vanishing of Eve's vision of God bring about the sense of ruin instantly, and as instantly repentance. It is the Northern quickness of conscience. Other elements are now added to the situation - tenderness to one another and a passion of penitence. There is no mutual blame as in Milton, no lack of courtesy from the man to the woman, no subordinate relationship of the woman to the man, such as in Milton seems to license the reproofs of Adam. Adam here makes one reproach, not bitter but in sadness of love, and Eve's short answer is tender and still. She never ceases to be to him the most winsome of women. He thinks more of his own sin than of hers, and in broken sentences, which, in the poet's way of expressing strong emotion, are not ended (the thoughts forcing themselves into fresh forms before their first form is completed, a manner Shakspere sometimes has), Adam breaks into a wild cry of desire to do the will of God such as we do not find in Milton. Here follows part of this scene, and it is worth while, for it is a touch of pure art, to call attention to the dark contrast now introduced to Eve's splended vision, when Adam cries -"Seest thou now Hell?"

out

1 "You tried to play the part of God and finely have you done it."

824.

"Thou mayst it reproach me,
In these words of thine;
Rue thee in thy mind

Adam, my beloved,

yet it may not worse repent thee,
than it rueth me in heart."

Then to her for answer Adam spoke again—
"O if I could know the All-Wielder's will,
What I for my chastisement

Thou should'st never see, then, anything more swift,

must receive from Him,

though the sea within

Bade me wade the God of Heaven, bade me wend me hence
Nor so fearfully profound
Ocean,

In the flood to fare
Nor so mighty were the

Into the abyss I'd plunge,
Work the will of God!"

that my mind should ever

waver

if I only might

"But naked like this we may not stay. Let us go into the covert of the holt. So they went mourning into that green wood, and there they fell to prayer, and every morning begged of God the Almighty that He would not forget them, but make known to them how henceforward they should live." Here ends, at line 851, Genesis B. Genesis A now takes up the story. The well-known dialogue follows between Adam, Eve, and God in the garden, and though it is chiefly paraphrase, yet English touches enter in, enough to interest the hearers of the song. At last the scene closes, and in the pity of the writer there is left for comfort to these exiles, not only the fruits of the ground, but also- and it is a poet's consolation "the roof of Heaven full of holy stars." "Behind their steps, with flaming sword, a holy watcher closed the Home of hope and happiness and joy." It is the same picture, but how different in power, as Milton drew

They, looking back, all th' eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms.

CHAPTER XVIII

"EXODUS"

THE poem of the Exodus, in the judgment of nearly all the critics, is by a single writer who had nothing to do with either the Genesis or the Daniel. It certainly stands alone, a complete and united whole. Even the episode which is intruded into the midst of the overthrow of the Egyptians, and which links the Israelites back to Abraham, is judged by Wülker and others to be by the same writer as the rest of the poem. If so, he is less of an artist than I should otherwise think him. The episode interrupts the story at the moment of its greatest interest, and is also excessively dull. I can scarcely conceive that a writer, who has some sense at least of unity and of choosing the best things to describe, can have been so dull. I should rather think that he or some one else wrote this piece as a separate song- as a kind of explanatory gloss -and that afterwards it was inserted by a stupid copyist into the poem. At any rate, this is not a poem which lends itself to critical disintegration. We are spared A, B, and C, and all their tribe. The thing is a whole, and can be spoken of as such. It is taken up with one event-with the Exodus-the beginning, progress and close of which it records; it moves swiftly and it ends well. Triumph begins it and triumph concludes it. In the midst is the trial of the Israelites and the destruction of the Egyptians.

The use of dialogue is not so common as in the Genesis; and when it is used it is brief and dry. On the other hand, the descriptive parts are long, and elaborately treated. We are by no means so close to human nature as we are in the Genesis. In this poem there is neither the simplicity of human feeling we find in Genesis A, nor the intellectual subtlety which belongs to Genesis B. Description, not passion, fills the lines; but the

1 It has been done, however, by Strobl and others, but fortunately not so as to convince even the giants of disintegration.

