With her booty flew, brought it to the sailor,

From an olive-tree a twig, right into his hands
Brought the blade of green.

does not invent; The poet of the Avitus for hints,

This is pretty and tasteful embroidery, but the poet he simply amplifies and adorns the matter before him. Temptation and the Fall, however indebted he may be to shows true original genius in his additions to his text; his pictures of Satan bound in the infernal regions, of the loyalty of the infernal retainer who performs the errand to Eden at his lord's behest, and of the subtlety by which Eve is overcome Unlike Milton, he conceives of Satan as so straitly fettered in the deeps of hell as to be unable to put his designs against the human race into execution by his personal efforts, and compelled to solicit the aid of one of his thanes. The immense loss in sublimity which this involves is almost compensated by the closeness to human nature:

If I to any thane
lordly treasure

in former times have given
while we in the good seats
blissful sate;

at no more acceptable time
could he ever with value

my bounty requite.

If men for this purpose
any one of my thanes
would himself volunteer

that he from here upward

and outward might go ;

might come through these barriers, and strength in him had

that with raiment of feather

his flight he could take,

and whirl through the welkin,
where the new work is standing
-Adam and Eve

in the earthly realm
with wealth surrounded-

and we are cast away hither
in these deep dales !

Keats justly eulogises Milton for placing vales in hell, but it will be seen that the Anglo-Saxon poet had been beforehand with him.

When the contents of the Bodleian MS. were given to the world by Franciscus Junius they were unaccompanied by any Latin version, and Milton's sight had failed him. Yet it is hardly possible to believe him unacquainted with a poem from which he continually seems to be borrowing, while he no less continually improves it. Nothing could be more natural than for Junius to present his book to the Commonwealth's Latin Secretary, and when Milton, his mind fraught with his growing epic, discovered that the volume contained a poem on the same subject, he would assuredly seek and find an interpreter. Considering the naturalisation— far more complete than in any other country-which the Bible was to undergo in England, and the extent to which English literature was to be permeated by it, the derivation of the earliest Anglo-Saxon poems from the Scriptures is a phenomenon of the deepest significance.

The authorship of the Exodus poem presents a problem. The spirit certainly seems too martial for the author of Exodus, but on the other hand we have Bede's distinct testimony that Caedmon did compose a para

POEMS ASCRIBED TO CAEDMON

25

phrase of Exodus, and it seems scarcely possible that the work of an author of such celebrity should have been extinguished by an anonymous writer. On the whole it appears safest to attribute the poem to him. The Daniel is more dubious.

cribed to

The poems on New Testament history or legend comprised in the Poems erroBodleian MS. are considerably later than the genuine Caedmon, if the neously asparaphrases of Genesis and Exodus are rightly attributed to him. They Caedmon manifest the same independence and invention as the poem on the Fall in the Old Testament series, and may well be attributed to its author. The spirit is totally unlike that which Bede would lead us to ascribe to Caedmon; it is vindictive, unchristian, and far below the substantially heathen Beowulf. They consist of several poems, on the Fall of the Angels, the Temptation of Christ, the Harrowing of Hell, the Resurrection, and other subjects from the New Testament, welded into one by the transcriber. The Dream of the Holy Rood has been ascribed to Caedmon in consequence of some lines from it being engraved on the Ruthwell Cross with the statement "Cadmon wrought me," but this clearly refers to the sculptor, and the poem is almost certainly by Cynewulf or one of his disciples. There remains a considerable fragment of an elaborate poem on the history of Judith, which has been ingeniously conjectured to have been composed in compliment to Queen Judith, Ethelwulf's wife and Alfred's stepmother, but is more probably a production of one of Caedmon's Northumbrian group some time in the eighth century. Some have deemed the author but mediocre as a poet; others have judged his work more favourably; and their opinion, we think, will be deemed fully confirmed by the brilliant translation of Professor Oliver Elton in the volume of essays published in 1900 in honour of Dr. Furnivall. This, by the favour of Professor Elton and the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, we are enabled to cite at full length, and it will be found a perfect specimen of the average style of Anglo-Saxon poetry :—

Large is the face of our world, but she loosed not trust in His gifts,
And sure was the sheltering grace of His hand, in her sharpest call
To the Prince, who presides, far-famed, in the height, to protect her now
From the worst of the Fear; and the Lord of His creatures willed her the boon
For her fulness of faith in the glorious omnipotent Father enskied.
And the heart grew fain, as I heard, within Holofernes the king,

And he sent forth a bidding to wine, a banquet of bravery measureless

For all the eldest of thanes in the orders of shielded fighters,

And the chiefs of the folk came quick to that mighty captain of theirs.

And fourth was the day since the fairily-radiant
Damsel had sought him, the deep-souled Judith ;
And they fared to the feast, his fellows in sorrow,
And with lust of the wine-cup uplifted was every
Breast of the warrior in battle-mail.

And they bore down the benches the beakers lofty

Full cups and flagons for feasting in hall;

And the soldiers seized them, the strong men in bucklers,

Translation of "Juaith"

Who were sealed-and their sovereign saw not-to death.
And the giver of gold was gay with the revel,
Holofernes, the fear and the friend of his earls,
And he laughed aloud, and hallooed and shouted
In fierceness of mood, and far the tempestuous
Clamour was caught by the children of mortals
As mad with the mead-cup he monished them often
To bear themselves bravely at board and be men
Curst was his soul, and his company doughty he
Drowned in their drink while the daylight held,

And he whelmed them in wine, the warriors all,

Till they lay at the last like dead men stricken, in languor lapped,
With good things gorged by their valorous giver of treasure. And he
Saw they were served as they sat in the feast-hall

Till dusk had descended nigh on the world.

And he bade them, that soul of all sins commingled,

To bring to his bed the blest among women,

Bracelet-laden, and lordly with rings.

And swiftly his servants set to the will of

The mailed ones' master, and made in a flash

To the guest-room of Judith, of judgement deep.

And they found her, and fetched the fairest of ladies
To his tall-arched tent, the targeted warriors,
Where the lord Holofernes, the loathed of the Saviour,
Slept through the nights; and encircling the couch
Was a curtain all netted of comeliest gold

For the captain of war and contriver of harms

To watch on the warriors that went to his chamber,
And be noted by none that came near him of mortals
Whom he called not in quest of their counsel himself,
The prince in his pride, from the proven in battle.

And they carried unto his couch the woman whose cunning was sure,
And the mind of the men was o'ercast as they went to their master with word
That the heavenly maid had been brought to the bower; and he, their lord
The leader of cities, the famous, was stirred to laughter of heart,
And was fain to defile the bright one and tarnish her fairness. God,
Wielder of war-men, and Guardian of might, and Awarder of fame,
Kept the king from his deed, and let not the crime betide.

Then his heart was hot with his lust, and he went, the hellish of soul,

Mid the press of his princes, along to his bed, where the pride of his life
Was to finish before the morn; not soft was the fortune here

Of the monarch of many, the puissant of soul, but meet for his works

On earth done under the sky, and his mind was empty of wit

As he stumbled to sleep his fill, the chieftain sodden with wine.

Then strode the soldiers straight from the chamber,

Drenched in their drink; they had drawn the detested one,

False to his faith and fell to his people, the

Last time on earth to his lair, in haste.

And the handmaid of God in her heart took counsel

Swiftly to slay, as he slumbered, the terrible

Lecher unclean, for her Lord; and His maiden
With coiling tresses, caught from its scabbard

A sword that was scoured unto sharpness of temper;
And next she besought by His Name the Redeemer of