has been printed, much, and that not the least interesting and valuable part, has no claim to that title; for example, the numerous mere documents that are given by Hickes in his most learned Thesaurus, and those that compose the six volumes of Mr. Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus. Most of what is of much value or curiosity in the language has now probably been committed to the press,much of it by scholars still living or only recently deceased, both in our own and other countries. The names of Conybeare, Ingram, Sharon Turner, Price, Kemble, Garnett, Miss Gurney, Thorpe, Guest, Bosworth, Fox, Goodwin, Langley, Norman, Offer, Cardale, Vernon, Barnes, Wright, Barrow, Stevenson, Thorkelin, Rask, Jacob Grimm, Leo, Schmidt, Ettmüller, Lappenberg, K. W. Bouterwek, to mention no others, may illustrate the wide diffusion of the interest that in our day has been and still continues to be taken in this field of study.

The epic of Beowulf is the most considerable poetical composition of which this primitive English literature has to boast. It exists only in a single manuscript, of the tenth century, one of those in the Cottonian Collection, from which it was first published, with a Latin translation, at Copenhagen, in 1816, by Dr. G. J. Thorkelin, whose transcript had been made so early as in 1786. A far superior text, however, accompanied by an English translation, notes, and a glossary, was afterwards produced by Mr. Kemble, in two volumes, the first published in 1833 (and again in 1835), the second in 1837. Copious extracts from Beowulf had previously been given by Mr. Sharon Turner in his History of the AngloSaxons, 1803; and the English reader will find a complete analysis of the poem, with versions of many passages in blank verse, in Professor Conybeare's Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, published in 1826 by his brother, the Rev. W. D. Conybeare. There is likewise an English translation of the whole in rhyme by Professor A. Diedrich Wackerbarth, published in 1849. The only other long work in verse that has been preserved is what is sometimes described as a metrical version of Scripture history by a poet of the name of Cædmon, recorded by Bede as having lived in the seventh century, but which is in fact a collection of separate Scriptural narratives, mostly paraphrased from the book of Genesis, possibly by various writers, and certainly of much later date. It was first published from the only known manuscript, which is of the tenth century, and is now in the Bodleian Library, by the

learned Francis Junius, at Amsterdam, in 1655; but a much more commodious and in every way superior edition, with an English translation, was brought out at London in 1832, under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries, by Mr. Thorpe. Another, by K. W. Bouterwek, in two volumes octavo, was published at Elberfeld in 1847 and 1848. Some remarkable coincidences have often been noticed between Cadmon's treatment of his first subject, that of the Fall, and the manner in which it is treated by Milton, who may very possibly, it has been thought, have looked into his predecessor's performance, unless we should rather suppose that a common ancient source may have supplied some hints to both. There is also another religious poem, on the subject of Judith, preserved in the same Cottonian volume with Beowulf; but it is only a fragment. It was first published by Edward Thwaites in a volume entitled Heptateuchus, containing the Five Books of Moses and other portions of Scripture, Oxford, 1699; and it is reprinted in Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, 1834, and again in 1846. Other fragmentary or short pieces are a song attributed to Cædmon (sometimes styled the Elder Cadmon) in King Alfred's translation of Bede, which if genuine must be of the latter part of the seventh century, and would be the oldest specimen of the language that has been preserved; a small portion of a warlike chant, first printed by Hickes (Grammatica Anglo-Saxonica, 192), and styled by Kemble, who has reproduced it in his edition of Beowulf, The Battle of Finnesburh; The Traveller's Song, first printed by Conybeare; several compositions interspersed in the historical record called the Chronicle, of which the most famous is that on the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots and Danes at a place called Brunanburg in 938; a considerable portion of a poem on the battle of Maldon, fought in 993, originally printed from one of the Cotton manuscripts, in his Johannis Glastoniensis Chronicon, 1726, by Hearne, who, however, mistook it for prose, and since reproduced both by Conybeare and by Thorpe (in the Analecta); and others in the two collections known as the Exeter and the Vercelli Manuscripts, both which have now been edited in full, the former (which is of the eleventh century) by Thorpe in 1842, the latter (having however been previously printed in an appendix to the Record Commission edition of Rymer's Foedera) by Kemble, for the Elfric Society, in 1843.

