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W.

U.

L.

F.

shall wearily await upon that plain

what penalty he will adjudge to them

for their deeds. The Winsomeness of earthly gauds
Shall then be changed. In days of yore Unknown
Lake-floods embraced the region of life's joy

and all earth's Fortune.

It must be remembered, of course, that in the original MS. the letters CY N.E W U L F were printed in the runic character to attract the eye to the device. But as each runic character also represents a word as well as a letter, in reading the poem the equivalent word was substituted to give the sense much as in the above English translation.

NOTE 5, p. 12.

There has been much discussion among scholars as to whether Cynewulf was a native of Wessex or of Northumbria. The "Exeter Codex," as we have said, is the dialect of Wessex (the literary dialect), but to claim a Wessex origin of Cynewulf on this ground would be to prove too much, for it would prove that all Anglo-Saxon poems are also West Saxon, for they are all in that dialect. Professor Cook ("Christ," p. lxxi.) has thus tabulated the authorities on either side of the debate: "Upon this point we are restricted to inference. Grimm seems to intimate that he considers Cynewulf to have been a West Saxon. He was at first followed by Dietrich, and the same opinion was also held by Th. Müller. Leo was the first to assume that he was a Northumbrian, though on grounds that were largely untenable. Not till 1875 did Dietrich change his opinion, and concede that Cynewulf was a Northumbrian. Rieger assented to this, as did Grein and Ten Brink. Müller, who at first regarded Cynewulf as a West Saxon, in 1895 endeavoured to prove that he was a Mercian. Sievers, in his articles on rhyme and metre, brought forward new arguments to show that the poet was a Northumbrian. Ramhorst and Leiding were of the same opinion."

In confirmation of the Northumbrian origin of Cynewulf, Mr. Stopford Brooke has the following interesting suggestions to make: "If Cynewulf wrote the 'Riddles' (in the Exeter book) -and far the greater number of critics think that he did-he was well acquainted with a storm-lashed coast bordered with cliffs; with the life and business of sailors in their ships, and that the seas which he knew were not only tempestuous, but frequently weltering with ice. . . . The Christ' also is full of sea allusions; the cliff barriers between sea and land is once, at least, vigorously seen, and the famous passage (line 848) is written by one who had been a sailor, who knew the pains and longings of a seaman's life, and who spoke to men who, being themselves seamen, would understand him. It is not a passage which a poet writing in Mercia or Wessex was likely to have written. No inland man, no Mercian, is likely to have written the voyage of 'Andreas.' Moreover, I do not know of any place on the coast of Wessex where a sea-poet was likely to write. Many such places did exist on the coast of Northumbria -Whitby, Hartlepool, Jarrow, Tynemouth, Lindisfarne, Coldingham-all centres of learning and all in constant sea communication. . . . An atmosphere' is perhaps poor evidence, but it is of value when it goes with other probabilities. Moreover, it is not such weak evidence as it seems. One might say, for example, that Tennyson could never have lived on the northern coast. His atmosphere is of the gentler lands and coasts below the Humber; and I can no more conceive the 'Elene' and the 'Riddles,' 'Guthlac,' and the 'Andreas' being written on the southern coast or inland, than I can conceive 'Maud' being written at Bamborough or Whitby" (Brooke, "Early English Literature," vol. ii. pp. 193-4). To his "sea atmosphere" argument Mr. Brooke adds two other suggestions in support of the Northumbrian origin of Cynewulf. First, there was no school of native poetry in either Mercia or Wessex, as for a century there had been in the North; and second, the historical conditions of Northumbria were in exactly that state which

would be likely to produce the half-sad, half-despairing note of Cynewulf, who finds all his joy, not on the earth, but in the world to come.

Professor Cook, on the other hand, although he would reject a Wessex origin for Cynewulf as emphatically as Mr. Brooke, makes the suggestion, which I have given in the text of my lecture, namely, that Cynewulf was an East Anglian rather than a Northumbrian, identifying the poet with a certain Cynulf, who was present at the Synod of Clovesho in 803, a priest of the diocese of Dunwich, in the train of Bishop Tidfrith. Briefly stated, Professor Cook's arguments for this contention are these :

1. The date agrees with what we should expect.

2. The form of the name is such as the poet was using at this time.

3. Cynewulf was almost certainly an ecclesiastic: if not a monk, then a priest, or perhaps both.

4. Dunwich was the seat of a school established by its first bishop, Felix, from which school, in later times, the University of Cambridge was asserted to have sprung: so that the traditions of learning may well have persisted there.

