and the keeping of faith. The new religion found potent allies in the camp of its foes, something, indeed, approaching the spiritual temper it desired to inculcate. There was need to soften the manners, to subdue the ferocity of the old English and their poetry; there was hardly need in order to transform it for Christian use, to heighten its seriousness, or altogether to alter its spirit and character. The ethical ideals, the sense of loyalty, the generous instincts abroad in it passed easily into religious literature. Some virtues peculiarly Christian our ancestors must in the beginning have found it difficult to accept-forbearance, humility, meekness—yet the converts, once made, displayed a sincerity of faith and a religious zeal which distinguished the English branch of the Church among all others. But if Christianity thus tamed the fiercer characteristics of the race, it was forced in turn to submit to ideals, political and literary, grown in a pagan soil.

The early Christian poetry of England is hardly to be distinguished in temper and spirit, it is not at all to be distinguished in form and method, from that of the earlier heroic and heathen lays. Nothing at first sight might appear more alien to Christian feeling and sentiment than the poetry of battle, to the lamb of peace than the wolf of war. There was nevertheless an aspect of Christianity, a figure under which its nature might be partially revealed. It was possible to represent it as a warfare. Under what better symbol than that of an age-long conflict between the powers of light and the powers of darkness could Christianity be presented to a warrior race? Thus translated into the terms of a life peculiar to them, our forefathers discovered within the new religion room for the old ways of thought, the ideals of their military life. Much, particularly in the Old Testament story, found ready acceptance. The wanderings of the Israelites, the tribal battles, the disaffections and revolts-all this they grasped easily. The conceptions, too, of God as "the Lord of hosts," a King "mighty in battle," of Satan as a chief in revolt, surrounded by rebel followers, were in no respect foreign to their mental experience. In the early literature of the converted English it was inevitable

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that Christianity should be transformed into the image of the heroic world. Into its scheme and history entered prince and earl, thane and clansman, all the details of long understood social and political relations. "Wyrd" by natural translation became Providence, Christ a man of war " who invades Hell as a king the territory of his enemy, the saints and patriarchs "ealdormen "9 and warriors," Abraham "a bold earl," the apostles "fierce and warlike leaders of the host," Peter and Paul thanes of Christ." The phrases and motives of the old pagan poetry, strangely inappropriate in our ears, passed into the new, and Christianity is forced for a season to accommodate itself to ideals not its own. The revolted "thanes of Satan" engage in a hand-to-hand struggle with Christ and his followers, the bow and spear are their weapons, Hell is the prison to which God, the victorious monarch, consigns his captives, loyal service to Him is such allegiance as the warrior owes his chief.

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The subjects of this early Christian literature are portions of the Bible story, as in the Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel,1 preserved in a single MS. now in the Bodleian, or narratives of saintly lives like Juliana, in the Exeter Book, or tales from the Apocrypha, like Judith, contained in the same MS. as Beowulf, but in them all are preserved the old seafaring and martial experiences, the old relations between earl and comitatus, the old note of exultation in victory, the familiar references to the horny-nibbed raven, the dewy-winged eagle, and the wolf, greedy for slaughter, to the trusty sword and byrnie, the meadhall, the crowded ale-benches, the gifts, the treasure of rings and jewels. Religious though the subjects are, the treatment remains epic, and only where such treatment is possible is the glow of inspiration felt. The earliest of these poems, Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, have been ascribed to a late seventh-century poet, Caedmon, most of the later, Elene, Andreas, Juliana, to Cynewulf, a Northumbrian poet of the eighth century. Of Caedmon we know nothing save from the famous passage in Bede's Ecclesiastical History (A.D. 731), which describes

1 Exodus and Daniel have been edited in the Belles-Lettres Series by Professor Blackburn, Juliana in the same series by Professor Strunk, Judith by Professor Cook.

him as a certain brother of Whitby monastery, "greatly distinguished and honoured by divine grace," whose power of song was the gift of God, since he had lived in the world till of advanced years and had learnt nothing of the art, and when the harp went round was accustomed to leave the feast in shame and retire to his home. To him upon one such occasion there came in a dream a man who saluted him, and calling him by his name, requested him to sing. And Caedmon answered, I cannot sing." Then he who spoke to him replied, "Yet it is in thy power to sing," and Caedmon asked, "What shall I sing?" And the man said, "Sing the beginning of all things." And Caedmon sang, and when he awoke from sleep he remembered all that he had sung, and added to that song others and all to the praise of God. It was formerly usual to ascribe the Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel all to Caedmon, but it is now customary to regard them as separate poems and the work of different authors. Yet although these works in the form in which we possess them can no longer be claimed for Caedmon, it is probable that he was the author of similar poems, and portions even of these may with probability be assigned to him.

