One of Alcuin's fancies in versification was to CHAP. V. close his second line with half of the first: " 42 Præsul amate precor, hac tu diverte viator Many of Alcuin's poems are worthy of a perusal. Some exhibit the flowers of poetry, and some attempt tenderness and sensibility with effect. They are all distinguished by an easy and flowing versification. Several poems are addressed to his pupil Charlemagne, and mention him under the name of David, with a degree of affection which seldom approaches the throne. The adulation of a courtly poet, however, sometimes appears very gross, as in these lines, in which, alluding to Charlemagne's love of poetry, he ventures to address him by the venerable name of the Chian bard: Dulcis Homere vale, valeat tua vita per ævum, This appears in the same poem with two other childish lines: Semper ubique vale, dic, dic, dulcissime David, One of his poems consists of six stanzas, each of six lines. The two first are quoted, because this poem is very like one of the most common modes of versifying in the Anglo-Saxon poetry : Te homo laudet, Pacis amore, Pars quia mundi est. 42 Ibid. p. 1740. 45 Ibid. p. 1742, 1743. BOOK Sed tibi sancte Mentis in arce Dum pie vivit. 44 Of the other Latin poetry of the Anglo-Saxons, little need be said. We have a few fragments of some authors, but they deserve a small degree of consideration. Malmsbury has preserved to us part of a poem made on Athelstan, probably by a contemporary, of which the only curiosity is, that it is a mixture of final rimes and middle rimes. Where the poem ceases to rime at the end of his lines, he proceeds to rime in the middle; and where he desists from middle rimes, he inserts his final ones; and he has made his two first lines rime together, both in the middle and at the end.45 There is some poetry on Edgar preserved by Ethelwerd 46; and the Vedastne MS. of the life of Dunstan contains some riming lines. 47 44 Alb. Opera. ed. Du Ch. p. 780. Regia progenies produxit nobile stemma Malmsb. lib. ii. p. 49. 46 Ethelw. lib. iv. c. 9. 47 Acta Sanct. May. CHAP. VI. Of the general Literature of the ANGLO-Saxons. CHAP. VI. THAT every nation improves as fast as the means and causes of improvement within it, and the external agencies that are operating upon it can effect or allow, all anterior history proves; but the modes and paths of the progress of each country will be as different as its circumstances are dissimilar: in one age or state some directions will be taken peculiar to itself, and distinct from those of its predecessors or contemporaries. In their paths of excellence, it may be pausing, but it will be found to be forcing other channels of its own. The movement is always either preparation for advance, or a diffusion of attained improvements, or clear and steady progression. If its career seems on some points to be questionable, or retrograde, it will, on a more scrutinising examination, be found to be decided and prosperous in others. The Anglo-Saxon nation is an instance that may be adduced in verification of these principles. It did not attain a general or striking eminence in literature. But society wants other blessings besides these. The agencies that affected our ancestry took a different course: they impelled them towards that of political melioration, the great fountain of human improvement; and, during the period of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty, laid firmly the foundations of that political constitution, and began the erection of that great social fabric, which Danes and Normans afterwards did not IX. BOOK overthrow, but contributed to consolidate and complete. THERE were no causes in action of sufficient energy at that time to make the Anglo-Saxons a literary people. They had not, like the Gauls or Britons, the benefit of Roman instruction to educate them ; for both the Roman legions and settlers had quitted the island before they came. From the Britons they could gain nothing, be. cause assailing them as invaders, and either enslaving or exterminating them, there was no chance of any sympathy of mental cultivation, Nor were the Britons much qualified to have been their intellectual teachers. Luxury, civil factions, merci. less wars with each other, and the Scotch and Irish depredations, were fast barbarising the island, while the Saxons were fighting for its occupation, The songs of the British bards were engrossed by encomiums on martial slaughter, drunken carousals, or the mystical traditions of expiring Druidism, in which but a few gleams of intelligent thought were at any time intermixed. Their historical events were twisted into the strange form of unnatural triads; and though they possessed many adages of moral wisdom and acute and satirical obseryation of life and manners, yet aphorisms without reasoning are but the sentences of a dictator, which impress the memory without cultivating the understanding; and even these could rarely benefit the Saxons, from the extreme dissimilarity to their own of the language in which they were preserved. Hence, till Gregory planted Christianity in England, there were no means or causes of intellectual improvement to our fierce and active ancestors. VI. But Christianity was necessarily taught at first CHAP. as a system of belief of certain doctrines, and of practice of certain rites and duties. The length of time requisite to inculcate and imbibe these left no opportunity for the diffusion of literature. The monks from Rome introduced some; but they had not only to bring it into the island, but to raise among the Anglo-Saxons the state of mind and capacity requisite to understand it, as well as the desire to attain it. No effects can take place without adequate causes. It was only among the monasteries that the new taste could be at first introduced, and among that part of the nation which devoted itself to religion. The rest neither felt the want of it, nor the value, nor had the leisure or the means of attending to it. The great majority of the population was in the working or servile state ; and husbandry being imperfectly understood or practised, too much labour was required to raise the produce they needed, and too little was obtained, with all their efforts, to give that leisure and comfort without which no nation or individual will study. The higher classes being all independent, and either assailing or depredating on others, or watching and defending themselves, or pursuing their vindictive feuds, or attending their kings and chiefs in expeditions, witena-gemots, and festivities, or employing their time in learning the use of arms, or in pilgrimages, penances, and superstitions, or attending county and baronial courts, performing suit and service, and transacting that frequent civil business of life which their free institutions were always creating, had as little surplus leisure for the cultivation of literature as the vassal, peasant, or the interior domestic. Their dependent jurisdic |