Amenities of Literature Part 3

To what cause are we to ascribe the complex construction of the diction, and the multiplied intricacies of the metres of the poetry of the Northmen? Bishop Percy noticed, that the historian of the Runic poetry has counted up among the ancient Icelandic poets one hundred and thirty-six different metres. The Icelandic and the Anglo-Saxon are cognate languages, being both dialects of the ancient Gothic or Teutonic. The genius of the Danish Scalds often displays in their Eddas[8] a sublime creative power far out of the reach of the creeping and narrow faculty of the Saxon, yet the same mechanism regulated both; the fixed recurrence of certain letters or syllables which const.i.tutes that perpetual alliteration, which oftener than rhyme gratified the ear of barbaric poesy, and a metaphorical phraseology or poetical vocabulary appropriated by the bards, furnis.h.i.+ng the adept with phrases when he had not always ready any novel conceptions. Shall we deem such arbitrary forms and such artificial contrivances, the mere childishness of tastes, to have been invented in the wintry years of these climates, to amuse themselves in their stern solitudes; or rather, may we not consider them as a mystery of the Craft, the initiation of the Order? for by this scholarlike discipline in multiplying difficulties the later bards separated themselves from those humbler minstrels who were left to their own inartificial emotions.

Such prescribed formulae, and such a mechanism of verse, must have tethered the imagination in a perpetual circle; it was art which violated the free course of nature. In this condition we often find even the poetry of the Scandinavians. The famous death-song of Regner Lodbrog seems little more than an iteration of the same ideas. An Anglo-Saxon poem has the appearance of a collection of short hints rather than poetical conceptions, curt and ejaculative: a paucity of objects yields but a paucity of emotions, too vague for detail, too abrupt for deep pa.s.sion, too poor in fancy to scatter the imagery of poesy. The Anglo-Saxon betrays its confined and monotonous genius: we are in the first age of art, when pictures are but monochromes of a single colour.

Hence, in the whole map of Anglo-Saxon poetry, it is difficult to discriminate one writer from another.[9]

Their prose has taken a more natural character than their verse. The writings of Alfred are a model of the Anglo-Saxon style in its purest state; they have never been collected, but it is said they would form three octavo volumes; they consist chiefly of translations.

The recent versions in literal prose by two erudite Saxonists of two of the most remarkable Anglo-Saxon poems, will enable an English reader to form a tolerable notion of the genius of this literature. CONYBEARE'S poetical versions remained unrivalled. But if a literal version of a primitive poetry soon ceases to be poetry, so likewise, if the rude outlines are to be retouched, and a brilliant colouring is to be borrowed, we are receiving Anglo-Saxon poetry in the cadences of Milton and "the orient hues" of Gray.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bp. Nicholson's Eng. Lib.

[2] It is pleasing to record a n.o.ble instance of the enthusiasm of learned research. "The leisure hours of sixteen years" furnished a comprehensive history of which "two-thirds had not yet appeared."--_Mr. Turner's Preface._

[3] A sufferer, moreover, fully a.s.sures us that some remain, which "must baffle all conjecture;" and another critic has judicially decreed that, in every translation from the Anglo-Saxon that has fallen under his notice, "there are blunders enough to satisfy the most unfriendly critic." "The Song of the Traveller," in "The Exeter Book," was translated by CONYBEARE; a more accurate transcript was given by Mr. KEMBLE in his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr. GUEST has furnished a third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a fourth may not correct the three.

[4] "Without exception!" is the energetic cry of the translator of Beowulf.

[5] The first line contains two words commencing with the same letter, and the second line has its first word also beginning with that letter. This difficulty seems insurmountable to a modern reader, for our authority confesses that, "In the Saxon poetry; as it is preserved in ma.n.u.scripts, the first line often contains but one alliterating word, and, from the negligence of the scribes, the alliteration is in many instances entirely lost."--_Dissertation on Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Fraser's Magazine_, xii. 81.

[6] A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr. GRENVILLE PIGOTT in his "Manual of Scandinavian Mythology."

