wonderful, a Tree, All that beacon was All enwreathed with light, and beheld it there, all the angels of the Lord 2 Winsome for the world to come ! Surely that was not, of a wicked man the gallows. saw it (shining) there, But the spirits of the saints and this mighty Universe. Wounded with my woeful guilts, saw the Wood of glory All with joys a-shining, all adorned with weeds, round this woodland Tree. come to understand since it now began Nathless could I through the gold I was all with sorrows vexed for I saw that fleet firebeacon Now it was with wet beclouded, then again enriched with gems. Change in clothing and in colour! These the words the best of woods now began to speak — How that I was hewèd down where the holt had end! strong the foes that seized me bade me lift their men outlawed.5 Made of me a mocking-stage, Then I saw the Lord, Lord of Folk-kin He, Hastening march with mickle power "But II dared not, against my Lord's word, bow myself or burst asunder, though I saw all regions of earth trembling; I might have felled his foes, but I stood fast." 1"Four jewels were at the edges of the earth.” 2 This line and the following-in the long metre-belong, I think, to the original poem which I conjecture Cynewulf was working on. bore. "The long-past battle of the sufferers," i.e. of the Tree and of Him it 4 Here Cynewulf, as I think, having used with personal modifications the long lines of the ancient poem, takes up his own work for a time. = 5 Waefer-syne a scene, a spectacle, a theatre. The Cross is as it were a stage on which the punishment and guilt of the criminal is displayed. Grein translates, "bade their slaves lift me up," but I think that the translation in the text is the most natural. It makes the Wood state simply, and at first, the shameful uses to which it was put. Then the Hero young, armed Himself for war and Almighty God Strong and staid of mood stepped He on the gallows high, 1. 39. "A Rood was I upreared, rich the King I lifted up, Lord of all the heavens, yet I dared not fall. With dark nails they pierced me through, on me the dagger strokes are seen; wounds they were of wickedness. Yet I dared not do them scathe; they reviled us both together. From head to foot was I drenched with blood, poured from this hero's side, when he had sent forth His Spirit. A host of wrathful weirds I bore upon that mount. I saw the Lord of peoples serve a cruel service: thick darkness had enwreathed with clouds the corse of the King. Shadow, wan under the welkin, pressed down the clear shining of the sun. All creation wept, mourned the fall of its King; Christ was on the Rood. I beheld it all; I was crushed with sorrow. Then they took Almighty God; from that heavy pain they lifted him; but the warriors left me there to stand streaming with blood. I was all wounded with shafts." Then he tells of the deposition, and how he watched it So they laid him down, limb-wearied; Then they looked upon him, him the Lord of Heaven, Sorely weary he, when the mickle strife was done! Did the men begin, here to make a grave for him. Laid him low in it, him the Lord of Victory! On that eventide. stood beside the head of his lifeless corse. and he rested there for a little time Then before his Banes, in the sight of them, And they carved it there, of a glittering stone, Over him poor folk sang a lay of sorrow company. 1. 63. But we stood on There he rested with a little the hill for a while, dropping blood, till men buried us deep, and that was a dreadful Weird. And now far and wide, when the servants of the Lord discovered me, men honour me. Now I bid thee, Man beloved of me, tell this dream to men. 1 This line is not longer than the original, and the pauses are pretty much the same. Short lines follow it, and then the long line is taken up again. I allot, as before, the long lines to the original poem on which Cynewulf worked, and the short lines to his own hand. The Rood then speaks of judgment to come, and that whoso beareth this best of signs in his heart will have no fear on that day. It ceases speech; and that personal part of the poem follows on which I have already written. This is the last of the important poems of the eighth century. It is good, but not very good. The older part, if my conjecture be right, is the best, and its reworking by Cynewulf has so broken it up that its dignity is much damaged. The shaping is rude, but the imagination has indeed shaped it. The image of the towering Tree, now shining through a golden light and overwrought like a Rood at Ripon or Hexham with jewelled lines of ornament, now veiled in a crimson mist and streaming with blood, is conceived with power, but it is not to be compared with the image of the mighty Rood in the Christ which illuminates with ruddy light the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of angels and of men summoned from their graves to judgment. The invention of the Tree, bringing its soul from the far-off wood, alive and suffering with every pang of the great Sufferer, shivering through every vein of it when Christ, the young Hero, clasped it round, and mourning when he lay beneath, and longing to fall on and slay his foes, and conscious that on it, as on a field of battle, Death and Hell were