Which the ruler of the Ether there has roomed for us, Christ, 1. 848. To compare these lines, written when Cynewulf was advanced in years, with the poem of the Hurricane, written when he was young, has more than a transient interest. And no artist can read both at the same time without having a higher pleasure than the ordinary reader. He will feel the same personality in both, but working, with how different a life behind the poetry, with how different an impulse; in how different a fashion and from how changed a character! Youth, moved out of itself by Nature, and looking neither before nor after, is in the earlier poem. The passion in it is untouched by the weight of the sorrows or duties of manhood, or by the sense of sin and the cry for redemption. These pains and burdens, on the contrary, as well as the soul wrapt in self-consciousness, are present in the later verses. Such a contrast makes Cynewulf real to us; and the change — I will not call it artistic progress, though at certain points it is so- does at least enable us to say, This man was an artist. CHAPTER XI CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE THE matters of which we have treated in the three previous chapters do not belong especially either to heathenism or Christianity. They may rather be called secular. All that had to do with the affairs of arms was as much heathen as Christian; and the same may be said with regard to the greater part of the poetry quoted to illustrate the daily life of our forefathers. We cannot altogether say this when we consider the poetry of natural description. I do not think that the remarkable descriptions of the sea and its storms and of various aspects of nature could have been written by the heathen English. The temper of these poems is not at all the old Teutonic temper. They are too contemplative for English heathendom. Nevertheless some of their spirit goes back to other heathendoms than the Teutonic, and goes back through the advent of Christianity. It was the Celtic missionaries who evangelised Northumbria, and through them the Celtic feeling for nature was imported into English poetry. Along with this, Latin Christianity brought with it Roman poetry, and Virgil and Ovid gave to the Northumbrian poets a fresh and kindling impulse to the observation and love of Nature. Beyond these impulses, however, the coming of Christianity poured into the river of the English imagination a multitude of new tributary streams, enlarged its waters, enriched its constituents, purified, mellowed, and deepened it. It did more; these new streams were of various elements, and though, at first, they did not isolate themselves into distinct currents, yet, as time went on, and they assimilated what was necessary for their separate existence, they became self-conscious streams of poetry within the general stream. What Christianity thus did for literature, what it modified of the past, what it originated for the future, what powers it added to that emotional life from which poetry urges itself upwards into form, what it weakened and strengthened, restricted and enlarged, is the subject of this and the following chapter. When we consider Christianity in contact with those heathen elements, so many of which, as pregnant motives of poetry, have continued in our literature, the first thing to be said is that, owing to the manner in which Christianity was propagated in England, it did not root out heathen ideas so much as change them. Its growth was left to the will of the people; to persuasion and not to force. The sword had no part, as on the Continent, as among the Northmen, in the evangelising of England. In no modern land that Jesus won was his conquest so gentle, so marked by tolerance and good sense. Hence Christianity was subject for a long time to interruptions and reactions. For nearly eighty years the heathen and Christian faiths were in close contact, and each preserved its freedom of development. The old battle songs were sung side by side with the Christian hymns, the sagas of the English heroes with the saga of Christ; the Christian Church, on the hill or by the river, saw during a varying term of years, and without any fierce religious fury, the heathen temple in the neighbouring grove. There was a long mingling then, in a peaceful fashion, of Christian and heathen thought; and through the mingling ran a special temper of tolerance and wisdom and good-breeding. These two things, both of which were vital influences on English literature, are best illustrated by a brief but necessary account of the various changes which marked the conversion of England. It was in the year 597 that Augustine brought the gospel to Kent, and King Æthelberht (partly prepared by his wife) listened to it graciously. A speech of his, which Erasmus might have fathered, strikes the key-note of the manner in which Christianity was spread in England by the kings, and indeed by the bishops. "Your words," said Ethelberht, "and promises sound very good to me, but they are new to us, and of uncertain meaning; I cannot so far yield to them as to abandon all that I and the whole English people have for so long observed. 