the incidents, present the broadest local colouring, and breathe the full.Teutonic spirit. The opening of the poem, down to the middle of the ninth section, is lost. The exact date is unascertainable, but Grimm seems to treat it as belonging to the great literary age of Wessex, the eighth century. Several remarkable poems are preserved to us in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, presently to be described. The chief of these are, the Brunanburgh War-song, and the Elegy on King Edgar, given under the years 938 and 975 respectively. The first-the Waterloo ode' of the ninth century-is a triumphal chant occasioned by the great victory won by Athelstan, over the Danes from Ireland under Anlaf, and the Scots under their king Constantine, at Brunanburgh. Never, says the Gleeman, since the Angles and Saxons came hither from the eastward, had they gained a bloodier victory : Ne wear wæl mare On ise iglande æfer gyta folces gefylled beforan þissum, sweordes ecgum, þæs be us secgad bec ealde uwitan, siðan eastan hider Engle and Seaxe up becomon ofer brymum brad Brytene sohton wlance wig-smiðas Wealas ofer-comon 1 I have not the slightest hesitation in identifying Brunanburgh with Bromborrow, a place on the Mersey in the Wirral of Cheshire. Various allusions in the song establish: 1. That the field of battle was close to the water side, so that the routed Danes immediately took to their ships. 2. That the place of refuge which they sought was Dublin. Both these conditions suit Bromborrow exactly, but ill agree with the supposition, either of Camden, that Broomridge in Northumberland, or of Ingram, that Bromby in Lincolnshire, was the scene of the contest; since each of those places is some miles distant from the sea or a navigable river, and one would hardly expect to find Ireland mentioned as the place of refuge for a Danish fleet defeated on the eastern coast. Florence of Worcester, and later writers copying from him, do indeed locate the battle on or near the Humber, but the earlier authorities, the Chronicle, Ethelwerd, and Malmesbury, say nothing to warrant him in so doing. 'Nor was there ever yet a greater slaughter of people brought about in this island before this with the edge of the sword, according to that which old sages tell us by book, since Angles and Saxons came up hither from the east, sought Britain over the broad main, as proud artificers of war overcame the alien race [Welsh], got possession-the earls keen after glory!-of the land.' The Elegy on King Edgar belongs to the waning period of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Some of the homely, vivid metaphors of the old gleemen are still retained; the sea is still the gannet's bath,' 'the home of the whale,' and so on; but the fire and the swift movement are gone. It is short, and yet diffuse-meagre, but obscure. II. The extant prose writings, though numerous, are, with one exception, valuable, not so much for any literary merits as for the light which they throw on the labours of the historian and the antiquary. There exists in the public Record offices an immense body of documents— charters, conveyances, declarations, laws, edicts, &c.many of which have been arranged and translated by the labours of Thorpe and Kemble, and have greatly contributed to deepen our knowledge of the way of life of our forefathers. All the more valuable Anglo-Saxon charters, to the number of many hundreds, were published by Mr. Kemble in his invaluable Codex Diplomaticus. But such documents are of course not literature, and therefore need not be here considered. Another large portion of the extant works consists of translations, many of which proceed from the pen of Alfred himself, who has explained his own motives for undertaking the work. The views of an Educational Reformer' in the ninth century are worthy of our careful attention. His object is, he says, the translation of useful books into the language which we all understand; so that all the youth of England, but more especially those who are of gentle kind and at ease in their circumstances, may be grounded in letters,—for they cannot profit in any pursuit until they are well able to read English.' With these views Alfred translated the work of Pope Gregory, De Curâ Pastorali, the epitome of universal history by Orosius, the work of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophia, and the Ecclesiastical History of Bede. But by far the most important prose work that has come down to us is the Saxon Chronicle, which gives a connected history of Britain in the form of annals, from the Christian era to the year 1154. The oldest MS. in existence dates from about the year 891, and is thought, with much probability, to have been partly composed, partly transcribed from earlier annals, by or under the direction of Archbishop Plegmund. From this time the Chronicle seems to have been continued under succeeding Archbishops of Canterbury to the time of the Conquest, when the task was