You will see that the most important book which the Roman priests brought to England was the Old Testament. This was a sacred book of the Hebrew people, who were not related to the Teutonic peoples, from whom our English sprang. The Hebrews belong to another family of mankind-the Semitic family, and from them we derive our religion and that wonderful book, the Old Testament, which is made up of the writings of their sacred men, their poets and prophets. And if we believe that literature, like everything else, grows rich, the greater the number and variety of things that are added to form it, then we must fancy that it was a great good fortune to English literature to have this rare old book of the Hebrews so early brought to England.

I want you to think of the Old Testament now only as a great literary work, full of wonderful poetry and rich imagination, coming from an entirely different race, to be grafted upon the rude poetry and traditions of this our Northern people. Fancy this poetry of the south, with its odors of spices and annis and cummin, its music of sounding harp and tinkling cymbal, its visions of green pastures and still waters, all at once mingled with the songs of the gleemen who sang at barbaric feasts where warriors clothed in skins spilled mead to the memory of dead heroes, and celebrated the glories of bloody warfare. Think of the unmelodious rhythm of this English singer, blending all at once with the melody of the harpstrings that the Hebrew bard had struck by the rivers of Judea, under the glowing skies of the Orient. Picture how the kindling imagination of the Northern poet, who had hardly known the language of tenderness or love, would be inspired by such ardent strains as these, from the songs of the great Solomon: Behold thou art fair, my love,

Behold thou art fair.

Thou hast dove's eyes within thy locks,
Thy hair is like a flock of goats

That appear from Mt. Gilead;

If

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,
And thy speech is comely.

Set me as a seal upon they heart,
As a seal upon thine arm,

For love is strong as death

And jealousy is cruel as the grave.

The coals thereof are coals of fire,

A most vehement flame.

you are able to fancy all this, you will see what a rich flood of poetry and imagery this great book of this Eastern people added to the rude and unformed literature that was to be nursed under the cold, wintry skies of Northern Europe. With these Hebrew books the Christian priests also brought the Roman letters which have ever since been the letters used by the English. Thus all at once upon the English soil came the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, the HEBREW LITERATURE, and the WRITTEN CHARACTERS of the ROMANS-three great gifts to the future of our English race.

TALK III.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

In the British Museum in London, where are collected the largest number of English books that are to be found together in one library, there is a time-stained and timeeaten manuscript known as the Beowulf. This manuscript is probably almost a thousand years old, although its exact age is not certain. Let everybody who speaks the English and has a reverence for English literature look at

language

this old manuscript with admiration. It is the oldest epic in the language, the oldest entire poem in our literature.

The

Beowulf is written in the Roman letters which were

It has

introduced into England by Christianity, and is in the earliest English spoken on the islands of Britain.

been

several times translated into modern English and into

other languages, and there have been many guesses as to whence it first came, when it was written, and to what people it related. Some learned men have thought it was of German, others of Scandinavian, origin; others that the scenery and character of the poem are wholly English. We shall most likely never know all the facts about it, or anything about its unknown author. But one thing seems certain to my mind: that the traditions or story on which it is founded are far older than the hand that first wrote it. Why may not this time-encrusted old poem of Beowulf have celebrated the deeds of some Teutonic hero in a pre-historic past? When it was first written down by the old poet, a thousand years ago, he could easily have embellished an older story with incidents of his own time and the scenery of the more modern dwelling-place of the Teutons, but he could not entirely lose, in telling the story, that atmosphere of antiquity which carries us back, as we read it, to the time when western Europe was filled with fens and waste places, peopled by men living in caves and lake-dwellings, with whom the Teutons may have battled when they were wandering through Europe before they had fixed their homes on the borders of the North and Baltic

seas.

But let me tell you here simply and briefly the story of the poem. Beowulf is a Chief of the Goths, a "deed-bold" warrior, the old poem calls him, accustomed all his life to war. At the opening of the poem he is going to the help of Hrothgar, a chief of the Danes, who is "old and hairless, when the poem begins. Hrothgar has built a great hall or "folkstead," in which he sits at feast with his warriors. It is probably much such a hall as that in which the ancient gleeman or scald first sang the deeds of Beowulf.

Fancy a long room, fifty by two hundred feet, with nave and side aisles formed by two rows of pillars. Down the centre of the hall is the great stone hearth on which burn huge fires of wood. Between the pillars curtains of skins or rudely woven tapestry are sometimes hung, and then they

form sleeping places for the warriors. In others of these. alcoves are set great vats, from which the mead and ale are dealt out to the drinkers. On a raised dais at the upper end of the hall sits the chief with his wife, at a table placed transversely to the long tables that run lengthwise through the hall on each side the central hearth. At the chief's tables are the most favored guests or those of highest rank. The apartments of the women, when there were women in the household, were back of the dais, shut off by thick hangings. If you will read the description in Scott's Ivanhoe of the hall of Cedric the Saxon, you will see that it was something such a hall as this, with appliances of a more advanced civilization, in which the English chiefs held revel and council as late as the coming of their Norman conquerors. Such a hall, adorned with barbaric pomp, Hrothgar the Dane, built for himself and warriors, and called Heorot. There the gleemen sang, the warriors feasted, and the mead flowed in the cups, and all went happily until a "grim guest called Grendel" came up from his dismal dwelling in neighboring fens, where lurked giants, dwarfs, and all sorts of misshapen creatures, and each night seized and bore off his prey from among Hrothgar's dearest warriors; and on this account Beowulf had been summoned to subdue Grendel. He embarked, therefore, on his "wide-bosomed " ship and went to the help of the old thane, or to quote the most poetical translation of the old poem:

"Departed then o'er the wavy sea,
by wind impelled,
the floater foamy-necked

to a bird most like,

till that about one hour

of the second day

the twisted prow

had sailed,

that the voyagers

saw land;

the ocean shores shine;

mountains steep;

spacious sea-nesses;

then was the sea-sailor

at the end of his watery way."

When they had landed, the "sea-weary men "marched straight for the hall of Hrothgar. Leaning their round shields of hard wood against the wall, they entered. The Danes asked who they were and whence they came. Beowulf answered proudly that he was a chieftain, the "board-sharer of the king of the Goths." On this he was made welcome; and as soon as he was rested and refreshed he entertained them with tales of his prowess. "The women," says the old poem, "liked the Goths' proud speeches," and the wife of Hrothgar came to sit by her lord and listen.

At night Beowulf waited sleepless for the time when Grendel, the grim guest, should come to seize a fresh warrior. When he heard him enter, he rose and grappled with him. Then

"bodily pain endured

the fell wretch,

on his shoulder was

a deadly wound manifest,

the sinews sprang asunder,

the bone-casing burst."

and off went Grendel, leaving his hand and arm in the strong grasp of Beowulf. He died on his return to the watery fens,

where

After this fight is over and Beowulf has been honored as