CHAPTER III. ANGLO-SAXON LEARNING AND PROSE.

Latin Among the Anglo-Saxons.

Books written on English soil in the Latin language are no part of English literature. It is necessary, however, to notice them, because they testify to the knowledge and taste of the educated; while the ideas expressed in Latin reached the less instructed people through sermons and in conversation, and through the translations into Anglo-Saxon which were directed and in part executed by King Alfred.

Though written by a native of our island we may omit the Latin book of Gildas, of about 516-570, for he was a Briton of the Romanized sort, who fled to Brittany. His book, where it does not contain mere lamentations, gives a kind of history, very vague, of events in the country, and of the sins and crimes of the British princes down to about 550. Such as the information was, Bede, the great early Anglo-Saxon historian, used it, as did the author of "The History of the Britons" attributed to Nennius (say 800), who, like Gildas, mentions the battle of Badon hill, but, unlike Gildas, brings in King Arthur. As we shall see later, Bede does not mention Arthur.

Leaving these vague British writers in Latin, we come to Bede.

Bede.

When we think of the time in which Bede, the greatest of our early scholars, lived and worked, it seems amazing that he had such a wide knowledge of books and so comparatively clear an idea of the way in which history should be written. Born in 673[Pg 24] (died 735), he was in his thirteenth year when his king, Egfrid of Northumbria, was killed by the Piets (practically Gaelic-speaking Highlanders), in the great battle of Nectan's mere (685), in Angus beyond the Tay, for so far into what is now Scotland had English Northumbria pushed her conquests. Great part of these was lost, and in the eighth century, there came an age of anarchy and civil war, as fierce as the contests of the old times of heathendom. To us the Anglo-Saxons of these ages seem barbarous enough, but Bede speaks of the Piets of Scotland as "barbarians". He constantly deplores the greed and ignorance of the clergy, in terms much like those used by the Protestants before the Reformation. In an ignorant age Bede wrote unceasingly and copiously about such natural science as was within his reach, especially using that popular and fanciful book of Pliny, mere fairy-tales of natural (or unnatural) history. He wrote much and usefully on chronology in relation to history; and on theology, of course, he wrote abundantly. Most important is his "Church History of the Race of Angles," without which we should know little indeed concerning the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain, and the development of events both in England and Scotland. His tale of the reception of Christianity by Edwin is very commonly quoted: it is of much literary interest, and proves that the sense of the mystery and melancholy of the world, so often expressed in Anglo-Saxon poetry, weighed heavily on men who were not poets.

A council or Witanagemot was held to consider the Christian doctrines preached by Paulinus. One noble, Coifi, said, in jest or earnest, that the heathen religion was useless, "for no man among your people does more to please our gods than I, but many are more favoured by you and by fortune". Coifi, therefore, voted that Christianity deserved consideration. But another noble, agreeing so far, added, "Human life, oh King,... seems to me to resemble the flight of a sparrow, which flits into your warm hall at a feast in winter weather. The bird flies into the bright hall by one door, and out by another, and after a moment of quiet, slips from the wintry darkness into the wintry darkness again. Such is the life of man, that is for a moment, but what went before, and what comes after, as yet we know not." The practical[Pg 25] Coifi then proposed to destroy the old temples of the old gods; rode off, and threw his spear into a shrine.

Coifi's idea was merely to "change the luck," and to enjoy the pleasures of destruction; he was of a common type of reformers; while the other speaker desired intellectual satisfaction, and the understanding of the mystery of existence.

Latin and even Greek learning, we have seen, found footing in southern England with the arrival of Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian at Canterbury in 669. Latin had never been quite extinct. A non-English writer in Latin, in Scotland, is Adamnan (died 704), author of a Life of the Irish St. Columba, who brought Christianity to the Picts of Scotland, while later from his little holy Isle of Iona missionaries reached Northumbria. Adamnan's book may be read with more pleasure than any other of the time; it is so rich in pictures of Highland life and sport on sea and land, and in tales of magic and the second sight. This was one of the works used by Bede in writing his "History".

