A Short Essay on the Art of Writing Valentines' and Album

Poetry.

145

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St. John's College, November 30th, 1858.

ANGLO-SAXON POETRY.

"Non dubitari debet, quin fuerint ante Homerum poeta."

WHEN fourteen hundred years ago the North poured forth its countless undisciplined tribes from the forests of Germany and the shores of the Baltic in irresistible numbers, to overwhelm the South in one wide deluge of blood and fire, it was then, while the worn out civilization of the old world was being ruthlessly swept away, that this great English nation had its birth. "We were born," says Arnold, "when the white horse of the Saxon was triumphant from the Tweed to the Tamar." Here it is that our history properly commences. If we would gain a clear and connected view of the growth of our constitution and literature, we must go back to the time when our forefathers left the banks of the Elbe, bringing with them the germs of a language and institutions, which, transplanted to this genial soil, should here, in after times, so marvellously develop themselves. Worthy of earnest attention are those rude ancestors of ours, who laid so deeply and firmly the foundation of England's future greatness: sterling metal was that, which could resist the fierce fires of the Dane and the Norman, and come out purer and brighter.

Now History in general affords such a superficial view of the life of a nation as will little satisfy the thoughtful Student, whose aim is to get at its inner life, at the secret motive springs of the external actions. And here it is that most writers of history have, until very recently, fallen short. They contented themselves with presenting to us little more than a chronicle of battles with accounts of a few conspicuous individuals, who seem, like Homer's heroes, to have been the sole actors; but of the powerful elements which are ever at work in the mass of the nation, secretly influencing and directing its course, of these they scarce afforded a glimpse, till by some sudden eruption their presence and force was made unmistakeably evident.