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ENGLISH LITERATURE.

No. III.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

The destruction of the Byzantine Empire, and the partition of Europe among the warlike nations of the North, is an event seldom alluded to by the Historian but with lamentation and abhorrence. The Muse of History, like the greatest modern worshipper of her Epic Sister, has been ever commanded, when she approached this epoch, to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous and jarring blast; and for the most part, authors, in describing that revolution which changed the whole aspect and condition of the civilized world, seem to lack words to express their grief at the event, and their detestation of its instruments.

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Europe, they say, was deprived, at one blow, of the blessings of science, and the ornament of art the epoch was one of darkness, of violence, and of blood. This, however, seems to us a very false and a very short-sighted view of this great event and we trust that we shall do no displeasure to our readers, by following the reasonings of a few great writers of the present century, who have found that this barba

VOL. I.

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rian deluge, this judgment sent upon the sins of man, this delivering up of the civilized world, like some fair virgin, to the brutal violence of the fire-eyed barbarians of the North, was in reality a proof of the benevolence of that system which regulates the affairs of mankind. It is but with a feeble step that we can hope to pursue the path of these great and wise spirits, who have dared

To vindicate the ways of God to man:

but we trust to make it clear that the civilization of the Byzantine Empire has not been less exaggerated than the ferocity of the invading nations; and that, with the exception of the introduction of Christianity, perhaps no event of equal importance had ever an effect so entirely beneficial, as the destruction of that foul but colossal fabric which had too long usurped the venerable name of the Roman Empire. »

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That empire was a prey to a deep-seated corruption, which it needed no learned eye to see was a symptom of 'dissolution and death; like the body of the dying (1) Legionary in the Poet, poison was in every yein, and every pulsation of its heart was a step towards the grave.

Were the Arts in such a condition as to make us regret their temporary obscuration? Alas, the tone of art at this epoch exhibits the monstrous exaggeration of the Hindoo sculpture, without its geniality; the coldness of the Egyptian painting, without the profound symbolic truths which often lie hid under its gigantic forms.

Was it the state of Science, which could have been urged, to disarm the vengeance of an offended Providence? That which usurped the injured name of Philosophy, what was it but the subtlety, without the correctness, of the Stagyrite; the dreamy splendour of the Platonists, without their occasional good sense or imagination.

»

The extravagance of their writings, says (2) Gruter, speaking of a school of charlatans equal to the pretended philoso

(') Statius-Pharsalia, Lib. III.

() Hist. Philosophie Ant. cap. 12.

phers of the Western Empire in pretension, but superior to them in sophistical acuteness; The extravagance of their writings was only equalled by the infamy of their lives. »

In the Court, a feeble and puerile ostentation had long held the place of that «Majesty," which was the fittest diadem of ancient Rome: the Senate and People had long disappeared from existence, to give place to a ceremonious and profligate court, which had nothing splendid about it but its gold, nothing vigorous but its crimes. This huge and corrupted carcase, without unity, without strength, almost without vitality; agitated alike by convulsion from within, and unceasing shocks and violence from without; this crowned phantom of the past-diademed, like (1) Inez de Castro on the day of her fearful coronation; but, unlike her, diademed with a visionary crown- was about, by the wise counsels of Providence, to be recalled to vigour and to life. As the physician tells us, that the transfusion of healthy blood, drawn from the veins in which, to use the vivid language of our Old Dramatist,

"It sparkles like a lusty wine new broached;

The vessel must be sound from which it issues: (2)

has often recalled to life those who appeared to be entering the very gates of death-even so did the deluge which poured from the frozen regions of the North, restore and reinvigorate Europe. If the Invaders were fierce, they were brave if rude, they were virtuous: one high and holy principle, the only principle which can found, and when founded, can protect, the institutions of any permanent civilization-the reverence for female chastity, and the appreciation of female virtues-was not unrecognized among these simple warriors. In this point lies the weakness of all ancient systems of polity; the plague-spot of all ancient constitutions of society and it

(') Assassinated by order of Alfonso IV. King of Portugal, her corpse exhumed and crowned by her husband Don Pedro, the successor of Alfonso Vide Camoens, Os Lusiadas.

(') Ford, The Broken Heart. Act V. Sc. II.

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was left for the wild forester of the Hercynian Wood, and the frantic Berserkir of Scandinavia, to teach this lesson to the descendants of Cornelia and Aspasia.

Our ancestors, the Indigenous inhabitants of Britain, had been affected, in as great a degree, perhaps, as any other nation, with the evil as well as the good influences of the Roman yoke luxurious rather than civilized; effeminate but not refined, buried in an apathetic gloom, whose clouds were only illumined by the transient flashes of bloody feud or obscure tyranny, Society in England, at the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, seems to possess the ferocity of savage life without its dignity; to be in the same condition as that (at the present day) exhibited by the Polynesian tribes; and to have awaited, in sullen inactivity, the approach of that new race which was to diffuse light, and life, and order, through its stagnant and chaotic depths. And though the empire obtained by the Northern strangers was acquired by injustice, and too often maintained by violence and fraud; it is nevertheless to their conquest of England that we must attribute indirectly the blessings of civilization, and—yet a greater boon-the godlike principles of our Liberty, and the sublime consolations of our Religion.

That, at the period of their exchanging the wild forests and mountains of their native country for the smiling valleys of their adopted England, they were in a very advanced state of civilization, we are not prepared to admit but the (1) Common Sense, still the distinguishing characteristic of the AngloSaxon mind, most admirably adapted them for the reception of the simple and elevating truths of Christianity; for the sedulous practice of its duties, and the powerful dissemination of its doctrines.

The intellect of Nations, like that of Individuals, acquires strength, delicacy, and flexibility, by degrees; and Poetry, always the earliest literature of a People, as it is of a Child, exhibits, at an early era, with the freshness, also the artlessness, of Infancy.

() Vide Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons. Book IX. passim.

To this principle the early poetry of the Anglo-Saxons forms no exception: it is of the most inartificial construction, void of plan, of arrangement, and of connexion; and presents little more than a series of exclamatory or interjectional expressions, the untutored utterance of rapture or despair.

The impression to be conveyed to his auditors, the AngloSaxon bard had but one means of producing, and the earliest efforts of his Muse are but strings of detached exclamations; in which the occasional sublimity of the thought hardly compensates for the uniformity of their tone, and the want of harmony in their proportions.

The language, indeed, in which lisped the infant accents of that noblest literature which was afterwards to produce a Milton, a Bacon, and a Shakspeare, was in the highest degree manly, vigorous and sonorous; and we cannot think that it is only to our veneration of a Tongue whose future destinies were so lofty, that the War-Song of Brunanburh, and the Invocation of Cadmon, the precursor of him who sang,

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"Of Man's first disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that forbidden Tree,»

possess to us so indescribable a charm.

The following passage from the former of these works, the earliest specimen of Anglo-Saxon poetry which is preserved, will give a better idea of its character than any description, however elaborate. It is the description of the field of battle, after a fierce contest in which Athelstan was victorious over the Northmen.

Wiges hræmige

Lætan him behindan;
Hra Bryttinga,

Salowig Padan,

Thone swærtan Hræfan,
Hyrnet nebban;

And thone hasu-wadan Earn,
Eftan hwit æses brucan;
Grædigne cuth-Heofoc,
And that græge deor
Wulfon Wealde.

The War-Screamers
Left they behind them;
The hoarse Bittern,

The sallow Toad;

And the swart Raven,

With horned beak;

The Eagle, dwelling in the woods,

Eating the white flesh of men,

The greedy battle-Hawk,

And that grey beast

The wolf of the wold.

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