The Iceberg-Riddle xxxiv.

Came a wondrous wight o'er the waves a-faring,
Comely from his keel called he to the land.
Loudly did he shout, and his laughter dreadful was,
Full of terror to the Earth! Sharp the edges of his
swords,

Grim was then his hate. He was greedy for the slaughter,

Bitter in the battle work; broke into the shield-walls, Rough and ravaging his way; and a rune of hate he bound.

Then, all-skilled in craft, he said, about himself, his

nature

'Of the maiden kin is my mother known;

Of them all the dearest, so that now my daughter is Waxen up to mightiness.'

Cædmon and the Christian Poetry. The distinctive Christian poetry begins before the date of the Elegies and the Nature-Riddles-in the seventh century, with Cadmon of Whitby. He is the first English poet whose name we know, and it

stands at the head of the long and glorious musterroll of English singers. We have worn Apollo's laurel for 1200 years. Cædmon began to make verse, we may fairly say, between 660 and 670. We know the date of his death-680; and we are told that he was somewhat advanced in years when the gift of song came upon him. We first find him as a secular attendant of the monastery of Hild, an abbess of royal blood, who had set up her house of God on the lofty cliff which rises above the little harbour where the Esk meets the gray waters of the German Ocean. Whitby is its Danish name; in the days of Bæda it was called Streoneshalh. Cadmon was born a heathen if he was English; but if, as some think from his name, he was a Celt, he was born a Christian. The monastery in which he afterwards became a monk was founded on the Celtic pattern-one of the children of Iona-and he was early imbued with the Celtic spirit. Existing Celtic hymns, such as Colman's, may have been placed before him by the Irish monks as models for his poetry. But, for all this, his tongue was English and his poems were made in English. Whatever the Irish spirit did for him, the ground of his work was English.

Bæda tells the story of Cadmon's birth as a poet. One night, having the care of the cattle, he fell asleep in the stable, and One came to him and said, 'Cædmon, sing me something.' 'I know not how to sing,' he replied, ' and for this cause left I the feast.' 'Yet,' said the divine visitant, you must sing to me.' 'What shall I sing?' said Cadmon. 'Sing,' the other replied, 'the beginning of created things.' And immediately Cædmon began a hymn in praise of the World's Upbuilder, and awakening, remembered what he had sung, and told the TownReeve of his gift, who brought him to Hild; and, becoming a monk, he continued in the abbey till he died with joy and in peace, singing, day by day, all the Scripture history, and of the Judgment-day. Others after him,' said Bæda, 'tried to make religious poems, but none could compare with him.'

His poetry had then made a school which was doing similar work to his when Bæda, fifty years after Cadmon's death, was finishing his Ecclesiastical History. Of what kind that work was we have no certain knowledge. The poems attributed to Cædmon by Junius in the manuscript called the Junian Cadmon have been assigned by critics to different writers. Only one of them-Genesis A-is thought by a few to be possibly from his hand. If so, he wrote the thing in two distinct manners- partly in a mere paraphrase of the Biblical story, dull, unilluminated by any imagination; and partly in imaginative episodes, in which the Fall of the rebel angels, the Flood, the battles of Abraham, and the story of Hagar and of Isaac are imaginatively treated as heroic tales, in the manner of a heathen saga, and with English feeling. It is

to be hoped that some day we shall get evidence to prove that these fine, bold episodes are from Cædmon's hand. The only verses we know to be his are transferred into Latin by Bæda, and

1 The following is a transcription of the above passage as it stands in the MS., written straight on without regard to the rhythmical measures, which are partly indicated by the dots. The literal translation printed opposite shows the lines into which the poem naturally falls:

