Outlines of English and American Literature

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A third result of the peaceful conquest of the missionaries was that many
monasteries were established in Britain, each a center of learning and of
writing. So arose the famous Northumbrian School of literature, to which we
owe the writings of Bede, Cadmon, Cynewulf and others associated with
certain old monasteries, such as Peterborough, Jarrow, York and Whitby, all
north of the river Humber.

BEDE. The good work of the monks is finely exemplified in the life of the
Venerable Bede, or Bada (_cir_. 673-735), who is well called the
father of English learning. As a boy he entered the Benedictine monastery
at Jarrow; the temper of his manhood may be judged from a single sentence
of his own record:

"While attentive to the discipline of mine order and the daily care
of singing in the church, my constant delight was in learning or
teaching or writing."

It is hardly too much to say that this gentle scholar was for half a
century the teacher of Europe. He collected a large library of manuscripts;
he was the author of some forty works, covering the whole field of human
knowledge in his day; and to his school at Jarrow came hundreds of pupils
from all parts of the British Isles, and hundreds more from the Continent.
Of all his works the most notable is the so-called "Ecclesiastical History"
(_Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum_) which should be named the
"History of the Race of Angles." This book marks the beginning of our
literature of knowledge, and to it we are largely indebted for what we know
of English history from the time of Casar's invasion to the early part of
the eighth century.

All the extant works of Bede are in Latin, but we are told by his pupil
Cuthbert that he was "skilled in our English songs," that he made poems and
translated the Gospel of John into English. These works, which would now be
of priceless value, were all destroyed by the plundering Danes.

As an example of Bede's style, we translate a typical passage from his
History. The scene is the Saxon _Witenagemot_, or council of wise men,
called by King Edward (625) to consider the doctrine of Paulinus, who had
been sent from Rome by Pope Gregory. The first speaker is Coifi, a priest
of the old religion:

"Consider well, O king, this new doctrine which is preached to us;
for I now declare, what I have learned for certain, that the old
religion has no virtue in it. For none of your people has been more
diligent than I in the worship of our gods; yet many receive more
favors from you, and are preferred above me, and are more
prosperous in their affairs. If the old gods had any discernment,
they would surely favor me, since I have been most diligent in
their service. It is expedient, therefore, if this new faith that
is preached is any more profitable than the old, that we accept it
without delay."

Whereupon Coifi, who as a priest has hitherto been obliged to ride upon an
ass with wagging ears, calls loudly for a horse, a prancing horse, a
stallion, and cavorts off, a crowd running at his heels, to hurl a spear
into the shrine where he lately worshiped. He is a good type of the
political demagogue, who clamors for progress when he wants an office, and
whose spear is more likely to be hurled at the back of a friend than at the
breast of an enemy.

Then a pagan chief rises to speak, and we bow to a nobler motive. His
allegory of the mystery of life is like a strain of Anglo-Saxon poetry; it
moves us deeply, as it moved his hearers ten centuries ago:

"This present life of man, O king, in comparison with the time that
is hidden from us, is as the flight of a sparrow through the room
where you sit at supper, with companions around you and a good fire
on the hearth. Outside are the storms of wintry rain and snow. The
sparrow flies in at one opening, and instantly out at another:
whilst he is within he is sheltered from the winter storms, but
after a moment of pleasant weather he speeds from winter back to
winter again, and vanishes from your sight into the darkness whence
he came. Even so the life of man appears for a little time; but of
what went before and of what comes after we are wholly ignorant. If
this new religion can teach us anything of greater certainty, it
surely deserves to be followed." [Footnote: Bede, _Historia_,
Book II, chap xiii, a free translation]

CADMON (SEVENTH CENTURY). In a beautiful chapter of Bede's History we may
read how Cadmon (d. 680) discovered his gift of poetry. He was, says the
record, a poor unlettered servant of the Abbess Hilda, in her monastery at
Whitby. At that time (and here is an interesting commentary on monastic
culture) singing and poetry were so familiar that, whenever a feast was
given, a harp would be brought in, and each monk or guest would in turn
entertain the company with a song or poem to his own musical accompaniment.
But Cadmon could not sing, and when he saw the harp coming down the table
he would slip away ashamed, to perform his humble duties in the monastery:

