Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days Part 7

But there is a better way of love than all of these. One may love the book through which one holds communion with the spirit of its writer, being ready to learn from him by direct learning, or by the learning received through suggestion, or through the rousing of the spirit of enquiry, or the spirit of opposition. Is not this the best kind of love, the love by which the thought of man is used by man, the spirit of man holds communion with the spirit of man?

All through the ages, great things have been handed down by written words, and people of all nations have shared one another's national heritage of written thought, and in that sharing made it larger and greater. We are now considering the earlier story of English Catholic literature, and it is surely well that people should know something of what things were said and sung in the olden time; the time when all art, all literature was fed by the great Mother of all Christian art and all Christian literature, the Holy Catholic Church.

You will find our Catholic literature saturated with sacred lore and knowledge of Holy Scripture. Before printing was invented people could not multiply copies of the Sacred Books as they can now, but they knew them probably much better than many of those who can easily now buy them for a few pence. We have translations of various parts of the Bible in these early times. You will remember how in St Bede's last days he finished his translation of part of St John's Gospel. We have lovely ma.n.u.scripts, such as that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in fine clear writing, which can be seen at the British Museum; and facsimiles of parts of them can be had for a small sum. It is simply an uneducated error to suppose that the heretical editing, as I may call it, of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, made by Tyndale and Coverdale, was the first attempt to put the Bible into English. We should have had plenty of printed copies of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, had these versions never been made and circulated to attack and injure Holy Church, without whom the originals could never have existed.

CHAPTER XIV

Scattering of our old MSS. in Sixteenth Century. Same now in public libraries. Collections. Exeter Book and Vercelli Book.

Where are all our old ma.n.u.scripts, our treasures from days of yore, the work of the cunning scribe, the pages whereon so many of our religious spent hour after hour, in patient and loving toil? They were scattered abroad in the sixteenth century by wholesale. Many of them found their way into private collections, and the collectors often generously gave them to college libraries. Matthew Parker, the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was a great book-collector, and gave a good many volumes to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. Among these is the oldest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. John Bale, once a friar, afterwards, alas! a Protestant Bishop, says that some of the books from the monasteries were used to scour candlesticks or to rub boots; some were sold to grocers and soap-vendors; and whole s.h.i.+ps-full went abroad.

[Ill.u.s.trations: SAXON s.h.i.+P As used by our Forefathers in the time of King Alfred

THE ALFRED JEWEL [_Page 114_]

Robert Bruce Cotton was another great book-collector. His library was sold to the nation about seventy years after his death. Many books and MSS. belonging to it were destroyed or injured by a fire that broke out where it had been placed; among those injured was the only copy of the old poem of Beowulf, which I have not talked about because it is apparently outside our _Catholic_ Heritage in literature. The reduced library is now at the British Museum. It includes the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, or Durham Book, which once belonged to Durham Cathedral.

There is another collection which was bought for the British Museum, made by Harley, Earl of Oxford.

William Laud, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in Charles the First's time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other valuable literary treasures.

Francis Junius collected Anglo-Saxon literature, and other books. He left them to the Bodleian Library. Among them is the unique "Caedmon"

Ma.n.u.script, given him by Archbishop Usher, who founded the library of Trinity College, Dublin. People are now alive to the value of these great possessions, and we must be glad that scholars have worked at them, and published many of them, and so made their contents accessible to everyone. But we must never forget our debt to the earliest writers, and chiefly to the monks who wrote and who copied, much and long and well. As we trust, they have their reward.

There are two specially interesting collections of ma.n.u.script Anglo-Saxon poems, known respectively as the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book. The Exeter Book is one of some sixty volumes acquired by Leofric, Bishop of Crediton, when he was making his library for the cathedral of his new bishopric at Exeter. It is described as "a large English book of many things wrought in verse." It is one of the few of Leofric's books that remain at Exeter, where it has been over eight hundred years. It contains various poems by Cynewulf and others. Several leaves are missing, and ink has been spilt over part of one page. This Exeter library was scattered at the "Reformation." Some of its treasures are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, or at Corpus Christi College, at Cambrige.

The Vercelli Book is so called because it was discovered in its home in the cathedral library at Vercelli in Italy a good many years ago. It contains twenty-two sermons in Anglo-Saxon, and six poems, among which is our beautiful "Dream of the Holy Rood." Perhaps some English pilgrim or pilgrims, on the way to Rome, left this book as a gift, or through inadvertence, at the hospice where hospitality had been received. Or perhaps Cardinal Guala, who was over here in the days of John and of Henry III, bought the book for his library at Vercelli. Or perhaps it was one of the books of which John Bale tells us whole s.h.i.+ps-full went abroad. We have to be very grateful to the scholars whose researches have recovered for us so much of our old heritage, and to those who have made their contents in various ways so easy to get at.

CHAPTER XV

Runes. An early love-poem

I said I would tell you a little about runes, which I have had more than once occasion to mention. The runes were the alphabet used by the Teutonic tribes, to which the English belonged. This alphabet is very old, and it is not certain where it originally came from. The word "rune" means secret or mystery. To "round" in a person's ear means to whisper, so that what is said is a "secret" or a "mystery." The word comes from "rune." When we use the word to "write" we think of setting down words on paper with a pen or a pencil. But the old meaning of "write" is to incise, or to cut, or engrave. Probably the runes were at first cut in wood. A wooden tablet was called "boc," from beechwood being used for it. When we talk of a book we are away from the first idea of a book a good distance. Runes were also carved, or incised, in metal and in bone. They were a.s.sociated, not only with secrecy or mystery, but with magic, and were supposed to possess power for good or evil. People thought that "runes could raise the dead from their graves; they could preserve life or take it, they could heal the sick or bring on lingering disease; they could call forth the soft rain or the violent hailstorm; they could break chains and shackles, or bind more closely than bonds or fetters; they could make the warrior invincible and cause his sword to inflict none but mortal wounds; they could produce frenzy and madness, or defend from the deceit of a false friend."

