we shall do so with that noble 'Address to the Sun,' found in Carthon, and his 'Last Song,' at the close of his poems. Oh thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers. Whence are thy beams, Oh sun! thy everlasting light! Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western way; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven: but thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more: whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult, then, oh Sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey. The tenderness and pathos of the close of the 'Last Song' strikingly re mind us of a similar passage in the Roman poet Ovid. My harp hangs on a blasted branch. The sound of its strings is mournful. Does the wind touch thee, Oh harp, or is it some passing ghost? It is the hand of Malvina ! Bring me the harp, son of Alpin. Another song shall rise. My soul shall depart in the sound. My fathers shall hear it in their airy hall. Their dim faces shall hang, with joy, from their clouds; and their hands receive their son. The aged oak bends over the stream. It sighs with all its moss. The withered fern whistles near, and mixes, as it waves, with Ossian's hair. Strike the harp, and raise the song; be near, with all your wings, ye winds. Bear the mournful sound away to Fingal's airy hall. Bear it to Fingal's hall, that he may hear the voice of his son; the voice of him that praised the mighty. The blast of the north opens thy gates, Oh king! I behold thee sitting on mists dimly gleaming in all thine arms. Thy form now is not the terror of the valiant. It is like the watery cloud when we see the stars behind it with their weeping eyes. Thy shield is the aged moon: thy sword, a vapor half kindled with fire. Dim and feeble is the chief who travelled in brightness before! But thy steps are on the winds of the desert. Thy storms are darkening in thy hand. Thou takest the sun in thy wrath, and hidest him in thy clouds. The sons of little men are afraid. A thousand showers descend. But when thou comest forth in thy mildness, the gate of the morning is near thy course. The sun laughs in his blue fields. The gray stream winds in its vale. The bushes shake their green heads in the wind. The roes bound toward the desert. season. There is a murmur in the heath! The stormy winds abate! I hear the voice of Fingal. Long has it been absent from mine ear! Come, Ossian, come away,' he says. Fingal has received his fame. We passed away like flames that shone for a Our departure was in renown. Though the plains of our battles are dark and silent, our fame is in the four gray stones. The voice of Ossian has been heard. The harp has been strung in Selma! 'Come, Ossian, come away,' he says; 'come, fly with thy fathers on clouds.' I come, I come, thou king of men! The life of Ossian fails. I begin to vanish on Cona. My steps are not seen in Selma. Beside the stone of Mora I shall fall asleep. The winds whistling in my gray hair, shall not awaken me. Depart on thy wings, 0 wind, thou canst not disturb the rest of the bard. The night is long, but his eyes are heavy. Depart, thou rustling blast. But why art thou sad, son of Fingal? Why glows the cloud of thy soul? The chiefs of other times are departed. They have gone without their fame. The sons of future years shall pass away. Another race shall arise. The people are like the waves of the ocean; like the leaves of woody Morven they pass away in the rustling blast, and other leaves lift their green heads on high. Did thy beauty last, O Ryno? Stood the strength of car-borne Oscar! Fingal himself departed! The halls of his fathers forgot his steps. Shalt thou then remain, thou aged bard, when the mighty have failed? But my fame shall remain, and grow like the oak of Morven; which lifts its broad head to the storm, and rejoices in the course of the wind! From this brief notice of the poetic genius of Ossian, we return to those early Anglo-Saxon writers to whom we have already referred. GILDAS, the first of these, in the order of time, was a native of the north of England, and his residence was in the vicinity of the wall of Severus; but at what precise period he lived, is uncertain. His calling seems to have been that of a Christian missionary, but of his life nothing farther is known. As a writer, Gildas is to be gratefully remembered for being the author of an Historical Epistle, containing an account of all the important events in the history of his native country, from the earliest period of that history down to the year 560. This epistle, though inelegantly written in the Latin language, is of the utmost importance, as it is the only reliable source whence our knowledge of the period of which it treats is to be drawn. This important work remained for many centuries comparatively neglected, but during the reign of Charles the Second it was translated into English, and has since been more generally known. NENNIUS, a contemporary of Gildas, was the reputed author of some comparatively unimportant tracts; but with regard to this writer himself, and also of the productions of his pen, so much uncertainty prevails that no farther notice of him is deemed necessary. ST. COLUMBANUS, another writer of the same period, and also a man of much greater genius and wider celebrity than either of his contemporaries, was a native of Ireland, and his name is still embalmed in that country in the sweetest recollections, for his vigorous and continuous efforts toward the advancement of Christianity throughout his native island. He was also a devoted patron of learning, and