they extended their rhythm sometimes into a more dignified cadence, as Weneda puldor cýning— Ymthe heolrten гceado Thuɲh thinɲa meahta sped. When their words would not fall easily into the desired rhythm, they were satisfied with an approach to it, and with this mixture of regular and irregular cadence all their poetry seems to have been composed. By this rhythm, by their inversions of phrase, by their transitions, by their omissions of particles, by their contractions of phrase, and, above all, by their metaphors and perpetual periphrasis, their poetry seems to have been distinguished. That they occasionally sought rhyme and alliteration cannot be doubted, for we have some few Anglo-Saxon poems in rhyme.b But neither of these formed its constituent character, nor was any marked attention given to the prosodical quantity of their syllables, as Hickes supposed. b Mr. Cony beare remarks, that in the Exeter MS. there is one Anglo-Saxon poem, entirely written in rhyme, with alliteration, p. 195. The extract which he has cited from the poem, on the Day of Judgment, has also the following rhymed passage: That nu manna gehpýlc Ibid. That now every man Either wounds of hell, Which ever he loves most. VOL. II. 33 CHAPTER V. Their Latin Poetry. THE Latin poetry of the Anglo-Saxons originated from the Roman poetry, and was composed according to the rules of Roman prosody. Its authors were all ecclesiastics, who had studied the classical writers and their imitators; and who followed as nearly as their genius would permit them, the style and manner of classical composition. Sometimes they added a few absurd peculiarities, dictated by bad taste, and sometimes they used rhyme. But in general the regular hexameter verse was the predominant characteristic of their poems. The origin of their Latin poetry may be therefore easily explained. With the works of the classical writers we are all acquainted. As the Roman empire declined, the genius of poetry disappeared. Claudian emitted some of its departing rays. But after his death it would have sunk for ever in the utter night of the Gothic irruption, if the Christian clergy had not afforded it an asylum in their monasteries, and devoted their leisure to read and to imitate it. The Romans had diffused their language as their conquests and colonies spread; but it would have also perished when the Gothic irruptions destroyed their empire, if the Christian hierarchy had not preserved it. The German tribes who raised new sovereignties in the imperial provinces were successively converted to Christianity; and as the new faith chiefly emanated from Rome, one religious system pervaded the western part of Europe. The public worship was everywhere performed in Latin. All the dignified clergy and many others were perpetually visiting Rome. The most accessible and popular works of the fathers of the church were in the Latin language. And this was the only tongue in which the ecclesiastics of Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, and Italy could compose or correspond in to be understood by each other. Hence every ecclesiastic in every part of Europe, who aspired to any intellectual cultivation or distinction, was obliged to learn the Latin language, and to write in it. From this circumstance, they nourished a necessary attachment to the Latin authors; and thus the Latin language and the classical writers were preserved by the Christian clergy from that destruction which has entirely swept from us both the language and the writings of Phoenicia, Carthage, Babylon, and Egypt. Many of the clergy wrote homilies, or disputatious treatises; some aspired to history, and some were led to cultivate poetry. In the fourth century, Victorinus, Juvencus, and Prudentius, distinguished themselves by poems in Latin verse on devotional subjects. In the fifth century, Sedulius, Dracontius, and Sidonius, with others, cultivated Latin poetry. In the next age appeared Alcimus, Arator, Columbanus, and the prolific Venantius Fortunatus. Every subsequent century enumerated many ecclesiastical poets, who all alike fashioned both their genius and their works from the classical models, or their imitators. chose, indeed, subjects more suited to their sacred profession; but they strove, according to their best abilities, to give their religious efforts all the style and the measures of the standard poetry of ancient Rome. They The Anglo-Saxons who wrote Latin poetry drank from the same Heliconian spring, and used the same prosody; and of course the Latin poetry originated from the Latin poetry of the ecclesiastics who had preceded them, and their classical models. But though the prosody of the classical poetry furnished these writers with their metres, yet as they were in a ruder and less cultivated age, their taste was too unformed and irregular to keep to the chaste style of the Augustan bards. They undervalued the excellence with which they were familiar, and sometimes they strove to improve it by beauties of their own; beauties, however, often perceptible only to the eye or the ear of a barbaric taste. Some of their grotesque ornaments are mentioned in the fifth century by Sidonius. He notices some verses which were so composed as to admit of being read either backward or forward. Thus: and Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor. Sole medere pede, ede perede melos. He has also given us a specimen of another fantastic effort in two verses, of which he asks his friend to admire the disposition of the syllables: Præcipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen, These, if read backward, will give Deficiet cito jam consumptum tempore flumen The poem of Proba Falconia, a poetess of the fourth century, was also constructed very whimsically. Her subjects were, the history of the creation, the deluge, and Christ. She narrates these histories in centos from Virgil, who knew nothing about them. She has so curiously selected above seven hundred of his lines, and so placed them, that, with the aid of titles to the different portions, the principal events of these Scripture histories are described in the words of the Mantuan bard.b Our Anglo-Saxons display occasional exertions of the same depraved taste in their Latin poetry; of which the most ancient that has descended to us consists of the compositions of Aldhelm, who died in 709; and will be noticed again in the chapter on their literature. His verses, from the study of better models, are preferable to this pompous prose. His poetical works which remain are entitled, De Laude Virginum, De Octo principalibus Vitiis, and Ænigmata. Towards the close of his prose treatise on Virginity, he stated that he should write on the same subject in poetry. His preface to the poem is an acrostic address to the abbess Maxima, in hexameter verse. It consists of thirty-eight lines, so fantastically written that each line begins and ends with the successive letters of the words of the first line; and thus the first and last lines, and the initial and final letters of each line consist of the same words. In the last line the words occur backwards. The final letters are to be read upwards: M ETRICA TIRONES NUNC PROMANT CARMINA CASTO S T rinus in arce Deus, qui pollens secla creavi T b Bib. Mag. tom. viii. p. 708–716. R ex regum et princeps populorum dictus ab æv O S OTSAC ANIMRAC TNAMORP CNUN SENORIT ACIRTE M.c He Aldhelm calls this, quadratum carmen, a square verse. was not the inventor of these idle fopperies of versification. Fortunatus and others had preceded Aldhelm in this tasteless path, in which authors endeavour to surprise us, not by the genius they display, but by the difficulties which they overcome. The poem is not divided into books or chapters. It consists of two thousand four hundred and forty-three hexameter lines, the last eight of which are rhymed; the four first alternately; the others in couplets. We subjoin them: Quis prius in spira morsum glomeravit inertem The first twenty-two lines of the poem are an invocation of the Deity. The translations of the passages which we select, as specimens of his powers, are made as literal as possible. Almighty Father! Sovereign of the world! • Maxima Bib. Vet. Patr. tom. xiii. p. 3. d Ibid. p. 19. |