There is a story in an old Norse book telling that Odin, the Scandinavian G.o.d, learned them and used them. St Bede tells in his "Church History" a story which proves that the belief in the magic power of runes lingered on in England after Christianity had become the professed religion of the people. It takes a good while to lose superst.i.tion that has been with people for a long, long time. Because Christianity condemns anything like magic, the use of the runes, a.s.sociated with it, gradually went out. The Irish missionaries in the North of England taught the people there a beautiful kind of handwriting from which the English handwriting of later times was formed. The "Lindisfarne Gospels" are written in the earlier Irish rounded characters. In a copy of St Bede's "Church History" written after A.D. 730, a more pointed hand is used. If we want to write fast, we do not write so round as when we write slowly. Afterwards, in the tenth century, the English began to use the French style of writing.

The runes were sometimes used as ordinary letters, without any thought of the old connection with magic. So the great Christian poet, Cynewulf, wrote his name in runes, which is how we know him to be the author of some of the poems we have been considering.

The portions of the "Dream of the Holy Rood" which are on the Ruthwell Cross (see Chapter IV) are carved in runes. There is a small sword in the British Museum with runes on it, which was found in the Thames.

In connection with the runes I want to tell you of two old poems, which may be related to each other. One is known as "The Wife's Complaint,"

the other as, "The Husband's Message." The first of them is apparently spoken by a woman who laments her hard fate, her husband having gone over the sea, away from her. She is imprisoned in an old earthen dwelling under an oak; she has no friends near, and she tells how vain were the vows of love exchanged between her and her husband. Now the second poem, "The Husband's Message," may be written for this wife; we do not know; at any rate it conveys a message from an absent husband to a wife; and I will give it to you as an early love-letter. It consists of two parts, one of which has been thought to be a riddle, but they have been put together by a learned Professor, and if they do belong to each other, the arrangement is as interesting as it is beautiful. The message is given by the letter itself--the slip of bark or wood on which it was carved--and this wood speaks. First it tells us about itself. It had dwelt on the beach near the sea-sh.o.r.e: there were few to behold its home in the solitude, but every morning the brown wave encircled it with a watery embrace. Then it little thought that even, though itself mouthless, it should speak among the mead-drinkers and utter words.

A great marvel it is, Strange in the mouth that knoweth it not, How the point of the knife and the right hand, The thought of a man, and his blade therewith, Shaped me with skill, that boldly I might So deliver a message to thee In the presence of us two alone, That to other men our talk May not make it more widely known.

The letter then tells how it had come in the keeled vessel, and how the lady would now know how in her heart she may think of the love of her lord. "I dare maintain," says the letter, "that there thou wilt find true loyalty." He that carved the characters on the wood, bad it pray her, the lady decked with jewels, to remember the vows they twain had often made when they dwelt together in their home in the same land.

Force drove him Out of the land. Now hath he bidden me Earnestly to urge thee to sail the sea When thou hast heard on the brow of the hill The mournful cuckoo call in the wood.

Then let no living man keep thee From the journey, or hinder thy going.

Betake thee to the sea, the home of the mew, Seat thee in the boat, that southward from here Beyond the road of the sea thou mayest find the man Where waits thy prince in hope of thee.

We hope the lady betook herself to the sea-mew's home, and found her beloved at the end of the journey! Her beloved had no thought of any greater joy than the granting of Almighty G.o.d that together they should be givers of treasure to men. The beloved has enough of beaten gold and wealth, and a fair home among the strangers, the n.o.ble warriors that obey him. Banished from home, gone forth a homeless one, in the stranger-land good has come to him; he has no lack of anything but of her, who had with him come under an old threat, and had been parted from him. He vows to fulfil his pledge and love-troth, and he writes in runes some message, which she, as it appears, would understand, and she alone.

The old, old story, written fair and full.

You will have noticed in the literature we have been considering the absence of certain elements which are an integral part of our modern literature. This poem, for instance, is, as far as I know, the only love poem before the Conquest which has come down to us. There is no romance either, and there is, we may say, no humour. Life is a very serious thing, so often lying close to the sword-edge; and the duties of life are simple. There is to be a great, very great enlargement of the borders of English literature later on. Prose and poetry are to have new developments. Romances are to show us heroic ideals. Lyrics of joy, of sorrow, of pa.s.sion, of emotion natural and spiritual, are to be sung.

The sense of beauty is to grow. The drama is to arise from beginnings to be but faintly traced in early days. Epic poetry is to take a great place. Character modified, enriched by foreign strains, is to mould a n.o.ble literature--n.o.ble through many and many a gift and grace. A great poet is to arise with sympathies large and wide, to show us, in verse most musical, in words full meaning, with that grace of humour which is a fresh light upon life, how men and women lived: and to be the great precursor of a greater than he. Geoffrey Chaucer is to come to us. After him William Shakespere.

THE END