336 Beowulf and Widsith 



Alclhelm's quotations from Virgil alone/ distributed pretty uni- 

 formly through his prose and poetry, and even so has not 

 exhausted the number. On the other hand, Klaeber,^ now ten 

 years ago, published two articles, entitled 'Aeneis and Beowulf,' 

 in which he showed the probability of a decided influence exerted 

 by the Latin upon the English epic. It is tempting to perceive a 

 relation between these two orders of facts. But may not echoes 

 of Homer, too, be found in Beowulf, as well as elsewhere in Old 

 English poetry'* ? To take a single example, the comparison of a 

 sailing ship to a bird in flight (217-8) bears a striking resemblance 

 to that in Od. 13. 86-8 (cf. 7. 36; 11. 125), and has no parallel 

 'n\t\\& Aeneid. The Old English has : 'So, driven by the wind, the 

 bark most like unto a bird sped, foamy-necked, across the waves' ; 

 while the Odyssey reads : 



Steadily onward she flew ; not even the falcon that soareth, 

 Swiftest of birds of the air, might vie with the ship in her swiftness ; 

 So did she speed on her way, right easily cleaving the billows. 



The question suggests itself, then, whether Aldhelm may not 

 have been a mediator of Homer, as well as of Virgil, to xA.ldfrith 

 and the poet or poets of his court. To have been such a mediator, 

 the first requisite evidently is that he should himself have been 

 demonstrably acquainted with Homer ; and this question, I believe, 

 has never been answered,* if indeed it has ever been seriously 



proclaimed prince of Anglo-Saxon poetry by the great King Alfred.' This 

 honor will seem the greater when we remind ourselves that, as Chambers 

 has said {Widsith, p. 2), 'upon the English poems Alfred the Great was 

 educated ; upon them in turn he educated his children ; and he was wont 

 to recommend to others the learning of "Saxon" lays by heart' ; and again 

 (p. 72) : 'King Alfred, we have seen, was deeply versed in Old English 

 poetry, and must have known dozens of lays, lost to us, dealing with the 

 old kings of Angel,' etc. Cf. Asser's Life of Alfred, chaps. 22, 75, 76. 



' Cf . pp. 547-559, especially the first and the last. 



^ Herrig's Archiv 126 (iQii). 40-48, 339, 359; cf. Brandl. p. 68. 



^ See, for example, my First Book in Old English (1894), p. 211, note 6; 

 p. 213, notes I, 2, 3, 4; p. 230, note 9. Bradley, Encyc. Brit., nth ed., 3. 758, 

 says that the principal story of Bcozvulf is told 'with a vividness of imagi- 

 nation, and a degree of narrative skill, that may with little exaggeration be 

 called Homeric'; and Chambers admits {Bcozvulf, 1921, p. 329) : 'Perhaps, 

 however, some remote and indirect connection even between B count If and the 

 Odyssey is not altogether unthinkable.' 



'' Ehwald (p. XIII) answers it in the negative, but has apparently not 

 scrutinized the simile. 



