CHAPTER II. FIRST ENGLISH POETRY. 1. The Long Line of English Poets.-2. Cædmon.-3. His Paraphrase.-4. Beo wulf.-5. Aldhelm.-6. Other Poets.-7. Mechanism of First English Verse. 1. We may think of all the poets that English literature has had during these twelve hundred years as a great host of men and women still marching in long procession, and still singing their songs to all who will listen. As our eyes move down the line, we catch sight of Chaucer, and Lydgate, and Sackville, and Spenser, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Dryden, and Pope, and Burns, and Wordsworth, and Keats, and Shelley, and Elizabeth Browning, and Tennyson. It may well seem to us the most glorious army that ever marched; and it interests us to know that at the very head of it walks a man who lived as far off as the latter half of the seventh century, and who was of so lowly origin that he seemed to rise out of the earth, and to come to his great vocation of song, not by human training, but by inspiration of God. The name of the first poet in English literature is Cædmon. 2. It appears that, in the year 657, a holy woman, the Abbess Hilda, founded a monastery at Whitby, on one of the high cliffs of the coast of Yorkshire, looking off upon the North Sea. Among the tenants of the abbey lands near by was this humble person, Cædmon, quite innocent of any knowledge of letters, already well advanced in years, but a devout convert from Paganism to the Christian faith, of which the new monastery was a beacon in all that dark neighborhood. One day he joined a festive party at the house of some remoter neighbor of the country-side. The visitors came in on horseback and afoot, or in country cars, drawn, some by horses, and some by oxen. There was occasion for festivity that would last longer than a day. The draught cattle of the visitors were stabled, and would need watching of nights, since, in wild times, cattleplunder also was a recreation, and one that joined business to pleasure. The visitors took turns by night in keeping watch over the stables. One evening when Cædmon sat with his companions over the ale-cup, and the song went round, his sense of song was keen; but, as a zealous Christian convert, he turned with repugnance from the battle-strains and heathen tales that were being chanted to the music of the rude harp which passed from hand to hand. As the harp came nearer to him, he rose, since it was his turn that night to watch the cattle, and escaped into the stables. There, since we know by his work that he was true poet-born, his train of thought, doubtless, continued till it led to a strong yearning for another form of song. If, for these heathen hymns of war and rapine, knowledge and praise of God could be the glad theme of their household music! and if he, -even he- Perhaps we may accept as a true dream the vision which Bede next tells as a miracle. Cadmon watched, slept; and in his sleep one came to him and said, "Cadmon, sing." He said, "I cannot. I came hither out of the feast because I cannot sing."-" But," answered the one who came to him, "you have to sing to me."- "What," Cædmon asked, "ought I to sing?" And he answered, "Sing the origin of creatures." Having received which answer, Bede tells us, he began immediately to sing, in praise of God the Creator, verses of which this is the sense: "Now we ought to praise the Author of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory: how he, though the eternal God, became the Author of all marvels; omnipotent Guardian, who created for the sons of men, first heaven for their roof, and then the earth." "This," adds Bede, "is the sense, but not the order of the words which he sang when sleeping." Cadmon remembered, upon waking, the few lines he had made in his sleep, and continued to make others like them. The vision seems to have been simply the dream-form given to a continuation of his waking thoughts; and Cadmon may well have believed, according to the simple faith of his time, that in his dream he had received a command from heaven. He went in the morning to the steward of the land he held under the abbey, and proposed to use his gift of song in aid of the work that was being done by Abbess Hilda and her companions. Hilda called him to her, up the great rock, and, to test his power, caused pieces of Scripture story to be told to him, then bade him go home, and turn them into verse. He returned next day with the work so well done, that his teachers became, in turn, his hearers. Hilda then counselled him to give up his occupations as a layman, and received him with all his goods into the monastery. There sacred history was taught to him, that he might place the word of God in pleasant song within their homes, and on their highways, and at festive gatherings, upon the lips of the surrounding people. He was himself taught by religious men trained in the Celtic school, which was more closely allied to the Eastern than the Western Church. They knew and read the Chaldee Scriptures, and, as their new brother began his work with the song of Genesis, the name they gave him in the monastery was the Chaldee name of the Book of Genesis, derived from its first words, "In the beginning," that being, in the Chaldee, b'Cadmon. 