was the author of various religious tracts, and some Latin poems, the merit of which was very unusual when we consider the period at which the author wrote. Neither of the three writers just mentioned, can, however, justly be considered as Anglo-Saxon authors, for they all wrote in the Latin language. CÆDMON, the next author to be noticed, may, therefore, properly be considered the first writer who distinguished himself among the British Anglo-Saxons. Cadmon was a monk of Whitby, and was originally of so comparatively low and obscure circumstances, as to be a menial in public service. In this capacity he was engaged when his talents were first developed, according to the narrative of the venerable Bede, in the following marvelous and extraordinary manner. Cadmon,' we are told by this author, 'was so much less instructed than most of his equals, that he had not even learned any poetry; so that he was frequently obliged to retire, in order to hide his shame, when the harp was moved toward him in the hall, where at supper it was customary for each person to sing in turn. On one of these occasions, it happened to be Cadmon's turn to keep guard at the stable during the night, and overcome with vexation, he quitted the table, and retired to his post of duty, where, laying himself down, he fell into a sound slumber. In the midst of his sleep, a stranger appeared to him, and saluting him by his name, said, 'Cadmon, sing me something.' Cadmon answered, 'I know nothing to sing, for my incapacity in this respect was the cause of my leaving the hall to come hither.' 'Nay,' said the stranger, 'but thou hast something to sing.' 'What must I sing? said Cædmon. Sing the creation,' was the reply, and thereupon Cadmon began to sing verses which he had never heard before,' and which are said to have been as follows: Now we shall praise the glory-father of men! how he of all wonders. the eternal lord, formed the beginning. He first created for the children of men heaven as a roof, the holy Creator! then the world the guardian of mankind, the eternal lord produced afterward, the earth for men, Cadmon then awoke; and he was not only able to repeat the lines whica he had made in his sleep, but he continued them in a strain of admirable versification. In the morning, he hastened to the bailiff of Whitby, who carried him before the abbess Hilda; and there, in the presence of some of the learned men of the place, he told his story, and they were all of opinion that he had received the gift of song from heaven. They then expounded to him, in his mother tongue, a portion of Scripture, which he was required to repeat in verse. Cadmon went home with his task, and the next morning he produced a poem which excelled in beauty, all that they were accus tomed to hear. He afterward yielded to the earnest solicitation of the abbess Hilda, and became a monk of her house; and she ordered him to transfer into verse the whole of the sacred history. We are told that he was continually occupied in repeating to himself what he heard, and, ‘like a clean animal, ruminating it, he turned it into most sweet verse.' Cadmon thus composed many poems on the Bible histories, and on miscellaneous religious subjects, and some of these have been preserved. His account of the Fall of Man is not unlike that which is given in 'Paradise Lost,' and the following passage in it might almost be supposed to have been the foundation of a corresponding passage in Milton's sublime Epic. It is that in which Satan is described as reviving from the consternation of his overthrow, and in English is as follows: Here is a vast fire a loathier landskip; the flame abateth not, hot over hell. Me hath the clasping of these rings this hard polished band, impeded in my course, debarred me from my way. My feet are bound, my hands manacled; Of these hell doors are the ways obstructed; so that with aught I can not from these limb-bonds escape. huge gratings of hard iron, forged with heat, with which me God hath fastened by the neck. Thus perceive I that he knoweth my mind, and that he knew also, the Lord of hosts, that should us through Adam evil befall, About the realm of heaven, where I had power of my hands. The specimen of Cadmon's writing here given, may serve as a general one of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It will be observed that it is neither in measured feet, like Latin verse, nor rhymed, but that the only peculiarity which distinguishes it from prose, is a regular alliteration in the original, so arranged that in every couplet there should be two principal words in the line beginning with the same letter, and that this letter must also be the initial of the first word on which the stress of the voice falls in the second line. A few more names of inferior order, such as Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmsberry, Coilfrid, Abbot of Wearmouth, and Felix of Croyland, bring down the list of Anglo-Saxon writers to the celebrated John of Beverly, and the venerable Bede. JOHN OF BEVERLY was descended from a noble family, and was born at Harpham, in Northumberland, near the middle of the seventh century. The evidence of genius which he early evinced, attracting the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was instructed in the learned languages by that prelate in person; and such was the rapidity of his attainments, that he soon came to be esteemed one of the first scholars of the age. On his return to his native country, in 685, he was preferred by Alfred, king of Northumberland, to the see of Haxam; and in 687, two years after |