3

449-1066.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD.

THE Anglo-Saxons were the progenitors of the English nation. After their settlement in Britain they called themselves English, and the country they lived in England. They came from their original home in that part of the lowlands of Germany which stretches across the isthmus of Old Denmark from the Elbe mouth to the Baltic shore. They were a strong, daring, and masterful race of people, consisting of various tribes-Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, but all using the same Low German tongue, with dialectic differences. Though a home-loving people, they were habituated to strife both on land and sea, and, even during the Roman occupation, had made marauding descents upon Britain, and indeed seem to have planted a colony there to which Roman writers refer as the Saxon coast. After the Romans left, the British Celts, unable to repress a great irruption of the Gaels, also a Celtic people, whom the Romans had walled within the northern parts of the island, invited the co-operation of the Saxons to drive them back. The invitation was accepted, and the arrival of a powerful horde of Anglo-Saxons in 449 marks the commencement of English history.

Deep-blooming, strong,

And yellow-hair'd, the blue-eyed Saxons came:
They came, implored, but came with other aim
Than to protect."

They came to settle; and invited in their turn their kinsmen of low Germany to aid them in securing and extending the settlements they at once began to make. They slew, or enslaved, or drove westwards across the island the Britons who had invited them, and whom they had the effrontery to call Welsh—that is,

foreigners; and by the end of the sixth century had established themselves in the fairest parts of the south, centre, and east, from the Channel to the Firth of Forth. The lands thus appropriated they apportioned among themselves, and set up a confusion of rival states, bearing various names, from which, by-andby, emerged the three leading kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. A struggle for mastery ended in the supremacy of Wessex. Then began the Danish inroads and settlement; and afterwards came the great Norman invasion.

The Saxons were pagans when they came, and continued their pagan-worship of Woden and Thor for a century and a half after their coming. But they were neither without letters nor a literature, though they had hardly yet begun to commit their literature to the custody of letters. Their system of writing was by runes; it was by no means in common use, and there is no evidence that they employed it on paper or parchment. Christianity, which came to them from both north and south, from the Celtic Culdee missionaries and the Romish mission of Augustine, gave them, with other blessings, a knowledge of Roman characters and the art of literary writing. It was after they were Christianised that the traditional poems and poetic fragments which they brought in memory with them from the homeland in low Germany were first entrusted to the security of manuscript. And it is not only possible but probable that the early transcribers of that ancestral pagan literature took such liberties with the traditional text as Christianity and pride of kindred might suggest or seem to warrant. Beowulf, for example, our oldest English epic, composed in all likelihood in the fifth century, before our Saxon forefathers quitted their Continental home, was first written down from traditional record in Northumbria in the eighth century, and bears traces of Christian editing in the introduction here and there of a softer element that relieves the sternness of its pronounced paganism. Northumbria continued to be the seat and centre of letters, illustrious with the names of Cædmon, Bede, and Cynewulf, till the storm of Danish barbarism in the ninth century quenched its lights, and literature fled southward to find a friend in Alfred, and a home in Wessex and Winchester. Danish blight again fell on English literature from 1013 to 1042, and it had hardly time to revive when the Normans came and repressed its growth for a century and a half.

The range is over six hundred and sixteen years, and extends from the arrival in Kent of a strong body of Jutes under Hengist and Horsa, to the arrival in the same shire of a hostile force of Normans under William, afterwards known as The Conqueror. The following notes present in more detail a historical survey of the period :—

From 450 to about 600.-Conquest of the Britons and seizure of their territory by the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles; paganism triumphant over Christianity. Arrival in Kent of the mission under St Augustine (597).

From about 600 to 835.-Edwin of Northumbria accepts Christianity (627). Struggle for supremacy among the Anglo-Saxon kings; Edwin defeated by Penda of Mercia, and Northumbria thrown back for a while into paganism; Penda defeated (655), and downfall of paganism. In 664 the Synod of Whitby, by which the Church of England estab lished on a Romish basis: Aidan and the Columban priests leave Northumbria. Rise of Wessex to supreme power under Egbert; Egbert first king of the English in 828.

