HKB
nor write. When the Saxons once turned their attention to letters, none of the barbarous nations excelled them--the progress made during the reign of Alfred, we again repeat, is marvellous.
Nothing can be more primitive than our Anglo-Saxon poetry. Every line bears the stamp of originality. The praise of brave warriors is ever the subject. It has always been the same. They but extolled what then stood highest in their estimation--the brave--the giver of rewards--the terror of enemies--the leader of battles are but the plaudits of men put into metre--the natural outbreak of admiration. Watch a fond mother when alone, talking to her infant--nature is still the same--she addresses it as her darling, her dearest, her life, her delight; and when she has exhausted every endearing epithet--uttered every fond word that her heart dictated, she evinces her affection by caresses. To what lengths could we extend the comparison! But neither mother nor child in those days called forth the lavish praises which were expended on a brave chieftain. We need only refer to the extracts we have already given in the body of our history, from the Welsh bards, to prove this. The literature in no country was ever built upon so original a foundation as that of the Anglo-Saxons. Their language at an early period was enriched by the Danish: their habits resembled those of the sea-kings. Long before the Norman conquest, they had melted into one; the sea-horses, and the road of the swans, were to them familiar images; there was a sublimity about the ocean, and the storm, and the giant headlands, which they felt and understood; and had we the space, we could fill pages with proofs of this grand poetical appreciation--of this natural inspiration. The Saxon ode which celebrates Athelstan's victory at Brunanburg bears evidence of the fiery spirit which the Scandinavians diffused. Neither drew from the classic stores of Rome or Greece.
Their homilies and graver works scarcely come within the compass of our history; they require more serious treatment than we are able to bestow upon them. Those attributed to Alfric are now on the eve of becoming widely known; and we doubt not but that, in the course of time, the study of the Anglo-Saxon language will be pursued by every man who aspires to literature. A few days' attention to it, renders the reading of Chaucer easy; and although it may be long before the student is enabled to decypher an old Saxon manuscript, yet he will be rewarded by the facility with which he will get through our early stores of black-letter lore.
Ballads were sung in the English streets before the time of Alfred. Our music and singing-parties are nothing new. More than a thousand years ago, the harp sounded in the festal hall, accompanied by the voice of the singer. Look at the beauty of the following extract. It is an old Saxon ditty, and was known long before the Normans invaded England. Read it; then turn to some of our specimens of modern versification. The exile is banished from his friends, and encounters many hardships. He is doomed to dwell in a cave within the forest; and thus he complains:--
This earthly dwelling is cold, and I am weary; The mountains are high up, the dells are gloomy, Their streets full of branches, roofed with pointed thorns; I am weary of so cheerless an abode. My friends are now all in the earth-- The grave guards all that I loved; I alone remain above, and thitherward am I going. All the long summer day I sit weeping Under the oak tree, near my earthly cave, And there may I long weep. The exile's path still lies through a land of troubles; My mind knows no rest--it is the cave of care. Throughout life has weariness ever pursued me.
This passage wants but the polish of Shakspere, and to be uttered by his own mournful monarch, king Richard the Second, to be worthy of a place in his immortal writings.[24]
ARCHITECTURE, ART, AND SCIENCE.