The earlier, or Caedmonian, Genesis (which has to be distinguished from an interpolation in the MS. of much later date, about 900, generally known as Genesis B.), gives the narrative as in the Scripture story, down to the sacrifice of Isaac; it is followed by the narrative of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea as related in Exodus, and by a poetical version of the first five chapters of Daniel, which leaves unfinished the account of Belshazzar's feast. Of these poems probably the earliest in date of composition is Exodus, the next in date Daniel, and the latest Genesis.1

The Genesis has a varied interest. Not only does it exhibit that curious blend of Christian and pagan sentiment, and that heightened epic manner so characteristic of early English poetry, it is a poem of rare quality distinguished for the imaginative elevation in the opening description of the creation of the world

1 Part of Genesis may be older than either Exodus or Daniel.

and account of the fall of man. A worthy precursor, we might call the author, of the poet of Paradise Lost. Nor is it impossible that his work was known to Milton in the first printed edition of 1655 made in Amsterdam, and that he had it in mind during the composition of his epic. The passages descriptive of the Deluge; of the expulsion of the rebellious angels; of the Hell, "flaming, yet without light," "terrible with fire"; of Satan imprisoned behind "the great bars of rugged iron hammered hot"; or such a battle piece as that between Abraham and the Elamites, prove its author beyond doubt a poet.

"So they rushed together-Loud were then the lances,

Savage then the slaughter-hosts. Sadly sang the war fowl,

With her feathers dank with dew, midst the darting of the shafts, Hoping for the corpses. Hastened then the heroes

In their mighty masses, and their mood was full of thought.

Then was hard play there,

Interchanging of death-darts, mickle cry of war!

Loud the crash of battle! With their hands the heroes
Drew from sheaths their swords ring-hilted,

Doughty of the edges!" 1

The Genesis is throughout distinguished by a rare activity of imagination; the descriptions of Satan particularly attain a surprising reflective depth and solemn splendour.

The Exodus is chiefly remarkable for the epic nobility of the description of the Israelites in their flight from Egypt, the pursuit by Pharaoh, and the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Here all the martial ardour of the Teutonic race flames out.

"Then they saw

Forth and forward faring, Pharaoh's war-array,

Gliding on a grove of spears; glittering the hosts!

Fluttered then the banners, there the folk the march trod.

Onwards surged the war, strode the spears along,

Blickered the broad shields; blew aloud the trumpets.

"Wheeling round in gyres, yelled the fowls of war,

Of the battle greedy; hoarsely barked the raven,

Dew upon his feathers, o'er the fallen corpses;

Swart that chooser of the slain! Sang aloud the wolves
At the eve their horrid song, hoping for the carrion,

Kindless were the beasts, cruelly they threaten;

Death did these march-warders, all the midnight through,

Howl along the hostile trail-hideous slaughter of the host."

1 For this and the following translations in this chapter I am indebted to Mr. Stopford Brooke's History of Early English Literature. For alternative versions see the Appendix.

Daniel contains no such striking passages as meet us in Genesis and Exodus; it is more prosaic, more didactic, a poem in which the epic objectivity suffers from the presence of the poet and his personal emotions.

Judith, a fragment which relates the story of Judith and Holofernes, was also formerly attributed to Caedmon. The problem of its authorship remains unsolved, but it is certainly later by centuries than the Caedmonian poems, and though some critics claim for it the highest poetical merit, in the judgment of most readers Judith will be found tamer in spirit and more artificial in tone than Genesis or Exodus. It sprang, however, from the same epic impulse, and endeavours like the rest of this early Christian poetry to substitute, for a purpose, Biblical history for national while it preserved the heroic manner. It was thus possible to attract to the new themes men who still were drawn by racial instinct to the older interests of war and warriors.

Of Cynewulf, who flourished about a hundred years later, we know hardly more than of Caedmon. He appears to have been something of a scholar, to have passed much of his life as a minstrel, to have lived to a great age, and to have been the author of many poems preserved for us in the Exeter and Vercelli books. How many is doubtful, but it is certain that he wrote Elene and Juliana, since he has himself recorded it by the insertion of runes which spell the name Cynewulf. The influence of Latin Christianity is a marked feature in this poet's work, not merely in the choice and treatment of his subjects, but in the language and construction. The epic impulse, it is apparent, has already suffered from antagonistic influences and the symptoms of a rapid decay are prominent. Lyrical and subjective elements successfully assert themselves, religious zeal overpowers distinctively pagan sentiment. Still, as in the Caedmonian poems, the smouldering fires burst forth even in the work of this scholar and fervid apostle of the Christian creed. Juliana, the story of a Christian maid who refuses to wed a pagan, opens like Beowulf with the customary Hwaet! Hark! by which the Anglo-Saxon scôp called the attention of