HANDBOOK

ENGLISH

OF

LITERATURE.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

OUR English forefathers who came to England in the fifth and sixth centuries brought with them no literature. They were not destitute of the art of writing, for they had their runes, but the use of these signs appears to have been greatly restricted, and perhaps seldom extended beyond a proverb or magic formula carved upon a sword-blade or on an ornament.

The early English tribes also possessed songs and legends, but they were unwritten, and were preserved in the memories of gleemen or minstrels, who roamed far and wide, and were welcomed everywhere. One of the very oldest songs we possess describes the wanderings through many lands of a gleeman named Wid-sith,' i.e. Far-traveller.' There is little beauty in the poem, for it is in great part a string of names of countries and peoples, and in its present written form it does not truly represent the primitive language which the gleeman used.

While the long and fierce struggle for the possession

B.

of Britain lasted, the English remained heathen and illiterate; but when the storm of conquest had abated, and when Christianity with its gentle influences made its way among these fierce tribes, then literature began to be cultivated.

The glory of the beginnings of this literature belongs to the north rather than to the south of England-to the Angles rather than to the Saxons. In the beginning of the seventh century Northumbria gained a position of supremacy which was not entirely lost for nearly two centuries. In 617 Eadwine became king, and Britons, Mercians, East Anglians and West Saxons submitted to him, and A woman with her babe might walk scatheless from sea to sea in Eadwine's day.' He fell in battle against the heathen Mercians in 633, but Oswald, the saintly king, took his place, and maintained the supremacy till he also fell in 642, and his successor, Oswi, broke the power of the Mercians in 655, and reigned in peace till 670. Ecgfrith, who reigned next, still further extended the power of Northumbria, by subduing the British kingdom of Cumbria, and a new bishopric was founded in Galloway. But in 685 this king fell in battle against the Picts beyond the Forth, and the political supremacy of Northumbria passed away for ever.

But during this period spiritual and intellectual forces had been working, whose influences did not cease, but which made Northumbria for another century to be a centre from which the light of learning and religion streamed over Western Europe.

King Oswald in his youth had been sheltered in St. Columba's monastery of Iona, and when he became

king, he invited missionaries to convert his kingdom. Aidan came and fixed his bishop's seat in Lindisfarne, and from thence he went forth on foot with the king to convert the peasants of Yorkshire and Northumberland. A little later Cuthbert founded a monastery at Melrose, and journeyed unweariedly as a missionary through the mountain villages of the Lowlands. After years of such labour he also came to Lindisfarne, and died in 685, in the year when the overlordship of Northumbria ceased.

Some twenty or thirty years earlier than this, Hild, a noble lady of royal blood, founded at Streonoshalh (Whitby) a monastery which became very famous. Within its walls were reared John, the St. John of Beverley; Wilfrid, the great Bishop of York; and Cædmon, our first English poet. Whitby became the Westminster of the north, kings and queens and nobles were buried there, and a memorable synod was held within its walls.

Farther north, and a little later in time, Benedict Biscop founded the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, and gathered into them a rich store of books and pictures and works of art. Within these walls were spent the years of Bæda, the father of English literature.

BÆDA.

BEDA was born in 673, somewhere in the strip of country lying between the mouths of the Wear and Tyne. Two years after his birth this strip of country was granted by the pious king, Ecgfrith, to Benedict Biscop, a nobleman who had entered the Church, and who

built the monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth, and a few years later that of St. Paul at Jarrow. The child Bæda was at seven years of age placed in the former monastery, and when the latter was built he was transferred there, and spent within its walls a tranquil happy life.

In these twin monasteries Bæda was brought under the best influences of the time. Benedict, the founder, travelled to Rome four or five times, and brought back with him books, pictures, costly relics, and other works of art. John, the archchanter of St. Peter's, at Rome, also came, and the people crowded to hear his beautiful singing. Other teachers, the best that could be got, were secured, and Bæda became proficient in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, his ardent love of study being doubtless his chief helper. All my life,' he says, 'I spent in that same monastery, giving my whole attention to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in the intervals between the hours of regular discipline and the duties of singing in the church, I always took pleasure in learning or teaching or writing something.'

As a teacher Bæda was famed, and the school at Jarrow was crowded with hundreds of pupils, and one of these, named Cuthbert, has left an affecting account of his master's death in 735 :

:

'He was much troubled with shortness of breath, yet without pain before the day of our Lord's resurrection, and thus he continued cheerful and rejoicing till the day of our Lord's ascension, and daily read lessons to us, his disciples, and whatever remained of the day he spent in singing psalms. Also he admonished us to