Amenities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac
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8 Cædmon, p. 29.
9 Paradise Lost, i. 221.
10 Paradise Lost, i. 592.
11 Paradise Lost, v. 798.
12 Guest’s “History of English Rhythms,” ii. 23.
13 This curious literary information has been disclosed by Roger Williams, the founder of the State of Rhode Island, who was despatched to England in 1651, to obtain the repeal of a charter granted to Mr. Coddington. I give this remarkable passage in the words of this Anglo-American:—“It pleased the Lord to call me for some time and with some persons to practise the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French and Dutch. The secretary of the council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages. Grammar rules begin to be esteemed a tyranny. I taught two young gentlemen, a parliament-man’s sons, as we teach our children English—by words, phrases, and constant talk, &c.” This vague &c. stands so in the original, and leaves his “wondrous tale half-told.” “Memoirs of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode Island, by James D. Knowles, Professor of Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theological Institution,” 1834, p. 264.
I am indebted for this curious notice to the prompt kindness of my most excellent friend Robert Southey; a name long dear to the public as it will be to posterity; an author, the accuracy of whose knowledge does not yield to its extent.
14 Mr. Southey observes, in a letter now before me, that “Vondel’s ‘Lucifer’ was published in 1654. His ‘Samson,’ the same subject as the ‘Agonistes,’ 1661. His ‘Adam,’ 1664. Cædmon, Andreini, and Vondel, each or all, may have led Milton to consider the subject of his ‘Paradise Lost.’ But Vondel is the one who is most likely to have impressed him. Neither the Dutch nor the language were regarded with disrespect in those days. Vondel was the greatest writer of that language, and the Lucifer is esteemed the best of his tragedies. Milton alone excepted, he was probably the greatest poet then living.”
This critical note furnishes curious dates. Milton was blind when the Lucifer was published; and there is so much of the personal feelings and condition of the poet himself in his “Samson Agonistes,” that it is probable little or no resemblance could be traced in the Hollander. The “Adam” of Milton, and the whole “Paradise” itself, was completed in 1661. As for Cædmon, I submit the present chapter to Mr. Southey’s decision.
No great genius appears to have made such free and wise use of his reading as Milton has done, and which has led in several instances to an accusation of what some might term plagiarism. We are not certain that Milton, when not yet blind, may not have read some of those obscure modern Latin poets whom Lauder scented out.
15 Guest’s “History of English Rhythms.”
16 This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his Infernals, may be read in Parfait’s analysis of the Mystery.—Hist. du Théâtre François, i. 79.
17 L’Angeleida of Valvasone, the Adamo of Andreini, and others.—Hayley’s Conjectures on the Origin of “Paradise Lost.” See also Tiraboschi, and Ginguéné.
18 These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty plates, in the Archæologia, vol. xx. We may rejoice at their preservation, for art, even in the attempts of its children, may excite ideas which might not else have occurred to us.
BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE.
The Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of “The Exploits of Beowulf” forms a striking contrast with the chronological paraphrase of Cædmon. Its genuine antiquity unquestionably renders it a singular curiosity; but it derives an additional interest from its representation of the primitive simplicity of a Homeric period—the infancy of customs and manners and emotions of that Hero-life, which the Homeric poems first painted for mankind:—that Hero-life of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but imperfect conceptions from the fragments he may have collected, while he metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those of the sentimental romance of another age and another race.
The northern hordes under their petty chieftains, cast into a parallel position with those princes of Greece whose realms were provinces, and whose people were tribes, often resembled them in the like circumstances, the like characters, and the like manners. Such were those kinglings who could possess themselves of a territory in a single incursion, and whose younger brothers, stealing out of their lone bays, extended their dominion as “Sea-Kings” on the illimitable ocean.1 The war-ship and the mead-hall bring us back to that early era of society, when great men knew only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose songs are ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.
We discover these heroes, Danes or Angles, as we find them in the Homeric period, audacious with the self-confidence of their bodily prowess; vaunting, and talkative of their sires and of themselves; the son ever known by denoting the father, and the father by his marriage alliance—that primitive mode of recognition, at a period when, amid the perpetual conflicts of rival chieftains, scarcely any but relations could be friends; the family bond was a sure claim to protection. Like the Homeric heroes, they were as unrelenting in their hatreds as indissoluble in their partisanship; suspicious of the stranger, but welcoming the guest; we find them rapacious, for plunder was their treasure, and prodigal in their distributions of their golden armlets and weighed silver, for their egotism was as boundless as their violence. Yet pride and glory fermented the coarse leaven of these mighty marauders, who were even chivalric ere chivalry rose into an order. The religion of these ages was wild as their morality; few heroes but bore some relationship to Woden; and even in their rude paganised Christianity, some mythological name cast its lustre in their genealogies. In the uncritical chronicles of the middle ages it is not always evident whether the mortal was not a divinity. Their mythic legends have thrown confusion into their national annals, often accepted by historians as authentic records.2 But if antiquaries still wander among shadows, the poet cannot err. Beowulf may be a god or a nonentity, but the poem which records his exploits must at least be true, true in the manners it paints and the emotions which the poet reveals—the emotions of his contemporaries.
Beowulf,3 a chieftain of the Western Danes, was the Achilles of the North. We first view him with his followers landing on the shores of a Danish kingling. A single ship with an armed company, in those predatory days, could alarm a whole realm. The petty independent provinces of Greece afford a parallel; for Thucydides has marked this period in society, when plunder well fought for was honoured as an heroic enterprise. When a vessel touched on a strange shore, the adventurers were questioned “whether they were thieves?” a designation which the inquirers did not intend as a term of reproach, nor was it scorned by the valiant;4 for the spoliation of foreigners, at a time when the law of nations had no existence, seemed no disgrace, while it carried with it something of glory, when the chieftain’s sword maintained