impression, which, not knowing how to unfold itself, becomes condensed by accumulation; the harshness of the expression, which, subservient to the energy and shocks of the inner sentiment, seeks only to exhibit It intact and original, spite of all order and beauty,-such are the characteristics of their poetry, and these will be the characteristics of the poetry which is to follow. VI. A race so constituted was predisposed to Christianity, by its gloom its aversion to sensual and reckless living, its inclination for the serious and sublime. When their sedentary habits had reconciled their souls to a long period of ease, and weakened the fury which fed their sanguinary religion, they readily inclined to a new faith. The vague adoration of the great powers of nature, which eternally fight for mutual destruction, and, when destroyed, rise up again to the combat, had long since disappeared in the far distance. Society, on its formation, introduced the idea of peace and the need for justice, and the war-gods faded from the minds of men, with the passions which had created them. A century and a half after the invasion by the Saxons,1 Roman missionaries, bearing a silver cross with a picture of Christ, came in procession chanting a litany. Presently the high priest of the Northumbrians declared in presence of the nobles that the old gods were powerless, and confessed that formerly 'he knew nothing of that which he adored;' and he among the first, lance in hand, assisted to demolish their temple. At his side a chief rose in the assembly, and said: 'You remember, it may be, O king, that which sometimes happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without is rain and snow and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall; he enters by one door, and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to him; he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is brief-the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while; but what is the time which comes after-the time which was before? We know not. If, then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certainty, it were well that we should regard it.' This restlessness, this feeling of the infinite and dark beyond, this sober, melancholy eloquence, were the harbingers of spiritual life. We find nothing like it amongst the nations of the south, naturally pagan, and preoccupied with the present life. These utter barbarians embrace Christianity straightway, through sheer force of mood and clime. To no purpose are they brutal, heavy, shackled by infantine superstitions, capable, like King Knut, of buying for a hundred golden talents the arm of Augustine. They possess the idea of God. This 1 596-625. Aug. Thierry, i. 81; Bede, xii. 2. 1 grand God of the Bible, omnipotent and unique, who disappeara almost entirely in the middle ages, obscured by His court and His family, endures amongst them in spite of absurd and grotesque legends. They do not blot Him out under pious romances, by the elevation of the saints, or under feminine caresses, to benefit the infant Jesus and the Virgin. Their grandeur and their severity raise them to His high level; they are not tempted, like artistic and talkative nations, to replace religion by a fair and agreeable narrative. More than any race in Europe, they approach, by the simplicity and energy of their conceptions, the old Hebraic spirit. Enthusiasm is their natural condition; and their new Deity fills them with admiration, as their ancient deities inspired them with fury. They have hymns, genuine odes, which are but a concrete of exclamations. They have no development; they are incapable of restraining or explaining their passion; it bursts forth, in raptures, at the vision of the Almighty. The heart alone speaks here-a strong, barbarous heart. Cædmon, says Bede, their old poet,' was a more ignorant man than the others, who knew no poetry; so that in the hall, when they handed him the harp, he was obliged to withdraw, being unable to sing like his companions. Once, keeping night-watch over the stable, he fell asleep. A stranger appeared to him, and asked him to sing something, and these words came into his head: 'Now we ought to praise the Lord of heaven, the power of the Creator, and His skill, the deeds of the Father of glory; how He, being eternal God, is the author of all marvels; who, almighty guardian of the human race, created first for the sons of men the heavens as the roof of their dwelling, and then the earth.' Remembering this when he woke, he came to the town, and they brought him before the learned men, before the abbess Hilda, who, when they had heard him, thought that he had received a gift from heaven, and made him a monk in the abbey. There he spent his life listening to portions of Holy Writ, which were explained to him in Saxon, 'ruminating over them like a pure animal, turned them into most sweet verse.' Thus is true poetry born. These men pray with all the emotion of a new soul; they kneel; they adore; the less they know, the more they think. Some