To judge of the Danish Saxon poetry by those effects which are ascribed to it, and by the veneration in which its professors were held, we should form no mean opi nion of its progress and importance as an art, among those barbarous people. We are certain, that the lead ers of the several armies of Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and Danes, who erected kingdoms in England, brought their poets along with them to celebrate their victories; that the songs of those bards were engravers on the memo ries of their countrymen, and formed the basis of autho rity on which the earliest Anglo-Saxon historians found ed their most important narrations of preceding times. We know, that poetry and poets were never so much honoured as under the Anglo-Saxon sovereigns; and that the greatest of those princes, Alfred and Canute themselves, were as proud of their rank among poets as among kings. Like the Cambro-British bard, we may believe the Saxon poet might exclaim with happy en thusiasm, "If I should desiro of my prince the moon as a present, he would certainly bestow it on me." The power of their poetry is described in an ancient ode, with an enthusiasm, which poetically atones for its hy perbole. " I know a song," says the ancient Scald, " by which I can soften and enchant mine enemies; which would make their weapons powerless; and were I load ed with bonds, would make my chains fall in pieces ; a song, that, were I caught in a storm, would hush the wind, and render the air perfectly calm." Nor are the wonders of their art confined to the description of poets themselves. The fervid genius of the poet is thus de scribed by a sober historian. "Their happy genius for poetry," says Olaus \Vormius, "discovers itself even in infancy, by such manifest indications, that it cannot be mistaken ; and is observed to be most ardent about the change of the moon When a poet of this high order and fervid spirit, is speaking of his art, or pouring out his verses, he hath the appearance of one that is mad or drunk ; nay, the very external marks of this poetic fury will discover them, at first sight, to be great poets, by certain singular looks and gestures, which are called in our language Skalviingle, i. e. the poetical vertigo." Our best acquainted readers of the Gothic muse do not seem to find, in the remnant of her works that have reached us, any great portion of such divine inspiration, as these descriptions would lead us to expect. The art of poetry seems to have been artificially and ambitiously cultivated by those bards; but, we may venture to say, not successfully, if simplicity be allowed to be a requi site in compositions of true taste. They seem to have separated the language of verse from prose, till their metaphors grew enigmas ; and those metaphors, though often daringly happy, are as frequently forced and unna tural. We can admit the poet with pleasure to call the sun the candle of the gods, the sea the field of pirates, a ship the horse of the Iva\ es, a combat the bath of blood, arrows the birds of war; this is wild but impressive language. But when we read of a ring for the finger, under the poetical name of a beaten snake ; when we find a hand called the bridge of the mountain bird, or falcon, and the finger on which the ring is put, the end of the gallows of Odin's shield, (i. e. the extremity of the limb on which the shield is hung); we are disgust ed with the conversion of poetry into hieroglyphics, where the poet seems to have doled us out a scanty pittance of meaning in the dark, with the hope that it might be lost.
That their poetry was less obscure to their contempo raries, with all its quaint figures, and inverted order of language cannot be doubted ; but since it is much more obscure to the most enlightened proficients of the present age, than that of the classics is to tolerable proficients in classical literature, the charge of obscurity cannot be altogether referred to antiquity.
The characteristics of Anglo-Saxon poetry were, chiefly, violent inversion of words, from the order which is found in their prose ; the perpetual mixture of peri phrases with their metaphors ; abrupt transition and great contraction of phrase, occasioned by omitting particles, conjugations, and declensions : we may add the frequent use of alliteration. The most ancient piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry which we possess, is that frag ment of the song of the ancient Caedmon, which Alfred has inserted in his translation of Bede. Caedmon was a monk, who dealt chiefly in religious poetry ; he died in 680. This fragment exhibits the periphrasis in its full force : out of 18 lines, 8 are occupied by so many phrases to express the Deity, three lines more are used for the periphrasis of making the world, and three as appellatives for the earth. Of eighteen lines fourteen are periphrastical, and convey only three ideas.* On this barren stock of exclamatory, obscure, abrupt, and periphrastical early poetry, it has been observed, that the Anglo-Saxons engrafted by degrees a much more interesting kind, the ballad or narrative ; for in the former sort of productions, it is evident, that narra tion was subservient to ornament. The ballad, because it is simple, has been generally regarded as the earliest kind of poetry ; but in fact, it requires a still ruder sort to precede it ; for men express their vehement feelings in exclamation sooner than they frame a story, and use interjection much earlier than description. When it is said that these early Scaldic songs were not narrative, the expression must be taken with allowance : something was indeed told, but to crowd together metaphors, and to decorate the chieftain with new comparisons, was the grand object of their art ; not to captivate the mind by that interesting suspense, which is the charm of a well told story. The chief was hailed by those early laureates as brave and irresistible ; as the eagle of battle and the shield of his people in war : it was said that he slaugh tered his enemies, that such a river or such a plain was reddened with their blood ; but from what we see of their fragments, the narrative was abrupt, and depended on the aid of phrases, not of events, to arrest the attention. These tumid effusions of poetic phrase might please at the table of the chieftain, w hose praises they rehearsed ; they might even please for many years a rude people, who had so few ideas, and so little sympathy with the feelings of human nature, as not to wish for a narrative that required attention, or excited sensibility ; but they were not fitted to hold a lasting influence over the human mind. It appears accordingly that a different species of poetry came into use. While the king and nobility were left to enjoy those birth-day and victory odes, a more interesting order of poets arose among the people, wretchedly humble indeed at first; but, like players of Thespis, destined to form a new era in their profession, while they picked up a scanty sustenance from the com mon crowd. These were the gleemen, or itinerant jesters, who, while they danced and tumbled, and shew ed their bears and merry-andrew tricks before the peo ple, told stories, and by degrees improved in the art of making those narrations agreeable. In time they gained admission to the hall and the palace, where they saw new objects and characters, to elevate, diversify, and refine their powers of amusement. From the fragment of a ballad by king Canute, the new style of poetry seems to have become popular as early as the 11th century, since the sovereign himself had deigned to use it. The harsh and obscure style of old Saxon poetry became still more discredited after the Norman conquest, and was at length wholly superseded by the ballad and metrical romance.