transferred, under what circumstances we do not know, to the monks of Peterborough. It seems possible to trace two principal hands in the composition of the Chronicle prior to the time of Plegmund -one that of a Northumbrian, the other of a West-Saxon writer. The traces of the Northumbrian hand are most evident, especially in the earlier portion; e.g. under the year 449 occurs the passage, 'From this Woden sprang all our royal kindred, and that of the South-Humbrians also.' Other indications occur under the years 697 and 702; and the comparative fulness with which Northumbrian affairs are recorded, as contrasted with all the other AngloSaxon kingdoms except Wessex, points to the same conclusion. The Northumbrian work was very likely performed at Lindisfarne; at any rate, soon after the touching notice of the destruction of the monastery in the year 793, this writer disappears, and Northumbrian history sinks back into a cloud of impenetrable darkness. Of the MSS. which contain these Northumbrian annals, the Laudian MS. in the Bodleian library (the E of Mr. Earle's late edition) is the most important and complete. Mr. Earle has shown cause for supposing that this MS. was compiled at the monastery of Peterborough, in or soon after the year 1116. The other great MS., known as the Benet MS. (the A of Mr. Earle), represents almost exclusively the historic view and literary interest of the South and West of England; thus, while the history of Alfred, on which the Laud MS. is almost silent, is minutely and lengthily told in the Benet, hundreds of notices of Northumbrian affairs which are found in the former are entirely omitted in the latter. The analysis of all the leading MSS. of the Chronicle has been ably made by Mr. Earle;1 but it is singular that he should have overlooked the significant entry in the Laud MS. under the year 449 above noticed: since that entry demonstrates, not merely that a Worcester scribe obtained Northumbrian information, which is Mr. Earle's theory (Introduction, p. xl.), but that part of the Chronicle itself comes from a Northumbrian hand. Considered as a whole, the literature of the AngloSaxons conveys the impression that they were a prosaic and practical race, solid but slow thinkers, without much imagination or mental fire. What they might have made of it, had they been allowed to develop their literature uninterruptedly, it is, of course, impossible to say. But it seems reasonable to suppose that, for ulterior ends of higher good, it was ordered that the Saxon commonwealth should not repose in unmolested prosperity. A vein of sluggishness, of Boeotian enjoyment, of coarse indulgence, with forgetfulness of the higher aims of life, ran through the Saxon character. Their transference from the sandy barrens and marshes of Holstein, from the peaty plains and stunted forests of Hanover, to the rich soil and milder climate of England, tended to develop this weak side-this proneness to ease. In their old dwelling-place Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel; Oxford, 1865. they were at least stimulated by the necessity of contending with the unfruitfulness of nature and the encroachments of the sea; in comparison with it, England must have been a terrestrial paradise-a very land of Cockaigne. This tendency to relapse into habits of indolence, which Sir Walter Scott has portrayed in the character of Athelstan in Ivanhoe, extended to the learned class, and to the churchmen no less than the laity. The influence of such a man as Beda should have been enough to inaugurate a long era of literary energy; yet William of Malmesbury assures us that, with the exception of the brief Saxon annals and the barbarous epitome of Ethelwerd, he had not been able to discover any historical work composed by an Anglo-Saxon upon the affairs of Britain, from the death of Beda to his own time. To form the future English character, it was necessary that the harder and sterner elements which belonged to the Scandinavian races, should be mingled and gradually fused with the softer Teutonic type. The Danish invasions and immigrations, which commenced in 787, and terminated with the establishment of the Danish dynasty in 1017, effected this. But in the process, the existing literary culture, and nearly all the establishments which had been founded to promote it, were swept away. In a country reduced to the dismal condition described by Bishop Lupus in a sermon preached to his flock' about the year 1012, it was impossible that men's thoughts should be efficaciously turned to any subjects save such as bore upon their personal security. Canute, indeed, after he had restored internal peace and order, showed a desire to patronise literary men, and, by rebuilding the monasteries, to open asylums for learning. But the glory and greatness of his reign gave an impulse rather to the Scandinavian than to the Saxon genius. No English poet sang of his victories; that task was left to the scalds, 1 Turner, Ang.-Sax. Book vi. ch. xiv. |