One romance in prose has been discovered, on the mediæval

story of Apollonius of Tyre (the same on which the play of Pericles, attributed to Shakspeare, is founded); of this also an edition by Mr. Thorpe, with a literal translation, appeared in 1834. Of the other prose remains the most important are the fragments of the Laws, among which are some of those of Ethelbert, king of Kent, who reigned in the latter part of the sixth and the early part of the seventh century, but evidently reduced to the language of a later age; the Chronicle, the earlier portion of which is chiefly a compilation from the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede, but which may be regarded as a contemporary register of public events from perhaps about the middle of the tenth century, and which terminates at the close of the reign of Stephen in 1154; the various works of King Alfred, which, however, are all in the main only translations from the Latin, though occasionally interspersed with original matter; his Pastorale of Pope Gregory, his Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiæ (with the verse in some of the copies metrically paraphrased and expanded), his English Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and his General History of Orosius; and the various theological, grammatical, and other writings of Alfric, or Elfric, generally supposed to have been the individual of the same name who was archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1006. There are also translations of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, and other parts of Scripture; and numerous lives of saints, besides some treatises on medicine and botany, and a great many wills, charters, and other legal instruments. Portions of the Laws were given in William Lambarde's Archaionomia, 4to., 1568, and fol., 1643, by Hickes in his Dissertatio Epistolaris (in the Thesaurus), and in Hearne's Textus Roffensis, Oxford, 1720; and there are complete collections by Wilkins, 1721; by Dr. Reinhold Schmidt, Leipzig, 1832; and by Thorpe (for the Record Commission), 1840. Of the Chronicle, of which there are many manuscripts more or less perfect, a portion was appended by Wheloc to his Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, with Alfred's translation, Cambridge, 1643; the earliest edition of the whole was that of Bishop Gibson, with a Latin translation, Oxford, 1692; and there have since appeared that of the Rev. J. Ingram, London, 1823, and that, by the late Richard Price, Esq., contained in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, 1848 (coming down, however, only to the Norman Conquest), both with translations into English. An EngJish MS. translation by the late Richard Gough, Esq., is preserved,

with the rest of his collection, in the Bodleian Library; and another, printed, but not published, by the late Miss Gurney, of Keswick, Norfolk, in 1819, has been made the basis of that edited by Dr. Giles, along with Bede's Ecclesiastical History, in one of the volumes of Bohn's Antiquarian Library, 1849. The Chronicle "in part translated," by Mr. Stevenson, is contained in the First Part of the Second Volume of The Church Historians of England, 1853. Many portions of it are also given in the original in a volume entitled Ancient History, English and French, exemplified in a regular dissection of the Saxon Chronicle, 8vo., Lond. 1830. Of the translations from the Latin attributed to Alfred the Great, the preface to the Pastorale of Pope Gregory was first printed, with a Latin translation, by Archbishop Parker, along with his edition of Asser's (Latin) Life of Alfred, fol., Lond. 1574; from this it was transferred to a scarce octavo volume published at Leyden in 1597, with the title of De Literis et Lingua Getarum, sive Gothorum, by a writer calling himself Bonaventura Vulcanius. Brugensis, meaning, it has been conjectured, Smidt, or De Smet, of Bruges, and who has been asserted to have really been Antony Morillon, secretary to Cardinal Grandvelle; it is also given along with his reprint of Asser by Camden in his Collection, published at Francfort in 1603, and in Wise's Asser, 8vo., Oxford, 1722; and Mr. Wright has inserted it, with an English translation, in his Biographia Britannica Literaria, 1842, vol. i. pp. 397-400. The version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiæ was first edited by Christopher Rawlinson, 8vo., Oxford, 1698; and there are modern editions of the prose, with an English translation and notes, by Mr. J. S. Cardale, 8vo., Lond. 1829, and of the verse (Alfred's claim to which, however, is very doubtful), also with an English translation and notes, by the Rev. Samuel Fox, 8vo., Lond. 1835. Alfred's Orosius was first edited, "with an English translation from the Anglo-Saxon," by the Hon. Daines Barrington, in 1773; and it has been reproduced, with a new translation by Mr. Thorpe, in a very convenient form, along with Dr. R. Pauli's Life of Alfred, in one of the volumes of Bohn's Antiquarian Library, 1853. Alfred's Bede was published, in folio, at Cambridge, first by Wheloc in 1643, and again by Dr. John Smith, with large and learned annotations, in 1722. We may mention that a collection, professing to contain "The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, with Preliminary Essays Illus

trative of the History, Arts, and Manners of the Ninth Century," and calling itself the Jubilee Edition, was produced at London, by "the Alfred Committee," in 2 vols. (commonly bound in 3), in It consists, however, only of translations into modern

1852. English.

The various treatises passing under the name of Alfric, Ælfric, or Elfric, have recently engaged much attention, and the name has been assumed by a society established some years ago for the publication of literary remains in early English. He is known by the titles of the Grammarian and the Abbot; and the writings attributed to him, which are very numerous, are mostly theological and grammatical. The Elfric Society has published a collection of his Homilies, edited, with a translation, by Mr. Thorpe, in 2 vols. 8vo., 1854; and a Latin grammar, compiled by him in his native language, first published by Somner in his Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, Oxford, 1659, has been reprinted in part, from a different manuscript, at the expense of Sir Thomas Phillipps. For further information respecting Ælfric and his works the reader is referred to the account of him given by Mr. Wright in the first volume of the Biographia Britannica Literaria, pp. 480494. His Homilies, Mr. Wright observes, are "written in very easy Anglo-Saxon, and form on that account the best book for the student who is beginning to study the language."

THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

THE year 1066 is memorable as that of the Norman Conquest, -the conquest of England by the Normans. The conquests of which we read in the history of nations are of three kinds. Sometimes one population has been overwhelmed by or driven before another as it might have been by an inundation of the sea, or at the most a small number of the old inhabitants of the invaded territory have been permitted to remain on it as the bondsmen of their conquerors. This appears to have been the usual mode of proceeding of the barbarous races, as we call them, by which the greater part of Europe was occupied in early times, in their con.ests with one another. When the Teuton or Goth from the pne