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THE HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH POETRY.

THE HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH POETRY.

SECTION I.

THE Saxon language spoken in England, is distinguished by three several epochs, and may therefore be divided into three dialects. The first of these is that which the Saxons used, from their entrance into this island till the irruption of the Danes, for the space of three hundred and thirty years". This has been called the British Saxon: and no monument of it remains, except a small metrical fragment of the genuine Cædmon, inserted in Alfred's version of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History". The second is the Danish Saxon, which

a The Saxons came into England A.D. 450.

Lib. iv. cap. 24. Some have improperly referred to this dialect the HARMONY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS, in the Cotton library; the style of which approaches in purity and antiquity to that of the CoDEX ARGENTEUS. It is Frankish. See Brit. Mus. MSS. Cotton. CALIG. A 7. membran. octavo. This book is supposed to have belonged to king Canute. Eight richly illuminated historical pictures are bound up with it, evidently taken from another manuscript, but probably of the age of king Stephen.

[The recent discovery of another copy of this "Harmony," at Bamberg, has gained for it the attention of several German antiquaries; and of these, Mr.

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Reinwald, an able and intelligent philologer, has very clearly shown, that its language is not Francic, but a Low German dialect. Mr. Reinwald conceives the author to have been a native of the district afterwards called Westphalia (Münster, Paderborn, Berg), and that he lived in the early part of the ninth century.

[The Bamberg Codex is now preserved in the Royal Library at Munich, and a transcript from it, collated with the Cotton MS., has for several years occupied the leisure of Mr. Scherer, with a view to publication. Independently of the value of this production as a rich repository of philological lore, from the extreme antiquity and purity of its language; it possesses a strong and pecu

prevailed from the Danish to the Norman invasion; and of which many considerable specimens, both in versed and prose, are still preserved; particularly two literal versions of the four gospels, and the spurious Cadmon's beautiful poetical paraphrase of the Book of Genesis f, and the Prophet Daniel. The third may be properly styled the Norman Saxon; which began about the time of the Norman accession, and continued beyond the reign of Henry the Second 5.

The last of these three dialects, with which these Annals of English Poetry commence, formed a language extremely barbarous, irregular, and intractable; and consequently promises no very striking specimens in any species of composition. Its substance was the Danish Saxon, adulterated with French. The Saxon indeed, a language subsisting on uniform principles, and polished by poets and theologists, however corrupted by the Danes, had much perspicuity, strength, and harmony: but the French imported by the Conqueror and his people, was a confused jargon of Teutonic, Gaulish, and vitiated Latin. liar interest for the student in English archæology, from the light it throws upon the laws and structure of AngloSaxon metre. The arbitrary classification of the Anglo-Saxon language anterior to the Conquest, given in the text, has been adopted from Hickes, an examination of whose opinions on the subject will be found in the Preface to this edition.-EDIT.]

A. D. 1066.

4 See Hickes. Thes. Ling. Vett. Sept. P. i. cap. xxi. pag. 177. and Præfat.

fol. xiv. The curious reader is also referred to a Danish Saxon poem, celebrating the wars which Beowulf, a noble Dane descended from the royal stem of Scyldinge, waged against the kings of Swedeland. MSS. Cotton. ut supr. VITELL A 15. Cod. membran. ix. fol. 130. Compare, written in the style of Cadmon, a fragment of an ode in praise of the exploits of Brithnoth, Offa's ealdorman, or general, in a battle fought against the Danes. Ibid. Orн. A 12. Cod. membran. 4to. iii. Brithnoth the hero of this piece, a Northumbrian, died in the year 991.

[The poem of Beowulf has since been published by the Chevalier Thorkelin, under the title of "De Danorum rebus gestis secul. iii. et iv. Poema Danicum dialecto Anglo-Saxonica: edidit versione Lat. et indicibus auxit Grim Johnson Thorkelin Eques Ord. Danebrogici auratus &c. Havniæ 1815." An analysis of its contents will be found in the last volume of Mr. Turner's "History of the Anglo-Saxons," with occasional extracts from the work itself; and an English translation of the specimens. The fragment of Brithnoth has been published by Hearne, but without a translation.— EDIT.]

e MSS. Bibl. Bodl. Oxon. Cod. membran. in Pyxid. 4to grand. quadrat. and MSS. Cotton. ut supr. OTHо. Nor. D 4. Both these manuscripts were written and ornamented in the Saxon times, and are of the highest curiosity and antiquity.

f Printed by Junius, Amst. 1655. The greatest part of the Bodleian manuscript of this book is believed to have been written about A. D. 1000.-Cod. Jun. xi. membran. fol.

He died 1189.

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