one has said that the first and most sincere hymn is this one word O! Theirs were hardly longer; they only repeated time after time some deep passionate word, with monotonous vehemence. In Leaven art Thou, our aid and succour, resplendent with happiness! All things bow before Thee, before the glory of Thy Spirit. With one voice they call upon Christ; they all cry: Holy, holy art Thou, King of the angels of heaven, our Lord! and Thy judgments are just and great: they reign for ever and in all places, in the multitude of Thy works' We are reminded of the songs of the servants of Odin, ton 'Michelet, preface to La Renaissance; Didrou, Histoire de Dieu. About 630. See Codex Exoniensis, Thorpe. * Rede, iv. 21 sured now, and clad in the garments of monks. Their poetry is the same; they think of God, as of Odin, in a string of short, accumulated, passionate images, like a succession of lightning-flashes; the Christian hymns embody the pagan. One of them, Adhelm, stood on a bridge leading to the town where he lived, and repeated warlike and profane odes alternately with religious poetry, in order to attract and instruct the men of his time. He could do it without changing his key. In one of them, a funeral song, Death speaks. It was one of the last Saxon compositions, containing a terrible Christianity, which seems at the same time to have sprung from the blackest depths of the Edda. The brief metre sounds abruptly, with measured stroke, like the passing bell. It is as if one could hear the dull resounding responses which roll through the church, while the rain beats on the dim glass, and the broken clouds sail mournfully in the sky; and our eyes, glued to the pale face of a dead man, feel beforehand the horror of the damp grave into which the living are about to cast him. 'For thee was a house built ere thou wert born; for thee was a mould shapen ere thou of thy mother camest. Its height is not determined, nor its depth measured; nor is it closed up (however long it may be) until I thee bring where thou shalt remain; until I shall measure thee and the sod of the earth. Thy house is not highly built; it is unhigh and low. When thou art in it, the heelways are low, the side-ways unhigh. The roof is built thy breast full nigh; so thou shalt in earth dwell full cold, dim, and dark. Doorless is that house, and dark it is within. There thou art fast detained, and Death holds the key. Loathly is that earth-house, and grim to dwell in. There thou shalt dwell, and worms shall share thee. Thus thou art laid, and leavest thy friends. Thou hast no friend that will come to thee, who will ever inquire how that house liketh thee, who shall ever open for thee the door, and seek thee, for soon thou becomest loathly and hateful to look upon."1 Has Jeremy Taylor a more gloomy picture? The two religious poetries, Christian and pagan, are so like, that one might make a common catalogue of their incongruities, images, and legends. In Beowulf, altogether pagan, the Deity appears as Odin, more mighty and serene, and differs from the other only as a peaceful Bretwalda2 differs from an adventurous and heroic bandit-chief. The Scandinavian monsters, Jötuns, enemies of the Esir, have not vanished; but they descend from Cain, and are the giants drowned by the flood.* Their new hell is nearly the ancient Nástrand, a dwelling deadly cold, full of bloody 3 1 Conybeare's Illustrations, p. 271. * Bretwalda was a species of war-king, or temporary and elective chief of aL' the Saxons.-TR. 3 The Æsir (sing. As) are the gods of the Scandinavian nations, of whom Odi■ was the chief.-TR. 4 Kemble, i. i. xii. In this chapter he has collected many features which show the endurance of the ancient mythology. 5 Nástrand is the strand or shore of the dead.-TR. ! eagles and pale adders;' and the dreadful last day of judgment, when all will crumble into dust, and make way for a purer world, resembles the final destruction of Edda, that 'twilight of the gods,' which will end in a victorious regeneration, an everlasting joy 'under a fairer sun.' By this natural conformity they were able to make their religious poenis indeed poems. Power in spiritual productions arises only from the sincerity of personal and original sentiment. If they can describe religious tragedies, it is because their soul was tragic, and in a degree biblical. They introduce their fierce vehemence into their verses, like the old prophets of Israel, their murderous hatreds, their fanaticism, all the shudderings of their flesh and blood. One of them, whose poem is mutilated, has related the history of Judith-with what inspiration we shall see. It needed a barbarian to display in such strong light excesses, tumult, murder, vengeance, and combat. "Then was Holofernes exhilarated with wine; in the halls of his guests he laughed and shonted, he roared and dinned. Then might the children of men afar off hear how the stern one stormed and clamoured, animated and elated with wine. He admonished amply that they should bear it well to those sitting on the bench. So was the wicked one over all the day, the lord and his men, drunk with wine, the stern dispenser of wealth; till that they swimming lay over drunk, all his nobility, as they were death-slain.'1 The night having arrived, he commands them to bring into his tent 'the illustrious virgin;' then, going in to visit her, he falls drunk on his bed. The moment was come for 'the maid of the Creator, the holy woman.' 