separate council of the Jews when Judas advises them not to reveal the place of the Cross, his imprisonment, his release, his prayer to Christ, his declaration of the death of Jesus for the redemption of the world, the finding of the Crosses, the discovery of the true Cross by a miracle, the devil's indignation and speech, the reply of Judas, the message of Helena to Constantine, the baptism of Judas as Cyriacus and his appointment to the Bishopric of Jerusalem, the finding of the nails and the return of Helena. The last canto is Cynewulf's personal account of how he wrote the poem and of his state of mind. Many have said that this is the finest of his poems, but I cannot agree with them. Cynewulf was at his best when he had to invent, not to follow. When he works as he does here, on a given story, his imagination seems fettered. It is very different when, as in the Christ, he is building his lofty song out of his own heart. It is different, even in the Elene, when he wholly abandons his original, and invents the battle, the sea-voyage, and the personal epilogue. These are excellent, and it is their goodness, I think, which has made the critics place the whole poem on so high a level. I have already translated them all and need dwell on them no more. rest of the poem is, I think, extremely dull. The In the battle and sea descriptions many heathen terms are used which enliven and strengthen the verse. Moreover, those swift, surprising, vivid phrases which mark a poet; that wordinvention of which every poet is fond at one time or another of his life, and which, in the shape more of double-shotted substantives than of adjectives, the Anglo-Saxon poets of Northumbria were only too eager to use appear frequently in the Elene. The metrical movement and swing of the lines are much more fixed and steady than in his other poems. There are very few verses which even tend towards the long line that belongs to the Caedmonian poems. On the contrary, that short epic line is used into which, after Ælfred, all English poetry seems to have drifted, as we see for example in the songs of the Chronicle. Rhyme and assonance are also not uncommon. All these characteristics point to a time when the art of poetry had consciously adopted rules, and when the metrical freedom of the poet began to be more rigidly limited. It does not, however, follow that because a poet like Cynewulf adopted the short epic line in its strictness that he was precluded from using the long line of the Caedmonian poetry; and whether he did use it in any later poem than the Elene is a question that will meet us when we describe the Dream of the Holy Rood, which, though I believe it to be at least partly Cynewulf's, I leave to the following chapter because it is unsigned by him.1 1 I have said no more, in this chapter on the signed poems of Cynewulf, of the Fates of the Apostles. It did not seem worth while to treat of it apart. But when these pages had gone to press Mr. Gollancz's book on the Christ appeared, and I have placed in a note at the end of this volume his new theory concerning the Fates of the Apostles and the Andreas. CHAPTER XXV UNSIGNED POEMS EITHER BY CYNEWULF OR BY MEN OF HIS SCHOOL THE poems which still remain for appreciation have all of them been attributed by divers critics to Cynewulf. No positive proof, however, can be given of his authorship of them. Five of them are important poems-the Guthlac, the Descent into Hell, the Phoenix, the Dream of the Rood, and the Andreas. The order in which I have here enumerated them is probably the chronological order of their composition, but no evidence really worth having can be given for this order. I may then classify them as I please, and I take first the Guthlac and the Andreas, both of which are saint-legends, then the Descent into Hell, then the Phoenix, and lastly, the Dream of the Rood, because, as I have said, it closes in my opinion the life and work of Cynewulf. The Guthlac is the story of that anchorite on whose island refuge in the fens the Abbey of Crowland was built. The poem is in the Exeter Book, and its conclusion is missing. There is scarcely any critic of importance who does not say that Cynewulf had a hand in it, and the second part at least is almost unanimously allotted to him. It is more than probable that we should find in its lost ending, had we but the luck to discover it, Cynewulf's signature in runes. The poem has been divided into two parts, and then into three, by various writers. Many attribute only the second part to Cynewulf; and those who think that he wrote the whole, think also, for the most part, that there was a long interval between the composition of the first and second portions,1 between Guthlac A 1 Rieger divides it into two, written at different times by Cynewulf. Charitius adopts the division, but only the second part is Cynewulf's. Lefevre divides it into three parts, with a long interval between the second and third parts. Dietrich and Morley say it is one poem