"Now it happened once that he did this thing at a certain
festivity, and went out to the stable to care for the horses, this
duty being assigned him for that night. As he slept at the usual
time one stood by him, saying, 'Cadmon, sing me something.' He
answered, 'I cannot sing, and that is why I came hither from the
feast.' But he who spake unto him said again, 'Cadmon, sing to me.'
And he said, 'What shall I sing?' And that one said, 'Sing the
beginning of created things.' Thereupon Cadmon began to sing verses
that he had never heard before, of this import:

Nu scylun hergan hefaenriches ward ...
Now shall we hallow the warden of heaven,
He the Creator, he the Allfather,
Deeds of his might and thoughts of his mind...."

[Illustration: CADMON CROSS AT WHITBY ABBEY]

In the morning he remembered the words, and came humbly to the monks to
recite the first recorded Christian hymn in our language. And a very noble
hymn it is. The monks heard him in wonder, and took him to the Abbess
Hilda, who gave order that Cadmon should receive instruction and enter the
monastery as one of the brethren. Then the monks expounded to him the
Scriptures. He in turn, reflecting on what he had heard, echoed it back to
the monks "in such melodious words that his teachers became his pupils."
So, says the record, the whole course of Bible history was turned into
excellent poetry.

About a thousand years later, in the days of Milton, an Anglo-Saxon
manuscript was discovered containing a metrical paraphrase of the books of
Genesis, Exodus and Daniel, and these were supposed to be some of the poems
mentioned in Bede's narrative. A study of the poems (now known as the
Cadmonian Cycle) leads to the conclusion that they were probably the work
of two or three writers, and it has not been determined what part Cadmon
had in their composition. The nobility of style in the Genesis poem and the
picturesque account of the fallen angels (which reappears in _Paradise
Lost_) have won for Cadmon his designation as the Milton of the
Anglo-Saxon period. [Footnote: A friend of Milton, calling himself
Franciscus Junius, first printed the Cadmon poems in Antwerp (_cir_.
1655) during Milton's lifetime. The Puritan poet was blind at the time, and
it is not certain that he ever saw or heard the poems; yet there are many
parallelisms in the earlier and later works which warrant the conclusion
that Milton was influenced by Cadmon's work.]

CYNEWULF (EIGHTH CENTURY). There is a variety of poems belonging to the
Cynewulf Cycle, and of some of these Cynewulf (born _cir_. 750) was
certainly the author, since he wove his name into the verses in the manner
of an acrostic. Of Cynewulf's life we know nothing with certainty; but from
various poems which are attributed to him, and which undoubtedly reflect
some personal experience, scholars have constructed the following
biography,--which may or may not be true.

In his early life Cynewulf was probably a wandering scop of the old pagan
kind, delighting in wild nature, in adventure, in the clamor of fighting
men. To this period belong his "Riddles" [Footnote: These riddles are
ancient conundrums, in which some familiar object, such as a bow, a ship, a
storm lashing the shore, the moon riding the clouds like a Viking's boat,
is described in poetic language, and the last line usually calls on the
hearer to name the object described. See Cook and Tinker, _Translations
from Old English Poetry_.] and his vigorous descriptions of the sea and
of battle, which show hardly a trace of Christian influence. Then came
trouble to Cynewulf, perhaps in the ravages of the Danes, and some deep
spiritual experience of which he writes in a way to remind us of the
Puritan age:

"In the prison of the night I pondered with myself. I was stained
with my own deeds, bound fast in my sins, hard smitten with
sorrows, walled in by miseries."

A wondrous vision of the cross, "brightest of beacons," shone suddenly
through his darkness, and led him forth into light and joy. Then he wrote
his "Vision of the Rood" and probably also _Juliana_ and _The
Christ_. In the last period of his life, a time of great serenity, he
wrote _Andreas_, a story of St. Andrew combining religious instruction
with extraordinary adventure; _Elene_, which describes the search for
the cross on which Christ died, and which is a prototype of the search for
the Holy Grail; and other poems of the same general kind. [Footnote: There
is little agreement among scholars as to who wrote most of these poems. The
only works to which Cynewulf signs his name are _The Christ_,
_Elene_, _Juliana_ and _Fates of the Apostles_. All others
are doubtful, and our biography of Cynewulf is largely a matter of pleasant
speculation.] Aside from the value of these works as a reflection of
Anglo-Saxon ideals, they are our best picture of Christianity as it
appeared in England during the eighth and ninth centuries.