From 835 to 1066.-Danish invasions (856 to 869)-Fife, Northumbria, East Anglia ravaged, and King Edmund killed. Reign of Alfred the Great (871-901). The Dane law defined in 878. After Alfred, the succession of English kings is as follows:

Edward "The Unconquered," 901-925.

Athelstan, 925-940. (His victory at Brunanburgh in 937.)
Edmund, 940-946.

Edred, 946-955. (Abbot Dunstan's power begins in this reign.)
Edwy, 955-957.

Edgar "The Peaceful," 958-975.
king's.)

Edward "The Martyr," 975-978.

(Dunstan's power equal to the

Ethelred "The Unready," 978-1016. (Great invasion of the Danes

under Sweyn.)

Edmund Ironside, 1016.

Then came the Danish line :

Canute, Harold, and Hardicanute, from 1016 to 1042.

The crown was restored to English brows, and Edward the Confessor reigned from 1042 to 1066. In 1066 Harold was crowned, and slain at Hastings.

INTRODUCTION.

The Anglo-Saxon period in the history of English literature extends to more than six centuries-from 449 to 1066. It is longer than the interval between the age of Chaucer and the present time. When its duration is considered, it must be owned that its literary products will scarcely bear comparison, either in quantity or quality, with those of any of the subsequent periods. But Anglo-Saxon literature has a value of its own, and must always be of special interest as illustrative of the earliest attempts of the English language in the art of literary expression. It was no unworthy commencement of a great literature. At the same time it should be remembered that only a portion of the literature of the Anglo-Saxons has been published, that a large proportion still remains in manuscript, and that much of the original amount was lost in the time of the Danish inroads. Taking these circumstances into account, we must allow that the art of literature was by no means neglected in the Anglo-Saxon period, but, on the contrary, was diligently and largely culti vated. To this result the capabilities of the Anglo-Saxon tongue greatly contributed. Scholars go so far as to say

that, relatively to the times, it was not a rude speech, but "probably the most disciplined of all the vernaculars of Western Europe, and certainly the most cultivated of all the dialects of the Gothic barbarians."

Anglo-Saxon literature, as we now possess it, deals mainly with historical and moral or religious subjects. At first the history is legendary, and largely blended with mythical creations; it is in verse, of unknown authorship and Continental origin, and more or less fragmentary. Beowulf is the longest and noblest specimen of this oldest English poetry, but along with it, and of a somewhat older date, must also be classed

The Traveller's Song, The Battle of Finnesburg, and The Song of Deor. By-and-by, as the Anglo-Saxons identify themselves with their new settlements in England, and come under the civilising influence of Christianity, the history becomes authentic, and, to a large extent, a record of passing events; it is chiefly, but not entirely, in prose, written by various hands, and emanating from the monasteries, or from the court of King Alfred. The Saxon Chronicle is the most notable specimen of native English literary history of the Anglo-Saxon period; it includes such excellent examples of historical verse as The Battle of Brunanburgh (937) and The Battle of Maldon (993). The narrative of the Danish wars is from King Alfred's pen, and is the most important piece of Old English prose we possess. To the same class of literature as The Saxon Chronicle belongs a great mass of historical translations in prose, made during the two centuries at the close of the Anglo-Saxon period. Of these may be mentioned Alfred's version of Orosius's History of the World, and his translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History.

Coming next to Anglo-Saxon writings on moral or religious subjects, we have to notice, as first in time (670) and first in merit, Cædmon's Song of Creation. "Others after him began to make religious poems," says Bede in Latin, "but none could rival him, for he learned the craft of poetry not of man but of God." He paraphrased into verse the whole Scripture narrative. Cynewulf was his poetical successor, a century later, and wrote, besides secular poems of great power and beauty, The Helene (or Finding of the Cross), The Christ, and probably The Andreas—a sacred epic on the adventures of St Andrew. King Alfred and Archbishop Alfric made large contributions in prose to the moral and sacred literature of the period. The former translated Boëthius's Consolation of Philosophy and Pope Gregory's Pastoral Cure; while the