Having thus indicated very briefly some of the salient features of English as it was spoken and written before the conquest, we proceed to make a rapid survey of the con temporary literature. From what has been said above, one will naturally look to the north for the earliest examples. The Runes graven upon the Ruthwell cross, which was set up about 680 A.D., are now proved from the inscription itself to be the composi tion of Cadmon, and are the very oldest relic of Anglian poetry. Here we find Cadmon speaking his own speech, not, as in his other poems, speaking to us through a Wessex version. Other and later monuments of Northumbrian English are a Psalter (800 A.D.); the Rush worth Gospels (000 A.D.); the Lindisfarne Gospels (970 A.D.). But the great body of this early literature, whether produced in Northumbria, or Mercia, or Wessex, has come down to us only in the dialect of the last of these states; therefore, in referring to it, we shall consider, not the antiquity of the 31S., but of the author. A good deal of it is poetical. The verse is alliterative, as in the Norse and oldest German poetry; and only in some of the later poems do we find a beginning of rhyme. The epic or narrative poems are remarkable for superabundance of often-recurring epithets, bold metaphors, and a certain pomp and magnificence of style. Of the genuine heroic poetry, however, there are few remains, the principal one being the poem of-Bemculf (q.v.), a work which must have been composed before the Angles and Saxons quitted their original seats on the continent. Other pieces produced in Germany, though only surviving in an English form, are the Traveler's Song and the Battle of Pinsburgh. The introduction of Chris tianity gave a religious character to Anglo-Saxon poetry; and many narrative poems are extant on religions subjects, sonic of which may be seen in the Codex Oxoniensis, a col lection edited by Thorpe (London, 1812). The Song of Cadmon (sec CA:DmoN), which is preserved in Alfred's translation of Bede, has been edited both by Junius and Thorpe; and a metrical paraphrase of parts of the holy Scriptures, ascribed to the same author, has found editors both in Thorpe (London. 1832) and Bouterwek (vol. i., Elberfeld, 1847). Cadmon is said by Bede to have d. about 680, so that both of the works in question
must belong to the 7th century. Two poems from the Codex which Dr. Blum discovered at Vercelli in 1832, have been edited by Jacob Grimm (Cassel. 1840), under the title of Andreas and E'lene; a poetical calendar of the saints by Fox (London, 1830); and a ver sion of the Psalms by Thorpe (London, 1835). Among the most important prose works must he mentioned the laws, civil and ecclesiastical, from the time of Ethelbert of Kent to that of Canute, of which the best edition is in Thorpe's 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (London, 1840). Of historical works may be mentioned Alfred's translations of ()rosins and Bede; and the Chronicle carried on by different hands to 1154, of which the best edition, down at least to the conquest, is Price's,-in the Monumenta Historica Briton pica, 1848, an earlier one being that of Ingram (London, 1823). It is in the province of theology that English literature before the conquest is most rich, abounding particu larly in legends and homilies. A collection of homilies made by bishop 2Elfrie has been published by the Elfric society (2 vole., London. 1847), a society instituted in 1843 for the promotion of the knowledge of the England and English language of those times. 4Elfric did much to enrich it with translations, and began a translation of the Bible. He translated the first seven books, the book of Job, and the apocryphal gospel of Nieo demus, and also a fragment of a poem on the history of Judith, of great celebrity (Oxford, 1098).- The Durham Rook, or St. Cuthbert's book, a very famous manuscript, now in the British museum, contains an interlinear gloss of the gospels in the East Anglian dialect, the text being probably of the 8th, and the gloss of the 10th century. Alfred translated the work of Boethius, De Gonsolatione Philosophier. The opinions of Englishmen before the conquest on astronomy, natural philosophy, and medicine are exhibited from their works by Wright in his Treatises on Sciences written daring the ..Wddle Ages (London, 1841). and Turner's History of The .Anglo-Saxons (3 vole., 7th ed., 1852). Compare also Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica; Marsh's Origin and History of