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 a high mount by the sea, “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, Cædmon 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.

7. As to their mechanism, there is one measure for Beowulf, Cædmon's Paraphrase, and all subsequent First English poems. There is no rhyme, and no counting of syllables. The lines are short, depending upon accent for a rhythm varying in accordance with the thought to be expressed, and depending for its emphasis upon alliteration. Usually in the first of a pair of short lines the two words of chief importance began with the same letter, and in the second line of the pair the chief word began also with that letter, that is to say, if the alliteration were of consonants; in the case of vowels the rule was reversed, the chief words would begin with vowels that were different.

8. As to their matter, if we except Cædmon, in whom there was an artistic power perhaps to be accounted for by the beginning of some mixture of blood between the northern English and their Celtic fellow-citizens, the First English writers, whether of verse or prose, were wanting in vivacity of genius. They were practical, earnest, social, true to a high sense of duty,

TO A.D. 680.]

FIRST ENGLISH POETRY.

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and had faith in God. They used few similes, and, although their poetry is sometimes said to abound in metaphor, its metaphors were few and obvious. By metaphor a word is turned out of its natural sense. There is little of metaphor in calling the sea the water-street, the whale-road, or the swan-road; the ship a wave-traverser, the sea-wood, or the floating-wood; a chief's retainers his hearth-sharers, or night the shadow-covering of creatures. This kind of poetical periphrasis abounds in First English poetry, but it proceeds from the thoughtful habit of realisation, which extends also to a representation of the sense of words by some literal suggestion, that will bring them quickened with a familiar experience or human association to the mind. There is in the unmixed English an imagination with deep roots and little flower, solid stem and no luxuriance of foliage. That which it was in a poet's mind to say was realised first, and then uttered with a direct earnestness which carried every thought straight home to the apprehension of the listener. The descendants of those Frisians who did not cross to our shores resemble the First English before they had been quickened with a dash of Celtic blood. Both Dutch and English, when the seed of Christianity struck root among them, mastered the first conditions of a full development of its grand truths with the same solid earnestness, and carried their convictions out to the same practical result. Holland, indeed, has been, not less than England, with England and for England, a battle-ground of civil and religious liberty. The power of the English character, and, therefore, of the literature that expresses it, lies in this energetic sense of truth, and this firm habit of looking to the end. Christianity having been once accepted, aided as it was greatly in its first establishment among us by zeal of the Gael and Cymry, the First English writers fastened upon it, and throughout the whole subsequent history of our literature, varied and enlivened by the diverse blending of the races that joined in the forming of the nation, its religious energy has been the centre of its life.

9. Cædmon's Paraphrase, written certainly during Abbess Hilda's rule over Whitby, between 657 and 680, was probably being produced during the last ten years of her life, or between the years 670 and 680. Aldhelm, born in 656, was then a youth, well-born, and well-taught by the learned Adrian, spending alike his intellectual and his material wealth at Malmesbury for the love of God. In Cadmon's time, in the year 672,

Aldhelm, a youth of sixteen, joined the poor monastery which had been founded by a Scot more learned than rich, named Meldum, after whom the place had its name of Meldum's Byrig, or Malmesbury. The place was so poor that the monks had not enough to eat. Aldhelm obtained a grant of the monastery, rebuilt the church, gathered religious companies about him, and inspired in them his zeal for a pure life. He was a musician and a poet; played, it is said, all the instruments of music used in his time. His letters, and his Latin verse, chiefly in praise of chastity, survive, but those English songs of his which were still on the lips of the people in King Alfred's day are lost to us. William of Malmesbury has recorded, on King Alfred's authority, that Aldhelm was unequalled as an inventor and singer of English verse; and that a song ascribed to him, which was still familiar among the people, had been sung by Aldhelm on the bridge between country and town, in the character of an English minstrel or gleeman, to keep the people from running home directly after mass was sung, as it was their habit to do, without waiting for the sermon. Another story is, that on a Sunday, at a time when many traders from different parts of the country came into Malmesbury, Abbot Aldhelm stationed himself on the bridge, and there, by his songs, caused some of those who would have passed to stay by him and, leaving their trade until the morrow, follow him to church.