conquered, is also well worth praise, but the praise must not be carried too far. The workmanship is not the workmanship of a fine artist. We cannot expect it, and the wonder is that at this time it was so good. 1 I have called it my conjecture, but I have since found that the writers of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, in their Excursus on Metres have had a somewhat similar opinion. They say "In the Lay of the Rood, attributed to Caedmon, as it seems, on the Ruthwell Cross, we have the purest piece of poetry in this metre. In the Vercelli book in which it is preserved, there is tacked on to it another poem on a somewhat similar subject, but wholly different in style and metre, which may very possibly be Cynewulf's." I think the whole was reworked by Cynewulf. CHAPTER XXVI THE SCHOOL OF YORK WHILE Cynewulf and his imitators were making the poems about which we have now written, the Collegiate School at York, founded on a secure basis by Ecgberht while Baeda was still alive, was steadily flourishing. Under its auspices not only Latin but English literature was cared for, if I am right in my guess that it was at York that those collections of English verse were made, which were afterwards brought to Wessex in the days of Ælfred. That school began no doubt with Wilfrid, but it did not become the notable school of England till the days of Archbishop Ecgberht, and it ran a noble and vigorous career of fifty years. After 782 it began to decay, but with a certain stately slowness. When it was dead, — and it finally died of the Danes, its learning and its spirit, having emigrated with Alcuin, went forth to animate the wide empire of Charles the Great. It is the history of this school, the last home of literature in the England of the eighth century, which we have now to write, and the tale of it will conclude this book. After the death of Baeda in 735, the seat of letters was transferred from Jarrow to York. Learning passed from a provincial monastery to the centre of the life of Northumbria. It passed from the guardianship of one man to the watchful care of a number of trained scholars, acting together, and teaching, like professors, their own special subjects, under the rule of one Head. We may, with some justice, call the School of York the first English University. Canterbury, under Theodore, was not more than a brilliant monastic school, and at Theodore's death its literary influence died. But the Heads of York provided for the continuance of the school, and for an organisation of it which we might call corporate. The system of teaching seems to have been subdivided, specialised, and handed down intact for at least two generations. York became the storehouse and distributor of learning for civilised Europe. Scholars flocked to it from all parts of Germany, Gaul, Italy, and Ireland. The new European schools, desiring a teacher, either sent one of their own men to take, as it were, a degree at York, or fetched to rule over them an Englishman who had the York certificate. If we add to these things the Cathedral, the great library, the collegiate buildings where the teachers and the pupils lived together, something of the image of a University is presented to our eyes. The town itself was not unworthy of the fame it attained in learning. It had been the capital of Roman Britain, and Britain lay so outside of the Empire that York was called altera Roma. It might have even been called an imperial city. Constantius dwelt in it. When Baeda takes trouble to record that Severus died and that Constantine was made Emperor within its walls, we feel that the historic imagination of the learned English had cast around it, like a toga, the dignity of Rome. Long before Baeda, the Northumbrians made it their chief city. It was the centre of the supremacy of Eadwine, and it finally became the royal seat of the Northumbrian kings. It was the first Christian King of Northumbria baptized, and he and Paullinus set up the little chapel of wood which grew into the Minster. Its spiritual and ecclesiastical history equalled in interest its political history, and now at the time of which we write, it became again the seat of an archbishopric. No doubt, this addition to its ecclesiastical position gave its school a greater vogue in England and in Europe. In the Nor was its people or its situation unworthy of its memories. It was thickly populated by a thriving, brave, and comfortable folk. To the crowd of its own citizens were added a number of foreigners who came to dwell in it for the sake of gain or education. The landscape that surrounded it was lovely; its air healthy; the Ouse flowed full beside its walls and was joined by the Foss, then a broad, deep and sluggish stream. triangle the streams made lay the town, but it had extended far beyond its walls, and the well-watered plains were covered with houses. The flowery meadows which bordered the river, the wooded hills beyond, earned the praise of Alcuin who loved his Alma Mater well. Learning had here a softer clime and dwelling-place than had nourished its hardy youth among the rocky fields, and near the stormy tides of Jarrow.1 1 Hanc piscosa suis undis interfluit Usa, Florigeros ripis praetendens undique campos; |