Noe freme. swa hine nergend heht hyrde tham hal
gan. heofon cyninge ongan. ofostlice that hof wyrcan.
micle mere cieste. magum sægde. that was threalic thing
theodum toweard. rethe wite. hie ne rohton thæs. ge
seah tha ymb wintra worn. warfest metod geofon
husa mæst. gearo hlifigean. innan and utan. eorthan
lime. gefæstnod with flode. fær noes. thy selestan

that is syndrig cynn. Symle bith thy heardra. the hit hreoh
water swearte sa streamas. swithor beatath

suggests to critics that Cædmon's work was mainly a series of heroic hymn-like lays on the subjects of the Old and New Testament, tinged with the colours of the Nature and the hero myths. It may be that we have the remains of one of these in the poem, portions of which are carved in runic letters on the Ruthwell Cross in Dumfriesshire. The lines sing of Jesus, the young Hero, who was God Almighty, who girded Himself and stepped up, full of courage, on the gallows for the sake of man.' And as He lies there, the Sacred Rood speaks: 'Lifted on high, I bore the Lord of the heavenly realm, and trembled, all besteamed with blood. Pierced with spears and sore pained with sorrows, I beheld it all. They laid Him, limbwearied, in the grave.' If this fragment be really Cadmon's work, it fills us with deep regret that we have lost his other poems-lost a poetry so close to the heroic manner, so filled with the spirit of that heathen vigour and passion which his life had seen and known. At any rate, we owe him a great debt. He bridged the river between the pagan and the Christian poetry. He showed to his folk how the new material of Christianity could be used by the bards of England. He made a great school of poetry. He made Cynewulf possible. He is the first English poet in our England. The royal line of England goes back to Cerdic, the still more royal line of English poets goes back to Cædmon.

The poetry of the School of Cadmon belongs to the end of

the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century. Some of these poems are in the Exeter Book. They are short hymnic songs of praise. There is the Song of the Three Children, adapted in the seventh century from the Apocrypha; and following it, the Prayer of Azarias. These were joined together, and furnished in later times with a conclusion, celebrating the deliverance of the three children. As the capacity for writing poetry grew, other forms were developed-poems of a halfepic character, and narrative poems with episodes like heathen lays inserted on a background of narrative. Of these two kinds of poetry, which ran together, the Exeter Book contains threeGenesis A, Exodus, and Daniel; and in the manuscript which contains Beowulf there is another— Judith. These probably belonged to Northumbria. Whether any long poems were written in the middle and south of England at this time we do not know; but we do know that the family lay and the war-song were made and sung everywhere, and we have a pleasant story which tells how Ealdhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, was accustomed on his preaching tours to stand like a gleeman on the bridge or the public way, and to sing songs, it may be his own, to the people flocking to the fairs, that he might draw them to him to hear the Word of God. This is the only thing we know of poetry in the south of England at this time.

Genesis A is in the Junian manuscript. This manuscript was found by Archbishop Ussher, and sent by him to Francis Du Jon (Junius), who printed it at Amsterdam some time after 1650, and published it as the work of Cædmon, because its contents and its beginning agreed with Bæda's account of Cadmon's work. It is now at the Bodleian, and is a small folio of 229 pages, in two handwritings, the first of the tenth century, and illustrated with rude pictures. The first contains the Genesis, the Exodus, and the Daniel; the second the poems and fragments of poems generally classed under the title of Christ and Satan. The Genesis is now divided into two parts, called A and B, and Genesis B and the Christ and Satan are now placed by the critics in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Genesis A is the first of the three poems belonging to the Cadmon School. It consists of the first 234 lines of the Genesis, and of the lines from 852 to the close. [The lines between 234 and 852 are Genesis B.] The early poem has many archaic elements, drawn from Teutonic ideas of the universe -- ancient Nature-myths. Its account of Abraham's war is alive with heathen lust of battle and vengeance; and Abraham and his comrades speak like an English earl and his thanes in counsel. When the poet comes to gentler matters the spirit of the poem is changed. The Christian sentiment for soft landscape, its love of animals, and its tender domestic feeling touch the verse, in a pathetic mingling, with grace and delicacy.