5. Through Æthelheard, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Tidfrith, his own bishop, Cynewulf could have kept in touch with Alcuin, from whom he derived his notions of the fire of Doomsday. About the time of the Council of Clovesho, Tidfrith received a letter of advice from Alcuin. Possibly Tidfrith, Æthelheard, or more likely Alcuin, may have been "the eminent man" whom Cynewulf apostrophises at the beginning of Part II. of "The Christ."

6. At Dunwich, in early days, the chief seaport on the East Anglian coast, Cynewulf would have ample opportunities to become acquainted with the sea, and even with the stormlashed cliffs of Whitby and the North.

"Objections," concludes Professor Cook, "may no doubt be brought against this theory, but to me there seems nothing

intrinsically improbable in it. If it be urged that we know nothing about the dialect of East Anglia, one might reply that at all events it was Anglian : if that the Dunwich School may by this time have become extinct, it is yet possible, nay, very likely, that Cynewulf may have attended the still more famous one at York, and by no means certain that he was not a Northumbrian or Mercian by birth. If the influence of Offa was sufficient to raise the Mercian Ethelheard to the See of Canterbury, it was sufficient to induct a priest from another province into his East Anglian office. It is thus possible that the Court which Cynewulf knew was the Court of Offa, and that it was there that he received the "appled gold" mentioned in the Elene.

It

"The poem is truly original and originally conceived. is the history, I might say the epic, of salvation. . . . It is a series of hymns, at least at the beginning, closed by choice outbursts of praise. I fancy, however-for the third part is much more continuously wrought than the first or secondthat when the poet had written a number of these short pieces, a larger aim dawned on him, and then fully rose in his mind: and that then he determined to work his three subjects into a connected whole. If he went back for this purpose to his earlier labours he did not fulfil his purpose well. The bringing together of the first part is not successful. The different pieces remain separate lays. In the second part the two subjects the Ascension itself, and the ascension with Christ of the souls delivered from Hades into Heaven-might easily have been made into a continuous narrative if Cynewulf had thought of weaving them into one piece when he began. . . . Nevertheless, of all Cynewulf's poems, The Christ' is the weightiest, because in it he has made his greatest struggle towards an artistic unity, and has best shown in a sustained effort his constructive power. It is, moreover, essentially the work of a poet, though of a poet untrained in composition. The rushing outbursts of praise the lyrics of the work—are

poetry of a higher fervour than anything in the Caedmonic verse. In these he reaches his nearest approach to a fine style; and, as always with a poet, his style is a revelation of his character. We seem to feel the man himself when in the contrast so natural to an artist this trumpet-tongued piety and joy is succeeded by personal passages full of pathetic regret, repentance, and humility. In praise and prayer, in mournfulness and exaltation, he was equally passionate." (Stopford Brooke, "Early English Literature,” vol. ii. p. 218-19.)

NOTE 6, p. 16.

"The Church enters to-day (Dec. 17) on the seven days which precede the vigil of Christmas, and which are known in the Liturgy under the name of the Greater Ferias. The ordinary of the advent office becomes more solemn; the antiphons of the Psalms, both for Lauds and the Hours of the day, are proper and allude expressly to the Great Coming. Every day at vespers is sung a solemn antiphon, which consists of a fervent Prayer to the Messiah, whom it addresses by one of the titles given Him by the sacred Scriptures. . . . The canonical Hour of Vespers has been selected as the most appropriate time for this solemn supplication to our Saviour, because, as the Church sings in one of her hymns, it was in the evening of the world (vergente mundi vespere) that the Messiah came among us. Then antiphons are sung at the Magnificat to show us that the Saviour whom we expect is to come to us by Mary. They are sung twice-once before and once after the Canticle" (Gueranger, "The Liturgical Year," Advent, pp. 508-9).

The following interesting reason for the use of the Magnificat at Vespers is thus given by Bede ("Works," 5, 306):-"It comes to pass, by the bounty of the Lord, that if we at all times meditate upon the acts and sayings of the Blessed Mary, the observance of chastity and the works of virtue will always continue in For the excellent and salutary custom has grown up in Holy Church that all shall sing her hymn (the Magnificat) every day

us.

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