ALFRED THE GREAT (848-901). We shall understand the importance of Alfred's
work if we remember how his country fared when he became king of the West
Saxons, in 871. At that time England lay at the mercy of the Danish
sea-rovers. Soon after Bede's death they fell upon Northumbria, hewed out
with their swords a place of settlement, and were soon lords of the whole
north country. Being pagans ("Thor's men" they called themselves) they
sacked the monasteries, burned the libraries, made a lurid end of the
civilization which men like Columb and Bede had built up in
North-Humberland. Then they pushed southward, and were in process of
paganizing all England when they were turned back by the heroism of Alfred.
How he accomplished his task, and how from his capital at Winchester he
established law and order in England, is recorded in the histories. We are
dealing here with literature, and in this field Alfred is distinguished in
two ways: first, by his preservation of early English poetry; and second,
by his own writing, which earned for him the title of father of English
prose. Finding that some fragments of poetry had escaped the fire of the
Danes, he caused search to be made for old manuscripts, and had copies made
of all that were legible. [Footnote: These copies were made in Alfred's
dialect (West Saxon) not in the Northumbrian dialect in which they were
first written.] But what gave Alfred deepest concern was that in all his
kingdom there were few priests and no laymen who could read or write their
own language. As he wrote sadly:

"King Alfred sends greeting to Bishop Werfrith in words of love and
friendship. Let it be known to thee that it often comes to my mind
what wise men and what happy times were formerly in England, ... I
remember what I saw before England had been ravaged and burned, how
churches throughout the whole land were filled with treasures of
books. And there was also a multitude of God's servants, but these
had no knowledge of the books: they could not understand them
because they were not written in their own language. It was as if
the books said, 'Our fathers who once occupied these places loved
wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and left it to us. We
see here their footprints, but we cannot follow them, and therefore
have we lost both their wealth and their wisdom, because we would
not incline our hearts to their example.' When I remember this, I
marvel that good and wise men who were formerly in England, and who
had learned these books, did not translate them into their own
language. Then I answered myself and said, 'They never thought that
their children would be so careless, or that learning would so
decay.'" [Footnote: A free version of part of Alfred's preface to
his translation of Pope Gregory's _Cura Pastoralis_, which
appeared in English as the Hirdeboc or Shepherd's Book.]

To remedy the evil, Alfred ordered that every freeborn Englishman should
learn to read and write his own language; but before he announced the order
he followed it himself. Rather late in his boyhood he had learned to spell
out an English book; now with immense difficulty he took up Latin, and
translated the best works for the benefit of his people. His last notable
work was the famous _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_.

[Sidenote: ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE]

At that time it was customary in monasteries to keep a record of events
which seemed to the monks of special importance, such as the coming of a
bishop, the death of a king, an eclipse of the moon, a battle with the
Danes. Alfred found such a record at Winchester, rewrote it (or else caused
it to be rewritten) with numerous additions from Bede's History and other
sources, and so made a fairly complete chronicle of England. This was sent
to other monasteries, where it was copied and enlarged, so that several
different versions have come down to us. The work thus begun was continued
after Alfred's death, until 1154, and is the oldest contemporary history
possessed by any modern nation in its own language.

* * * * *

ANGLO-NORMAN OR MIDDLE-ENGLISH PERIOD (1066-1350)

SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. A glance at the following selections will show
how Anglo-Saxon was slowly approaching our English speech of to-day. The
first is from a religious book called _Ancren Riwle_ (Rule of the
Anchoresses, _cir_. 1225). The second, written about a century later,
is from the riming chronicle, or verse history, of Robert Manning or Robert
of Brunne. In it we note the appearance of rime, a new thing in English
poetry, borrowed from the French, and also a few words, such as "solace,"
which are of foreign origin:

"Hwoso hevide iseid to Eve, theo heo werp hire eien therone, 'A!
wend te awei; thu worpest eien o thi death!' hwat heved heo
ionswered? 'Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me?
The eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto
biholden.'"

