meaning in short and contracted phrases. The only artifices they used were those of inversion and transition. The most ancient piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry which we possess, is that fragment of the song of the ancient Cadmon which Alfred has inserted in his translation of Bede. Cædmon was a monk, who accustomed himself to religious poetry, which he began late in life. He died in 680. The fragment which has descended to us, he made on waking in a stall of oxen which he was appointed to guard during the night. The original shows the rhythm to which Bede alludes: Now we should praise Nu pe rceolan heɲigean The Guardian of the heavenly bearon ɲices peand; kingdom; The mighty Creator, And the thoughts of his mind, The earth for the children of men, The middle region, The Guardian of Mankind, The Eternal Lord, Afterwards made Metoder mihte And his mod gethanc, Alfred's Bede, 597. In these eighteen lines the verbal rhythm and periphrasis of the style are evident. Eight lines are occupied by so many phrases to express the Deity. These repetitions are very abruptly introduced; sometimes they come in like so many interjections: The Guardian of the heavenly kingdom; The mighty Creator Glorious Father of his works! Eternal Lord! Holy Creator! The Guardian of Mankind, The Eternal Lord Almighty Ruler ! Three more of the lines are used for the periphrasis of the first making the world: b Bede, iv. 24. Alfred has preserved the Saxon. He established the beginning; He afterwards made Three more lines are employed to express the earth as often by a periphrasis : The earth for the children of men The iniddle region The ground for men So that of eighteen lines, the periphrasis occupies fourteen, and in so many lines only conveys three ideas; and all that the eighteen lines express is simply the first verse of the book of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." No Saxon poem can be inspected without the periphrasis being found to be the leading characteristic. The elegant Menology in the Cotton Library displays it in its very beginning. The rhythm in the placing of the syllables is also apparent : Chirt par acenný d On thy eahteothan dæg beofon nicer peard. Christ was born he was called the Saviour, As all the specimens of their native poetry which will be adduced in this chapter will be found to abound with periphrastical amplifications, it will be unnecessary to introduce more instances here. Their periphrasis is always mingled with metaphors; and as these will be seen very frequently in the subsequent citations, they need not be particularized. One striking instance will suffice, which we will take from Cedmon's periphrasis and metaphors to express the ark; he calls it successively, the ship, the sea-house, the greatest of watery chambers, the ark, the great sea-house, the high mansion, the holy wood, the house, the great sea-chest, the greatest of treasure-houses, the vehicle, the mansion, the house of the deep, the palace of the ocean, the cave, the wooden fortress, the floor of the waves, the receptacle of Noah, the moving roof, the feasting-house, the bosom of the vessel, the nailed building, the ark of Noah, the vehicle of the ark, the happiest mansion, the building of the waves, the foaming ship, the happy receptacle. Another prevailing feature of the Anglo-Saxon poetry was the omission of the little particles of speech, those abbreviations of language which are the invention of man in the more cultivated ages of society, and which contribute to express our meaning more discriminatingly, and to make it more clearly understood. The prose and poetry of Alfred's translation of Boetius will enable us to illustrate this remark. Where the prose says, Thee the on cham ecan retle ɲicrast, "Thou who on the eternal seat reignest," the poetry of the same passage, Thee on heahretle ecan picrart, "Thou on high seat eternal reignest," omitting the explaining and connecting particles, the and that. So, "Thou that on the seat," is again in the poetry, "Thou on seat." The Saxon of the little fragment of Cedmon is without particles. Whoever looks into Anglo-Saxon poetry after being familiar with their prose, will perceive how uniformly barren their poems are of the discriminating and explanatory particles. He will likewise feel, in the difficulties which attend his construction of it, how much obscurity is created by their absence. In prose, and in cultivated poetry, every conception of the author is clearly expressed and fully made out. In barbaric poetry, and in the Anglo-Saxon poetry, we have most commonly abrupt, imperfect hints, instead of regular description or narration. The poetical citations which follow, will abundantly show this. But that their poetry seeks to express the same idea in fewer words than prose, may be made apparent by one instance. Thus, the phrase in Alfred's prose, "So doth the moon with his pale light, that the bright stars he obscures in the heavens," is put by him in his poetry thus: With Pale light Moon lesseneth. Even when the same idea is multiplied by the periphrasis, the rest of the sentence is not extended either in meaning or expression. One word or epithet is played upon by a repetition of synonymous expressions, but the meaning of the sentence is not thereby increased. Of their artificial inversion of their words and phrases in their poems, every specimen adduced will give evidence. It is quite different in their prose. The words follow there most commonly in an easy and natural order. The poem on Beowulf will give repeated instances of their abrupt and unconnected transitions. Their metre will be the subject of a separate chapter. The poetry which pleases a refined age, has no more similarity to such poetry as we find to have been popular among