Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

painter like Fra Angelico. The images of Eadwine and Coifi, of Oswald and Aidan, of Cuthbert and Ceadda, of Hild and Caedmon, and I choose only a few, - make us see and love our forefathers. He has the same power elsewhere. The Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, of whom he speaks in his little book upon them, appear as alive before us and win our reverence. The entrance of Eosterwine into the monastic life, the death of Benedict, the departure of Ceolfrid for Rome like Paul from the sea-shore, could not be better done. But the best of these lives is that of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. Baeda loved his subject, and his love of the man pervades the book with charm, a charm derived from two delightful but different characters - the character of Baeda the writer and the character of Cuthbert the subject of the book.

This biography is made up of many tales, and most of them are of miracles. It is strange that after such repeated care and the reading of the life by so many persons, no doubt whatever is thrown on any of the miracles told of a man who had died so short a time before. One of them is so curious that Baeda thinks it may be questioned. The passage is marked by his happy simplicity, and yet by a sudden stirring in him of his desire of truth. It illustrates, then, on two sides, his literary character. Cuthbert, troubled by a swelling in his knee, is prescribed for by a man on horseback clothed in white robes and of an honourable aspect. He follows the prescription and gets well. "At once," says Baeda, "he perceived that it was an angel." Then he considers the matter and adds, "If any one think it incredible that an angel should appear on horseback, let him read in the history of the Maccabees," and he alludes to the story of Heliodorus which Raffaelle has so nobly painted. It is also worth saying, for it still further illustrates his literary character, especially as an historian, that, when he is speaking in his own person, he has no knowledge of the miraculous. When he has told the tale of Cuthbert quenching in one day a supernatural as well as a natural fire, he adds, "But I, and those who are like me conscious of our own weakness, can do nothing in that way against material fire." Again, when he speaks of the beasts and birds obeying Cuthbert "We, for the most part," he says, "have lost our dominion over the creation, for we neglect to obey the Lord." The same careful note steals sometimes into the Ecclesiastical History. It represents the struggle, it may be an altogether unconscious struggle, of the temper of the scholar who demands accuracy with the temper of the pious monk to whom the miraculous was so dear and so useful.

No man, judging from his writings, was less self-conscious, and it is partly owing to this that his tales of others are so vivid. There is scarcely a single personal allusion in his writings, nor does he fill up his stories with remarks of his own. It seems a pity that we know so little of him; but then, had he been personal, he had not been so delightful a story-teller,1 nor would he have done so well his special work of collecting into one body the knowledge of his time.

That no imaginative work full of his personality exists, sets him apart from the men who feel the poetic impulse, and his long home-staying agrees with this judgment. No inner driving sent him on pilgrimage; his was a scallop-shell of quiet. But though he sat at home, he knew the world. The news of travel and knowledge in England and Europe were brought to the cell of Baeda, and all the corn he received he made into bread which men could eat and digest with ease. We can well imagine with what charm he welcomed his guests and how many were the friends he made. One man, however, as age grew on him, seems to have been nearest to him. This was Ecgberht of York, whom Baeda must have chosen to carry on his work of learning, of teaching and writing. Almost the only visit he paid in his long life was to Ecgberht, when for a few days they sat together and talked over education, literature, and the state of the Church in Northumbria. The year after he sent to Ecgberht the last of his extant writings, the wellknown Epistola ad Egbertum. "The soundness and far-sightedness of the ecclesiastical views in this work would be remarkable in any age, and are especially remarkable in a monk. The lessons contained in the letter might serve, in the neglect or observance of them, as a key for the whole history of the Anglo-Saxon Church." Independent of this usefulness is the literary quality of the letter. It is in excellent form; it slides, with easy and natural connection, from subject to subject; it is as clear as a bell; its firmness and authority are as distinguished as its gentleness and courtesy. What he says

1 One personal touch belongs to the artistic side of the man, and it is of the more interest when we think of the boy who sang in the choirs at Wearmouth and Jarrow, of the man who admired the poetry of Caedmon, who sang psalms and antiphons with mingled joy and sorrow on his death-bed, who made and chanted English hymns. He is speaking of music, and he cannot keep back his pleasure in it:

"Among all the sciences, this is more commendable, courtly, pleasing, mirthful, and lovely. It makes a man liberal, courteous, glad, amiable; it exhorts him to bear fatigue; it comforts him under labour; it refreshes the troubled mind; it takes away headaches and sorrow; and dispels the depraved humours and the desponding spirit." - Bed. Op. vol. viii. p. 417. (S. Turner's translation.)

