In these verses, unconnected and rude as they appear to us, there is a grim picturesqueness, which brings vividly before our eyes, the hoarse screamers busy at their horrid feast; and we do not, we trust, violate the dignity of the classic muse, by venturing to compare the «sallow toad, the « swart raven,» the grey hawk of war, eating the white flesh of heroes, with that savage picture of a battle-plain, given us by the contemporary of Homer, where the Fates-those tremendous phantasms (reproduced, we should observe, in the Valkyriur, the Choosers of the Slain, of the Scandinavian Mythology) are pursuing their task among the dying and the dead.

་་

-and whom they saw,

Stretched out; or falling, newly gored, in him «They struck their talons huge. — » (')

In the infancy of a nation, Poesy seldom attunes her lyre but to the accents of War-the exultation of Victory or the lamentations of defeat form the only tones which give any presage of the rich and varied harmonies of a more cultivated epoch. The Passion of Love does indeed exist; nor is it easy to conceive a state of society so dark and barbarous as to be unillumined by its purple light; but the obstacles between the first sensation of its influence, and the gratification of its desires, are so few, and so easily removed-and so little attention can be spared by the noble savage » from the more urgent necessities of self-subsistence and self-preservation,that the tender fears, the blushing hopes,

"

«Le speranze, gli affetti,

»

«La data fè, le tenerezze, i primi

Sgambievoli sospiri, i primi sguardi,» (2)

do not form, as yet, a subject of universal sympathy for the Man, and inexhaustible interest for the Poet.

With that vigorous good sense which we have mentioned

(') Hesiod, Theogony.

() Metastasio, Didone Abbandonnata, Act. II.

as the characteristic of the Teutonic mind, and which was perhaps nowhere more plainly indicated than in this fact, Woman, in the (1) social as well as legislative polity of the Anglo-Saxons, vindicated that position, her possession of which furnishes us with an unerring standard by which to estimate the actual or possible civilization of a people.

of

She was the companion, the counsellor, and the friend, man: and that veneration for the weaker sex which struck the great Roman (2) Historian with admiration among the simple and valiant Germans, was retained in its fullest force among the Anglo-Saxons.

That Woman, however, though venerated and respected, was not the object of a fantastical adoration, need be less a matter of surprise to us than of satisfaction. She was not then under the influence of that artificial and romantic system, which afterwards removed her, out of that intimate and hallowed circle of domestic affections, where she is most beauti ful

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles;

A perfect Woman, nobly planned,

To warm, to comfort, and command; » (')

and rendered, as we find her in the (1) Romances, alternately an idol tricked out with a fantastical perfection, and a plaything for the vanity and sensuality of mankind.

No! let us be thankful that the Common Sense of the Anglo-Saxons did not desert them, even in their Love:

(') The Saxon Charters teem with documentary proofs that women were as unfettered in their actions, and possessed as full rights over their property, as is now the case. (') Tacitus, Agricola.

(') Wordsworth. The White Doe of Rylstone.

(*) The Romance of Tristram, the «Morte Artus,» the «Roman de Ron»> &c., prove that the artificial system of chivalry, while it placed women, publicly, almost in the light of supernatural beings, permitted the most frightful profligacy in the private relations of the sexes.

Rarus enim fermè sensus communis in illâ
Fortunâ- » (3)

and let the fair descendants of these wise and tender matrons reflect, that if the Saxon husbands had felt for the other sex more of adoration, they had felt less of love-of that love which alone is worthy of the name; which is founded upon confidence and respect.

Bitter and obstinate have been the controversies respecting the history as well as the structure of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Among these contested points was long the assertion of Ritson, a man whose industry and learning was only equalled by his arrogant and pedantic ferocity, that the Anglo-Saxons, founding his opinion on the prose translation of Apollonius of Tyre, possessed no romances; that is, narrative poems of a heroic character.