The account of the Creation tells of the Hollow Chasm, black in everlasting night-the vast Abrupt that was before the earth and stars were made; then of the birth of ocean and of light, and of Day flying from the Dark, and of Morning striding over earth and repelling the Night; then of Man's creation, and of the winsome water washing the happy lands, and of earth made lovely with flowers--and the lines are full of the new kindliness which, unlike the heathen poetry, loved the beauty and softness of the earth and sky. Mere paraphrase follows, and then the poetic work is again taken up in the episode of the Flood, which is told by one who had seen the rain of tempest and heard the sounding of the sea, and, it may be, from the height of the abbey cliff, watched the sailors drive their barks into the harbour. Another weary piece of paraphrase brings us to Abraham's story, his visit to Egypt, his war with the kings of the East, Hagar's deliverance, and the sacrifice of Isaac. The episode is well invented, and developed with great freedom from its original. The war is English Abraham acts and talks like an English earl; the raid of the Eastern kings is like a raid of the Picts into Northumbria; the tie of comradeship between Abraham and Aner, Mamre and Eshcol, is the same as that between Beowulf and his thanes, between Byrhtnoth and his followers; the joy in the vengeance taken is fiercely northern. 'No need,' cries Abraham, ‘to fear any more the fighting rush of the Northmen. The carrion-birds, splashed with their blood and glutted with their corpses, are sitting now on the ledges of the hills.' Dialogue, which belongs to the whole of the episodes and gives them life and movement, is largely used in the story of Hagar, and almost suggests the drama. The sacrifice of Isaac is full of Teutonic touches-the bale-fire, the white-haired gold-giver girding his gray sword on him, the sun stepping upwards, the high wolds where the pyre is made, the vivid reality of a Northman's human sacrifice; and the poem ends with the cry of God Pluck the boy away living from the pile of wood.'

war.

The Exodus is a complete whole. It is not troubled by paraphrase. The writer uses the greatest freedom with his subject, inventing, expanding, elaborately exalting his descriptions; beginning with the death of the first-born, and ending with the triumph over Pharaoh. War and the array of battle give him great pleasure. He describes Pharaoh's host on their march with vigour and fire; and the marshalling of Israel before the passage of the sea is full of poetic pleasure. In both passages, what an English host was like at the beginning of the eighth century is exactly detailed. The great war, however, is the war of God against the Egyptians, His menace of their host on the march, His use against them of the blackness of tempest, the charging waves, the bloody flood. These were God's ancient swords.

Many times the poet describes the overwhelming. It is forcible--over forcible; but young poetic life is in it. And the poem closes with the Song of victory and the plunder of the dead Egyptians.

Judith, in the manuscript which contains Beowulf, is probably of the same cycle as the Exodus-a poem of the middle of the eighth century. Like the Exodus, the poem is conceived as a Saga, to be sung before the warriors in camp as well as the monks in the refectory. It seems to have been in twelve books, for our manuscript contains a few lines of Section ix., and the whole of Sections x., xi., and xii. Section x. begins with the feast of Holofernes and the leading of Judith to his tent. He reels into his bed, drunken and shouting. 'Avenge, O God!' she cries, this burning at my heart; and the slaughter of the heathen chief is told with accurate delight. Book xi. brings us to Bethulia. Judith calls on all the burghers to arm for battle, and again English war is described. The warriors, bold as kings, run swiftly to the carnage, showers of spears fall on the foes, and the sword-play is fierce among the doomed. The gaunt wolf, the raven, and the dusky eagle rejoiced on that day. The twelfth book tells of the surprise of the Assyrian host, their flight, and the gathering of the spoil; and Judith ends it with the praise of God. She towers over the whole, a noble and heroic figure, fit to receive and wear her spoil-the sword and helm, war-shirt and gems, of Holofernes.

The Daniel closes this earliest cycle of Christian poetry. It has no literary quality-a mere monkish paraphrase of the book as far as the feast of Belshazzar. The school of Cædmon had reached its decay.

