IX. BOOK he built, though open to the skies, were never wet with rain during the worst weather; one of his garments, when at Rome, once raised itself high in the air, and was kept there awhile, self-suspended; a child, nine days old, at his command, once spake to clear the calumniated pope from the imputation of being its father. 19 Such were the effusions of monastic fancy, which our ancestors were once enamoured to read, and eager to believe. We will now pass on to his literary character. HE, while abbot, addressed a letter to Geraint, king of Cornwall, whom he styles "the most glorious lord governing the sceptre of the western kingdom," on the subject of the proper day of celebrating Easter, which yet exists; but which has nothing in it to deserve further notice. He addressed a learned book to Alfred, the intelligent king of Northumbria, on the dignity of the number 7, on paternal charity, on the nature of insensible things which are used in metaphors, on the rules of prosody, on the metres of poetry.21 ALDHELM was highly estimated by Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, who places him above both Bede and Alcuin. Bede, his contemporary, described him as a man in every respect most learned; neat in his style, and wonderfully skilled in secular and ecclesiastical literature. Alfred translates Bede's "nitidus in sermone" into "on wordum hluttor and scinende," clear and shining in his words.22 Malmsbury closes his panegyric on his style with asserting, that from its acumen you would think it to be Greek; from its splendour, Roman; and 19 3 Gale, 351. 20 16 Mag. Bib. Pat. p. 65. 22 Alfred's Bede, v. 18. CHAP. a from its pomp, English. 23 After these lavish commendations, it will be necessary to consider their applicability. His letter to Eahfrid contains a most elaborate specimen of Latin alliteration. Fifteen words begin with the same letter in the first paragraph. “ Primitus (pantorum procerum pretorumque pio potissimum paternoque præsertim privilegio) panegyricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promulgantes stridula vocum symphonia ac melodiæ cantilenæque carmine modulaturi hymnizenus.” In the same letter we have afterwards, “ torrenda tetræ tortionis in tartara trusit." The whole epistle exhibits a series of bombastic amplification.24 His treatise in praise of virginity is his principal prose work, and is praised by Malmsbury for its rhetorico lepore. It is unfortunate for human genius, that the taste and judgment of mankind vary in every age, and that so defective are our criterions of literary merit, that even in the same age, there are nearly as many critical opinions as there are individuals who assume a right to judge. Some things, however, please more permanently and more universally than others; and some kinds of merit, like that of Aldhelm, are only adapted to flourish at a particular period. This singular treatise contains a profusion of epithets, new created words, paraphrases, and repetitions, conveyed in long and intricate periods. He clouds his meaning by his gorgeous rhetoric25 : 23 3 Gale, 342. 24 Usher Syll. Hib. Ep. p. 37. 25 Yet its editor, Henry Wharton, in 1693, praises its eximiam elegantiam. Aldhelm addresses it to several religious ladies, his friends; as Hildelitha, Justina, Cuthberga, Osburga, Aldgida, Hidburga, Burrigida, Eulalia, Scholastica, and Tecla. S. 1. BOOK IX. never content with illustrating his sentiment by an adapted simile, he is perpetually abandoning his subject to pursue his imagery. He illustrates his illustrations till he has forgotten both their meaning and applicability. Hence his style is an endless tissue of figures, which he never leaves till he has converted every metaphor into a simile, and every simile into a wearisome episode. In an age of general igno. rance, in which the art of criticism was unknown, his diction pleased and informed by its magnificent exuberance. His imagery was valued for its minuteness, because, although usually unnecessary to its subject, and to us disgusting, as a mere mob of rhetorical figures, yet, as these long details contained considerable information for an uncultivated mind, and sometimes presented pictures which, in a poem, "might not have been uninteresting 26, it was read with curiosity and praised with enthusiasm. That the style of Aldhelm's prose work is the injudicious adoption of the violent metaphors and figures of northern poetry so like the swollen style of modern Persia, the following