3. Cædmon sang, in what is now called his "Paraphrase," of the creation, and with it of the war in heaven, of the fall of Satan, and of his counsellings in hell as the Strong Angel of Presumption. Thus Cædmon began, first in time and among the first in genius, the strain of English poetry: — "Most right it is that we praise with our words, Glorious King of all the hosts of men: He speeds the strong, and is the head of all His high creation, the almighty Lord. None formed him: no first was, nor last shall be, Of the eternal Ruler; but his sway Is everlasting over thrones in heaven." Cædmon paints the Angel of Presumption, yet in heaven, questioning whether he would serve God: "Wherefore,' he said, 'shall I toil? No need have I of master. I can work With my own hands great marvels, and have power Higher in heaven. Why shall I, for his smile, Serve him, bend to him thus in vassalage? Stand by me, strong supporters, firm in strife. Have chosen me for chief; one may take thought I am their master, and may rule this realm.'" And thus, to quote one passage more, Cadmon, a thousand years before the time of Milton, sang of Satan fallen: "Satan discoursed; he who henceforth ruled hell Spake sorrowing. God's angel erst, he had shone white in heaven, Then said he, Most unlike this narrow place To that which once we knew, high in heaven's realm, For the Almighty we hold royalties. Yet right hath he not done in striking us Down to the fiery bottom of hot hell, Banished from heaven's kingdom, with decree That he will set in it the race of man. Worst of my sorrows this, that, wrought of earth, Whilst we these pangs endure, this grief in hell. Cædmon, when he has thus told the story of creation and the fall of man, follows the Scripture story to the flood, and represents with simple words the rush of waters, and the ark "at large under the skies over the orb of ocean." So he goes on, picturing clearly to himself what with few words he pictures for his hearer. The story of Abraham proceeds to the triumph of his faith in God'; when he had led his son Isaac to the top of high mount by the sea, he "began to load the pile, awaken fire, and fettered the hands and feet of his child; then hove on the pile young Isaac; and then hastily gripped the sword by the hilt, would kill his son with his own hands, quench the fire with the youth's blood." From this scene of God's blessing on the perfect faith of Abraham, Cadmon proceeds next to the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites, a story of the power of God, who is able to lead those who put their faith in him unhurt through the midst of the great waters. And the next subject of the extant paraphrase is taken from the Book of Daniel, to show the same Power leading Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, with their garments unsinged, through the furnace-fire. This paraphrase closes with Belshazzar's feast. The rest is from the New Testament, inscribed in the one extant manuscript less carefully, and by a later hand. It has for its subject Christ and Satan. It is fragmentary; and perhaps no part of it is by Cædmon, except that which describes the fasting and temptation in the wilderness. 4. Thus the English heart sang through the verse of Cadmon its first great hymn based on the Word of Truth. But in the English heart, side by side with its sense of need, and of duty toward God, lay its sturdy joy in combat with man; and not far from the time when was born this first great English poem of religion, was born likewise the first great English poem of war. The Teutonic settlers in England had brought along with them from the Continent an heroic legend concerning a chief named Beowulf, who was a Pagan like themselves; and the memory of him they kept alive within them long after they had ceased somewhat to be Pagans. By some unknown Christian poet, writing in the same north of England where Cadmon was uttering his inspirations, this old legend was put into English verse, forming a poem of 6,357 short lines, and bearing the name of its hero," Beowulf." It is the most ancient heroic poem in any Germanic language. Its hero sails from a land of the Goths to a land of the Danes, and there he frees a chief named Hrothgar from the attacks of a monster of the fens and moors, named Grendel. Afterwards he is himself ruler, is wounded mortally in combat with a dragon, and is solemnly |