The numerous books which were within the reach of Bede were brought, in five journeys, by Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, from Rome to Northumberland. Before Bede, such books had been studied by Aldhelm (Bishop of Sherborne, died 709). He wrote poetry in the native language, which King Alfred greatly admired, but none of the extant poems are attributed to him. His Latin would have surprised Cicero; he delighted in strange words, and in strings of alliterations. He wrote edifying treatises on Christian virtues as exemplified by Biblical characters and by saints, some of them rather fabulous personages. He knew many early Christian authors, and Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, and Lucan, but his own style was as absurdly bombastic as that of many of the ancient Irish romances. He had disciples in style, who manufactured acrostics in Latin verse.

The Latin literature of the southern Anglo-Saxons thus fell for a time into full decadence; very different was the learning of the northern Bede. His taste was uncorrupted by the sudden arrival of ancient literature among a people almost barbarous. He wrote in plain Latin without affectation concerning things worthy to be[Pg 26] known and remembered: he gave us a frank and charming picture of the great St. Cuthbert; he had, no doubt, too great a love of miracles, and rather exaggerated some which he found in earlier lives of early English saints, such as the said Cuthbert, the saint of the Border, whose body sleeps in Durham Cathedral. The authors whom he quotes are mainly Christian, including many of the chief Fathers of the Church, and he is not certain about the propriety of studying the heathen classics, though he cannot abstain from Virgil, who, it was fancied, predicted the coming of Christ. He had Greek enough to read the Greek New Testament, but this learning was lost, in England, in later times. The translation of Bede's "History" into Anglo-Saxon under King Alfred was not the least of his gifts to his people.

Alcuin.

Alcuin (735-804), a pupil of the school of York, lived at the worst period of the savage attacks made by the still heathen Danes on England. What the Anglo-Saxons had done to the Britons, the Danes after 780 did to the Anglo-Saxons, slaying, plundering, torturing, and burning, wherever they came. Happily for Alcuin he passed most of his life abroad, aiding the great Emperor Charlemagne in founding schools and fostering education. Charlemagne collected the old war-songs of his people, little dreaming that in three centuries he would become as fabulous a hero, in the French epic poems of the eleventh to the thirteenth century, as Beowulf or Alboin had been in Germanic lays. Alcuin had far more influence as a lecturer and as a writer of letters than as an author; in a poem he preserves the names of the books in the libraries of York and Wearmouth, beautiful manuscripts that would now be almost priceless, but the Danes burned them all. Other Latin writers there were, they mainly dealt with religious themes, and their works are of very little importance.

Alfred.

Not till the kingdom of the West Saxons, Wessex, became the most powerful state in England, and made successful resistance to[Pg 27] the Scandinavian invaders, who had destroyed monasteries everywhere, were learning and literature able to raise their heads again. It was the most famous of English kings, Alfred (849-901), that, among all his other labours as warrior and ruler, restored education.

It is unfortunate that so many matters of interest in Anglo-Saxon times are veiled in obscurity. The "Life of Alfred," by Asser, a Welshman, Bishop of Sherborne, is a confused record.

Alfred was certainly taken to Rome by his father at a very early age, but all that is told on this subject is most perplexing. He is said to have been untaught in the art of reading till he was 12 years old, but he heard Anglo-Saxon poems repeated by others, and knew many of them by heart. The famous tale that his mother offered a book of Anglo-Saxon poems to the first of her sons who should "learn it," and that Alfred was taken by the beauty of the illuminations, learned to read, and won the prize, is absolutely unintelligible in Asser's Latin. But Asser says, and Alfred, in his Preface to an Anglo-Saxon translation of Pope Gregory's "Pastoral Care" himself avers, that learning was almost or quite extinct south of the Humber, when his reign began, while in Northumbria matters were little better. But his father's second wife, Judith, was daughter to the Emperor, Charles the Bald, and though Judith, a young girl, was far from being sedate and erudite, the connexion with the Continent enabled Alfred to bring over Frankish scholars, such as Grimbald, while from Wales came Asser, who, for part of each year, lived with Alfred as his tutor.