These warlike barbarians were long reproached that even their religion fomented an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in the future state of their paradisiacal Valhalla, their deceased heroes rejoiced at their celestial compotations, _to drink out of the skulls of their enemies_.

A pa.s.sage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated, is, "Soon shall we _drink_ out of the _curved trees of the head_;"

which Bishop Percy translates, "Soon, in the splendid hall of Odin, we shall drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies." And thus also have the Danes themselves, the Germans, and the French.

The original and extraordinary blunder lies with Olaus Wormius, the great Danish antiquary, to whose authority poets and historians bowed without looking further. Our grave Olaus was bewildered by this monstrous style of the Scalds, and translated this drinking bout at Valhalla according to his own fancy,--"Ex concavis crateribus craniorum;"--thus turning the "trees of the head" into a "skull," and the skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, was innocent of this barbarous invention; and, in his violent figures and disordered fancy, merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees, from the heads of animals--that is, the curved horns which formed their drinking cups. If Olaus here, like Homer, nodded, something might be urged for his defence; for who is bound to understand such remote, if not absurd conceits? but I do not know that we could plead as fairly for his own interpolating fancy of "drinking out of the skulls of their enemies."

This grave blunder became universal, and a century pa.s.sed away without its being detected. It was so familiar, that Peter Pindar once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.

[7] HICKES and WANLEY mistook the "Ormulum," a paraphrase of Gospel history, as mere prose; when in fact it is composed in long lines of fifteen syllables without rhyme.

[8] See "A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology," by Mr. Grenville Pigott. 1839. "The Northern Mythology" will be found here not only skilfully arranged, but its wondrous myths and fables elucidated by modern antiquaries. It is further ill.u.s.trated by the translation of the poem of Oehlenschlager, on "The G.o.ds of the North;" whose genius has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version.

[9] Such is the critical decision of CONYBEARE, a glorious enthusiast. "Ill.u.s.trations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," by John Josiah Conybeare. 1826.

The late Mr. Price, the editor of Warton's History, announced an elaborate work on the Anglo-Saxon poetry. The verse of CONYBEARE and the disquisitions of PRICE would have completed this cycle of our ancient poetry. But a fatal coincidence marked the destiny of these eminent votaries of our poetic antiquity--both prematurely ceasing to exist while occupied on their works. CONYBEARE has survived in his brother, whose congenial tastes collected his remains; PRICE, who had long resided abroad, and there had silently stored up the whole wealth of Northern literature, on his return home remained little known till his valued edition of Warton announced to the literary world the acquisitions they were about to receive. He has left a name behind him, but not a work, for Price had no fraternal friend.

Since this chapter was written, Mr. Thos. Wright has published "An Essay on the State of Literature and Learning under the Anglo-Saxons." It displays a comprehensive view taken by one to whose zealous labours the lovers of our ancient literature are so deeply indebted.

CaeDMON AND MILTON.

Caedmon, the Saxonists hail as "the Father of English Song!"

The personal history of this bard is given in the taste of the age.

Caedmon was a herdsman who had never read a single poem. Sitting in his "beers.h.i.+p," whenever the circling harp, that "Wood of Joy!" as the Saxon gleemen have called it, was offered to his hand, all unskilled, the peasant, stung with shame, would hurry homewards. Already past the middle of life, never had the peasant dreamt that he was a sublime poet, or at least a poet composing on sublime themes, incapable as he was even of reading his own Saxon.

As once he lay slumbering in a stall, the apparition of a strange man thus familiarly greeted him:--"Caedmon, sing some song to me!" The cowherd modestly urged that he was mute and unmusical:--"Nevertheless thou shalt sing!" retorted the benignant apparition. "What shall I sing?" rejoined the minstrel, who had never sung. "Sing the origin of things!" The peasant, amazed, found his tongue loosened, and listened to his own voice; a voice which was to reach posterity!

He flew in the morning to the town-reeve to announce a wonder, that he had become a poet in the course of a single night. He recited the poem, which, however--for we possess it--only proves that between sleeping and waking eighteen lines of dreamy periphrasis may express a single idea.

