period; though, as all the personages of the romance are Danes, and all the circumstances are Danish, it may be conjectured, if it be an original Anglo-Saxon poem, that it was written when the Danes had a settlement in some parts of Britain. At Copenhagen the patriotism of literature is ardent. The learned there claimed Beowulf as their own, and alleged that the Anglo-Saxon was the version of a Danish poem; it became one of the most ancient monuments of the early history of their country, and not the least precious to them for its connexion with English affairs. The Danish antiquaries still amuse their imagination with the once Danish kingdom of Northumbria, and still call us “brothers;” as at Caen, where the whole academy still persist in disputations on the tapestry of Bayeux, and style themselves our “masters.”
It was, therefore, a national mortification to the Danes that it was an Englishman who had first made known this relic; and further, that it existed only in the library of England. The learnedThorkelinwas despatched on a literary expedition, and a careful transcript of the manuscript of Beowulf was brought to the learned and patriotic Danes. It was finished for the press, accompanied by a translation and a commentary, in 1807. At the siege of Copenhagen a British bomb fell on the study of the hapless scholar, annihilating “Beowulf,” transcript, translation, and commentary, the toil of twenty years. It seemed to be felt, by the few whose losses by sieges neverappear in royal Gazettes, as not one of the least in that sad day of warfare with “our brothers.”Thorkelinwas urged to restore the loss. But it was under great disadvantages that his edition was published in 1815. Mr. Kemble has redeemed our honour by publishing a collated edition, afterwards corrected in a second with a literal version. Such versions may supply the wants of the philologist, but for the general reader they are doomed to be read like vocabularies. Yet even thus humbled and obscured,Beowulfaspires to a poetic existence. He appeals to nature and excites our imagination—while the monk,Cædmon, restricted by his faithful creed, and his pertinacious chronology—seems to have afforded more delight by his piety than the other by his genius—and remains renowned as “the Milton of our forefathers!”