805 



SAXON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



SAXON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



306 



The 

 from 



1 .ably written in the 10th century, affords a splendid example. 

 ' Tale of Apollonius of Tyre ' i in prose, and a mere translation 

 the Latin. 



There are other songs preserved in our chronicles, and closely allied 

 to those last mentioned, but which are much shorter, and partake 

 more of the lyrical character. Among them may be enumerated the 

 Brunanburgh war-song, Edgar's coronation song, the two songs which 

 commemorate the death of this monarch, and the elegy written on the 

 death of the Confessor. The first and last of these are among the 

 noblest specimens of Anglo-Saxon poetry. 



A great deal of Anglo-Saxon verse was written during the llth 

 century. One of the writers seems to have been called Deor. His 

 name occurs in a poem which exhibits many difficulties of construction, 

 and perhaps some blunders of transcription ; but it may be gathered 

 that he was icop or minstrel to the Danish princes who succeeded 

 Kiuit, and he appears to have lost hia place at court when the Con- 

 fessor mounted the throne of England. The name of Cynewulf has 

 also been extracted from certain poems found in the Exeter and 

 Vercelli manuscripts. It was hid in a kind of riddle, similar in 

 character to our modem acrostic. He was probably the compiler of 

 the two manuscripts, and may have been the author of much of the 

 poetry which they contain. 



But the noblest relic of this period ia the Psalter published by the 

 University of Oxford, from a manuscript preserved in the ' Biblio- 



du Roi.' In the first part, each psalm has an Anglo-Saxon 

 tion in prose; and also a preface giving some account of its 



history, general scope, and tendency. The translation often para- 

 phrases the Latin, so as to show more clearly its doctrinal or prophet- 

 ical meaning : but from the 50th Psalm, the translation is metrical, 

 and though generally literal, exhibits many cases of glaring miscon- 

 struction. The prefaces also disappear, and the whole seems to be the 

 work of a man very slenderly provided even with the rudiments of 

 learning. This deficiency, however, may now be considered as amply 

 Tisated for by the high character of the poetry. Some of the 

 psalms are translated with a terseness and also an elegance, which 

 he translation far above any of our modern versions, and there 

 is occasionally a Miltonic sweep of language, that has not often been 

 surpassed even in the choicest specimens of our sacred poetry. 



A note in the manuscript informs us that a priest named Wulfwin 

 Cada " wrote it with his own hand " (manu suft conscripsit). We 

 think it extremely probable that Wulfwin copied from some manu- 

 script the prone version as far aa it went, and then drew on his own 

 resources. There are numberless instances of transcribers altering and 

 continuing the work they were copying. Most of our manuscript 

 chronicles were transcript* up to a certain date, and were then con- 

 tinii"! as original compositions. The verb eonttripiit shows it was a 

 compilation ; and if Wulfwin had before him a metrical translation, he 

 would li mlly, with that passion for stately language so common among 

 his countrymen, have postponed it to the prose version. To Wulfwin 

 Cad* we think may fairly be ascribed both the faults and the merits of 

 the metrical translation. 



tig the most important prose works of our Saxon literature 

 most be ranked those extraordinary compilations which are commonly 

 called (as if they constituted but one work) the ' Saxon Chronicle.' 

 The earliest copy of a Saxon Chronicle now extant is the Plegmund 

 Manuscript, in the library of Corpus Christ! College, Cambridge. It is 

 i. - W itiley observes, in the same hand to the year 891, and in 

 hands equally ancient to the year 924. After that date it seems to 

 have been continued and interpolated by various transcribers, whose 

 notices of Christ Church, Canterbury, leave little douM that the 

 lie property of that cathedral. As Plegmund was 

 consecrated archbishop in 890, and died in C .i23, it has been inferred 

 that the < ra'inal text was compiled by his order, and continued 



under hi* direction. The internal evidence favours 

 ; i"M. Th- notice* which it contains respecting th> 

 M Alfred and Iii- immediate predecessors could hardly have been 

 furnished by any but those who were present at them, and were 

 probably the substance of conversations which had passed Ixrtwecn the 

 prelate and the king. 



in point of time, is the Dunstan manuscript in the 

 British Museum. This is also a Canterbury manuscript, and appears 

 k> Austin's Abbey. It is written throughout in 

 the same hand, and ends in the year 977. As Dunstan was then arch- 

 bishop, and as the handwriting resembles that of other manuscripts 

 ascribed to him, he has been named with some degree of confidence as 

 the transcriber. However this may be, it must have been written by a 

 Ban of tcboUrlike attainment. We have only to compare the passages 

 which relate to the period after Plegmund's death, with the corre- 

 sponding jBumi; in the Cln manuscript, to aeejat once its 



particularly striking in the poetical portions. The 



le on the battle of Brunanburgh would have remained for ever 



rid in ]rts unintelligible, but for the copy preserved in 



iwtan Chronicle. 



lea them two chronicles, we have a Worcester, an Abingdon, 

 another Cauterljury Chronicle, and a fourth, which appears to have 

 been written at Peterborough. It haa been inferred (chiefly for 

 reasons connected with the handwriting) that these were compiled 

 respectively in the yean 1016, 1048, 1058, and 1125. We have 



ARTS A3D SCI. DIV. VOL. TIL 



also divers transcripts and collations made by Lambarde, Junius 

 Josselyn, and other antiquaries of the 16th and 17th centuries, some of 

 which were evidently taken from manuscript authorities no longer 

 extant. Josselyn appears to have had in his possession a second 

 Peterborough Chronicle ; and Lambarde's transcript in Trinity College, 

 Dublin, is thought to have been made from an ancient manuscript 

 which perished in the fatal fire that destroyed so many of our Cotto- 

 nian treasures. The Plegmund, the Dunstan, the Abingdon, and the 

 ancient chronicle transcribed by Lambarde, all began with Cassar's 

 invasion. The Worcester, Peterborough, and latest Canterbury manu- 

 scripts begin with a description of Britain, extracted chiefly from Bede 

 and Orosius. 



