The History of Early English Literature, being the History of English Poetry from its Beginnings to the Accession of King Ælfred.

Reasons for including this Book.

This volume is included here because of the great influence it has had in forming popular notions regarding the Beowulf. The eminence of Mr. Brooke as a critic and as a poet has given him the attention of an audience hardly commanded by any other writer included in this paper.

Again, the number of lines actually translated by Mr. Brooke is equal to that in many of the volumes described in this section.

Difference between the two Editions.

The account in the second volume is much shorter than that in the first; only twelve pages are given to the story of Beowulf, while the first volume gives forty-three. The later book omits all discussion of the episodes, and, although parts of the older volume are retained, the matter is, in general, re-written.

Method of Translation.

Translated extracts accompany the story as told by Mr. Brooke.

In his Preface (p. ix), the author speaks of the futility of prose translations of poetry, and of the inadequacy of modern English media for translating the spirit of the poetry. Finally he adopts a line which he hopes will ‘fulfil the needs and follow closely the peculiarities’ of Old English.

‘I chose after many experiments, the trochaic movement used in this book, each half-line consisting of trochees following one another, with a syllable at the end, chiefly a long one, to mark the division of the line. I varied the line as much as I could, introducing, often rashly, metrical changes; for the fault of this movement is its monotony. I have sometimes tried an iambic movement, but rarely; for this trochaic line with a beat at the end of each half-verse seemed to me to get the nearest to the sound of the Anglo-Saxon line, even though it is frequently un-similar to that line itself. I used alliteration whenever I could, and stressed as much as possible the alliterated words, and I changed the length of the line with the changes of the original. But when I could not easily alliterate my line or stress the alliterated word, I did not try to do so.’

The author adopts an archaic diction. The word-order of the Old English is followed whenever possible.

Text Used.

The text appears to be that of Grein-Wülker (1883).

While the extracts cannot always be praised for their accuracy, they are, perhaps, sufficiently faithful for a popular work. When the author undertakes to emend the text for himself, or offers an original interpretation, his work is not always trustworthy. Emendations in his Beowulf selections, however, are rare.

The style of the extracts seems needlessly obscure. This is due in part to following too closely the original word-order (see lines 4 and 5 of the extract), and in part to the free use of archaic language. Mr. Brooke does not hesitate to employ such forms as, ‘house-carles,’ ‘grit-wall,’ ‘ness-slopes,’ ‘host-shafts,’ ‘war-wood,’ ‘gold-flakèd shields,’ ‘grinning-masked helms,’ which it would seem must be quite unintelligible to the majority of Mr. Brooke’s readers.

The verse, which has been fully discussed above, is, perhaps, the most satisfactory feature of Mr. Brooke’s work. Of course it is not strictly imitative, as he himself explains, but it gives a fairly good impression of the movement of the Old English verse.

1. The swimming-match is not available for illustration here.

2. In the second edition, the penultimate line reads, ‘Jewels great and heaped,’ &c.