wich and Ipswich, and in this later descent upon the English coast in 991 was opposed by the old East-Saxon Ealdorman and his followers, who disputed the passage of the river. The poem tells how the Viking Herald, calling across the river in loud and threatening tones, demands tribute from the English as price of the Danes' departure, how it is indignantly refused by Byrhtnoth, how the wily pirates request an unopposed passage of the stream and a fair fight, how the Saxon leader in his pride and confidence waives his advantage of position, and permits his foes to cross, and how the battle is joined. A fierce hand-to-hand struggle takes place, in which Byrhtnoth is slain, but dying still exhorts his men, and around his body his loyal followers fall, fighting to the last. 66 In Maldon for the last time in our literature the old epic strain of Beowulf is revived. Once again flames out in a Christian epoch the spirit of the old pagan lays. It was doubtless the work of a Christian, but of a Christian in whom the defence of home and kindred against the Danish sea-robbers, the wolves of blood," had roused the smouldering pagan fires. The author may himself have seen, he must surely have had speech with men who had seen the battle. So vivid a picture, so detailed, so exact in its references to names and places, could hardly have been the work of the unaided imagination. The last stand of Byrhtnoth and his companions around the body of their chief in this the latest of our authentic heroic poems seems to typify the resistance of the epic spirit to the new literature, and its final overthrow. The splendour of Maldon rises even above the splendour of a good fight well told, of poetry which is worthy of the indomitable courage it describes. It rises above the splendour of a death-grapple in which men are minded to die rather than give ground, of a Homeric strain in which are exchanged the ringing challenges and defiances of the old heroic world. The splendour of Maldon springs from the mingled daring and chivalry to the foe which, casting aside advantage of position, offers a fight on equal terms, from the temper which, in this, as it were, its final utterance, seems to express for us in the words of Byrhtwold, "the old comrade," the whole creed of heroism, "Harder should be the spirit, the heart all the bolder, courage the greater as the strength grows less." Plain as is the style of Maldon, plain to bareness, there is perhaps no more spirited or stirring battle piece in the language. From it radiate the best qualities of the English race, its hardihood, its magnanimity, its loyalty, its contempt for cowardice. Such a pillar as that of which Pausanias speaks,“ on which were inscribed the paternal names of those who at Thermopylae sustained the attack of the Medes," 1 should mark the spot where this English Leonidas and his people fought and died. But, if there be no pillar, the poem is their more enduring monument. Some conception of the contents may be gathered from the following versions of portions of the poem. "Hard by the shore stood In battle's fierce fray. Then purchase thee peace now With treasure; and freedom, Their chief, may'st thou give them Thy people, from pain. Take from us seamen Peace at the price of it, Gold at our pleasure, And to our galleys we Go, on the flood faring Answered him Byrhtnoth, What say they, my folk here? For tribute the spear-shaft They send you, fell-pointed, Their swords, and the weapons That worthless to you are, 1 Quoted by Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 213. Sea-rover's Herald! For base were the yielding Unfought for, fared ship-ward, Bore back with you gold- But us beseems better Of battle, ere tribute We tend you, we play.' Then waded the war-wolves, The host of the Vikings, West over Panta, For water they recked not. Across the bright river High bore they their bucklers, The shipmen their linden shields Lifted to land. There 'gainst them Byrhtnoth Fiercely in readiness Stood, with his men ranked, Facing the foemen. With bucklers close-linked he Bade them together stand Fast 'gainst the foe. Nigh then was the fray and The fame of the fighting, Nigh was the doom of men Loud sounded the clamour Greedy for carrion Raven and eagle rose, Tumult was there. Forth flew the spears Sharp-filed, and the javelins Whetted to slay. Bows there were busy, The dart and the buckler, The battle was bitter. Warriors on either hand Fell, and the flower of the Maldon is not an epic poem; it is, like Finnsburh, an epic episode. It is such an episode as might have filled a book in an epic conceived like that of Homer. It is of course also a belated episode, the event itself occurred too late in history to be taken up into any epic process. From just such lays, however, dealing with matter of the same kind in the same spirit, a great national epic might possibly have sprung.1 But architectural faculty which enabled the poet or poets of the Iliad to invent a scheme, such as the wrath of Achilles, was wanting. By means of that scheme the absence of Achilles from the war-episode after episode was introduced without destroying the unity of the poem. Room was left for the achievements of other heroes, while the nominal hero sulked in his tent, and a mass of heterogeneous material thus swept within the framework of a single poem. In the Odyssey the device employed is a different one. The action waits while Odysseus at the court of Alcinous relates in four books his earlier adventures, into which narrative is set all the matter through which the poet found it inconvenient or impossible to conduct his hero himself. Three more books are occupied with the adventures of Telemachus on his search for his father. The Teutonic epic process reached the episode; it went further, in Beowulf it made a practically successful effort to unify several episodes. But to impose unity upon such a complex of episodes and characters as meet us in Homer was beyond its strength. At a critical moment in its development it met unfriendly forces. It combated those forces indeed vigorously, imposed its ideals and methods in a field very foreign to that of its own interests, but, sapped of its strength, gradually lost ground, declined, and finally sank below the mind's horizon. 1 It is held by some critics, perhaps with truth, that the Teutonic lays, such as we possess or can from the fragments imagine, characterised as they are by a certain independence and native sufficiency, had reached the highest development possible to the type, and would not readily have yielded themselves to a process of " stitching" into epos of the eminent or Homeric pattern. See Professor Ker's Epic and Romance. CHAPTER V EARLY CHRISTIAN EPIC THE epic matter, the hero-sagas our ancestors brought with them to England, attained in Beowulf its noblest and most comprehensive form. Of this heroic material-there must have been store of it—none was written, and Beowulf itself was stitched together from lays for long carried in the memory and orally recited. But its ideals, the ideals of a branch of the Germanic peoples, are there refined and ennobled by contact with Christianity and the Celtic civilisation of Britain. There is clear evidence of an alien influence at work. The heroic sagas-ruder compositions, the image of a ruder society-submitted to the spiritual and softening forces of their altered life when the invaders crossed the North Sea and from pirates became settlers. Of Anglo-Saxon poetry untouched by such influences nothing of importance survives. "The immigrants in Britain did not," as Ten Brink says, "live with a native population permeated by Roman culture, as in Gaul, and ready to communicate this culture. Only dumb witnesses, monuments of Roman art and industry, spoke to them of the greatness of the people whose place they had taken." The settlers preserved their language, they preserved their political constitution, they preserved many of the ancient virtues of the race, yielding only, after a campaign in which for long the issue seemed doubtful, to the Christian creed. That submission was of itself, however, sufficient to prove fatal to the epic impulse. In the campaign against Teutonic paganism Christianity was powerfully assisted by certain features in the political organisation and in the character of the English settlers. Even Christian sentiment discerned in these fierce sea-farers, and in their literature—the old heathen sagas themselves friendly elements, a high sense of duty, a moral depth and power of feeling, a reverence for the mysterious, a respect for chastity |