The writing of riddles was a favourite poetic pastime there is extant more than one collection in Latin ; one is by Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne (died 709). The Old English riddles are noteworthy for their intimate portrayal of natural scenery, particularly of the sea in storm and calm. The poems mentioned above, with a few others of minor Angloimportance, make up the record of what survives of Old Saxon English poetry-only a small fragment, we may be sure, of Metre. what once existed. All this poetry is written in an alliterative metre without rhyme, the common form of verse in early times among all the Teutonic nations. Each line is sharply divided into two parts by a pause or caesura, and has four stressed syllables, two in either half-line. Of these stressed syllables at least two, often three, begin with the same consonant, or with vowels, thus: Byrhtnoð maþelode, bord hafenode, Byrhtnoth spake then, his buckler he lifted, Shook his slender spear, these words he shouted, The unstressed syllables vary in number, so that the lines are of uneven length. The diction of this poetry differs markedly from that of prose, and abounds in periphrastic expressions, as when a ship is called an ocean-horse' (brim hengest) or 'a wave-goer' (yplida). There seems to have been a large store of stock phrases regarded by every poet as common poetic coin on which he might ring the changes, when he had not the skill to invent phrases of his own. The poem on Brunanburh (Tennyson's translation will give any one who cannot read Old English a fair idea of the poem and of the movement of Old English verse in general) is little more than a skilful patchwork of traditional phraseology, a cento of quotations, like a schoolboy's Latin verses. We have already seen how the vocabulary of the heroic poetry was adapted to religious themes, as in the opening of Andreas, often with little change. Yet, in spite of the frequent employment of a conventional poetic diction, the Old English poets can at times write with real eloquence and feeling. They are at their best when they describe the turmoil of battle and the terrors of the sea. Old English prose cannot compare in variety or interest with Old Old English poetry; there is nothing in prose to set beside English Beowulf. The poetry in spirit and metre and rhythm is Prose. original and indigenous, even when, as in the religious poems, its themes are borrowed; the prose is a secondary literature, following Latin prose with uncertain steps, as it was destined to do for many centuries to come. Its range is also limited : it is used mainly for instructional purposes, and is too desperately in earnest to have much time for the artistic graces. England has to wait many years for a prose in any way Latin English comparable with that evolved so early, without outside help, in Iceland. From the time of the introduction of Christianity, Latin became the formidable rival of the vernacular as a prose medium, and remained so till the seventeenth century. The English from the first took kindly to Latin culture, and very soon after the arrival of Augustine, there sprang up throughout the land schools for the advancement of Latin learning, notably those at Canterbury and York. For one and a half centuries (circa 650-800) England was well in the forefront of European scholarship. The greatest product of this Latin learning is the Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum) by Bede (673–735), a priest of the monastery of Jarrow. Bede's history, one of our first-rate authorities for the early history of England, the record of one who himself saw the transition from the old faith to the new, is one of those books which never lose their charm, and is as fresh to-day as when it was written. Other scholars who acquired more than a local reputation were Aldhelm, who died Bishop of Sherborne in 709, author, among other things, of a hundred riddles in Latin verse, from which the English riddles drew some of their inspiration; and Alcuin (735-804), the writer of several commentaries and of many interesting letters, who in 782 was summoned to the Continent by Charlemagne to direct the education of France. These writers-and they are only three out of many-also wrote vernacular prose and verse, but only their Latin works have survived, being those alone on which they themselves set any value. All this learning, which the monasteries and the monastic schools so sedulously cultivated, was swept away by the incursions of the heathen Danes, and it was not until the time of Alfred that an attempt was made to revive it. How disastrous to the cause of learning these incursions were we may gather from Alfred's preface to his translation of Pope Gregory's Oura Pastoralis. Here Alfred tells us that, when he came to the throne (871), there were very few persons on either side of the Humber who could read Latin: he could not think of a single one south of the Thames. He recalls with envy the days when foreigners came to England in search of wisdom and instruction-the days of Bede and Alcuin-and announces his resolve, in view of the general ignorance of Latin, to translate such books as are most needful for all men to know into the language which we can all understand '. Alfred's labours established English prose. Among his translations are those of Gregory's Pastoral Care, Orosius's History of the World, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, the standard works of the day on theology, history, and philosophy. Alfred does not follow his originals with very great closeness, but omits, adds, and expands to suit his purposes. In his translation of Orosius he inserted one notable passage of his own, the account, which he took down from their own lips, of the voyages of two Norwegians, Ohthere and Wulfstan, round the North Cape and far into the Baltic Sea. It is a bright, clear narrative, all too short, wonderfully simple and direct (not unlike the narratives of Hakluyt's seamen, among which it afterwards found a worthy place), which gives us a better idea than all the translations of the capabilities of Old English as a prose vehicle. In his