instances, but a sample of several pages of the book, will show; we have not only, The golden necklace of the virtues; the white jewels of merit; the purple flowers of modesty; the transparent eyeballs of virginal bashfulness; the grapes of iniquity; the swan-like hoariness of age; the shrubbery of pride; the torrid cautery of the dogmas; the phlebotomy of the Divine Word; unbarring the folding doors of dumb taciturnity; the helmet - The 26 It frequently digresses into such descriptions as this :various-coloured glory of the peacock excels in the perfect rotundity of its circles. Beauty in its feathers at one time assumes a saffron tinge, at another glows with purple grace ; it now shines in cerulean blue, and now radiates like the yellow gold." VI. of grammar ; the tenacious knot of memory; the importunate CHAP. dragon of gluttony; the shining lamps of chastity burning with the oil of modesty; the plenteous plantations of the apple-tree fecundating the mind with flourishing leaf; and the fetid sink of impurity lamentably overwhelming the ships of the soul.” But we have also long paragraphs of confused figures : “O illustrious grace of virginity, which as a rose rises from twigs of briars, reddens with a purple flower, and never putrifies in the dire decay of mortality, although it is tied to the weary frailness of death, and grows old with down-bending and crooked age." “ The leaky bark of our feeble ingenuity, shaken by the whirlwind of a dire tempest, may attain late its port of silence by laborious rowing of the arms; yet we trust that the sails of our yards, swelling with the blasts of every wind, will, notwithstanding their broken cables, navigate happily between the Scyllas of solecism and the gulph of barbarism, dreading the rocky collisions of vain-glory and the incautious whirlpools of self-love." “ Resembling the industry of the most sagacious bees which, when the dewy dawn appears, and the beams of the most limpid sun arise, pour the thick armies of their dancing crowds from the temple over the open fields; now lying in the honeybearing leaves of the marigolds, or in the purple flowers of the mallows, they suck the nectar, drop by drop, with their beaks ; now flying round the yellowing willows and purplish tops of the broom, they carry their plunder on numerous thighs and burthened legs, from which they make their waxen castles ; now crowding about the round berries of the ivy, and the light springs of the flourishing linden tree, they construct the multiform machine of their honeycombs with angular and open cells, whose artificial structure the excellent poet with natural eloquence has sung in catalectic verse; so, unless I mistake, your memorising ingenuity of mind, in like manner wandering through the flourishing fields of letters, runs with a bibulous curiosity.” 27 27 Dr. Parr has condescended, in our own days, to mention “the battering ram of political controversies ;” but Aidhelm preceded him BOOK Every page exhibits some strong effusions of fancy and high poetical feeling, but overloading their subjects; frequently inapplicable; never placed with taste, nor limited by judgment, nor singly and distinctly used. The whole is a confused medley of great and exuberant genius, wasting and burlesqueing uncommon powers. The celebrated BEDE, surnamed the Venerablea), was a priest in the monastery of Weremouth, in the kingdom of Northumbria. His simple life will be best told in his own unaffected narration. He was born in 673. 28 “ Born in the territory of the same monastery, when I was seven years of age, I was, by the care of my relation, committed to the reverend abbot Benedict to be educated, and then to Ceolfrid. I passed all the time of my life in the residence of this monastery, and gave all my labours to the meditation of the Scriptures, and to the observance of regular discipline, and the daily care of singing in the church. It was always sweet to me to learn to teach and to write. with the figure: “ the bulwark of the Catholic faith, shaken by the balistæ of secular argument, and overthrown by the battering rams of atrocious ingenuity.” S. 36. 28 His encomiastical periphrasis on the Virgin, though placed as Sanctarum socrus animarum, Supernorum regina civium - Obsidem seculi, Monarcham mundi, Rectorem poli; Redemptorem soli ; Archangelo promentrante, Paracleto adumbrante; S. 40. 29 They who desire to know when the name Venerable was applied to Bede, may consult the Appendix to Smith's Bede, p. 106. |