flesh in great pieces; then, advancing, sought to grip Beowulf. He, however, had been awakened, and was on the alert, and laid hold of the monster with his two hands. The grip of Beowulf was miraculous. He had purposely avoided arming himself with a sword, for Grendel was possessed of a charm that made all steel harmless to him. Beowulf trusted to his own muscular strength; and, tearing the creature's shoulder open, he broke its sinews, and rendered it helpless. Grendel could only limp away, the blood pouring from him, and leave his track across the marsh of the sea-monsters, as he made his way to his den in their lake. He sank dead in the water before reaching his mother's cavern. Then the surge boiled with blood, and the waves were hot with gore.

Beo

The

The excitement in Heorot, the great hall, was intense. wulf was rewarded with every kind of gift and honour, and was given a palace to pass the next night in. That night, however, Grendel's mother, mad with grief at the slaughter of her monster son, came up to Heorot, and broke into the hall. noise of her entrance woke all the Scyldings who were sleeping there, yet she had time to kill one, the counsellor of Hrothgar the king. She escaped unscathed in the tumult; but Beowulf was called from his sleep, and prepared at once to pursue. He clad himself in ring-mail, and plunged boldly into the morass, where the tracks of Grendel showed the entrance of the den. Down through the deep water he sank; then the witch, the mother of Grendel, saw him and clutched him, but could not break through his mail. She seized and carried him into her hall, where was no water. He struck hard with his war-sword, but the edge failed, and he flung the sword on the earth in his wrath, and trusted only to the strength of his grip. Grendel's mother clasped and threw him, and drew a dagger which she sought to plunge into his breast. But he saw hanging in her hall an old sword, the work of the giants-a magic sword, greater than any man might carry in war. He seized the hilt, and struck her fiercely across the throat. Her neck bones broke, and she fell dead across the floor. Looking round the hall, he saw Grendel's corpse lying of life deprived, and with a mighty stroke he cut off the monster's head. The corpse rolled far away, but the venomous blood melted the sword-blade, until nothing was left except the hilt.

The Scyldings had waited with King Hrothgar on the bank, while Beowulf was down in the cave. When the blood surged up and tinged the water, they cried out that Beowulf was slain; but, as they shouted, he came diving through, and swam to land, and laid triumphantly at their feet his trophies of the sword-hilt and of Grendel's head.

The poem, in many verses, relates the successes of Beowulf when he returned to his native land, and tells of how he grew wealthy and powerful, and of how he became a king, and ruled for fifty years.

2. Effect produced by Christianity on the Old English Poetry. Cædmon's Bible-Stories and Hymn.

After Christianity was introduced into England, at the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh centuries, English poetry was written in an entirely different manner from that of the war-songs. This was because the monks, the only people who copied out the ancient verses, turned away from the stories of bloodshed, and preserved nothing except a few poems which dealt with sacred matters. The earliest piece of poetry that we have belonging to this time is a fragment of a poem by a shepherd at Whitby, named Cædmon, which is in the form of a paraphrase of Bible history.

English during the seventh century was too incomplete for any one to dream of using it in a translation of the Bible. But Cædmon knew many of the old alliterative Teutonic songs, which he and his comrades were accustomed to sing at their feasts; and the idea occurred to him that he might be able to turn some of the Bible stories into verse of a similar kind. After he had made several attempts, his friends in the Abbey of Whitby heard of his efforts, and willingly translated for him portions of the Vulgate, from which he produced a great book of rough and rugged poetry.

Cadmon shows how little the English were, up to that time, touched by the teaching of Christianity. His paraphrase resembles Beowulf both in character and execution, for the heathen spirit is strongly marked in it. At the same time, there are to be found passages of a true devotional feeling, and nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the famous hymn with which the book begins.

"Now must we glorify

the Maker's might,

the guardian of Heaven,
and His mind's thought,

the work of the Glorious Father, when of each of His wonders

The following are some of the lines attributed to Cadmon,

giving an account of the outbreak of the Flood:

"Noah, son of Lamech,

when, with his children,

had six hundred winters,

he on the ark entered

the young with the old,
was dear to the people.
rain from the heavens ;
from every vein ;
the sea uprose
Strong was and fierce,
covered the men of earth
Their thoughts of wrong
the strong sea swept
forty days,

the fierce punishment
The waves drove

from their flesh-coverings. heaved high the ark; under the welkin,

the dwelling most excellent,

Danger must not,
violently touch

The Holy God

Hest, command.

who, by God's hest,

The Lord sent
the well-springs broke

the ocean-streams burst forth;
over the shores.

He that ruled the waters,
with the wan wave.
the Creator avenged;
on the fated folk,
as many nights;
was grim to men.
the wicked ones' lives
Flood covered the hills,
then wide rode,
over the ocean's ring,
fared with its freight.
with terrors of water,
the wave-wanderer.

led and preserved them."

Welkin, the sky; the vault of heaven.
Fared, travelled; went.

3. The Various Dialects of Old English.

Cadmon's poems were written in Northumbrian dialect, and we must be careful to bear in mind one great fact attaching to the Old English times-that there was never one definite language which belonged to the whole country, until a long time after the Norman conquest. There were special dialects used in special districts; and, though they all had a general resemblance to one another, strongly marked differences still existed between them. In many cases the people speaking in one dialect might hardly have been able to understand the people speaking in another.

