ascent to heaven amid the ministering company of saints. Scholars have pointed out that the description of the bird's dwelling-place is influenced by the old Celtic fancy of the Land of Eternal Youth; and certainly it is not difficult to see, in the bright colors and happy fancy of the poem, the working of the Celtic imagination, as well as the transforming touch of hope which had been brought into men's lives by Christianity.

Anglo-Saxon Love Poems and Elegies.-Besides the poetry attributed to Caedmon and his school, and to Cynewulf and his school, there exist a few short poems of the greatest interest. One of these, called "The Wife's Lament," gives us a glimpse of one of the harsh customs of our ancestors. A wife, accused of faithlessness, has been banished from her native village, and compelled to live alone in the forest; from her place of exile she pours out a moan to the husband who has been estranged from her by false slanderers. "The Lover's Message" is a kind of companion piece to this. The speaker in the little poem is the tablet of wood upon which an absent lover has carved a message to send to his beloved. It tells her that he has now a home for her in the south, and bids her, as soon as she hears the cuckoo chanting of sorrow in the copsewood, to take sail over the ocean pathway to her lord, who waits and longs for her. With these two little pieces begins the love-poetry of England.

“The Wanderer."—The longest and most beautiful of all the Anglo-Saxon elegies or poems of sentiment is "The Wanderer." It is the complaint of one who must "traverse the watery ways, stir with his hands the rime-cold sea, and tread the paths of exile," while he muses upon the joys and glories of a life that has passed away forever. "Often," he says, "it seems to him in fancy as though he clasps and kisses his great lord, and on his knees lays hand and head, even as erewhile"; but he soon wakes friendless, and sees before him only "the fallow ways, sea-birds bathing and spreading their wings, falling hoar-frost and snow mingled with hail." At the close the Wanderer breaks out into a song of lamentation over the departed glories of a better time: "Where is gone the horse? Where is gone the hero? Where is gone the

giver of treasure? Where are gone the seats of the feast? Where are the joys of the hall? Ah, thou bright cup! Ah, thou mailed warrior! Ah, the prince's pride! how has the time passed away, as if it had not been !" There is a wistful tenderness and a lyric grace in this poem which suggests once more the Celtic leaven at work in the ruder AngloSaxon genius. It suggests, too, a state of society fallen into ruin, a time of decadence and disaster. Probably, before it was written, such a time had come for England, and especially for Northumbria.

III. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE DANES: LITERATURE OF

WESSEX

The Danes Destroy Northumbria.-While the Anglo-Saxons had been settling down in England to a life of agriculture, their kinsmen who remained on the Continent had continued to lead their wild freebooting life of the sea. Toward the end of the eighth century bands of Danes began to harass the English coasts. Northumbria bore the main force of their attacks. The very monastery of Jarrow, in which Baeda had written his Ecclesiastical History, was plundered, and its inhabitants put to the sword. The monastery of Whitby, where Caedmon had had his vision, was only temporarily saved by the fierce resistance of the monks. By the middle of the ninth century the Danes had made themselves masters of Northumbria. They were such men as the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons had been three hundred years before— worshippers of the old gods, ruthless uprooters of a religion, literature, and society which they did not understand.

Rise of Wessex: King Alfred.-In Wessex, however, a kingdom had arisen with strength enough to offer a firm resistance to the Danes. King Egbert, of Wessex, after compelling the tribes of Central Britain to acknowledge his headship, had taken, in 828, the proud title of "King of the English," for by this time the Angles had given their name to all divisions of the Anglo-Saxon people in Britain. When the Danes, victorious in Northumbria, began to press southwestward into the kingdom of Wessex, Alfred the Great

held the throne. His heroism turned back the tide of barbarian invasion. By the treaty of Wedmore, which he forced upon them in 878, the Danes pledged themselves to remain north of Watling Street, the old Roman road running from Dover to Chester. From this time until the Norman conquest, two centuries later, the only literature which remains to us was produced in Wessex. It is almost entirely a literature of prose. The best of it was the work of King Alfred himself, or produced under his immediate encouragement.