The poetry of that school took its materials from the Old Testament. Christ was celebrated in it as the Creator, the great warrior who overthrew the rebel angels, the Egyptians, the Assyrians. It was eminently English; it was eminently objective. The personality of the poet does not intrude into the poems.

The second school of Christian poetry is clearly divided from its predecessor. Cynewulf was its founder and its best artist. Its subjects are drawn from the New Testament and the martyr stories and legends of the Church of Rome. It is more Latin in feeling than English. Christ is celebrated, not as the God of the Jews who destroys His foes, but as the Saviour of the world of men for whom He dies, and the Judge who is to come. The note of it is a note of sorrow on the earth, but of joy to be in heaven. In the life to come is the rapture which fills the hymns of Cynewulf. And, finally, the poetry almost ceases to be objective. The personal passion of the poet enters into every subject, and like a runs river through every poem. Even the natural description is touched with its colour.

Abraham's Battle with the Elamites.

So they rushed together. Loud were then the lances, Savage then the slaughter-hosts. Sadly sang the wan fowl,

All her feathers dank with dew, 'midst the darting of the shafts,

Hoping for the corpses. Then the heroes hastened
In their mighty masses, and their mood was full of
thought.
Hard the play was there,

Interchanging of death-darts, mickle cry of war!
Loud the clang of battle! With their hands the heroes
Drew from sheath their swords ring-hilted,
Doughty of the edges.

In the camps was clashing
Of the shields and shafts, of the shooters falling;
Brattling of the bolts of war! Underneath the breast
of men

Grisly gripped the sharp-ground spears

On the foemen's life. Thickly fell they there Where, before, with laughter, they had lifted booty. (Genesis, II. 1982-2060.)

The Approach of Pharaoh.
Then they saw

Forth and forward faring, Pharaoh's war array,
Gliding on, a grove of spears; glittering the hosts!
Fluttered there the banners, there the folk the march
trod.

Onwards surged the war, strode the spears along,
Blickered the broad shields; blew aloud the trumpets.
Wheeling round in gyres, yelled the fowls of war,
Of the battle greedy; hoarsely barked the raven,
Dew upon his feathers, o'er the fallen corpses;
Swart that chooser of the slain! Sang aloud the wolves
At the eve their horrid song, hoping for the carrion.
Kindless were the beasts, cruelly they threaten;
Death did these march-warders, all the midnight through,
Howl along the hostile trail-hideous slaughter of the
host.

Cynewulf.

Cynewulf, with whom the second period of Old English poetry begins, was, in the opinion of a large number of critics, a Northumbrian, but some think him to have been Mercian. It is difficult to conceive how a poet so well acquainted with the sea and the coasts of the sea should have written in Mercia. A Mercian might have been acquainted with the sea, but not impassioned by it, as Cynewulf proves he is. Moreover, the sadness of his poetry, the constant regret for vanished glory, does not suit the life in Mercia at this time, when, from 718 to 796, Ethelbald and Offa had made Mercia the greatest kingdom in England ; but does suit the life in Northumbria when, from 750 to 790, that kingdom had fallen into anarchy and decay. There are other critics who place him much later than the eighth century.

We know the name of the poet, and something of his life and character. He has signed his name in runic letters to four of his poems. His riddling commentary on these runes gives personal details of parts of his life. His youth, he says, 'was

radiant.' He was sometimes attached as a Scôp to a chieftain; sometimes he played the part of a wandering singer. He had received many gifts for his singing, then fallen into need; had known the griefs of love, and lived the wild life of a young poet; so that, when looking back on his youth, he thinks of himself as stained with many sins. Then the scenery of his life changed. Some heavy misfortune fell on him, and he tells us then that his repentance was deep. In his sorrow for sin he had a vision of the Cross, and felt the blessing of forgiveness. His 'gift of song' that he had lost in his remorse and fear returned to him, and then he began to write his Christian poetry. In that poetry we read his sensitive, impassioned, self-contemplative character. He is as personal as Milton or Cowper; but, unlike Cowper, he passes from religious sorrow into religious peace, and the poems written in his old age are full of contented aspiration for the better kingdom.

