NOTE.-Poetry is indicated by a dagger and prose fiction by a circle. The names of the greatest authors appear in heavy type. Scanty remains A single shelf of no great length would hold all that has come down to us from this early period: a few manuscript books and a few loose leaves, which rare good fortune has preserved for a thousand years and more. Could these priceless relics be brought together and were we privileged to examine them, our first surprise, perhaps, would come at finding the manuscripts written in a language which, though English, is as strange as German, which it resembles. Had we the ability to read AngloSaxon, as early English is called, we should again be surprised to find how much of this Language Religious character early literature, poetry and prose, is of a religious character. But this is easily explained. Coming of When, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the English left their homes on the south shores of the Baltic and North seas and invaded England, pillaging, plundering, killing great numbers of the Britons whose lands they were seizing, and driving the remainder westward, they were a pagan people and such they remained till the sixth century when missionaries from Italy and Ireland wrought a great change. In a remarkably short time Christianity drove out the pagan beliefs. Monasteries rose here and there throughout the land, each monastery not only a religious but an educational center, for connected with each was a school. Some of these schools grew into what might be called colleges, whose truly great teachers attracted large numbers. In less than a century after the coming of the missionaries, the English monasteries were famous throughout western Europe, so great a zeal did the English show for religion and learning. It is not strange, therefore, that the literature of this period, for the most part written by monks or at least by Earliest English poetry those who had received their training in the monasteries, should be religious. It is a mistake, however, to think that English literature was cradled in the monastery. The English had always been a song-loving people. They sang as they rushed into battle. Song cheered their feasts when petty tribal kings gathered their warriors about them in the mead halls. There were professional poets among themscops they were called-who composed and chanted herosongs. Little of this earlier "heathen" poetry has been preserved, however; for it was oral literature, passed down from singer to singer by memory alone. Yet the most interesting poem in all this period of four centuries takes us back to these pre-Christian days, though the version that we have was made by a monk of perhaps the eighth century, who, happily for us, felt in this song of earlier times that which stirred his blood and prompted him to record it on parchment. It is a poem of over 3000 lines, unrhymed like all Anglo-Saxon poetry, called Beowulf. Beowulf It tells a wonderful story of how Beowulf, when a young man, killed in dreadful encounters two half-human monsters of the fens; and how, in his old age, he slew a huge, fire-spitting, winged dragon. The poem is well worth reading, because it is a good story well told, because it gives invaluable pictures of early English life, and because its ideals of manhood are noble. Bede Of the literature which was produced later, when the monasteries were so powerful in their good work, the greater part is poetry, associated with two Caedmon, names, Caedmon and Cynewulf, between Cynewulf, whom, in point of time, came Bede, a great teacher and writer of Latin prose, whose history of the church in England, credulous yet honest and painstaking, is a valuable document. Caedmon, Bede tells us in his history, was an uneducated menial connected with a Northumbrian monastery, a mere servant who suddenly became inspired to compose and sing, not of encounters with the dark fenland demons but the wonderful stories told in the Old Testament. Scholars say that none of the three paraphrases of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel which we have should be attributed to him; yet we know that he, and probably many another, composed such songs, long narratives which must have possessed great interest to those to whom the Bible was a new book. Cynewulf, living perhaps half a century later, was a Christian scop, educated at a monastery. Not all of his poems are religious, for attributed to him are many riddles in verse, a form of literature of which the early English were very fond; but his best poems are saintly legends or deal with New Testament themes. The poems of the Cynewulf group are more polished than those of the Caedmon group, more artistic; they are farther removed from the heathen poetry of earlier times-the times when Beowulf and similar poems were popular. Alfred the The next name on the roll of English writers is that of King Alfred the Great, one of the noblest figures of all times, who lived in the latter half of the eighth century. Between the days of Caedmon and Cynewulf and the days of Alfred lies a dark interval of civil war among the petty kingdoms which had gradually formed out of the English tribes possessing the island, and of cruel invasions by the Danes, fierce "sea-wolves," once neighbors of the English in their old home on the continent, who destroyed monasteries, burned villages, and killed great numbers. Learning, and piety too, all but disappeared. Conditions were not greatly different from those of a few centuries before when the fierce English tribes poured in upon the more highly civilized Britons. We are concerned but indirectly with all that King Alfred did to deliver his country from this peril, restore order, and build up the nation anew; our immediate interest is with his efforts to bring back piety and learning—a great task which he accomplished but in part. In earlier times, before the Danish invasions, the monastery libraries had contained few save Latin books. Not Bede alone, but all scholars, on the Continent as well as in England, wrote and spoke Latin. The Bible was a Latin Bible. Book knowledge was locked up in a foreign tongue. It was Alfred's idea to change all this; his people should be taught in their native tongue. Gathering what scholars he could about him, he translated with their aid whatever Latin books he thought of value to his country Anglo-Saxon Chronicle several religious works, a standard history of the world, Bede's church history, and certain other manuals of information. Perhaps the most important composition of his reign, and one in which no doubt he had a part, was a compilation, from scant monastery records and other sources, known to us as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This is a brief history of England by years, beginning with 60 B. C. For some years there are no entries; other years are represented by but a few lines, the account naturally growing fuller as it advances through the reign of Alfred. As literature it is not remarkable, though some of its prose is fairly good and occasionally one finds in it a spirited account of some notable event, the chronicler at times even abandoning prose for poetry; but this earliest of histories in the English tongue is of great value none the less. After Alfred's The literature of Alfred's day was mainly prose, as that of the earlier times was mainly poetry. Little but prose do we find from his day on through the century and a half preceding the Norman Conquest in 1066: the Chronicle continued, many sermons, and other works for the most part religious in character. day What should be our final estimate of this period? When we consider how recently the English had been but rough, plundering adventurers, without books, with Final estimate out schools, without even a common language, for until long after the Norman Conquest the various sections of England had their separate dialects,― we can but feel that the literary output was most creditable. The poetry is better than the prose, but neither prose nor poetry is of high artistic merit compared with the masterpieces of later times. Of the poetry, Beowulf, possessing the same strong spiritual qualities that char |