The

those in the Exeter book are hymns and sacred poems. famous Traveller's Song and the Lament of Deor inserted in it are of the older and pagan time. In both there are poems by CYNEWULF, whose work is remarkably fine. They are all Christian in tone. The few touches of love of nature in them dwell on gentle, not on savage, scenery. They are sorrowful when they speak of the life of men, tender when they touch on the love of home, as tender as this little bit which still lives for us out of that old world: 'Dear is the welcome guest to the Frisian wife when the vessel strands; his ship is come, and her husband to his house, her own provider. And she welcomes him in, washes his weedy garment, and clothes him anew. It is pleasant on shore to him whom his love awaits.' Of the scattered pieces the finest are two fragments, one long, on the story of Judith, and another short, in which Death speaks to Man, and describes the low and hateful and doorless house,' of which he keeps the key. But stern as the fragment is, with its English manner of looking dreadful things in the face, and with its English pathos, the religious poetry of this time always went with faith beyond the grave. Thus we are told that King Eadgar, in the ode on his death in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, chose for himself another light, beautiful and pleasant, and left this feeble

life.'

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The war poetry of England at this time was probably as plentiful as the religious. But it was not likely to be written down by the writers who lived in religious houses. It was sung from feast to feast and in the halls of kings, and it naturally decayed when the English were trodden down by the Normans. But we have two examples of what kind it was, and how fine it was, in the Battle Song of Brunanburh, 937, and in the Song of the Fight at Maldon, 991. A still earlier fragment exists in a short account of the Battle of Finnesburg, probably of the same time and belonging to as long a story as the story of Beowulf. Two short odes on the victories of King Eadmund

and on the coronation of King Eadgar, inserted in the AngloSaxon Chronicle, complete the list of war poems.

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The Songs of Brunanburh and Maldon are fine war odes, the fitting sources, both in their short and rapid lines and in their almost Homeric simplicity and force, of such war-songs as the Battle of the Baltic' and the Charge of the Light Brigade.' The first describes the fight of King Ethelstan with Anlaf the Dane. From morn till night they fought till they were weary of red battle' in the 'hard hand play,' till five young kings and seven earls of Anlaf's host lay in that fighting place quieted by swords,' and the Northmen fled, and only 'the screamers of war were left behind, the black raven and the eagle to feast on the white flesh, and the greedy battle-hawk, and the grey beast the wolf in the wood.' The second is the story of the death of Brihtnoth, an ealdorman of Northumbria, in battle against the Danes. It contains 690 lines. In the speeches of heralds and warriors before the fight, in the speeches and single combats of the chiefs, in the loud laugh and mock which follow a good death-stroke, in the rapid rush of the verse when the battle is joined, the poem, though broken, as Homer's verse is not, is Homeric. In the rude chivalry which disdains to take vantage ground of the Danes, in the way in which the friends and churls of Brihtnoth die, one by one, avenging their lord, keeping faithful the tie of kinship and clanship, in the cry not to yield a foot's breadth of earth, in the loving sadness with which home is spoken of, the poem is English to the core. And in the midst of it all, like a song from another land, but a song heard often in English fights from then till now, is the last prayer of the great earl, when, dying, he commends his soul with thankfulness to God."

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LESSON 5.

OLD ENGLISH PROSE.-"It is pleasant to think that I may not unfairly make English prose begin with BEDA. He was born about A.D. 673, and was, like Cædmon, a Northumbrian. From 683 he spent his life at Jarrow, in the same monastery, he says, and while attentive to the rule of mine order, and the service of the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning or teaching or writing.' He long enjoyed that pleasure, for his quiet life was long, and from boyhood till his very last hour his toil was unceasing. Forty-five works prove his industry, and their fame over the whole of learned Europe during his time proves their value. His learning was as various as it was great. All that the world then knew of science, music, rhetoric, medicine, arithmetic, astronomy, and physics was brought together by him; and his life was as gentle and himself as loved as his work was great. His books were written in Latin, and with these we have nothing to do, but his was the first effort to make English prose a literary language, for his last work was a Translation of the Gospel of St. John, as almost his last words were in English verse. the story of his death, told by his disciple, CUTHBERT is the first record of English prose writing. When the last day came, the dying man called his scholars to him that he might dictate more of his translation. There is still a chapter wanting,' said the scribe, and it is hard for thee to question thyself longer.' 'It is easily done,' said Bæda, take thy pen and write quickly.' Through the day they wrote, and when evening fell, There is yet one sentence unwritten, dear master,' said the youth. Write it quickly,' said the mas

reply, all is finished now.'

and died. It is to that scene

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In

as its sacred source, as it is in the greatness and variety of

Bæda's Latin work that English literature strikes its keynote.