'She took the heathen man fast by his hair; she drew him by his limbs towards her disgracefully; and the mischief-ful odious man at her pleasure laid; so as the wretch she might the easiest well command. She with the twisted locks struck the hateful enemy, meditating hate, with the red sword, till she had half eat off his neck; so that he lay in a swoon, drunk and mortally wounded. He was not then dead, not entirely lifeless. She struck then earnest, the woman illustrious in strength, another time the heathen hound, till that his head rolled forth upon the floor. The foul one lay without a coffer; backward his spirit turned under the abyss, and there was plunged below, with sulphur fastened; for ever afterwards wounded by worms. Bound in torments, hard imprisoned, in heil he burns. After his course he need not hope, with darkness overwhelmed, that he may escape from that mansion of worms; but there he shall remain, ever and ever, without end, henceforth in that cavern-house, void of the joys of hope." Has any one ever heard a sterner accent of satisfied hate? When Clovis had listened to the Passion play, he cried, 'Why was I not there with my Franks!' So here the old warrior instinct swelled into flanı over the Hebrew wars. As soon as Judith returned, 'Men under helms (went out) from the holy city at the dawn itself. They Turner, Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, iii. book 9, ch. 3, p. 271. * Ibid, p. 272. dinned shields; men roared loudly. At this rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood, and the wan raven, the fowl greedy of slaughter, both from the west, that the sons of men for them should have thought to prepare their fill on corpses. And to them flew in their paths the active devourer, the eagle, hoary in his feathers. The willowed kite, with his horned beak, sang the song of Hilda. The noble warriors proceeded, they in mail, to the battle, furnished with shields, witl swelling banners. . . . They then speedily let fly forth showers of arrows, the serpents of Hilda, from their horn bows; the spears on the ground hard stormed Loud raged the plunderers of battle; they sent their darts into the throng of the chiefs. . . . They that awhile before the reproach of the foreigners, the taunts of the heathen endured.'1 ... Amongst all these unknown poets' there is one whose name we know, Cædmon, perhaps the old Cædmon who wrote the first hymn; like him, at all events, who, paraphrasing the Bible with a barbarian's vigour and sublimity, has shown the grandeur and fury of the sentiment with which the men of these times entered into their new religion. He also sings when he speaks; when he mentions the ark, it is with a profusion of poetic names, 'the floating house, the greatest of floating chambers, the wooden fortress, the moving house, the cavern, the great sea-chest,' and many more. Every time he thinks of it, he sees it with his mind, like a quick luminous vision, and each time under a new aspect, now undulating on the muddy waves, between two ridges of foam, now casting over the water its enormous shadow, black and high like a castle, 'now enclosing in its cavernous sides' the endless ferment of the caged beasts. Like the others, he wrestles with God in his heart; triumphs like a warrior in destruction and victory; and in relating the death of Pharaoh, can hardly speak from anger, or see, because the blood mounts to his eyes: "The folk was affrighted, the flood-dread seized on their sad souls; ocean wailed with death, the mountain heights were with blood besteamed, the sea foamed gore, crying was in the waves, the water full of weapons, a death-mist rose; the Egyptians were turned back; trembling they fled, they felt fear: would that host gladly find their homes; their vaunt grew sadder: against them, as a cloud, rose the fell rolling of the waves; there came not any of that host to home, but from behind inclosed them fate with the wave. Where ways ere lay sea raged. Their might was merged, the streams stood, the storm rose high to heaven; the loudest armycry the hostile uttered; the air above was thickened with dying voices. . . . Ocean raged, drew itself up on high, the storms rose, the corpses rolled.'3 Is the song of the Exodus more abrupt, more vehement, or more savage? These men can speak of the creation like the Bible, because they speak of destruction like the Bible. They have only to look into their own minds, in order to discover an emotion sufficiently strong to raise their souls to the height of their Creator. This emotion existed 1 Turner, Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, iii. book 9, ch. 3, p. 274. |