flies to the fens to die.

"The will of all the Danes

was fulfilled by that deadly fight." But another task remains for Beowulf. Grendel's mother, more terrible than Grendel himself, comes to avenge her son's death, and carries off one of the thegns. Beowulf resolves to conquer this new foe. With his thegns he tracks the woman fiend over murky moors, through rocky gorges, and by the haunts of the water-nixies, until he comes upon a stagnant pool, frothing with blood and overhung by gloomy trees. By night the waters are livid with flame. The deer, pursued by dogs, will die on the bank rather than tempt those unsounded depths. It is a place of terror. Beowulf plunges in and fights the water fiend in her cave under the flood. His sword proves useless against her. Again he trusts to sheer strength. "So it behooves a man to act when he thinks to attain enduring praise; he will not be caring for his life." Beowulf falls, and the fiend is above him, her knife drawn. Then the hero snatches from a pile of arms a mighty sword, giant-forged, and slays his adversary. Again there is mirth and praise at Heorot.

In the last part of the poem Beowulf has become King of the Goths and has ruled over them for fifty winters. At this time the land is worried by a dragon, who sets men's homes aflame with his fiery breath. The dragon's lair is near a wild headland at whose foot the sea breaks; here Beowulf seeks him and gives battle, trusting "in the strength of his single manhood." The old King is again victorious, but is mortally hurt. He bids a follower bring out the dragon's treasure hoard, and as the glistening gold and jewels are spread on the grass, he gives thanks that he has won them for his people. So Beowulf dies, and a lofty mound is raised in his honor on the high cliff, which sailors, in voyaging

upon the deep, could behold from far. The poem ends in a requiem of praise:

"Lamented thus

The loyal Goths,

Their chieftain's fall,
Hearth-fellows true;
They said he was,

Of all kings in the world,

Mildest to his men

And most friendly,

To his lieges benignest,

And most bent upon glory."

The poem of Beowulf not only tells us much about the dress and customs of that group of German tribes to which the English belonged, it is full of the spirit that the Early English shared with their northern kinsmen. It is a poem of battle. Its hero is the strong man who fights and conquers creatures of darkness and the wilderness. They are powers of evil, full of hate and malice, but they are very real: they have bodily form and terrible physical strength. There is little in the poem that we should call beautiful; there are no bright, rich colors to delight the eye; hardly a trace of gentleness, pathos, or pity. There is no love-story, no heroine; no fair lady appears to smile on Beowulf and reward his deeds. We are given no glimpses of the loveliness of the earth; no hint of blue skies or flowers, of green, sunny slopes, or of the song of birds. The world of these old heroes is brought before us as a cheerless, gray-hued, somber land, haunted with evil monsters. Yet while death waits for every man, while "sickness or sword-blade" shall soon take his strength from him, while Fate rules all, the stern spirit of Beowulf is neither conquered nor cast down. "Each of us shall abide the end of his life-work; let him that may work,

work his appointed deeds ere death come." The dying Beowulf rejoices, as he looks back upon his life. He has kept his own with his own might; no king dared meet him in battle; he has not sworn falsely, and "for all this," he says, "I may be glad at heart." Beowulf, we must remember, is a true English hero. He shows us what those rude northern peoples imagined a man should be. And this hero is represented as going out to fight against evil; as risking his own life for the service of others; as resigned to the great will that rules the world, and as dying content, his work finished, as one prepared to depart.

Christian Literature. From this ancient hero-song of Beowulf, full of the strength and gloom of the heathen past, we must now pass to the literature which was directly founded on the new intellectual and religious life which the labor of the Christian teachers had begun. Two men, ALDHELM in the south, and CEDMON in the north of England, are conspicuous as pioneers of this Christian literature. Aldhelm was both a poet and a scholar. He was born about 639, or 640, and after studying under an Irish hermit in the woods of northern Wessex, he went to Canterbury and continued his studies in the famous school there. This school, founded by St. Augustine, and improved by later teachers, was the earliest center of the higher education in England, or, indeed, in northern Europe. Aldhelm had thus unusual opportunities for that age, and he used them to good purpose. He became one of the most learned men of his time. His fame spread beyond the limits of England, and scholars from France and Scotland came to consult him. There had been great scholars in England before Aldhelm, but they were foreigners, men who had settled in England and taught the learning they had acquired abroad. Aldhelm was the first man, born

and trained in England, to gain a great and widely recognized reputation as a classical scholar. After leaving Canterbury he returned to his old school in northern Wessex, where his early teacher, MAILDULF, had founded an abbey which came to be known as Maildulfesburgh, or Malmesbury. Here he lived a useful and busy life, taking a leading part in the ecclesiastical and religious progress of his time. He wrote a number of books in Latin, both in prose and verse. He helped forward the advance of English architecture, and a church which he built at Bradford-on-Avon still stands as a memorial of his labors, almost the only Saxon church which the Norman conquerors did not pull down. He was an expert musician, and beside all this he wrote popular poems in English. These are now lost, but the people knew and sung them so late as the twelfth century, and King Alfred pronounced Aldhelm the best English poet of his time. His object in some of these English poems was to make the new religion. interesting and attractive to the people, and so when the people listened to his songs for the pure pleasure of it, he managed not only to amuse them but to help and instruct them also. On the death of Maildulf, Aldhelm was made abbot of Malmesbury, and later, Bishop of Sherborne. He died in 709. He seems to have been not merely a great student, but one full of that tact, gentleness, and human kindness which make a man truly wise.

Cædmon. Cædmon, the first poet of the north whose name has come down to us, was a very different man from the scholarly Aldhelm. Aldhelm, as we have just seen, represents the new education. We can learn from him how clever the English were by nature, how rapidly they could master the learning of the civilized

world when they were given the chance. Unlike Aldhelm, Cædmon was not a scholar, but an ignorant man, not able even to read and write. He lived in a bleak, storm-beaten nook on the coast of Northumbria. Even now this region is wild and impressive, and in Cadmon's time it must have been full of a stern and savage grandeur. The coast at this point is bold and rocky;

back from it stretch dreary tracts of rolling moorland, cut by a deep gorge or valley, through which the river Esk pushes its way to the North Sea. At the mouth of this stream was a fishing village, now the prosperous seaport of Whitby. On a cliff near by there stood in Cadmon's day the monastery of Streoneshalh, one of the great religious houses of the north, then presided over by a famous abbess named Hilda. We know but little of Cædmon's early life. Some have thought that