by one hand. Wülker thinks that the second part is Cynewulf's and his earliest work! These differing doctors show at least that no clear conclusion has been arrived at. and Guthlac B. The style and poetic power of the first are very inferior to the second. Moreover, the first part differs considerably from the Life of Guthlac by Felix, who may have been a monk of Crowland, while the second part follows that life closely. On the whole, then, it is most probable that Cynewulf, at the beginning of his Christian life, while his imagination was yet hampered by his natural avoidance of all profane poetry, wrote the first part of Guthlac from oral tradition, and then, much later in life, when his imagination was delivered by the peace in his soul, took up his old work again, after the production of the Life of Guthlac, and added to it an end, with a special account of the anchorite's death. The free and noble manner of this part is a great contrast to the barren and limping movement of the first part. Could we but be certain that Cynewulf wrote both parts at different times, the comparison of the poet in the one to the poet in the other would be a fascinating bit of criticism. One thing remains to be said. Mr. Gollancz tells me he has transferred to the beginning of Guthlac (which follows the Christ in the Exeter manuscript) a number of lines which have been usually printed at the end of the Christ. These form, he says, the true introduction to Guthlac, and he supports his opinion by the fact that there is a blank space in the manuscript before these lines begin. The Christ certainly ends better where he makes it now end, at line 1663. It is not so clear that the Guthlac begins better where he makes it begin -Se bið gefeana faegrast. It is a better beginning, as a matter of form, but the difficulty lies in this, that the quality of this new introduction, as poetry, is of a much higher value than the rest of the first part of the poem. It is, in fact, of the same poetic value as the Christ itself, with which it has been so long connected, or as the second part of Guthlac. It is not possible, I think, to hold that this introduction could have been written by the poet of Guthlac A at the time when A was written. It is not only a difference in artistic work which divides them, but it is a difference in thoughtfulness, in experience of life, such as, to compare small things with great, divides the outlook over life taken by Milton in the Samson Agonistes from that taken in the Comus. It is more than probable that Mr. Gollancz is right in tagging on these twentynine lines to the Guthlac, but I think he will have to say that 1 If so, this partly dates the poem, for that life was written between 747 and 749. they were placed there many years after the first part was written, when Guthlac B was added-about the time, that is, when Cynewulf wrote the Christ. Indeed, I think that the whole preface has been remodelled if not entirely written at this time. It is done with something of an artist's hand. The picture with which it begins is tenderly conceived, and tenderness is one of the qualities of Cynewulf's genius. The mournful note in it, the patriot's sorrow, belongs also to Cynewulf, and has some historical interest if we identify his life with the evil days of Northumbria. There is also a contemplative element in it as of one who had retired from the stormy world and was inclined, in the conventionality of conversion, to classify the different kinds of saints. In such a classification he easily slips into his subject. The life of Guthlac belonged to the highest class. He is one of the anchorites whom Northumbria's old traditions, derived from the Celtic monks, considered to live nearest to God. "Fairest of joys it is," so the poem begins, when at first they meet the angel and the "happy soul who has forsaken the frail delights of earth.” And sweet and tender is the greeting that the angel gives Now mayst fare thy way whither fondly thou didst yearn Chr. 1671 (Guth. 6). From this, the introduction passes on through the classification I have mentioned to those chosen champions of God who dwell in wildernesses; and glides at once into the life of Guthlac in lines which seem to confirm the inference that this first part of the poem followed an oral tradition rather than the book of Felix. "Now we may declare what men of holy estate made known to us, how Guthlac directed his mind to the will of God." The first part has but little poetic power of any kind, and the few lines in it which describe the hermit's life with nature have been already quoted. The second part reveals at once a more experienced and more imaginative hand. It takes up, after an homiletic account of the Fall, the story of the death of Guthlac, and his death is told in heroic terms. It is the last fight of a Christian warrior. His death-song is sung; he is received into the Burg of triumph. The scenery is well set and the Sun plays his part in the battle. Night too appears |