The king wrote a Handbook, or commonplace book, of Latin extracts, which he translated into his own native tongue; and later he translated, or caused to be translated, the "Pastoral Care" of Pope Gregory; the very popular work on "Consolation" by Bo?thius, a philosopher who was slain about 524; the "Church History" of Bede; and a kind of "History of the World" by Orosius, a Christian writer of the fifth century. Of these books, the "History" by Bede was of the greatest value for Englishmen; the "Consolations" of Bo?thius are at least as consolatory as any others, and were long popular; while whoever reads Orosius will learn many things, though he will learn them wrong, about the whole history of the human race. Still, the Anglo-Saxon reader became aware of the[Pg 28] elements of geography, and of the existence of the powers of ancient Assyria, Egypt, Crete, and Athens, while much space is devoted to the empire of the Amazons.[1] "It is shameful," says Orosius, nobly, "to speak of such a state of things, when such miserable women, and so foreign, had subdued the bravest men of all this earth," a conquest which the women repeated, he says, during the Peloponnesian war!

When Orosius reaches Roman history he is much more copious, and not so amusingly incorrect. Alfred, as a rule, paraphrased rather than translated his originals, omitting and adding at pleasure, and amplifying the geography of the North, by information received through Otthere and Wulfstan, contemporary voyagers.

He found learning on its deathbed and he restored and revived it, saving erudition from the natural contempt of men by the royal example of a great statesman, sportsman, and warrior. It was plain to the world that, in spite of the human tendency to despise books, learning was not merely an affair for shavelings in cloisters, for the great king himself loved reading and writing.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

To the influence of Alfred is attributed, with much probability, the organization of the earlier parts of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," which briefly tells the history of the country from year to year. There were several versions of these annals, containing the most notable events of each year. It seems that copies of one manuscript, containing the remotest events, beginning with the invasion of Britain by Julius C?sar, and going on to Alfred's own age, were given to several monasteries. In each the scribe afterwards continued to make, as it were, a diary of the chief occurrences, and, later, various additions about past events would be inserted in various religious houses, so that the dates are not always to be trusted. After the year of Alfred's birth, the records become more full. In his "Life of Alfred," Asser turned much[Pg 29] of the "Chronicle" for Alfred's reign into Latin: the materials of the "Chronicle," therefore, existed in his day (an early part of it was by a Northumbrian writer). The "Chronicle" now exists in several versions, done by various hands in various monasteries. Some "Chronicles" are lost, such as that of Kent, whence much matter has been borrowed by that of Peterborough, which is the longest, and reaches the year 1154.

The early entries in the "Chronicle" are very short: here is the history of the year 774.

"In this year a red Cross appeared in the heavens after sunset; and in this year the Mercians and Kentish men fought at Otford, and wondrous serpents were seen in the South Saxons' land."

This reads like a journal kept by a child. In later days events are recorded at more length, such as fights with the Danes; meetings of the Witanagemot, or great Council of the Wise; slayings of Kings and Earls; even foreign facts of interest about Popes and Emperors. But as late as 1066, the chronicler is brief enough, when he tells how William, Count of Normandy, sailed to Pevensey on Michaelmas Eve.

"This was then made known to King Harold, and he gathered a great army, and came to meet Count William at the hoar apple tree. And William came against him unawares, ere his people were in battle order. But the king, nevertheless, fought boldly against him with those men who would follow him, and there was a great slaughter made on each side. There were slain King Harold, and Earl Leofwine his brother, and Earl Gyrth his brother, and many good men; and the French held possession of the place of carnage, as to them God granted for the people's sins." We who write long books about a single battle, such as Waterloo, are surprised by the brevity of the "Chronicle".

Some seventy years later, just before it ends, the "Chronicle" has a long and famous passage about the cruel oppressions in Stephen's reign (1137). By that date the language has changed so much, that the meaning can easily be made out, even by readers who do not know Anglo-Saxon. The style of the "Chronicle" is always extremely simple, and the good monks are usually more interested in events affecting their own monasteries, than in[Pg 30] matters which are of more importance to the history of the country. Nevertheless, there are records of periods in the "war-age" when the Danes were burning, plundering, and slaying through England, and there are characters of great interest among the kings, earls, and counsellors, lay or clerical, of whom we should know little or nothing if the monks had ceased to make their entries in the "Chronicle". To students of language, with its dialects and changes, the "Chronicle" is priceless, and a few poems and ballads are contained in its pages.