10. Bede, born in 673, was a child in arms when Cædmon sang the power of the Creator and his counsel, and the young Aldhelm had begun his work at Malmesbury. When seven years old—that is to say, about the time of the death of Abbess Hilda-Bede was placed in the newly-founded monastery of St. Peter, at Wearmouth. Three years later the associated monastery of St. Paul was opened at Jarrow, on the banks of the Tyne, about five miles distant from St. Peter's. Bede, then aged ten, was transferred to the Jarrow monastery. There he spent his life, punctual in all formal exercises of devotion, and employing his whole leisure, pen in hand, for the advancement of true knowledge. He digested and arranged the teaching of the fathers of the Church, that others might with the least possible difficulty study the Scriptures by the light they gave. He produced, in a Latin treatise on The Nature of Things, a text-book of the science of his day, digested and compacted out of many volumes. His works are almost an encyclopædia of the know

TO A.D. 731.] BEDE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

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ledge of his time. He drew it from many sources, where it lay hidden in dull, voluminous, or inaccessible books, and he set it forth in books which could be used in the monastery schools, or be read by the educated for their own further instruction. The fame of the devout and simple-minded English scholar spread beyond our shores. A pope in vain desired to have him brought to Rome. He refused in his own monastery the dignity of abbot, because "the office demands household care; and household care brings with it distraction of mind, which hinders the pursuit of learning." He was thus at work in his monastery, thirtysix years old, at the time of the death of Aldhelm.

It was in those days that Roderick the Goth lost Spain to the Arabs.

In 731, when in his fifty-ninth year, Bede finished the most important of his works, that known as his Ecclesiastical History. That History of the English Church was virtually a History of England brought down to the date of its completion, and based upon inquiries made with the true spirit of a historian. Bede did not doubt reported miracles, and that part of the religious faith of his time supplies details which we should be glad now to exchange for other information upon matters whereof he gives too bare a chronicle; but, whatever its defects, he has left us a history of the early years of England—succinct, yet often warm with life; business-like, and yet child-like in its tone; at once practical and spiritual, simply just, and the work of a true scholar, breathing love to God and man. We owe to Bede alone the knowledge of much that is most interesting in our early history. Where other authorities are cited, they are often writers who, on the points in question, know no more than Bede had told them. Bede died in the year 735, three years after the completion of his History. He wrote in Latin, then the language of all scholars; but in his last days, under painful illness, he was urging forward a translation into English of the Gospel of St. John. One of his pupils said to him, when the end was near, "Most dear master, there is still one chapter wanting; do you think it troublesome to be asked any more questions?" He answered, “It is no trouble. Take your pen and make ready, and write fast." Afterwards, says the pupil, who gave, in a letter that remains to us, the narrative of Bede's last days, when the dying scholar had been taking leave of his brethren in the monastery, and bequeathing among them his little wealth of pepper, napkins, and incense, "the boy said, 'Dear master,

there is yet one sentence not written.' He answered, ‘Write quickly.' Soon after the boy said, 'The sentence is now written.' He replied, 'It is well. You have said the truth. It is ended. Receive my head into your hands, for it is a great satisfaction to me to sit facing my holy place, where 1 was wont to pray, that I may also sitting call upon my Father.' And thus on the pavement of his little cell, singing 'Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,' when he had named the Holy Spirit he breathed his last, and so departed into the heavenly kingdom."

11. The year of the death of Bede, 735, is the supposed date of the birth of Alcuin. Alcuin was bred from infancy in the monastery of York. He was there in the time of Egbert, who, in 735, received the pall as second Archbishop of York, and who is said to have founded in York monastery the famous school in which Alcuin was taught. The fame of the York school and library spread to the court of Charlemagne. Noble youths came from afar to be taught theology by Egbert, and other knowledge by his vice-master Albert who in the year 766 succeeded him in the archbishopric. Albert, with Alcuin's help, increased the fame of the school, and continued to be zealous beyond all others for the enrichment of the library. During the fourteen years of the archbishopric of Albert, Alcuin had in the York monastery immediate charge over the school and library. What he learnt from the books he told in his own words to his pupils, and with some of the best of them he established life-long friendships. One of his friends and pupils, Eanbald, in 780 became Albert's successor in the archbishopric. Alcuin had once been to Rome with Albert on a search for books; now he was sent again, that he might use the opportunity of a mission to fetch the archbishop's pall, and bring with it more books to the York library. Thus Alcuin chanced to be, in 781, at Parma when Charlemagne was passing through that town on the way home from the crowning of his infant son Louis, afterwards Louis le Débonnaire, as King of Aquitaine, and of his second son, Pepin, as King of Lombardy.

Alcuin then was, what Bede had been, the foremost scholar of his time, and Charlemagne sought aid from him as an intellectual ally. He invited Alcuin to his court, where in the winter, when fighting was not in season, Charlemagne studied himself and compelled all his family to study, and whence he would compel his people also to receive instruction under Alcuin's