The fallacy of this opinion had been long suspected by Turner, the learned, enlightened, and amiable historian of the Anglo-Saxons, whose name shall never be mentioned by an Englishman, justly proud of his Teutonic descent, but with gratitude and admiration; and was fortunately proved by the discovery, in 1805, of the (2) Poem of Beowulf, a production indisputably to be placed no later than the 10th Century; and which forms a valuable addition to the Saxon library, already containing the poems of the two Cadmons, that of Judith, a most singular paraphrase of a portion of the Apocrypha, the Song of the Exile, and some very remarkable religious poetry. Justice compels us to confess that the style and treatment of these works is so uniform that the passage we have quoted will convey a very clear notion of AngloSaxon poetry. It must not, however, be supposed that-at a period when the accomplishment of improvising verse, and accompanying it by the music of the harp, was so necessary a part of the national education, that a lack of skill arresting

(') Juvenal. Sat. XIII.

(2) The only MS. which exists of this singular relic is in the Cottonian Library, Vitellius, A. 15, and has been injured by the fire in the British Museum in 1731. Beowulf, the Hero of the poem, is said to have fallen in Jutland in the year 340. Turner. Book IX. Chap. 2,

the instrument in its circling course, round the table of the golden mead, rendered necessary the interposition of a miraculous dream, as in the case of the younger Cadmon, to relieve his despair, and to supply his incapacity— the AngloSaxons possessed little poetry but the long, and, it must be confessed, somewhat wearisome works to which we have alluded. They had indeed a great quantity of lyric or ballad poetry-now unfortunately lost, with the exception of the following fragment composed by Canute II, surnamed the Great.

Merie sungen the muniches binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut ching (') reuther by:
Roweth Cnyghtes noer the land,

And here we these muneches sang. (2)

Merry sang the monks in Ely,

When Cnut the king was rowing by;
Row ye knights, near the land,

And hear we these monks' song.

As the subject of these verses proves that he possessed that sensibility to what is beautiful which is ever the characteristic of the true poet; and as their expression exhibits delicacy and truth, we should give their author no insignificant place in our Pantheon of royal Poets.

The Ballads of Aldhelm, as we learn from (5) history, were chaunted among the people two hundred years after his death: it was a book of ballads (1) which allured Alfred to studyAlfred, that darling of England, whose efforts for the improvement of his country can no where be more fitly alluded to than in Russia, an empire which owes so much of its present glory to a kindred spirit to him who was the Alfred of this father-land, as Alfred was the Peter of our own. With respect

This word is still retained in the German crudern» to row; and in the En

glish word rudder.»

(2) Hist. Elien, -3 Gale, 505.

(3) Alfred, Manual.

(*) Asser.

VOL. 1.

38

:

:

to the (1) versification of the Anglo-Saxons, many very contradictory theories have been advanced some writers maintaining that the character of verse was produced by initial alliteration, others by rhyme, and some by an accentual arrangement of syllabes. It is, however, difficult, if not impossible, to detect a universal prevalence of any one of these methods and it will be safer to assert that, though these means were occasionally, they were not necessarily employed and that AngloSaxon poetry is distinguished from prose, 1st: by a greater pomp and elevation of diction; 2nd: by the omission of the connecting or explanatory parts of speech; and 3rd: by a most persevering use of that method so remarkable in all primitive poetry, a method to which the Holy Scriptures owe so much of their sublimity, the frequent use of repetition and hyperbole

:

The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, it is important to remark, must be divided into two great and distinct classes, the Vernacular, and the Latin poetry:

:

In the former we trace, with increasing pride, the progress of a language, which, whether from fortunate constitution, or from the unequalled number of great men who have cultivated it, is the richest, the most philosophical, the most flexible, and the most manly, in the world in the latter, we find no reason to blush for the inferiority of our ancestors; at a period, when, it must he confessed, no glory could be carried off from a contest with the laureates of the time; when Monks were striking with rash hand the lyre of Virgil, of Flaccus, and of Catullus.

The monstrous idea of making Latin verses rhyme was one of the fantastical barbarisms of this age-and the versifiers of the cloister, with a Latinity as crabbed as their dialectics, attempted to deck the virgin Muse of Mantua in the tinsel trappings and jingling bells plundered from the Missal and the Antiphony.

(') Bede defines rhythmus, as «a modulated composition of words, not according to the laws of metre, but adapted in the number of its syllables to the judgment of the ear, as are the verses of our vulgar (or native) poets.» Op. Vol. I. p. 57.