The most famous poem in the "Chronicle" is on the battle of Brunanburh (937), when the English, under ?thelstan, defeated the Scots and Danes. This song, translated by Tennyson, does not so much describe the fighting as the triumph after the battle.

Five lay
On that battle-stead,
Young kings
By swords laid to sleep:
So seven eke
Of Olaf's earls,
Of the country countless
Shipmen and Scots.

Olaf fled in his ship over the barren sea, the aged Constantine, King of the Scots, left his son dead on the field. As usual the raven, wolf, and eagle have their share of the corpses: an Anglo-Saxon poet could not omit these animals. This poet boasts that there has been no such victory since first the Anglo-Saxons "the Welsh overcame". Perhaps the enthusiasm of English students rather overrates the poetical merits of this war-song.

There is more poetry, and more originality in "Byrhtnoth," a song of a defeat at the hands of the Danes. The warrior entering the field of battle

Let from his hands his lief hawk fly,
His hawk to the holt, and to battle he stepped.

He haughtily refuses to accept peace in exchange for tribute which the Danes demand. The armies are divided from each other by a tidal river, and Byrhtnoth chivalrously allows the[Pg 31] heathen to cross, at low tide, and meet him in fair field. There are descriptions of hand to hand single combats; and of the wounds given and taken, and the boasts of the slayers, who throw their spears, piercing iron mail, and shields of linden wood; and strip the slain of their armour and jewels. The friends of the fallen fight across the corpses. Byrhtnoth falls, some of his company flee, the rest make a ring of spears about the hero, one cries

The more the mood, as lessens our might,

that is,

The braver be we, as our strength fails.

The whole poem might be translated, almost without a change, into "the strong-winged music of Homer," or the verse of the old French "Song of Roland". The song is not conventional, it is a noble war-poem. For some reason the best war-poems are inspired by glorious defeats, at Maldon, at Flodden, at Bosworth, at Roncesvaux, at Culloden.

The Monks and Learning.

The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," running from Alfred's day to King Stephen's, and thus surviving the Norman Conquest, is the earliest historical writing in English prose. As we have seen, it was the work of the monks, regular soldiers of learning, living together under strict rules. On the other hand the secular clergy, parish priests and others, were the irregular levies against ignorance. The monks were fallen on evil times for learning and literature.

During the long cruel wars against the Danish raiders and settlers (900-960) many monasteries were overthrown; others, like Abingdon, became poor neglected places; into others the kings and nobles placed their younger children, to live comfortably on the rents and revenues of the Church, and neglect prayer and books. Under Eadwig the Fair, St. Dunstan (born 925) appeared as a reformer, making the rule of the Church respected, and being therefore at feud with Eadwig, as Thomas à Becket was with Henry II. Under Edgar (957-975), peace was restored, and Dunstan could carry out reforms as Archbishop of[Pg 32] Canterbury. He brought back from Flanders the new rule-of the Order of St. Benedict (which the monk in Chaucer despises as not up to date) for the strict living of monks, and was backed by Bishops Oswald and ?thelwald, men of learning and reformers of education.

New monasteries, which often had schools attached to them, were built, and old monasteries were restored. Dunstan was an artist (a picture of him as a monk is still preserved, and is said to have been drawn by himself). He was skilled in music and metalworking, and fond of the old Anglo-Saxon poetry. He has left no books of his own writing, but there are curious early Lives of him in Latin. As a boy he climbed in his sleep to the roof of a church; he used to see visions of people at the time of their deaths; a large stone is said to have flown at him of its own accord; and, before his death, his bed, with him in it, was slowly raised up in air, and softly let down again. According to these tales, Dunstan must have been a "medium"; there is nothing saintly in such prodigies. Like many people of genius who were not saints, he was of a visionary nature, though a thoroughly practical and energetic man.

