of thought and speech of our forefathers in that "dark backward and abysm of time." We have it here at first hand, 'proving,' in Chapman's words,

"-how firm truth builds in poet's feigning ;"

and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that we may live with our ancestors and know them-which surely is the chief end of history-better in this poem than in all the bulky volumes of professed historians.

That some of the persons mentioned in the poem are historical there can be little doubt, but of the hero himself the utmost we can assert is, that he may not impossibly have been a real man. The two theories about him propounded by Kemble show in a very striking manner the difficulty of the question. In 1833 the great Anglo-Saxon scholar has no doubt that Beowulf is historical; in 1837 he retracts the erroneous views developed in the earlier volume, and Beowulf becomes a mere phantom of mythology. The truth probably lies somewhere between these extreme views, and indeed Kemble would very likely have modified his later theory if he had known of the identification of Higelac, the uncle of Beowulf, with the Chochilaicus, King of the Danes,' whose death in battle with the Attoarii in 511 is recorded by Gregory of Tours, and in the Gesta Regum Francorum. The dry record of these chroniclers is a remarkable confirmation of the passages

in the poem which tell of Higelac's fatal expedition to Friesland and slaughter by the Hetwars, and we thus get, what Kemble craved in vain, a key-date of the highest value.* A farther trace of Higelac is found in the passage from a writer of the tenth century, quoted by Grein in the article already referred to, which relates that the bones of Huiglaicus qui imperavit Getis et a Francis occisus est were still preserved on an island in the Rhine, near its mouth, and shown to strangers as a wonder for their immense size.

If then it is pretty certain that the uncle really lived, why should we doubt the existence of the nephew merely because a heap of fables has gathered round his name? We have no record of him, it is true, elsewhere. In the shadowy realm of Northern history or legend he is unknown, but not assuredly, as the poem testifies, caret quia vate sacro. AngloSaxon and Norse genealogies are alike silent about him; but this may be explained by the fact that he was a childless man, and after his death his little kingdom was probably soon swallowed up in the dominions of greater neighbours. On the whole, therefore, if we have little reason to affirm his existence we have as little to deny it, and

* The Hetwars are evidently the Attoarii. They are identified with the Chatti of Tacitus, as their neighbours the Hugas are with his Chanci. The fact that Chochilaicus is called King of the Danes' is of no moment. The ecclesiastical historian probably used the word as including northern barbarians of all kinds.