Venerable Bede held this effusion as a pure inspiration: the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxons indulgently discovers three ideas: Conybeare, more critical, acknowledges that "the eighteen lines expand the mere proposition of 'Let us praise G.o.d, the maker of heaven and earth.'" But this was only the first attempt of a great enterprise--it was a thing to be magnified for the neighbouring monastery of Whitby, who gladly received such a new brother.

For a poet who had never written a verse, it was only necessary to open his vein: a poet who could not read only required to be read to. The whole monkery came down with the canonical books; they informed him of all things, from "Genesis" down to "the doctrine of the apostles." "The good man listened," as saith Venerable Bede, "like a clean animal ruminating; and his song and his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers wrote them down, and learned from his mouth." These teachers could not have learned more than they themselves had taught. We can only draw out of a cistern the waters which we have poured into it. Every succeeding day, however, swelled the Caedmonian Poem; a.s.suredly they wanted neither zeal nor hands--for the glory of the monastery of Whitby!

Such is a literary anecdote of the seventh century conveyed to us by ancient Bede. The dream of the apparition's inspiration of this unlettered monk was one more miracle among many in honour of the monastery; and it was to be told in the customary way, for never yet in a holy brotherhood was found a recusant.

Even to this day we ourselves dream grotesque adventures; but in the days of monachism visions were not merely a mere vivid and lengthened dream, a slight delirium, for they usually announced something important. A dream was a prognostic or a prelude. The garrulous chroniclers, and saintly Bede himself, that primeval gossiper, afford abundant evidence of such secret revelations. Whenever some great act was designed, or some awful secret was to be divulged, a dream announced it to the world. Was a king to be converted to Christianity, the people were enlightened by the vision which the sovereign revealed to them; was a maiden to take the vow of virginity, or a monastery to be built, an angelical vision hovered, and sometimes specified the very spot. Was a crime of blood to be divulged by some penitent accessory, somebody had a dream, and the criminal has stood convicted by the grave-side, which gave up the fatal witness in his victim. In those ages of simplicity and pious frauds, a dream was an admirable expedient by which important events were carried on, and mystification satisfactorily explained the incomprehensible.

The marvellous incident on which the history of Caedmon revolves may only veil a fact which has nothing extraordinary in itself when freed from the invention which disguises it. Legends like the present one were often borrowed by one monastery from another, and an exact counterpart of the dream and history of our Saxon bard, in a similar personage and a like result, has been pointed out as occurring in Gaul. A vernacular or popular version of the Scriptures being required, it was supplied by a _peasant wholly ignorant of the poetic art till he had been instructed in a_ DREAM.[1]

Scriptural themes were common with the poets of the monastery.[2] The present enterprise, judging from the variety of its fragments from both Testaments and from the Apocrypha, in its complete state would have formed a chronological poem of the main incidents of the Scriptures in the vernacular Saxon. This was a burden of magnitude which no single shoulder could have steadily carried, and probably was supported by several besides "the Dreamer." Critical Saxonists, indeed, have detected a variation in the style, and great inequalities in the work; such discordances indicate that the paraphrase was occasionally resumed by some successor, as idling monks at a later period were often the continuators of voluminous romances. I would cla.s.s the Caedmonian poem among the many attempts of the monachal genius to familiarize the people with the miraculous and the religious narratives in the Scriptures, by a paraphrase in the vernacular idiom. The poem may be deemed as equivocal as the poet; the text has been impeached; interpolations and omissions are acknowledged by the learned in Saxon lore. The poem is said to have been written in the seventh century, and the earliest ma.n.u.script we possess is of the tenth, suffering in that course of time all the corruptions or variations of the scribes, while the ruder northern dialect has been changed into the more polished southern. If we may confide in a learned conjecture, it may happen that Caedmon is no name at all, but merely a word or a phrase; and thus the ent.i.ty of the Dreamer of the Monastery of Whitby may vanish in the wind of two Chaldaic syllables![3] Be this as it may, for us the poem is an ent.i.ty, whatever becomes of the pretended Dreamer.

