BOOK
IX.

the greedy battle-hawk, of the old wise men)
and the grey beast,

since from the East hither
the wolf in the wood.

the Angles and the Saxons
Nor had there been a came up
greater slaughter

over the broad waves,
in this island

and sought the Britons. ever yet

The illustrious smiths of war ! of people destroyed,

the Welsh overcame; before this

the earls excelling in honor ! by the edges of swords, and obtained the country. 19 this is what the books tell us In this song we may observe this artless, order : in the two first paragraphs, the actions of Athelstan and his brother are recited. The West Saxous and the Mercians are then separately praised. The fate of their enemies follows. The deaths of the five kings and seven earls are commemorated. Anlaf's flight and escape are sung, and Constantine's, whose son fell in the conflict. The poet then exults in the superior prowess of his countrymen. He conducts the remains of the defeated army to Dublin, and the victorious princes into West Saxony. He closes his song with two poetical commonplaces; one on the birds of prey, who crowd the field of battle, and the other on the superiority of this victory to all former ones.

The song on Edgar's death is much shorter :

Here ended

the men on earth, his earthly joys

call so transitory. Edgar, England's king: On that month which every he chose for himself another where light,

in this country's soil beautiful and pleasant ! they, that were before and left this feeble life, in the art of numbers which the children of the rightly instructed, nations,

call July;

CHAP.

I.

in his youth departed the Lawgiver of the sky; on the eighteenth day, when man broke his rights. Edgar from life

And then was also driven the giver of the bracelets of the beloved man, the nobles :

Oslac, from the earth, and his son took

over the rolling of the waves, afterwards to the kingdom ; over the bath of the sea-fowl, a child not full grown;

the long-haired hero, the ruler of earls :

wise, and in words discreet, Edward was his name, over the roaring of the waters, an excelling hero.

over the country of the whales ; Ten nights before

of an home deprived. from Britain departed

And then was shown the bishop so good

up in the sky in native mind,

a star in the firmament. Cyneward was his name. This the firm of spirit, Then was in Mercia,

the men of skilful mind, to my knowledge,

call extensively wide and

every
where

a comet by name, the praise of the Supreme Go- men skilled in art,

wise truth-tellers. destroyed on the earth.

There was over the nation Many were disturbed the vengeance of the Supreme. of God's skilful servants. Widely spread Then was much groaning hunger over the mountains. to those that in their breasts That again Heaven's carried the burning love

Ruler removed ; of their Creator in their mind. the Lord of angels ! Then the

of He again gave bliss miracles

to every inhabitant so much despised,

by the earth's fertility. 20 the Governor of victory;

These historical songs have none of the story, nor the striking traits of description which interest us in the ballads of a subsequent age. In the Saxon songs we see poetry in its rudest form, before the art of narration was understood. The simplicity of the ballad deceives us into a belief that it is the easy and natural performance of the less cul

vernor

was

source

20 Sax. Ch. Gib. 122. Ing. 160.

BOOK
IX.

tivated ages of society. But the truth seems to be, that the excellence of the ballad is as difficult of attainment as any other species of approved poetry, and is the result not merely of genius, but also of great cultivation. In the ruder ages of nations, the ballad is the sort of poetry the most frequently composed and the most generally recited. The incessant cultivation of this particular species creates at least an excellence in it which subsequent ages do not attain, because other departments of the Parnassian art are then attended to, and the ballad becomes less used.

The song of Canute on Ely was the composition of the eleventh century; and being much later written than that on Athelstan, and therefore of a more cultivated kind, seems to have approached nearer that lively and dramatic form which interests us so much in the ballads of the following ages. This little fragment is, indeed, the oldest specimen of the dramatic or genuine ballad which we have in the Anglo-Saxon language.

The genuine ballad seems to have originated when the old Saxon poetry began to decline. The laboured metaphor, the endless periphrasis, the violent inversion, and the abrupt transition, being the great features of the Saxon poetry; these constituted that pompousness which William of Malmsbury truly states to have been its great characteristic. But it was impossible that while these continued prevalent and popular, the genuine ballad could have appeared. The ballad, therefore, probably arose from more vulgar and homely poets — from men who could not bend language into that difficult and artificial strain which the genius of the Anglo-Saxon bard was educated to use. The am

I.

bulatory glee-men, who strove to please the public CHAP. by their merry-andrew antics, were most probably the first inventors of the genuine ballad. While at one time they tumbled and danced, showed their bears, and frolicked before the people in the dresses of various animals, at others they may have told little tales to interest the mob, from whose liberality they drew their maintenance.

INCIDENTS narrated in verse were more intelligible than the pompous songs of the regular poets, and far more interesting to the people. In time they gained admission to the hall and the palace ; and, by the style of Canute's ballad, this revolution must have been achieved by the beginning of the eleventh century. Then the harsh and obscure style of the old Saxon poetry began to be unpopular; and being still more discredited after the Norman conquest, it was at length completely superseded by the ballad and the metrical romance.

CHAP. II.

ANGLO-Saxon Narrative Poems, or Romances. — the Poem on

BEOWULF.

BOOK The origin of the metrical romance has been

lately an interesting subject of literary research; and as it has not been yet completely elucidated, it seems proper to inquire whether any light can be thrown upon it from the ancient Saxon poetry.

It was asserted by Mr. Ritson, in conformity with the prevailing opinion of antiquaries, that the Anglo-Saxons had no poetical romance in their native tongue. But he grounds his opinion on the fact, that no romance had been at that time discovered in Saxon but a prose translation from the Latin of the legend of Apollonius of Tyre. The Anglo-Saxon poem on Beowulf, which, after having been for ages neglected by our antiquaries, was particularly pointed out to the notice of the public in the first edition of this history in the

year 1805, proves that this opinion was erroneous.

This work is a poem on the actions of its hero Beowulf. If it describes those deeds only which he actually performed, it would claim the title of an historical poem; but if, as few can doubt, the Anglo-Saxon poet has amused himself with pourtraying the warrior, and the incidents of his fancy, then it is a specimen of an Anglo-Saxon poetical romance, true in costume and manners, but with an invented story. It is the most interesting relic