As we have said, Cadmon's dialect was the Northumbrian, which was spoken in that part of England which lies north of the river Humber. It was brought over by Anglian tribes, who came from the district now known as the Duchy of Sleswick. In this dialect the guttural sounds were very distinctly marked, and have been long preserved. The Northerners to this day speak of a kirk and a brig, where Southerners and Midlanders say church and bridge. At one time the Northumbrian literature was considerable in its extent, but very little of it has survived to modern times.

The second dialect was the Mercian, spoken in England between the Humber and the Thames. It was probably to a large extent of Frisian origin, for the kingdom of Mercia in Anglo-Saxon times was founded by Frisians, who formed one of the Saxon tribes; and the Old Friesic of the continent very

closely resembled the Mercian in England. The Mercian afterwards developed into the Midland dialect, and became the forerunner of modern standard English. The following couplet in every word is at the present both Friesic and English :

"Good butter and good cheese

Is good English and good Fries."

The third dialect was the Wessex, which was spoken south of the Thames, and was brought in by Saxon tribes, who crossed the channel from the lower parts of the Rhine and the Weser. This was the mother tongue of Alfred the Great, and for nearly two centuries after his death remained as the standard form of English. In the old period of English, but not in the middle, this dialect held the most prominent place, and a considerable literature has survived, but it ceased to be used for literary purposes before the modern period began.

There was a fourth dialect, spoken in Kent, which was very similar to the Wessex dialect, but had yet a character of its own. It is possible that Kent was peopled by a Frisian tribe, and that Kent was afterwards so thickly populated by a Saxon element from Wessex that the two dialects underwent a partial amalgamation.

The terms Old English and Anglo-Saxon require some attention. They are often used as if they meant the same thing. This, however, is not the case, for Anglo-Saxon is merely another name for the Wessex dialect, while by Old English we mean the whole of the four dialects spoken in England before the Norman Conquest. To recapitulate, these are (1) Northumbrian, brought in by the Angles; (2) Mercian, probably brought in by the Frisians; (3) Wessex, or Anglo-Saxon, brought in by the Saxons; (4) Kentish dialect, of uncertain origin. These four, taken together, make up Old English.

4. The Change brought about by the Latin Schools. The Influence on Old English effected by the Introduction of Words which translated the Latin Words. The Literary Work of the Period. Wilfrith and the Venerable Bede. A great change began late in the seventh century when Latin schools, set up by Italian monks, were instituted in England. The Roman missionaries brought with them much literature of a kind hitherto unknown by the English. Its books, written at Rome, were far advanced in their knowledge of philosophy and history. The dialects of Old English had so far been virtually restricted to verse, since they were not fitted for dealing with reflective work, and were only strong enough to express the simplest ideas in the simplest words. The new literature of the next century, composed under the direction of the Roman mis

sionaries, had therefore to be written in Latin, a fact which after some lapse of time produced an enormous effect upon English. The young monks, led by their new masters, were compelled to familiarise themselves with Latin; and this led to the invention and introduction of compounds in their own tongue which corresponded with the abstract terms of the Latin. Hence "by the beginning of the eleventh century the West Saxon speech of Alfred and his successors had grown into a comparatively wealthy dialect, suitable for the expression of many ideas unfamiliar to the pirates and farmers of East Anglia."

The literature of this period commenced with a Latin biography of Wilfrith, Bishop of Hexham, who died in 709; but the chief work of its school was done by the Venerable Bede.

Bede was born near Wearmouth during the life-time of Cadmon, and spent his life as a scholar at Jarrow on the banks of the Tyne. Here was a monastery of the Benedictine order closely connected with Rome, and well supplied from the Roman libraries. Bede, taking to the art of letters, produced over forty books, the majority of them in Latin; but his translation into English prose of St. John's Gospel and his English verses which have come down to us, show that the old Teutonic spirit was never extinct in him. The most celebrated of his works is his History of the English Church, a Latin book famous for its breadth of view and for the simple truthfulness with which it is told. The well-known account of Bede's death, written by Cuthbert his pupil, is perhaps the most beautiful relic that we possess of Old English times. A most curious piece of verse in the Northumbrian dialect, said to have been chanted by Bede when he was dying, has been fortunately preserved.

"Before his compulsory journey, before his departure,
Nothing is wiser than for a man to consider
Whether his spirit, after the day of death,
May be judged worthy of good or of evil.”

5. The Fall of Northumbria, and the State of Literature until the rise of Wessex.

During the eighth century the literary movement in the North and Midlands, which had so far been extremely successful, was entirely shattered by the ruin of Northumbria and the invasions of the Danes. In 787 the first Danish, or rather Norwegian, ships arrived, and England was harried until Alfred's treaty with Guthrum in 879. The principal works that have been saved from this unhappy century are the Laws of Ine, King of Wessex; and of Offa, King of Mercia; the Penitentials of the Church; the Charters; and various devotional poems. Many of the latter are preserved in two books, one of which is kept at