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to append to them, though not the exact expressions of Beda, yet some analogous explanatory or justificatory statement? Again, the substitution of their order is this,' as introductory words, instead of their meaning is this' (quorum iste est sensus), taken in connection with Beda's disclaimer of having given the ordo ipse,' certainly agrees better with the supposition that Alfred was quoting the very words of Cadmon, and knew it, than with any other. And yet, if we adopt this conclusion, how can we any longer identify Cadmon with the Paraphrast? For the version of the opening of the poem, as given by Alfred, stands very far apart from that in the Paraphrase, though with a general agreement in tenor. The following is a literal translation of Alfred's version:

'Now must we praise the warden of the heavenly kingdom, the might of the Creator, and his purpose, the work of the Father of glory; how he, the eternal Lord, established the beginning of each one of his marvels. He first, the holy Creator, framed for the children of earth heaven to be their roof; then afterwards he, the eternal Lord, the King almighty, guardian of mankind, formed the earth, a home for men.'

On the other hand the opening of the Paraphrase runs as follows::

'For us it is very right that we praise with our words, love in our souls, the warden of the heavens, the glorious king of hosts; he is of powers the essence, head of all high creations, the Ruler Almighty. There was never for him first beginning, nor cometh now end for the eternal Lord; but he is in his kingdom above heaven-thrones, in high majesty, sooth-fast and very firm.'

Of course Alfred's version is much nearer to the words of Beda than this, but on the other hand it may be said that it is too near to be natural; the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred corresponds so closely with the Latin of Beda that it is impossible not to conclude that one is the mere

translation of the other. On the whole, therefore, it seems to me most probable that Alfred really knew nothing about the poems of Cædmon, or at any rate had them not before him at the time when he was translating Beda. If so, there no longer remains any valid reason why we should refuse to identify the author of the Paraphrase with the real Cadmon of the seventh century. The contents of the Paraphrase agree, as we have seen, remarkably well with the sketch given by Beda of the subjects on which Cadmon wrote, and it seems more difficult to believe that two poems on the same subject were written by Anglo-Saxon authors in very ancient times, of which the one preserved to us is by an author absolutely unknown, while the other has utterly perished, than to admit that time has spared, though in a sadly mutilated condition, the work, once widely and justly celebrated, of the Yorkshire Poet.

Andreas and Elene constitutes the principal portion of the poetry of the Codex Vercellensis, a manuscript discovered by Blume in the library at Vercelli, in the year 1836, printed in the appendix to the report of the Record Commission in 1837, published with an excellent introduction and notes by Jacob Grimm, at Cassel, in 1840, and edited by J. M. Kemble, for the Elfric Society, in 1853. The two poems are, though in the same handwriting, quite unconnected with one another. Andreas, containing 1722 lines, is a narrative of some of the remarkable adventures of the apostle St. Andrew, in aid of the evangelist St. Matthew, who had fallen into the hands of a tribe of idolatrous cannibals in the land of Mermedonia. The Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, published by Fabricius, contains a brief abstract of this legend; but a Greek MS. at Paris, entitled Πράξεις Ανδρέου και Mar@alov, furnishes a narrative approaching very closely to that of the Anglo-Saxon poem.

The chief incidents of the poem are as follows. St.

Andrew, while preaching in Achaia, is warned by a voice from heaven to go to the aid of his fellow-labourer and friend St. Matthew, who was in Mermedonia, and in great danger. He comes down to the shore, and embarks in a boat in which the Deity himself and two angels are the rowers. A storm arises, and gives occasion to much edifying talk between the boatmen and the passengers. Andrew and his friends fall asleep, and next morning find themselves lying on the beach in Mermedonia. Unseen, Andrew walks up to the castle where the prisoner is confined; the seven guards before the prison-door fall down dead; the door flies open; the friends embrace. St. Matthew and his fellow-prisoners depart immediately; Andrew returns to the city. About this time the Mermedonians send for a fat prisoner to the jail, and their disappointment upon discovering that the birds have flown is inconsolable. But a breakfast must be had, so they at length resolve upon casting lots amongst themselves, to determine who shall be sacrificed to the appetites of the rest. The lot falls on a young man; but, at the prayer of Andrew, all weapons lifted against him become like wax. The devil now appears, and reveals the presence of the saint; Andrew is seized, and dragged all day over the hard roads and rocks,—