2 These are the words of Bishop Stubbs. Bede, Dict. Eccles. Biog.

of the fitting language to be used by a bishop may well be said of the style of his letter-"His speech should always be seasoned with the salt of wisdom, elevated above the common diction, and more worthy of the Divine ear." Few pastoral letters, and it may well bear that name, have been more weighty with wisdom, piety, and grace; and the words are worthy of the emotions and thoughts with which they are charged. Its love of the souls of men, its love of the work of Christ, are both suffused with a solemn and admonitory love of his country. Sadness and hope, when the old man looks forth from his quiet place over the past and future of Northumbria, commingle in his language, and the sense of his approaching departure gives the letter all the diguity of the last words of a servant of the Lord. For now his time was at hand, and his scholars clustered more closely round him. While he could still move, he never missed his daily service in the church. "I know," he said, with his childlike grace, and it is Alcuin who records the phrase, "that the angels visit the canonical hours and the gatherings of the brethren; what if they do not find me among the brethren? Will they not say, Where is Baeda; why does he not come with the brethren to the prescribed prayers?" At last, as the days grew on to the time of the Lord's Ascension, his sickness grew upon him; and Cuthbert, his scholar, has recorded in a letter, some of which I have already quoted, and which, from its observant and affectionate grace, is a part of English literature, the happy hours of the dying of his father and master whom God loved. He sang the antiphons, but when he came to the word, Do not forsake us, he burst into tears and they all mourned with him. But he had also much joy, and he filled even these days with work. "I have not lived so as to be ashamed," he said, "among you; nor do I fear to die, because we have a gracious God," -words which St. Ambrose also used. He laboured to compose two works. The first of these was Collections out of the notes of Bishop Isidorus, and of this he said his love of truthful work still strong in death-"I will not have my pupils read a falsehood, nor work therein without profit after my death." The second was a translation of the Gospel of St. John as far as the words, "But what are these among so many?"-and the history of English literature speaks of it with pleasure and regret; with pleasure, for it is the first translation into our own tongue of any book of the Bible; with regret, for the translation has not come down to us.

On the Tuesday before the Ascension he suffered still more, but dictated cheerfully, saying among other things, "Go on

swiftly; I know not how long I can continue. My Maker may soon take me away." The night was passed in thanksgiving, and on Wednesday he bid them write with speed what he had begun. "Most dear Master," said one, "there is still one chapter wanting, does it trouble you to be asked more questions?"-"It is no trouble," he answered. "Take your pen, make ready and write fast." Which he did, but at the ninth hour he said to me, "I have some little things of value in my chest, such as pepper, napkins, and incense; run quickly and bring the priests of our monastery that I may distribute among them the gifts which God has given me." Then he passed the day "joyfully till the evening, and the boy who wrote for him said, 'Dear Master, there is yet one sentence unwritten.' He answered, 'Write quickly. Soon after the boy said, 'The sentence is now written.' And he replied, 'It is well; you have said the truth. It is ended. Take my head into your hands, for I am well satisfied to sit facing my holy place, where I was wont to pray.' And thus on the pavement of his little cell, singing, Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,' when he had named the Holy Ghost, he breathed his last, and so departed to the kingdom of Heaven." So passed away, quietly as he had lived, the "Light of the Church," the "Father of English learning." 1

1

[ocr errors]

as

While he was yet alive, a new school of poetry, other than the Caedmonic school which he had celebrated, had begun; and soon grew steadily. It lasted fully fifty years after his death; until that fatal time when Jarrow and Wearmouth where he had worked, and Lindisfarne which he had loved, were harried by the heathen men. It is this new school and

its labours which now call us back from the prose writers to the poets, from the literature in England of a foreign tongue to a literature in our own language.

1 They wrote an epitaph for him

Presbyter hic Baeda requiescit carne sepultus;

Dona, Christe, animam in caelis gaudere per aevum ;
Daque illi sophiae debriari fonte, cui jam

Suspiravit ovans, intento semper amore.

I have placed these bad verses here that I may quote the indignant criticism which William of Malmesbury, with all the humorous haughtiness of a scholar, makes upon them. Moreover, his criticism shows how rapidly scholarship, beyond York, decayed in Northumbria. "They are contemptible," he says, and adds, when he has quoted them, "Is it possible to thin down by any excuse the disgrace, that there was not to be found, even in that monastery where, during his lifetime the school of all learning had flourished, a single person who could write his epitaph, save in this mean and paltry style? But enough of this; I will return to my subject."— Chron., Bk. i. 3.

CHAPTER XXII

"THE DISCOURSE OF THE SOUL TO THE BODY" AND THE "" ELEGIAC POEMS

THE characteristic of the Caedmon cycle of poems is the absence of self-consciousness; the personality of the poet does not appear in Genesis, Exodus, or Daniel, in the Christ and Satan, or in Judith. It is true that in Genesis B a good deal of subtle drawing of character exists. as subtle, that is, as the age permitted, but this part of the poem is said to be much later than the death of Baeda. Yet, even here, the writer is not concerned with himself, his own sorrows, or his salvation.

It is quite different with a class of poems which began to rise about, I think, the beginning of the eighth century. These poems are concerned with personal fates, and with the emotions these fates awaken; with the personal relation of the soul to God and its eternal state; and many of them are written with the eye of the writer fixed on his own heart and its imaginations. Baeda's death-lay is a short piece which represents a whole class of poetical prayers wrung forth by the passion of the soul for redemption; and this class of poem now continued to be composed by the English. Every one of them worth calling poetry is steeped in personal feeling. This subjective drift of poetry is especially marked in Cynewulf. All the poems which he has signed with his name, however far the story he tells in them be impersonal, contain, either in their midst or at the end, a short or long passage which is entirely taken up with his own feelings. Even the Riddles may begin and close with a personal representation; and the things concerning which he riddles are personified with a force which proves how deeply he was penetrated with this individual manner of thinking and feeling.

The poems discussed in this chapter are, I think, earlier than Cynewulf's work, somewhat earlier even than the Riddles. Four of them belong to the earthly fates of men, and one to their spiritual fate. This one poem is called the Discourse of

« AnteriorContinuar »