translation Alfred is hampered by the Latin, and even when he is writing independent of it, should the occasion seem to him to call for a more formal style, as in the preface to the Pastoral Care, the influence of Latin syntax is evident in his long, intricate sentences. In the passage on the Norwegian explorers Alfred writes as he must have talked, forgetting his Latin syntax; it is a pity he ever wrote otherwise. There are passages in the Chronicle, too, which are expressed in the same direct and simple way. The English Chronicle, which is extant in several recensions and takes the history backward to the invasion of Caesar, and, in one recension, forward to the reign of Stephen, may owe its inception to Alfred's influence. At any rate it is in dealing with Alfred's reign that it first begins to discuss events with any measure of fullness. It is a very unequal work, some of the entries being the barest statements of fact; but in telling the story of the wars against the Danes it gives us many passages of simple, vivid narrative. Unfortunately, Old English prose is for the most part of a strictly expository character. Its greatest exponent, after Alfred, is Elfric (circa 955-1020), Abbot of Eynsham, near Oxford, author of numerous homilies, lives of the saints, and a grammar; and translator of parts of the Bible. Elfric in many of his works shows an excessive fondness for alliteration, his prose resembling Old English verse broken down. Another homilist is Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, a contemporary of Ælfric. The development of English prose was checked by the Norman Conquest, which was destined to influence profoundly the course of English Literature in direct and indirect ways, which will be discussed in the next chapter. A new beginning. 10 CHAPTER II EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1066–1350) Effect of the Norman Conquest on English literature - Geoffrey of Monmouth Anglo-Latin AT the time of the Norman Conquest the literature of There need be no attempt to explain away this fact. English literature has again and again refreshed itself from foreign springs, and if in the sources of its inspiration it owes more to the Latin races than to the Teutonic, a consideration not without its comfort in these days, this is only another reminder that we are a mixed race. And of all the debts which English owes to foreign literature, none is so great as that which it incurred in the Middle Ages to French. Unless this indebtedness is kept constantly in mind, there can be no understanding of Middle English literature; indeed, there can be none of modern English literature either, since the origins of many things, and these not the least important, in that literature are to be found in certain departures of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. For the literary historian Middle English literature before Chaucer is excessively important, not so much for any work of outstanding merit which it has given us, as for its promise of what is to come. The history of Middle English poetry might easily resolve itself into the history of the endeavour to win for English the French elegance and grace, to naturalize in England the style and the themes of French poetry. Chaucer is the father of English poetry in a stricter sense than that generally attached to such attributions of literary paternity. His poetry is the full and triumphant expression of all that English poetry of the three preceding centuries was trying to be, and in achieving this he follows closely in the steps of those that make in France'. We have to wait for Chaucer till we see all that French literature meant for English. For the English language and English versification in the time between the Conquest and Chaucer were in a state of transition, and, moreover, did not receive that measure of scholarly cultivation which alone could fit them to be the vehicles of a great literature. One of the results of the Norman invasion was to set up French as the language of the upper classes-the classes most capable in those days of producing literature-and to relegate English to an inferior position as the language of the humble and unlettered. At the same time Latin continued, as before the Conquest, to be written and spoken by scholars. The immediate consequences of this state of things were disastrous for English literature. It received a set-back from which it took three centuries to recover. Had all those who wrote in French and Latin as sedulously cultivated the mother-tongue, the recovery might have been much more rapid, but, as it was, the remaking of English versification on the pattern of Frenchfor that is what the new order of things involved-was left in the hands of those who were often least able to accomplish it. Moreover, the condition of the language itself rendered a new literary standard difficult to attain at once. It was rapidly shedding its_inflexions, and was taking over many new words from the French. There was, besides, no standard English; there was one English for the north, another for the midlands, and another for the south, all of equal literary importance. From all this it follows that early Middle English literature (1066-1366) is largely experimental work; it is a literature in the making. What we witness is English trying to make a foreign versification its own. Yet the halting achievement of those years made Chaucer's work possible; for, though Chaucer owed little to it in direct inspiration, yet it had done something towards fitting the language for the purposes of literature. Without it, Chaucer might have written in French. He is the first Englishman of genius to write in English. He took over from his English predecessors the language which they had struggled to make a worthy literary medium, and having genius in him, he shaped it to finer issues than they had dreamt of. Before we consider the works in which this new English literature was finding expression, we must glance at the literature written in Latin and French. The writings in Latin, in which language so much of the best mediaeval thought found its expression, are of consequence for |