"Whoso had said (or, if anyone had said) to Eve when she cast her
eye theron (i.e. on the apple) 'Ah! turn thou away; thou castest
eyes on thy death!' what would she have answered? 'My dear sir,
thou art wrong. Of what blamest thou me? The apple which I look
upon is forbidden me to eat, not to behold.'"

Lordynges that be now here,
If ye wille listene and lere [1]
All the story of Inglande,
Als Robert Mannyng wryten it fand,
And on Inglysch has it schewed,
Not for the lered [2] but for the lewed, [3]
For tho that on this land wonn [4]
That ne Latin ne Frankys conn, [5]
For to hauf solace and gamen
In felauschip when they sitt samen; [6]
And it is wisdom for to wytten [7]
The state of the land, and haf it wryten.

[Footnote 1: learn]
[Footnote 2: learned]
[Footnote 3: simple or ignorant]
[Footnote 4: those that dwell]
[Footnote 5: That neither Latin nor French know]
[Footnote 6: together]
[Footnote 7: know]

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. For a century after the Norman conquest native poetry
disappeared from England, as a river may sink into the earth to reappear
elsewhere with added volume and new characteristics. During all this time
French was the language not only of literature but of society and business;
and if anyone had declared at the beginning of the twelfth century, when
Norman institutions were firmly established in England, that the time was
approaching when the conquerors would forget their fatherland and their
mother tongue, he would surely have been called dreamer or madman. Yet the
unexpected was precisely what happened, and the Norman conquest is
remarkable alike for what it did and for what it failed to do.

[Illustration: DOMESDAY BOOK
From a facsimile edition published in 1862.
The volumes, two in number, were kept in the chest here shown]

It accomplished, first, the nationalization of England, uniting the petty
Saxon earldoms into one powerful kingdom; and second, it brought into
English life, grown sad and stern, like a man without hope, the spirit of
youth, of enthusiasm, of eager adventure after the unknown,--in a word, the
spirit of romance, which is but another name for that quest of some Holy
Grail in which youth is forever engaged.

NORMAN LITERATURE. One who reads the literature that the conquerors brought
to England must be struck by the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon and the
Norman-French spirit. For example, here is the death of a national hero as
portrayed in _The Song of Roland_, an old French epic, which the
Normans first put into polished verse:

Li quens Rollans se jut desuz un pin,
Envers Espaigne en ad turnet son vis,
De plusurs choscs a remembrer le prist....

"Then Roland placed himself beneath a pine tree. Towards Spain he
turned his face. Of many things took he remembrance: of various
lands where he had made conquests; of sweet France and his kindred;
of Charlemagne, his feudal lord, who had nurtured him. He could not
refrain from sighs and tears; neither could he forget himself in
need. He confessed his sins and besought the Lord's mercy. He
raised his right glove and offered it to God; Saint Gabriel from
his hand received the offering. Then upon his breast he bowed his
head; he joined his hands and went to his end. God sent down his
cherubim, and Saint Michael who delivers from peril. Together with
Saint Gabriel they departed, bearing the Count's soul to Paradise."

We have not put Roland's ceremonious exit into rime and meter; neither do
we offer any criticism of a scene in which the death of a national hero
stirs no interest or emotion, not even with the help of Gabriel and the
cherubim. One is reminded by contrast of Scyld, who fares forth alone in
his Viking ship to meet the mystery of death; or of that last scene of
human grief and grandeur in _Beowulf_ where a few thanes bury their
dead chief on a headland by the gray sea, riding their war steeds around
the memorial mound with a chant of sorrow and victory.

The contrast is even more marked in the mass of Norman literature: in
romances of the maidens that sink underground in autumn, to reappear as
flowers in spring; of Alexander's journey to the bottom of the sea in a
crystal barrel, to view the mermaids and monsters; of Guy of Warwick, who
slew the giant Colbrant and overthrew all the knights of Europe, just to
win a smile from his Felice; of that other hero who had offended his lady
by forgetting one of the commandments of love, and who vowed to fill a
barrel with his tears, and did it. The Saxons were as serious in speech as
in action, and their poetry is a true reflection of their daily life; but
the Normans, brave and resourceful as they were in war and statesmanship,
turned to literature for amusement, and indulged their lively fancy in
fables, satires, garrulous romances, like children reveling in the lore of
elves and fairies. As the prattle of a child was the power that awakened
Silas Marner from his stupor of despair, so this Norman element of gayety,
of exuberant romanticism, was precisely what was needed to rouse the
sterner Saxon mind from its gloom and lethargy.