The antiquaries of the 16th and 17th centuries seem to have 

 assumed that the Anglo-Saxon monasteries kept a regular record of 

 contemporary events; and there are certainly grounds for believing 

 that registers of a certain kind were really kept by them. Bede's 

 ' History' (iv. 14) has been referred to in proof of this. He tells us, 

 that in the year 681 a boy, who was an inmate of Selsey Abbey, was 

 seized with the plague, which was then desolating the country. As 

 the poor lad was lying on his bed, he was accosted by two angel- 

 visitants, who bade him tell the frightened monks that the plague 

 would spread no farther, that it been stayed by the prayers of Oswald, 

 of whose death that very day waa the anniversary. " Let them," said 

 Saint Peter, for no less a person is the speaker, " search in their books 

 (in suis codicibus) in which are recorded the deaths of deceased persons 

 (defunctonun depositio), and they will find that on this day he was 

 taken," ftc. The abbot, we are told, believed the boy's words, and 

 straightway went and searched hi his chronicle (in Annali suo), and 

 found that on that very day King Oswald had been slain, &c. Here 

 reference seems to be made to some public register of the convent ; 

 and this register, or the earlier manuscript it was copied from, seems to 

 have furnished materials for the Peterborough Chronicle. 



" An. 642. Now waa Oswald, king of the Northhymbre, slam," &c., 

 " upon the Maser-field, on the day called the nones of August," &c. 



The mention of the day on which an event occurred, is rare in our 

 chronicles ; it is therefore probable that we have here the very passage 

 which the worthy monk was sent in search of. 



That there were also public (or perhaps we might say national) 

 registers, in which were recorded the accessions, &c. of the kings, we 

 also gather from the same venerable historian. We are told (' Hist.' 

 iii. 4), such was the horror excited by the cruelties of the Welshman 

 Ceadwalla, and the apostecy of the Northumbrian kings, that " it was 

 resolved upon by all who had to reckon the chronology of the kings 

 (regum tempora computantibus) that the memory of the faithless 

 kings should be blotted out, and the year assigned to the reign of the 

 the king next following," &c. ; and he elsewhere adds, with studied 

 phraseology, " unanimo omnium consensu firmatum est," ' Hist.,' iii. 9. 

 In the Chronicles we have the entry : 



" An. 634. And Oswald also took to the kingdom of the North- 

 hymbre, and he reigned ix. winters. They assigned him the ninth, on 

 account of the heathenism which they practised who reigned the one 

 year between him and Eadwiue." 



Here we find, within a century after Ida landed at Bamborough, a 

 register kept of the Northumbrian kings, and general interest excited 

 as to the entries made in it. From details mentioned by Bede, and 

 which colild only have been supplied by written documents, it is clear 

 that these historical notices reached to the times of paganism. They 

 ! must have been originally written in English, and with Runes, those 

 , ancient characters which were only partially given up when Chris- 

 ' tianity introduced the literature of Rome, and which occasionally make 

 thi-ir appearance in our manuscripts to the end of the llth century. 

 [Ri'XKS.j A too literal translation of these venerable documents, no 

 doubt, introduced the many Anglicisms to be found in the works of 

 Bede, and even of the Welshmen Nennius and Asser. On this ground 

 only can we account for the intrusion into the pages of scholars like the 

 first and last of these writers, of such phrases as " victoriam sumpsere" 

 (cige namon, An.-Sa.t.), " loco funeris dominati aunt " (ahton wselstowe 

 geweald, An.-Sax ), ftc. 



With these materials at hand, we may readily understand the course 

 followed in the compilation of our early chronicles, Who were the 

 parties that continued and interpolated the.se chronicles, is a question 

 very difficult to answer satisfactorily. Archbishop Elfric, Siint Wulf- 

 stan, Hugh White the monk of Peterborough, and others, have been 

 named, with more or less of confidence, by different critics. For our own 

 parts, we could never resist a feeling, almost amounting to conviction, 

 that the character of William was the work of the venerable Wulfstan. 

 It begins thus : 



" An. 1087-- If any wish to know what manner of man he was, 



or what state he held, or of how many lands he was lord, then will we 

 of him write, as we him knew, we that have waited on him (the him 

 onlocodon), and otherwhiles in his court have wormed," Ac. 



There were few English churchmen at the close of William's reign 

 who could put forth this claim to the confidence of their reader, and 

 still fewer that could have drawn William's character with the freedom 

 and at the same time with the Christian feeling that distinguishes 

 the whole of this noble composition. Wulfstan was at that time the 

 only English bishop ; and when, after describing the cruelty and 

 sternness of the king, he adds the prayer, " may the Almighty God 