ALFRED'S WORK.-When Bæda died, Northumbria was the home of English literature. Though as yet written mostly in Latin, it was a wide-spread literature. Wilfrid of York and Benedict Biscop had founded libraries and established monastic schools far and wide. Six hundred scholars gathered round Bæda ere he died. But towards the end of his life, this northern literature began to decay, and after 866 it was, we may say, blotted out by the Danes. The long battle with these invaders was lost in Northumbria, but it was gained for a time by Elfred the Great in Wessex; and with ELFRED'S literary work learning changed its seat from the north to the south. But he made it by his writings an English, not a Latin, literature; and in his translations he, since Bæda's work is lost, is the true father of English prose.

As Whitby is the cradle of English poetry, so is Winchester of English prose. At Winchester Ælfred took the English tongue and made it the tongue in which history, philosophy, law, and religion spoke to the English people. No work was ever done more eagerly or more practically. He brought scholars from different parts of the world. He set up schools in his monasteries. He presided over a school in his own court. He made himself master of a literary English style, and he did this that he might teach his people. He translated the popular manuals of the time into English, but he edited them with large additions of his own, needful, as he thought, for English use. He gave his nation moral philosophy in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy; a universal history, with geographical chapters of his own, in the History of Orosius; a history of England in Bæda's History, giving to some details a West Saxon form; and a religious hand-book in the Pastoral Rule of Pope Gregory. We do not quite know whether he worked himself at the English, or Anglo-Saxon, Chronicle, but at least it was in his reign

that it rose out of meagre lists into a full narrative of events. To him, then, we look back as the father of English literature."

"With the Peace of Wedmore in 878 began a work even more noble than this deliverance of Wessex from the Dane. So long as I have lived,' wrote Ælfred in later days, 'I have striven to live worthily.' He longed, when death overtook him, to leave to the men that come after a remembrance of me in good works.' The aim has been more than fulfilled. The memory of the life and doings of the noblest of English rulers has come down to us living and distinct through the mists of exaggeration and legend that gathered round it. He really lived for the good of his people. He is the first instance, in the history of Christendom, of the Christian King, of a ruler who put aside every personal aim or ambition to devote himself to the welfare of those whom he ruled. The defence of his realm provided for, he devoted himself to its good government. His work was of a simple and practical order. He was wanting in the imaginative qualities which mark the higher statesman, nor can we trace in his acts any sign of the creative faculty or any perception of new ideas. In politics as in war, or in his after dealings with letters, he simply took what was closest at hand, and made the best of it. The laws of Ini and Offa were codified and amended, justice was more rigidly administered, corporal punishment was substituted in most cases for the old blood-wite, or money-fine, and the right of private revenge was curtailed.

The strong moral bent of Ælfred's mind was seen in some of the novelties of his legislation. The Ten Commandments and a portion of the Law of Moses were prefixed to his code, and thus became part of the law of the land. Labor on Sundays and holy days was made criminal, and heavy punishments were exacted for sacrilege, perjury, and the seduction of nuns. The spirit of adventure that made him in youth the first huntsman of his day, and the reckless daring of his early manhood took later and graver form in the activity that found time amidst the cares of state for the daily duties of religion, for converse with strangers, for study and translation, for learning poems by heart, for planning buildings and instructing craftsmen in gold work, for teaching even falconers and dog-keepers their business. Restless as he was, his activity was the activity of a mind strictly practical. Elfred was pre-eminently a man of business, careful of detail, laboriious, and methodical. He carried in his bosom a little hand-book, in which he jotted down things as they struck him-now a bit of family genealogy, now a prayer, and now a story, such as that of Bishop Eald