the AngloSaxons, than the sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, can be supposed to have to the boisterous music of our ancestors. Poetry, like painting and architecture, has attained to its perfection by slow degrees. The leaves of its laurel seem to have been the gradual contributions of genius and labour during many centuries. But at the period in which it is the province of this his tory to contemplate it, little else seems to have been done than the formation of a style of composition different from prose. If we call this style poetry, it is rather by complaisance than truth— rather with a knowledge of the excellences afterwards introduced into it, than of those which it then possessed. The barren and peculiar state of the Anglo-Saxon poetry leads us to infer, that it was the product of art more than of nature. Its origin seems to have been as homely as its genius. The origin of the periphrasis is easily accounted for; a favourite chief or hero conquers, and is received on his return by the clamorous rejoicings of his people. One calls him brave; another, fierce; another, irresistible. He is pleased with the praises; and some one at his feast, full of the popular feeling, repeats the various epithets with which he had been greeted: Edmund the brave chief, slaughtered his enemies at This is in substance an Anglo-Saxon poem. But when these addresses were found to interest the vanity of the chiefs, and to excite their liberality, more labour would be bestowed in the construction of the periphrasis; the compliment would be sometimes higher seasoned, and then the periphrasis would be raised into occasional metaphors: the hero would be called, the eagle of battle, the lord of shields, the giver of the bracelet, the helmet of his people; and the lady would be saluted as a beautiful elf. The style of the Anglo-Saxon poetry seems to have been originally the common, imperfect language of the people, in its half-formed and barbarous state. When an infant first begins to talk, it uses only the nouns and pronouns of its language. By degrees it learns the use of a few verbs, which for some time it uses in their simplest forms, without any of their conjugations. The meaning of these is supplied by its actions, or is left to be guessed by its parent. The knowledge of the abbreviations, or the particles of language, is gradually attained. With our careful education, children acquire from us the habit of using them with fluency and correctness in a few years. But wild nations must have been some centuries without them. All nations, who have formed their languages, have gone through the same process, in doing so, that our children are always exhibiting. The nouns, or the names of things, are at first their only language. Some of these, which signify visible action or motion, come at last to be used to express motion or action generally, or are added to other nouns, to express them in Hence a state of action. These are what we now call verbs. nouns, nouns used as verbs, or thus converted into verbs, and others made pronouns, compose the whole of the language in the ruder ages of every uncivilized nation. As the progress of society goes on, the abbreviations of language begin to be formed; words multiply, and the forms of using them to distinguish the various ideas of the human mind from each other, and to give determination and precision to its meaning, begin also to multiply. The conjugations of the verbs, and the declensions of nouns, are then invented, new sets of nouns receive being, and new meanings are given to the primitive nouns, as will be shown in our chapter on language, till at length every language receives that multiplicity of terms and particles which form the copious and clear stream of expressive and cultivated prose. If a people narrate a tale in the full and copious period of their language, they will do it naturally in that easy and loquacious prose which forms the style of Herodotus, the oldest prose writer of Greece that has survived to us. But if the same tale was told by the ancestors of this people in their ruder state, when language had not acquired its abbreviations, nor the verbs their conjugations, nor the nouns their secondary meanings and derivative applications; and if that tale, so rudely told, were handed down faithfully by tradition in its rude state to the cultivated age, it would probably exhibit all the features of the Anglo-Saxon poetry; it would be without particles, without conjugations or declensions, with great contraction of phrase, with abrupt transitions, with violent metaphor and frequent periphrasis. The contraction of phrase would arise from the penury of their associations. The same poverty of mind and knowledge would make the periphrasis, or the retracing the same idea again and again, their easiest source of eloquence; and the violence of metaphor naturally arises from not having immediately new terms to express the new, or more intellectual ideas, that would every year be rising among an improving people; and therefore, till new words are devised, the old names of real things are necessarily, though violently applied. The metre of the Saxon poetry is the simplest that can be conceived, and is, indeed, often little else than a series of short exclamations. Its inversions are more artificial. But when music was applied to poetry, and men found it beneficial to sing or recite a chieftain's praise, we may conceive, that, to secure to themselves the profits of the profession, some little ingenuity was exerted to make difficulties which would raise their style above the vulgar phrase. Its inversion was one of the easiest modes of making a peculiar style of composition; and as society advanced in its attainments, the transition, the alliteration, and |