[Illustration: THE NORMAN STAIR, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL]

THE NEW NATION. So much, then, the Normans accomplished: they brought
nationality into English life, and romance into English literature. Without
essentially changing the Saxon spirit they enlarged its thought, aroused
its hope, gave it wider horizons. They bound England with their laws,
covered it with their feudal institutions, filled it with their ideas and
their language; then, as an anticlimax, they disappeared from English
history, and their institutions were modified to suit the Saxon
temperament. The race conquered in war became in peace the conquerors. The
Normans speedily forgot France, and even warred against it. They began to
speak English, dropping its cumbersome Teutonic inflections, and adding to
it the wealth of their own fine language. They ended by adopting England as
their country, and glorifying it above all others. "There is no land in the
world," writes a poet of the thirteenth century, "where so many good kings
and saints have lived as in the isle of the English. Some were holy martyrs
who died cheerfully for God; others had strength or courage like to that of
Arthur, Edmund and Cnut."

This poet, who was a Norman monk at Westminster Abbey, wrote about the
glories of England in the French language, and celebrated as the national
heroes a Celt, a Saxon and a Dane. [Footnote: The significance of this old
poem was pointed out by Jusserand, _Literary History of the English
People_, Vol. I, p. 112.]

So in the space of two centuries a new nation had arisen, combining the
best elements of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French people, with a
considerable mixture of Celtic and Danish elements. Out of the union of
these races and tongues came modern English life and letters.

GEOFFREY AND THE LEGENDS OF ARTHUR. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a Welshman,
familiar from his youth with Celtic legends; also he was a monk who knew
how to write Latin; and the combination was a fortunate one, as we shall
see.

Long before Geoffrey produced his celebrated History (_cir._ 1150),
many stories of the Welsh hero Arthur [Footnote: Who Arthur was has never
been determined. There was probably a chieftain of that name who was active
in opposing the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, about the year 500; but
Gildas, who wrote a Chronicle of Britain only half a century later, does
not mention him; neither does Bede, who made study of all available records
before writing his History. William of Malmesbury, a chronicler of the
twelfth century, refers to "the warlike Arthur of whom the Britons tell so
many extravagant fables, a man to be celebrated not in idle tales but in
true history." He adds that there were two Arthurs, one a Welsh war-chief
(not a king), and the other a myth or fairy creation. This, then, may be
the truth of the matter, that a real Arthur, who made a deep impression on
the Celtic imagination, was soon hidden in a mass of spurious legends. That
Bede had heard these legends is almost certain; that he did not mention
them is probably due to the fact that he considered Arthur to be wholly
mythical.] were current in Britain and on the Continent; but they were
never written because of a custom of the Middle Ages which required that,
before a legend could be recorded, it must have the authority of some Latin
manuscript. Geoffrey undertook to supply such authority in his _Historia
regum britanniae_, or History of the Kings of Britain, in which he
proved Arthur's descent from Roman ancestors. [Footnote: After the landing
of the Romans in Britain a curious mingling of traditions took place, and
in Geoffrey's time native Britons considered themselves as children of
Brutus of Rome, and therefore as grandchildren of Aneas of Troy.] He quoted
liberally from an ancient manuscript which, he alleged, established
Arthur's lineage, but which he did not show to others. A storm instantly
arose among the writers of that day, most of whom denounced Geoffrey's
Latin manuscript as a myth, and his History as a shameless invention. But
he had shrewdly anticipated such criticism, and issued this warning to the
historians, which is solemn or humorous according to your point of view:

"I forbid William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon to speak of
the kings of Britain, since they have not seen the book which
Walter Archdeacon of Oxford [who was dead, of course] brought out
of Brittany."

It is commonly believed that Geoffrey was an impostor, but in such matters
one should be wary of passing judgment. Many records of men, cities,
empires, have suddenly arisen from the tombs to put to shame the scientists
who had denied their existence; and it is possible that Geoffrey had seen
one of the legion of lost manuscripts. The one thing certain is, that if he
had any authority for his History he embellished the same freely from
popular legends or from his own imagination, as was customary at that time.

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