1 There were but few exceptions. Episcopal violence seems to have been retained between Christian and Christian, not between Christian and heathen. Augustine was gentle enough, though he was a vain man, with Ethelberht and the Kentish heathen, but his manners with the Welsh monks were not of the same type. But then the Welsh were Christians, not heathen, and they were not in harmony with Rome. It would not have been politic for Augustine to have anything to do with the Welsh. It was more easy for Rome to be tolerant to ignorant heathen than to Christians who differed from her formulæ. And the keeping of Easter at a different date from Rome was a very serious thing; it touched the headship of Rome. Even Baeda seems to lose his temper over it. But since you are strangers and have come from a far land, and desire to tell us what you hold to be true and good, we will do you no harm, but will give you food and a place to dwell in, and you may speak to my people and win over as many as you can to your belief;" which things he did, and was himself shortly afterwards, with many of his people, baptized. But he "compelled none to embrace the faith," so that many still remained heathen. In 604 the East Saxons, under Saeberht, Æthelberht's nephew, were converted, and Æthelberht founded St. Paul's in London for his nephew. Eadbald, son of Æthelberht, became King of the Kentishmen in 616. He had refused to receive the faith of Christ. Even when he became Christian, he was unable to take any strong measures against idolatry (E. H., ii. 6); and I think it possible that Kent in a large measure relapsed. It is plain that London went back into heathendom when Saeberht died. His three sons were all pagans, and the wild disturbance they made in the church crying out to the bishop who was administering the Eucharist, "Why not give us the white bread you gave to our father?”. illustrates how close the English world was then to Paganism, how little the fear of Rome was in their hearts. When we travel North we find much the same wavering state of things. Eadwine of Deira was baptized, 12th April 627, with all his people, by Paullinus. When he died in 633, a whole year passed by before Oswald came to the throne and Northumbria slipped back into heathenism, but after Oswald's accession the conversion of the country went on steadily. Paullinus, it is true, had fled, but Oswald sent messengers to the elders of the Scots who had baptized him when in exile, and Aidan descended from Iona to teach Northumbria. At Lindisfarne his bishop's seat was set, and from that desolate rock he and his successors evangelised Northumbria;1 but in all the wilder and more inaccessible parts the people long continued heathen. Meanwhile the half-and-half condition of England can be further illustrated by the story of Raedwald. Raedwald, who was King of East Anglia till about 627, had become a Christian in Kent, but on his return home his wife seduced him back to heathenism. Nevertheless he made the best of both worlds; for he set up 1 They went also through other parts of England before the Synod of Whitby, but their chief work was in the North; and it must always be remembered, as one of the causes of certain elements in the Anglo-Saxon poetry of Northumbria, that the religion of the North- - that is, the greatest source of popular emotion--came to the people through the Celtic character. two altars in the same temple, one to Christ and another to his gods. One of Baeda's contemporaries had seen these altars when he was a boy. His son Eorpwald became a Christian, but was slain by a pagan, under whom the province was again heathen for three years. Then Sigeberht came to the throne, who, having embraced the Christian faith in Gaul and become a man of learning, made all East Anglia Christian in the years between 631-634. In 635 the West Saxons, who were confirmed pagans, received the faith in the person of Cynegils their king, under the influence and in the presence of Oswald, who took the West Saxon "to son" at Dorchester, a town which for about forty years was the ecclesiastical centre of Wessex. His son Coenwalch was still a heathen on his accession in 643, but three years later was baptized. He is the traditionary founder of the great church at Winchester, a town which in after years was the cradle of English prose; and he secured Glastonbury for England with all its venerable traditions and its names so dear to after literature. In the meantime, Kent, under Earcomberht, son of Eadbald, had become altogether Christian. This king, succeeding his father in 640, uprooted heathenism. It took then forty-three years to make Kent, where the faith was first preached, completely Christian. In 653 the East Saxons, who had relapsed under those three stormy young men, were brought back to the faith by Sigeberht and by the preaching of Cedda; but a pestilence breaking out among them in 665, a great number of them restored the old temples, but were reconverted - an unstable and fierce folkwithin the year. Five years, then, before Caedmon wrote, heathenism had not been forgotten. This becomes still plainer when we think of the state of Mercia during this time. Penda, king of that province, came into lordship over it in 626. From that date till 655, when he was slain, he fought with stern consistency for the faith of his fathers the terror and the admiration of Middle and Northern England. The wars he urged were, however, more political than religious. No persuasion could change his faith, but he ceased to persecute the Christians. He did not even prevent the preaching of their faith. He contented himself with sneering at those Christians who did not live up to the commandments of their God. His son Peada, whom he made viceroy of the Middle Angles, became Christian in 653 and introduced four Northumbrian priests into his province. Penda did not stand in the way, but I cannot help feeling that the old heathen suffered sorely when he felt |