It has become an arduous inquiry whether MILTON has not drawn largely from the obscurity of this monkish Ennius? "In reading Caedmon," says SHARON TURNER, "we are reminded of Milton--of a 'Paradise Lost' in rude miniature." Conybeare advances, "the pride, rebellion, and punishments of Satan and his princes have a resemblance to Milton so remarkable that _much of this portion might be almost literally translated by a cento of lines from the great poet_."[4] A recent Saxonist, in noticing "the creation of Caedmon as beautiful," adds, "it is still more interesting from _its singular correspondence even in expression with 'Paradise Lost_.'"

The ancient, as well as the modern, of these scriptural poets has adopted a narrative which is not found in the Scriptures. The rebellion of Satan before the creation of man, and his precipitation with the apostate angels into a dungeon-gulf of flame, and ice, and darkness, though an incident familiar to us as a gospel text, remains nothing more than a legend unhallowed by sacred writ.

Where are we, then, to seek for the origin of a notion universal throughout Christendom? I long imagined that this revolt in heaven had been one of the traditions hammered in the old rabbinical forge; and in the Talmudical lore there are tales of the fallen angels; but I am a.s.sured by a learned professor in these studies, that the Talmud contains no narrative of "the Rebellion of Satan." The Hebrews, in their sojourn in Babylon, had imbibed many Chaldean fables, and some fanciful inventions. At this obscure period did this singular episode in sacred history steal into their popular creed? Did it issue from that awful cradle of monstrous imaginings, of demons, of spirits, and of terrifying deities, Persia and India? In the Brahminical Shasters we find a rebellion of the angels before the creation, and their precipitation from light into darkness; their restoration by the clemency of the Creator, however, occurs after their probationary state, during millions of years in their metamorphoses on earth. But this seems only the veil of an allegory designed to explain their dark doctrine of the metempsychosis. The rebellion of the angels, as we have been taught it, is a.s.sociated with their everlasting chains and eternal fire; how the legend became universally received may baffle inquiry.[5]

But the coincidence of the Caedmonian with the Miltonian poem in having adopted the same peculiar subject of the revolt of Satan and the expulsion of the angels, is not the most remarkable one in the two works. The same awful narrative is pursued, and we are startled at the opening of the Pandemonium by discovering the same scene and the same actors. When we scrutinise into minuter parts, we are occasionally struck by some extraordinary similarities.

Caedmon, to convey a notion of the ejection from heaven to h.e.l.l, tells that "the Fiend, with all his comrades, fell from heaven above, through as long as _three nights and days_." Milton awfully describes Satan "confounded, though immortal," rolling in the fiery gulf--

_Nine times the s.p.a.ce that measures day and night_ To mortal men.

Caedmon describes the Deity having cast the evil angel into that "House of perdition, down on that new bed; after, gave him a _name_ that the highest (of the devils which they had now become) should be called _Satan_ thenceforwards." Milton has preserved the same notice of the origin of _the name_, thus--

To whom the _Arch-Enemy_, And thence in heaven called _Satan_--

Satan in Hebrew signifying "the Enemy," or "the Adversary."

The harangue of Satan to his legions by the Saxon monk cannot fail to remind us of the first grand scene in the "Paradise Lost," however these creations of the two poets be distinct. "The swart h.e.l.l--a land void of light, and full of flame," is like Milton's--

----yet from these flames No light, but rather darkness visible.

The locality is not unlike, "There they have at even, immeasurably long, each of all the fiends a renewal of fire, with sulphur charged; but cometh ere dawn the eastern wind frost, bitter-cold, ever fire or dart."

This torment we find in the h.e.l.l of Milton--

The bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, From beds of raging _fire_ to starve in _ice_.

The parching air _Burns frore_, and _cold performs the effect of fire_.[6]

The "Inferno" of Dante has also "its eternal darkness for the dwellers in fierce _heat_ and in _ice_."[7] It is evident that the Saxon, the Italian, and the Briton had drawn from the same source. The Satan of Caedmon in "the torture-house" is represented as in "the dungeon of perdition." He lies in chains, his feet bound, his hands manacled, his neck fastened by iron bonds; Satan and his crew the monk has degraded into Saxon convicts. Milton indeed has his