description is of a more careful and conscious finish than any in the Genesis. There is no actual battle such as that between Abraham and the kings of the East, but war and the circumstance of war are a great pleasure to this writer. The gathering of hosts, their march, ensigns and music, their ordering, their camping, the appearances and speeches of the chiefs, are drawn with so much clearness and personal interest that we feel that the writer had been an eager warrior. The real battle of the poem is the battle of God, and of the charging waves God wields, with Pharaoh and his host; and a fine piece of rough early work it is. God strikes, to let the water-destruction loose, the walls of wave on either hand "with an ancient sword." It is no battle then of host with host, but of Jehovah Himself, wielding the elements as His weapons, with Pharaoh. A great number of curious, vigorous, and pictorial expressions, of which the sense is too often repeated, mark a time much later than the quieter style of the earlier Genesis; and the freer handling of the Bible story, as if the writer had wholly rejected paraphrase in order to compose a work of art, is some proof of a later date. I am not sure that the poetry is not too forcible, too much desirous of effect, too flamboyant, if I may be allowed that term; and were this true of the whole, as it certainly is of some parts, it would be characteristic of a poetic period which had just taken its first turn towards sensationalism, but which, nevertheless, retained a great deal of the power of a simpler and more natural age of song. There is also no sense of regret or looking back in the poem, such as we find in Cynewulf's later work. Wherever in date we put Judith, we may put the Exodus. There is in both the same literary audacity and youthful exuberance. The Exodus opens with a celebration of Moses as the giver of laws and as a leader of men, beloved of God and consecrated to the deliverance of Israel. His future work in Canaan is briefly touched. Then we hear that it was in the desert of Sinai, before the Exodus, that the truth about creation was revealed to him; in what way "the Lord, mighty in victory, set the rounded circle of the earth and on high the firmament"; and at this point, after thirty lines of brief introduction, the poet sweeps instantly into his subject, and with a fine image which carries with it the central matter of the poem

33. Then in that old time, and with ancient punishments,2 (Deeply) drenched with death was the dreadest of all folk.

1 There is another rendering of this which I mention in its place.
2 That is, with drowning-with the ancient doom of the Flood.

First, the fate of the first-born is described, and the words used are full of interest

47.

By the death of hoard-wards
Slept the joyous song in hall
God had these man-scathers,
Fiercely felled (in death) -
Broken were the burg-defenders;
Loathly was that people-Hater!
With the bodies of the dead;
Far and wide was weeping,
Locked together lay the hands

wailing was renewed;
spoiled of all its treasure!
at the mid of night,
heaps of the first-born.

far and wide the Bane strode;
All the land was gloomed
all the best were gone away.
world-delight was little,

of the laughter-smiths!1 Famous was that day

Over middle-earth when the multitude went forth.

Then follows the journey to Ethan, through "many a narrow pass and unknown ways, until, all armed, they came to the dark warriors (the Ethiopians), whose lands were covered with a helm of air, and whose march-fortresses were on the moorland." 2 Below them lay "the land of the Sun-men, the burnt-up city heights, and the folk embrowned with hot coals of heaven. But the holy God shielded the folk against the dreadful glare, o'erspread the blazing heaven with a veil, with a holy network. It drank the fire-flame up, and the heroes were amazed; gladdest of troops were they. The o'ershading of the Day-Shield' wended (was drawn over) the welkin, for the God of wisdom had overtented the pathway of the Sun with a sail, though the men saw nothing of the mast-ropes nor of the spars of the sail, nor how was fastened down that greatest of field-houses. When the third encampment brought comfort to the folk, all the army saw how high were uplifted the sacred sails! "Twas a Lift-wonder, flashing light; and the

1 This is one of the short and vivid phrases of this writer. All who made laughter sat with hands clasped in woe; and the word "laughter-smiths" is peculiar to this poet, who goes out of his way to be strange.

2 Mearchofu morheald, "moor-holding mark-enclosures." This reads like a personal remembrance, perhaps of forts on the Northumbrian border.

3 Another of this poet's favourite metaphors is that of a Net. Here the cloud-shield is like a woven web. At line 202 an army is wael-net, "slaughter

net."

4 I suppose this is the concave firmament which is conceived of as a shield hung over the earth, under whose hollow the day abides. But it may be the sun itself, which in Icelandic poetry is sometimes called the shield of the sky. Grein translates Daeg-scealdes, "Tag-schiffes," perhaps to bring it into harmony with the strange and, I think, unique metaphor of the sail which follows. But the shield-image is, I think, right. I cannot but fancy from several phrases in the passage that the writer had heard of the velarium spread over the amphitheatre, and that he used the image of it here to express the mistcovering, the pillar of cloud, which protected the Israelites from the blaze of If this conjecture be right, it explains the ropes, the mast, and the mighty tent greatest of field-houses."

the sun.

66