He could distinguish and divide

A hair 'twixt south and southwest side;
On either which he could dispute,
Confute, change hands, and yet dispute.
He'd undertake to prove by force
Of argument, a man's no horse :
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,

And that a lord may be an owl:
All this by syllogism too,

By mood and figure he could do.

In truth, the divinity of those times was so interwoven with its scholastic learning, as to be separated from it with difficulty; nor is it to our purpose to go into all those doctrines, which, as belonging to the Popish religion in general, are not peculiar to that age; nor to those other opinions relating to the Unity or Trinity of the Divine nature, and the decrees; nor indeed to any doctrines as divided by divines into doctrines of religion, natural, or revealed. Peter Abelard, Peter Lambard (the Master of the Sentences), Thomas Aquinas (of the Sums), Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus, (that is to say, their several doctrines, as before observed) now divided the schools, with others, who, while studying all the sciences, mingling their metaphysics with their divinity, and their logic with both of them, formed that amalgama, now generally denominated the Scholastic Theology. And in this too Aristotle had a hand, "but for whom these times (though they left out some of his better parts) had wanted (as Thomas Baker expresses it) some articles of faith."

Nor should we omit to add, that when the schools were first opened to receive the monks, that they could

a See Brucker's Hist. Philos. or Dr. Enfield's Hist. of Philosophy (2d vol.) being an abridgment of that great work.

not fail to impart to their scholars some propensities towards revelations and supernatural dreamings, together with their skill in miracle-making; which, if we scruple to call their literature, or theology, formed, at least, the superstitious costume of those times.

For there is as regular an account of the miracles of our first archbishops, bishops, abbots, and lady abbesses, as of their other attainments; and that the power was at length advanced to a sort of science, or at least to a consummate kind of skill, may be collected from the famous Rood of Boxley, and the Image of our Lady concerning the former, I cannot forbear quoting Lambarde's words: "It needed not Prometheus' fire to make it a lively man, but only the help of the covetous priestes of Bell, or the ayde of some craftie college of monkes to deify it, and make it pass for a very God." The periods to which we allude would em

a See Wharton's Angl. Sac. Vol. I.

b See St. Ethelburga's miracles, in Bentham's Hist. of Ely. But the most singular romance that I have read of this kind is the Life and Miracles of St. Rhadegund, a black-lettered book, in the library of Jesus College, Cambridge.

c The structure itself of this rood was so curious, as to pass for miraculous; "but the horse bearing the image on his back, leaving the carpenter who made it, and being driven (as it were) by some divine furie and beating and bouncing with his heeles at the Abbay Church doore, together with the service it doubtlesse rendered the Abbat and Covent," completed the miracle. I spare my reader and myself the trouble of the whole story; to which Lambarde (PERAMBULATIONS OF KENT, p. 228) appositely applies the lines of Horace:

Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum ;

Cum Faber, incertus, scamnum, faceretne Priapum,
Maluit esse Deum.

Hor. Epist.

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brace those years, distinguished by corrupting the Fathers, forging books and charters, and every species of pious fraud. These, you will say, rather belong to the cloysters, than the schools-in truth they drew well togetherand so let us there leave them.

Ηκω νεκρων κευθμώνα, και σκοτε πουλάς

Λιπων.

Euripidis Hec.

Leaving the dead, and gates of darkness drear,
I spring to light.

We next proceed to poetry.

Nothing is more characteristic of a country, in its different periods, than its poetry. But the poetry of Cambridge possessed nothing to distinguish it from that of any other part of England, except that it might possess more of Latin: for our Saxon ancestors had poetry in their own language, but it soon took a Latin turn, which they derived from Italy.

The poetry in the Saxon language was characterized by periphrasis and metaphor, frequent ellipses, and a cadence not exact. It often admitted rhime, and abounded with alliteration. The following fragment of a ballad of Canute the Great, is one of the best specimens of the

A fig-tree block I was, a useless log,

Till Carver, doubting whether he should make
A bench, or a Priapus, did, at length,
Resolve to make a God of me.

The whole narrative reminds one of the dream of Severus, in which a horse, properly caparisoned, shook off the Emperor Pertinax, and stooping down, invited Severus to mount, which first induced him to aspire at the empire. Herodian. Hist. Lib. iii. 34.

Saxon Rhythm; and it seems to have been designed for rhime.

Merie sunzen de munecher binnen ely

Tha Enuz ching reuden by;

Roped Enizer noer de land

And here pe des muneches sang.

That is,

Merry sung the monks in Ely,

When King Canute sailed by ;

Row, knights*, near the land,

And hear what these monks sang.

This is the fragment of a song, written as the king was on the river, and heard the monks of Ely chanting their devotions, and may therefore serve as a specimen of the poetry of their neighbours, the monks of Cambridge.

The above stanza is introduced as well for the sake of what follows, as for itself: for the following lines are one of the earliest stanzas in English poetry, in its departure from the Saxon. It is a fragment of a hymn to St. Nicholas, to whom Henry VI. at first dedicated his college, now called King's: the author too, for aught I know, might have been of Cambridge; for he was born in the kingdom East Angles, and might perhaps retain some college-feelings for Saint Nicholas.

Sainte Nicholaes, Godes druð,

Tymbre us faire scone hus.

At þi burth, at þi bare,

Sainte Nicholaes bring us well pare".

*Or servants.

a i. e. St. Nicholas, God's lover, build us a fair beautiful house. At thy birth, at thy bier, St. Nicholas, bring us safely there. 1 Bib. Reg. 5. F. 7. Bib. Har. 322. See Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica.

These lines were considerably more ancient than Chaucer; for St. Godric, the author, died in 1170, and Chaucer was born about 1328.

poets was Cadmon: he

But he who has furnished
Saxon lyric poetry was

The earliest of our Saxon was a monk, and died in 680. us with the best specimen of King Alfred the Great, whom both universities are willing to admire.

But it was natural for them, who had derived their religion from Rome, to derive from the same source their poetry: hence they so much affected Latin verse. This was more generally dedicated to the prevailing belief of a superstitious age, though they had other poetical fancies; and it abounded with conceits, occasionally in the acrostic form, and sometimes with a rhime at the beginning and end of the verse: but, generally speaking, their Hexameters and Pentameters did not so much abound with false quantities as did the Latin verse of some ages that followed. I must not fail to observe, too (whatever has been said to the contrary), that the Saxons had the poetical

romancea.

The Saxon poetry began to assume more of the English, by partially introducing, at first, what is now called the English and Roman characters. Of the former, a

a See this well proved in Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. book xii.

b This continued the practice for several centuries, more particularly in Latin inscriptions, to a very late period. Blomefield mentions one in St. Clement's Church, Cambridge, as late as 1538. Collect. Cantab. p. 59. Hence it becomes impossible to ascertain any thing from the intermixture of the Saxon and Roman character, in ancient inscription, as for instance, from those of BeRTE ROSATA, and JOHANES De PYKENPÄ❤, in Jesus College, Cambridge. There was an inscription in the Gothic character, dated 1591, in the Old Chapel of Queen's.