What King Alfred Did for Literature.-As a child King Alfred had seen Rome, and had lived for a time at the great court of Charles the Bald in France; and the spectacle of these older and richer civilizations had filled him with a desire to give to his rude subjects something of the heritage of the past. When, after a desperate struggle, he had won peace from the Danes, he called about him learned monks from the sheltered monasteries of Ireland and Wales, and made welcome at his court all strangers who could bring him a manuscript or sing to him an old song. It was probably during his reign that the poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf, as well as the older pagan poems, were brought southward out of Northumbria and put in the West-Saxon form in which we now have them. He spurred on his priests and bishops to write. He himself learned a little Latin, in order that he might translate certain books, which he deemed would be most useful and interesting to Englishmen, into the WestSaxon tongue; putting down the sense, he says, "sometimes word for word, sometimes meaning for meaning, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbald, my mass-priest, and John, my masspriest." The most important of these pious labors was a rendering of Baeda's Ecclesiastical History, which gave a native English dress to the first great piece of historical writing which had been done in England. Alfred also caused the dry entries of the deaths of kings and the installations of bishops, which the monks were in the habit of making on the Easter rolls, to be expanded into a clear and picturesque narrative, the greatest space, of course, being taken up with the events of his own reign. This, known as the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle, is the most venerable monument of Old English prose.

Decadence of Anglo-Saxon Literature.-Despite all his efforts, King Alfred did not succeed in creating a vital native literature in Wessex. The language was changing, and the literary spirit of the people was almost dead. The sermons or Homilies of the great and devoted Aelfric, however, here and there rise to the rank of literature, by reason of the näive picturesqueness of some religious legend which they treat, or by the fervor of their piety. Aelfric also translated a portion of the Scriptures, adding to the beginning which Bede had made, and carrying one step further the long process by which the great English Bible was brought into being. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, also, which continued to grow in the monasteries of Peterborough, Winchester, and Ely, here and there breaks out into stirring verse. One of these poetic episodes, known as the "Battle of Brunanburh," is entered under the year 937. Another, the "Death of Byrhtnoth," also called the "Battle of Maldon," bears date 991; it is the swan-song of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Latin and Danish Word-Borrowings.-During the period we have just traversed the English tongue was enriched from two sources, Latin and Danish. The Latin words which came in during the period of Christianization nearly all refer to the church and its functions. They are such words as church itself (originally a Greek word, kyriakon), minster (monasterium), bishop (episcopus), monk (monachus), priest (presbyter), martyr (originally a Greek word, meaning "witness"), devil (diabolus), and a host of others. The Danish contribution was confined chiefly to such geographical endings as -by and -thorp, meaning "town," preserved in names such as Somersby and Althorp.

End of the Old English Period. So far as literature was concerned, England at the end of the tenth century was in need of new blood. The Danes had brought no literature with them, and the Anglo-Saxon genius was exhausted. In fact, in spite of all its rugged grandeur and fine persistence, this genius was at its best lacking in many elements necessary

to make a great national life. Anglo-Saxon poetry, looked at in the large, betrays a narrowness of theme, and monotony of tone, out of which a great literature could have evolved, if at all, only slowly and with difficulty. Some new graft was needed, to give elasticity, gayety, and range. This need was met when, in 1066, William the Conqueror landed at Hastings with his army of Norman-French knights, and marched to give battle to the forces of Harold, the last of the Saxon kings.

REVIEW OUTLINE.-Who were the earliest known inhabitants of Britain during historic times? How long a period elapsed between the mention of them in Greek history and the time when Cæsar made them known to the Roman world? Sum up the principal facts of the Roman occupation of Britain. Why and when were the Roman forces withdrawn? When did the Anglo-Saxon sea-robbers begin to conquer the Britons, thus left defenceless by Rome, and weakened by her civilization? How long did the struggle endure? How is King Arthur's name connected with it? Bring together as many particulars as you can from this chapter concerning the character of the Celts, and contrast it with what you know of the Anglo-Saxon character. Note the traces which the Celts and the Roman conquerors left in the new language which the Saxon invaders planted in England.

Give some account of the Christianizing of England. Who was Bede? Who was the first Christian poet? Tell his story, and indicate some traces of the pagan spirit in him. What great English poet, centuries later, treated Caedmon's theme, "the beginning of created things"? From what source do we learn the name of the greatest poet of this time? Relate the traditions concerning his life. Which of the writings attributed to him are entirely Christian and which pagan in feeling? What qualities in the "Phoenix" and the "Wanderer " suggest the influence of the Celtic spirit? Of what large group of English poems is the latter a forerunner? Can you name three later English poems that belong to this class?

All the literature, both prose and poetry, which we consider in the two first sections of this chapter, was produced in Northumbria. When, and by what new invaders, was the literary supremacy of Northumbria destroyed? Why did Wessex now become the centre of learning and of literary activity? What kind of literature was chiefly produced in Wessex? Tell what you can of the Treaty of Wedmore. What were