ORATOR AND POET, ACTOR AND DRAMATIST. 225 



longer an indigenous deity but one of foreign origin came 

 to be his priests; and in that capacity praised him, some 

 times in poetical, sometimes in oratorical, form. Through 

 out Christendom from early times down to ours, religious 

 services have emphasized in various proportions the differ 

 ent attributes of the Deity now chiefly his anger and re 

 venge, now chiefly his goodness, love, and mercy ; but they 

 have united in ceaseless exaltation of his power; and the 

 varieties of oral admiration, of invocation, of devotion, have 

 been partly in prose and partly in verse. All along the 

 Church-service has had for its subject-matter this or that 

 part of the sacred history, and all along it has embodied its 

 ideas and feelings in a semi-rhythmical liturgy, in hymns, 

 in the orations which we call sermons : each of them having 

 in one way or other the laudatory character. So that the 

 Christian priest has throughout stood in substantially the 

 same relation to the Being worshiped, as did the pagan 

 priest, and has perpetually used kindred vehicles of expres 

 sion. 



While the Christian priest has been officially one who 

 repeated the laudations already elaborated and established, 

 he has also been to a considerable extent an originator, alike 

 of orations and poems. Limiting ourselves to our own coun 

 try, and passing over the ancient bards, some of doubtful 

 authenticity, whose verses were in praise of living and dead 

 pagan heroes, and coming to the poets of the new religion, 

 we see that the first of them Csedmon, a convert who became 

 inmate of a monastery, rendered in metrical form the story 

 of creation and sundry other sacred stories a variously 

 elaborated eulogy of the deity. The next poet named is 

 Aldhelm, a monk. The clerical Bede again, known mainly 

 by other achievements, was a poet, too; as was likewise 

 abbot Cynewulf . For a long time after, the men mentioned 

 as writers of verse were ecclesiastics ; as was Henry of Hunt 

 ingdon, an archdeacon; Giraldus Cambrensis, bishop-elect; 

 Layamon, priest; and Nicholas of Guildford. Not until 



