poetry of England has owed much to the different races which mingled with the original English race; it has owed much to the different types of poetry it absorbed - Greek, Latin, Welsh, French, Italian, Spanish-but below all these admixtures, the English nature wrought its steady will. It seized, it transmuted, it modified, it mastered these admixtures both of races and of song.

Of what kind the early English poetry is, what feelings inspired the poets, what imaginations filled their hearts, how did they shape their work- that is the vital, the interesting question; and to answer it, the poetry itself must be read. I have therefore not written much about the poems, but I have translated a great quantity of what seemed to me not only their best, but also their most characteristic passages. I have also, when they were short enough, translated whole poems like the fourth Riddle and the Wanderer.

How to translate them was my chief difficulty. It was necessary, above all, that the translation should be accurate, but it was also necessary that it should have, as far as possible, the rhythmical movement of verse. Of all possible translations of poetry, a merely prose translation is the most inaccurate.

The translations here given are as accurate as I could make them. I do not mean that there are no mistakes in them, which would be an insolence I should soon repent, - but I mean that there is nothing out of my own fancy added to the translation. The original has been rigidly followed, and, for the most part, line for line. I have nearly always bracketed inserted words; and the only licence I have taken is the introduction of such words as then and there and all, when I needed an additional syllable for the sake of the rhythm which I adopted. Permission to do this was, I may say, given to me by the Anglo-Saxon poets themselves; it is their constant habit.

Then I felt that the translation should be in a rhythm which should represent, as closely as I could make it, the movement and the variety of the original verse. A prose translation, even when it reaches excellence, gives no idea whatever

of that to which the ancient English listened. The original form is destroyed, and with it our imagination of the world to which the poet sang, of the way he thought, of how he shaped his emotion. Prose no more represents poetry than architecture does music. Translations of poetry are never much good, but at least they should always endeavour to have the musical movement of poetry, and to obey the laws of the verse they translate.

A translation made in any one of our existing rhyming metres seemed to me as much out of the question as a prose translation. None of these metres resemble those of AngloSaxon poetry; and, moreover, their associations would modernise the old English thought. An Anglo-Saxon king in modern Court dress would not look more odd and miserable than an

Anglo-Saxon poem in a modern rhyming metre. Blank verse is another matter. It frequently comes near to the "short epic line" of Cynewulf, but it fails in the elasticity which a translation of Anglo-Saxon poetry requires, and in itself is too stately, even in its feminine dramatic forms, to represent the cantering movement of old English verse. Moreover, it is weighted with the sound of Shaks pere, Milton, or Tennyson, and this association takes the reader away from the atmosphere of early English poetry. I felt myself then driven to invent a rhythmical movement which would enable me, while translating literally, to follow the changes, and to express, with some little approach to truth, the proper ebb and flow of Anglo-Saxon verse.

The Anglo-Saxon line is divided into two halves by a pause. The first half has two "measures," and the first syllable of these is accented, or "stressed." The second half has the same number of measures and accents. The binding together of these two halves is done by alliteration. Generally speaking, the two accented syllables in the first half and one of the accented syllables in the second half begin with the same consonant or with any vowels; almost always with different vowels. Frequently, however, there is only one alliterated syllable in

the first half of the line. Unaccented syllables, the greater number of which were placed at the beginning of the second half line, after the pause, filled up the line. One school of poets, of whom Cynewulf was the chief, used a short line, with few slurred syllables. Another school which has been called the Caedmonian School used a line with a varying number of unaccented syllables, and as a great number of these were often inserted, the line has been called the "long epic line" in contrast with Cynewulf's shorter line. A poet of this school could use the shorter line when he pleased. He might have a line of only eight syllables, or one of three times that length, expanding it to express his swelling passion, or contracting it to suit a sharp question or a concise description. The variety then of the line was great, and its elasticity. It was capable of rapidity and solemnity; and its harmony and order were secured by the last alliterated stress being on the first syllable of the last word but one of the full line.

