IV. When their words would not fall easily into the CHAP. desired rythm, they were satisfied with an approach to it, and with this mixture of regular and irregular cadence all their poetry seems to have been composed. By this rythm, by their inversions of phrase, by their transitions, by their omissions of particles, by their contractions of phrase, and, above all, by their metaphors and perpetual periphrasis, their poetry seems to have been distinguished. That they occasionally sought rime and alliteration cannot be doubted, for we have some few Anglo-Saxon poems in rime. 3 But neither of these formed its constituent character, nor was any marked attention given to the prosodical quantity of their syllables, as Hickes supposed.* 3 3 Mr. J. Conybeare remarked, in the Exeter MS., the contents of which he first brought to our general knowledge, one Anglo-Saxon poem, entirely written in rime, with alliteration, Introd. xiv. His brother has inserted it with a translation, p. xviii-xxv. In some others he remarks that it occurs only in part, as in the extract which he has cited from the poem on the Day of Judgment, which has the following rimed passage: Thæt nu manna zehpylc That now every man Cpic thenden her panath who dwells here alive, Ceceosan mot May choose Either wounds of hell, Or the bright light, Or the vengeance of darkness ; Or glory with honours ; Or life, or death, Ibid. p. xxvi. BOOK IX. it, p. viii.; but I think it was as an occasional beauty, not, as in Pierce Ploughman, the fundamental principle. His opinion on the versification of the Saxon poetry deserves to be quoted; he thinks it belongs to the trochaic or dactylic species. It is to a metre of this kind, in which emphasis holds the place of quantity, that I would refer the verses of the Anglo-Saxons. They will be found to consist, for the most part, of feet of two or three syllables, each having the emphasis on the first, and analogous therefore to the trochee or dactyl, sometimes perhaps to the spondee of classic metre. Introd. xi. Mr. Bosworth has inserted Mr. Rask's opinion on this subject in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar. But Bede's statement, which I observed, and have quoted before in p. 264., gives us an Anglo-Saxon's own decisive information on this disputed subject. CHAP. V. Their Latin Poetry. V. The Latin poetry of the Anglo-Saxons origin. CHAP. ated from the Roman poetry, and was composed according to the rules of Roman prosody. Its Origin of authors were all ecclesiastics, who had studied the their Latin Poetry. classical writers and their imitators; and who folfowed, as nearly as their genius would permit them, the style and manner of classical composition. Sometimes they added a few absurd peculiarities, dictated by bad taste, and sometimes they used rime. But in general the regular hexameter verse was the predominant characteristic of their poems. The origin of their Latin poetry may be therefore easily explained. With the works of the classical writers we are all acquainted. As the Roman empire declined, the genius of poetry disappeared. Claudian emitted some of its departing rays. But after his death it would have sunk for ever in the utter night of the Gothic irruption, if the Christian clergy had not afforded it an asylum in their monasteries, and devoted their leisure to read and to imitate it. The Romans had diffused their language as their conquests and colonies spread; but it would have also perished when the Gothic irruptions destroyed their empire, if the Christian hierarchy had not preserved it. The German tribes who raised new sovereignties in the imperial provinces were successively converted to Christianity; and as the new faith chiefly emanated from Rome, one religious Α Α 4 IX. BOOK system pervaded the western part of Europe. The public worship was every where performed in Latin. All the dignified clergy and many others were perpetually visiting Rome. The most accessible and popular works of the fathers of the church were in the Latin language. And this was the only tongue in which the ecclesiastics of Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, and Italy could compose or correspond in to be understood by each other. Hence every ecclesiastic in every part of Europe, who aspired to any intellectual cultivation or distinction, was obliged to learn the Latin language, and to write in it. From this circumstance, they nourished a necessary attachment to the Latin authors; and thus the Latin language and the classical writers were preserved by the Christian clergy from that destruction which has entirely swept from us both the language and the writings of Phænicia, Carthage, Babylon, and Egypt. Many of the clergy wrote homilies, or disputatious treaties; some aspired to history, and some were led to cultivate poetry. In the fourth century, Victorinus, Juvencus, and Prudentius, distinguished themselves by poems in Latin verse on devotional subjects. In the fifth century, Sedulius, , Dracontius, and Sidonius, with others, cultivated Latin poetry. In the next age appeared Alcimus, Arator, Columbanus, and the prolific Venantius Fortunatus. Every subsequent century enumerated many ecclesiastical poets, who all alike fashioned both their genius and their works from the classical models, or their imitators. They chose, indeed, subjects more suited to their sacred profession ; but they strove, according to their best abilities, to give their religious efforts all the style V. and the measures of the standard poetry of ancient CHAP. Rome. The Anglo-Saxons who wrote Latin poetry drank from the same Heliconian spring, and used the same prosody; and of course their Latin poetry originated from the Latin poetry of the ecclesiastics who had preceded them, and their classical models. But though the prosody of the classical poetry furnished these writers with their metres, yet as they were in a ruder and less cultivated age, their , taste was too unformed and irregular to keep to the chaste style of the Augustan bards. They undervalued the excellence to which they were familiar, and sometimes they strove to improve it by beauties of their own; beauties, however, often perceptible only to the eye or the ear of a barbaric taste. Some of their grotesque ornaments are mentioned in the fifth century by Sidonius. He notices some verses which were so composed as to admit of being read either backward or forward. Thus: a Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor. and Sole medere pede, ede perede melos. ? He has also given to us a specimen of another fantastic effort in two verses, of which he asks his friend to admire the disposition of the syllables : Præcipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen, Tempore consumptum jam cito deficiet. These, if read backward, will give 1 Sid. Ap. lib. ix. ep. 14. |