The Riddles, it is generally understood, contain a great deal of his early work before his conversion. If they are his, they tell us that he knew some Latin and had lived in monasteries, probably as a scholar; was a lover of natural scenery, of animals and birds; was eager in the works of war, and had sung the sword, the spear, the war-shirt, and the bow; had watched with an observant eye the village and the town on the edge of the woods, the river, the mill, the loom, the gardens, the domestic animals. Moreover, he had seen and described, with a young man's joy in the tempest, the cliffs and shore white with the leaping waves, the ships labouring in the mountainous sea, the folk-halls burning in the gale, the woods ravaged by the lightning and the black rain.

All this and much more is celebrated in the Riddles. With his love of impersonation, he personified far more than his riddle-making predecessors, Ealdhelm, Symphosius, and Tatwine, the subjects of his enigmas. When he makes the Iceberg ride like a Viking over the waves, and charge, breaking his enemies' ships, with fierce singing and laughing, to the shore, we feel that he could scarce carry further imaginative personation of natural phenomena. Yet he is so particular in observation of Nature that he devotes three separate Riddles to the description of three several kinds of tempest, and they are done with imaginative intensity, nor is the phrase exaggerated.

The Riddles are in the Exeter Book, in three divisions. There are ninety-five of them, but these are combined into eighty-nine. There were probably a hundred. Those written by Ealdhelm and others before Cynewulf's time were in Latin; these are in English verse, with the exception of the eighty-sixth, which is in Latin. As the name Lupus is in it, it is supposed that Cynewulf thus recorded his name.

When we meet Cynewulf again he is all changed. He has suffered sore trouble, and is overwhelmed with sorrow for sin; and we possess,

C and Y and N; for the King is wrathful,
God of conquests giver. Then, beflecked with sins,
E and V and U must await in fear

What, their deeds according, God will doom to them
For their life's reward. L and F are trembling,
Waiting, sad with care.

The Juliana is in the Exeter Book, and Cynewulf has worked up the legend of this virgin and martyr in a series of episodes so abrupt, so full of repetition, with so awkward a hand, that it plainly suggests a beginner's work in a new method. From a wild young poet to a sad penitent, from versing of war and love and nature to versing a pious legend, are not transitions which are easily made, nor is the work done in such a transition imaginative. We may say the same of the first part of the St Guthlac, which he has not signed, but which we think was written in this transition period. It rests on traditions of the saint, and is a lifeless piece of writing.

In the Crist, which is the next signed poem, Cynewulf has passed through this transition time, and attained ease, life, and eagerness in his art; recovered his imaginative power, his passion, and his descriptive force. Here, for the first time in his Christian work, he reaches originality, his true method and fit material. The Crist is not the translation of a legend; it is freshly invented; and Cynewulf is always at his best when he is inventing, not imitating. The sorrow for his sinful life continues, but it is now mingled with the peace which comes of realised forgiveness. 'I have sailed on wind-swept seas,' he cries, 'over fearful surges, but now my ship is anchored in the haven to which the Spirit-Son of God has brought me home.'

The Crist is in the Exeter Book. It was scattered in fragmentary pieces through this book, but has now been brought together. It consists of three parts. The first celebrates the Nativity, the second the Ascension, the third the Day of Judgment, and the poem closes at line 1663. The series of cantatas into which the first part is set are remarkable not only for the rushing praise with which each of them ends, but also for a dramatic dialogue, almost like the dialogue in the Miracle-Plays, between a choir of men and women from Jerusalem and Mary and Joseph. It reads like a prediction of the medieval mysteries. In the second part there is a finely conceived scene, set in the vast of space, of Christ returning to His Father's home, leading all the Old Testament saints up out of Hades, and of the meeting with Him and them of the host of heaven who have poured from the gates to welcome the new-comers. The third part of the poem begins with the gathering of the angels and the