In order to be able to fulfil these needs and follow these peculiarities, I chose, after many experiments, the trochaic movement used in this book, each half-line consisting of trochees following one another, with a syllable at the end, chiefly a long one, to mark the division of the line. I varied the line as much as I could, introducing, often rashly, metrical changes; for the fault of this movement is its monotony. I have sometimes tried an iambic movement, but rarely; for this trochaic line with a beat at the end of each half-verse seemed to me to get the nearest to the sound of the AngloSaxon line, even though it is frequently un-similar to that line itself. I used alliteration whenever I could, and stressed as much as possible the alliterated words, and I changed the length of the line with the changes of the original. But when I could not easily alliterate my line or stress the alliterated word, I did not try to do so. It was better, I thought, to give literally the sense and the sentiment of the original than to strain them or lose them by a rigid adherence to alliteration and accent. I have made clear the division of the

my

Anglo-Saxon line by leaving a space in the midst of each line of translation. The two half-lines are, of course, intended to be read right across the page, with a slight pause upon the space between them. I think the method used is on the whole the right method, but I am by no means satisfied with what I have done. I submit it with much deference to those who understand the difficulties of such a translation.

This book is written from the literary point of view, and desires, above all, to induce English-speaking folk to reverence, admire, and love the poetry which their fathers wrote in old time, since it is worthy. I have not therefore, except when I thought it necessary, entered into the critical or scientific questions which hum like bees around the poems. On these questions a great number of books, reviews, and pamphlets have been written. I have not avoided this side of the matter from any want of gratitude to the critics, or from any lack of appreciation of the work of Anglo-Saxon scholars. On the contrary, it is my duty and my pleasure to acknowledge, that were it not for the intimate and exhaustive labour of German, English, and American scholars, a book like this, which views the poetry of the ancient English only as literature, could not have been written at all, or, at least, not on any sure foundation. No translation worth reading, or giving a clear representation of what the Anglo-Saxon poets thought or felt, could have here been made, had it not been preceded by the long, careful and penetrating labour of the philologists; nor could any just literary estimate of the poems or any useful arrangement of them have been worked out in this book, without the minute and accurate toil expended on them, and on their subjects, sources and dates by a multitude of critics among whom the Germans are pre-eminent. Moreover, had it not been for the labour and genius of the later historians of early England, especially of Mr. Green, I could not have had the materials for binding up, as I have tried to do, the poetry of England with the history of England.

I cannot, so numerous are they, mention the many scholars

to whom my thanks are due, but my gratitude to them is none the less. Where I have specially used the work of any one of them I have acknowledged it in the text. Two, however, above all, ought to be thanked by me, as they have been thanked by all who have cared for ancient English poetry. Professor Grein is gone from us, but he will never be forgotten. To his Dictionary I owe my first interest in the AngloSaxon language, my first understanding of its power and charm. To his translation of the poems into German I owe my first appreciation of the poetry of early England. The reading of that translation made me eager to read the poems in the original, and I could not rest till I was able to do so. When I had read them I could not rest till I had written this book. The other scholar to whom this book owes so much is Professor Wülker. He needs no praise, but he may take gratitude from me. Had it not been for his Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsächsischen Litteratur, one like myself, who late in life began to read the Anglo-Saxon literature, could never have found his way through the tangled mazes of Anglo-Saxon criticism, nor known what to look for, nor where to find his wants fulfilled. I cannot understand why the University Professors of Anglo-Saxon in this country do not have that book translated, and edited up to date.

I was fortunate enough while these pages were passing through the press to be in time to see Professor Earle's book, The Deeds of Beowulf, and though I do not agree with his theory of the origin of the poem, I wish to thank him for having, by his translation and notes, made Beowulf a more literary possession for the English people. I have also to thank Mr. Gollancz for permitting me to use the early proof sheets of his edition of the Christ. I saw these sheets after I had made the translations of the Christ contained in this book, and before he had re-written his translation as it now appears. I made some changes in my translation and adopted some of his phrases. I also adopted his new division of the poem, and his ending of it at line 1663. Since then his book has been published, and