that we must look for the first blossomings of Christian poetry in England.

Bede and Caedmon.-Many monasteries sprang up in Northumbria in the train of the Celtic missionaries from Ireland. Two are famous because of their connection with literature-Jarrow and Whitby. At Jarrow lived and died Baeda, known as the "Venerable Bede," a gentle, laborious scholar in whom all the learning of Northumbria was summed up. He translated the gospel of St. John into English, but his version has unfortunately been lost. He wrote many books, nearly all of them in Latin, the most notable being the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum). It is from a passage in this book that we know the story of Caedmon, the first poet of Christian England. Bede tells us that when the inmates of the monastery were gathered together at the evening feast, and the harp was passed round for each to sing in turn, Caedmon, the cowherd, would rise and depart, for he was an unlettered man and knew nothing of the gleeman's art. So it was for many years, until he was no longer young. One night, when he had thus left the cheerful company and gone to the stables to tend the cattle, he fell asleep and had a wonderful dream. The shining figure of the Lord appeared before him, saying, "Caedmon, sing to me." Caedmon answered, "Behold, I know not how to sing, and therefore I left the feast to-night." "Still, sing now to me," the Lord said. "What then shall I sing?" asked Caedmon. "Sing the beginning of created things," was the answer. Then in his dream Caedmon framed some verses of the Creation, which in the morning he wrote down, adding others to them. News of the wonderful gift which had been bestowed upon the unschooled man was carried to Hild, the abbess of the foundation, and she commanded portions of the Scripture to be read to him, that he might paraphrase them into verse. So it was done; and from this time on Caedmon's life was given to his heaven-appointed task of turning the Old Testament narrative into song.

Caedmon's Paraphrases.-The poems which have come down to us under Caedmon's name consist of paraphrases

of Genesis, of Exodus, and a part of Daniel. An interesting fragment called Judith is sometimes included in the work of the "school of Caedmon." In places, especially in dealing with a warlike episode, the poet expands his matter freely, adorning it with his own fancy. In Exodus, for instance, all the interest is centred on the overwhelming of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea. The Egyptian and the Israelitish armies are described with a heathen scôp's delight in war, and the disaster which overtakes the Egyptian hosts is sung with savage force and zest. In Judith the pagan delight in battle and in blood-revenge is even more marked. First, king Holofernes is shown, like a rude viking, boisterous and wassailing in his mead-hall. When Judith comes to him in his drunken sleep and hews off his head with a sword, the poet cannot restrain his exultation; and the flight of the army of Holofernes before the men of Israel is described with grewsome vividness.

Cynewulf. If we know little of Caedmon's life, we know still less of Cynewulf, the poet who succeeded him, and who was probably the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poets, if we except the unknown bard who gave Beowulf its present form. Out of very insubstantial materials a picturesque story has been made for him. He is said to have been in his youth a wandering singer, leading a wild life by sea and shore, as he plied his gleeman's craft, now in the halls of lords, now in the huts of shepherds and on the village green, now on the deck of Northumbrian coasting-ships. In the midst of this free existence he suddenly underwent some deep religious experience, which, together with the public disasters then overtaking Northumbria, completely changed the temper of his mind. He gave up the half-pagan naturepoetry which up to this time he had written, and turned to write religious poems. We have, signed with his name in strange characters called runes, two lives of saints, St. Juliana and Elene, and the Christ, an epic dealing with the Saviour's incarnation and ascension, and with the Day of Judgment. Other poems have been ascribed to him with varying degrees of probability: Andreas, a very lively and näive story of a saint's martyrdom and final triumph over

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his enemies; the Phenix, a richly colored description of the mythic bird and its dwelling-place, with a religious interpretation; and finally a number of Riddles, very curious compositions, some of which are full of fine imagination and fresh observation of nature.

The "Riddles " of Cynewulf.-These last are nothing more nor less than conundrums, in which some object or phenomenon is described suggestively, and the reader is left to guess what is meant. The new moon is a young viking, sailing through the skies in his pirate ship, laden with spoils of battle, to build a burg for himself in highest heaven; but the sun, a greater warrior, drives him away and possesses his land, until the night conquers the sun in turn. The iceberg shouts and laughs as it plunges through the wintry sea, eager to crush the fleet of hostile ships. The sword in its scabbard is a mailed fighter, who goes exultingly into the battle-play, and then is sad because women upbraid him for the slaughter he has done. The swan and the beaver are described with an insight and sympathy which remind us, in a far-off way, of modern nature-poetry. It is pleasant, even if not quite scientific, to think of the Riddles as the youthful work of Cynewulf, since his is the only poet's name that has survived from those obscure and troubled times.

The "Phoenix."-The Phenix derives a special interest from the fact that it is the only Anglo-Saxon poem of any length which shows a delight in the soft and radiant moods of Nature, as opposed to her fierce and grim aspects. In the land where the Phoenix dwells "the groves are all behung with blossoms, the boughs upon the trees are ever laden, the fruit is aye renewed through all eternity." The music of the wonderful bird, as it goes aloft "to meet that gladsome gem, God's candle," is "sweeter and more beauteous than any craft of song." When a thousand years of its life are done, it flies far away to a lonely Syrian wood, and builds its own funeral pyre of fragrant herbs, which the sun kindles. Out of the ball of ashes a new Phoenix is born, and flies back to its home in the enchanted land of summer. At the end, the whole poem is made into a Christian allegory of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of his

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:

WESSEX

LITERATURE OF

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