Thus he, with Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, later Archbishop of York; Abbo; ?thelwold; Byrthferth; and others, introduced "regulars"—Benedictine monks—in place of married priests into the cathedrals, and encouraged schools and learning of all kinds. ?thelwold himself taught Latin to boys at Winchester, and had the Latin book of the rules of the Benedictine monks done into Anglo-Saxon. A set of Anglo-Saxon sermons survives from this age called "The Blickling Homilies" (from Blickling, a house of Lord Lothian, where the manuscript has been preserved). Homilies are simple statements of Scriptural facts for simple hearers. The preacher already addresses the congregation as "my dearest brethren" (mine gebrothra tha leofostan). "Bethlehem," says the preacher, "means being interpreted, the House of Bread, and in it was Christ, the true bread, brought forth." "The Divine nature is not mingled with the human nature, nor is there any separation: we might explain this to you by a little comparison, if it were not too lowly; see an egg, the white is not mixed with the[Pg 33] yolk, yet it is one egg." The sermons (these quoted are by ?lfric) are all plain teaching for plain people, but there is a famous address by Bishop Wulfstan, encouraging the English, by Biblical examples of Hebrew fighting patriots, to defend themselves against the cruel heathen Danes (1014).

?lfric.

In the school at Winchester ?lfric was trained (born 955?) and thence went to instruct the young monks in the abbey of Cerne in Dorset, where he preached homilies; he wrote them both in English and in Latin. His sermon on the "Holy Housel," that is the Holy Communion, contained ideas which the Protestants, at the Reformation, thought similar to their own, and they printed this homily. "All is to be understood spiritually." "It skills not to ask how it is done, but to believe firmly that done it is." The style of the prose is more or less alliterative, and a kind of rhythm is detected in some of the sermons, as if they were intended to be chanted.

The Latin grammars written by ?lfric do not concern English literature; his Dialogue (Colloquium) between a priest and a number of persons of various occupations, throws light on ways of living. He wrote Latin "Lives of Saints," and edited part of an English translation or paraphrase of the Bible, suitable as material for homilies. He produced many other theological works, and died about 102-(?) being Abbot of Eynsham in Oxfordshire.

The interest of ?lfric, Wulfstan, and the rest, for us, is that they upheld a standard of learning and of godly living, in evil times of fire and sword, and that English prose became a rather better literary instrument in their hands.

The "Leechdoms," and works on herb-lore and medicine of the period, partly derived from late Latin books, partly from popular charm songs, are merely curious; they are full of folk-lore. After the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon prose, save in the "Chronicle," was almost submerged, though, in poetry, there were doubtless plenty of popular ballads, for the most part lost or faintly traceable as translated into the Latin prose of some of the writers of history. There would be songs chanted among the country people about[Pg 34] the deeds of Hereward the Wake and other popular heroes; minstrels, now poor wanderers, would sing in the farmhouses, and in the halls of the English squires, but not much of their compositions remains.

We have, however, a few famous brief passages of verse, like the poem of "The Grave," familiar through Longfellow's translation, and probably earlier than the Conquest. It is written on the margin of a book of sermons, and the author's mood is truly sepulchral. The "Rhymed Poem" is celebrated only because it is in rhyme, which was a novelty with a great future before it; it is older than 1046, its muse is that of moral reflection.

The one verse of a song of King Canute is handed down by a monkish chronicler who lived more than a century later. The king in a boat on the Ouse, near a church, bids his men row near the shore to hear the monks sing:—

Merie sungen the munaches binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut ching rew therby:
"Roweth cnihtes neer the land,
And here we thes munches sang."

This contains a kind of rhyme, or incomplete rhyme, of the vowel sounds only (assonance) in Ely, therby, "land", "sang."

St. Godric (died 1170) also left a hymn to Our Lady, in rhymed couplets, with the music.

Of about the same period is a rhymed version of the Lord's Prayer; the number of syllables to each line varies much, as in Anglo-Saxon poetry, contrary to the rule in the poetry of France.

There are other examples all showing the untaught tendency of the songs of the people towards rhyme and towards measures unknown to the early Anglo-Saxons.

[1] The Amazons appear to have been the armed priestesses of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor, about 1200 b.c.