This lingering

drogon deormode after dunscræfum,

ymb stanhleoðo stearcedferhde,

efne swa wide swa wegas to lagon,

enta ærgeweorc innan burgum,

stræte stanfage. storm upp aras
after ceasterhofum, cirm unlytel
hæðnes heriges.1

martyrdom is renewed during several days, the saint being healed of his wounds each night,

1They dragged the beloved one among the mountain dens, the strongsouled round the rocky summits, even as wide as ways lay, the old work of giants within the burgh, in the street paved with stones of many colours. A storm arose at the castle court, no small clamour of the heathen host.'

and strengthened to endurance by his Almighty protector. At length, after various astounding miracles, the persecutors are all overawed into baptism, and the saint, after appointing a pious bishop over them, named Plato, commits them to the grace of God, and departs, to their infinite sorrow, for his own country.

The subject of Elene, that is, Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, is the finding of the true cross at Jerusalem. The well-known story is adhered to pretty closely in its main features, though with much amplification in details. The discovery of the holy nails used in the Crucifixion receives especial prominence; indeed, it almost throws the Invention of the Cross into the shade. The poem contains 1321 lines.

Both stories, then, in substance and in details, are taken from church tradition; yet the spirit of the time and the people is manifest, perhaps, in the very choice of the subjects, especially in that of Elene. A Teuton loved before all things to hear of war and fighting; now Constantine in the story only embraces Christianity because it has brought him victory in war; nor is the cross on the sacred Labarum sufficient for him-out of the holy nails must be fashioned a bit for his bridle, which victory ever waits upon. In Andreas there is indeed no fighting; but there is a striking picture of a solemn Volks-thing, or national assembly; and in the account of the divine ferryman, we cannot but trace the sagas about the Saxon Woden, according to which he was wont, in the disguise of a ferryman, to transport and deliver men from danger. The patient, almost monotonous, endurance of the saint, is indeed a purely Christian feature; but when we find him with all the wounds and bruises of the day miraculously healed before the morning, we are reminded of the fact that the sagas attribute the same marvel to the 'Hiadningar,' the ancient heroes of the north, though indeed with this difference, that the latter have fought

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valiantly, and not got more hard blows than they have given.

With regard to the authorship of these poems, Jacob Grimm (from whose excellent introduction my account of them is mainly taken) enters into an interesting speculation. The name of the author of Elene is given in runic letters at the close of the poem-it is Cynewulf. But who was Cynewulf? and who wrote Andreas? Grimm now proceeds to weave a pretty theory. Towards the end of Andreas occur the lines (1. 1487),

Hwædre git sceolon

lytlum sticcum leod worda dæl
furður reccan.1

The 'git,' ye two, refers, he thinks, to a king and queen. These were, he conjectures, Ina, king of Wessex (688-725), and Ethelburga, his queen; if so, the poet was probably Bishop Aldhelm, Ina's friend and counsellor, who is known to have written Saxon poems, though they were supposed to be lost, and who, as educated under Archbishop Theodore in the school of Canterbury, might easily have become acquainted with the Greek legend embodied in Andreas. Cynewulf was perhaps a disciple of Aldhelm. Beowulf and Cadmon do not belong to a much earlier period; all four poems seem to point to a time when only some hundred years, or less, had elapsed since the nation renounced the faith of its forefathers, so that it still retained many vestiges of its wild heathen past.

Judith, a fragment of which only has come down to us, found in the same unique MS. volume which contains Beowulf, is not inaptly described by Mr. Turner2 as an Anglo-Saxon romance, since, like many of the romances of a later age, while the outline of the story is taken from Jewish history, the tone, the descriptions, and many of

Yet must ye two, in little pieces, further con over a portion of my

verses.

2 Turner's Anglo-Saxons, III. 302.