Henry Bradley

“ Since, however, we learn from Bæda that already in his time Cædmon had had many imitators, the abstract probability is rather unfavourable than otherwise to the assumption that a collection of poems contained in a late 10th century MS. contains any of his work. Modern criticism has shown conclusively that the poetry of the “Cædmon MS.” cannot be all by one author. Some portions of it are plainly the work of a scholar who wrote with his Latin Bible before him. ”

“ It is true that for two centuries and a half a considerable body of verse has been currently known by his name; but among modern scholars the use of the customary designation is merely a matter of convenience, and does not imply any belief in the correctness of the attribution. The so-called Cædmon poems are contained in a MS. written about A.D. 1000, which was given in 1651 by Archbishop Ussher to the famous scholar Francis Junius, and is now in the Bodleian library. ”

“ This passage, which begins in the middle of a sentence (two leaves of the MS. having been lost) is one of the finest in all Old English poetry. In 1877 Professor E. Sievers argued, on linguistic grounds, that it was a translation, with some original insertions, from a lost poem in Old Saxon, probably by the author of the Heliand. Sievers’s conclusions were brilliantly confirmed in 1894 by the discovery in the Vatican library of a MS. containing 62 lines of the Heliand and three fragments of an old Saxon poem on the story of Genesis. ”

“ It is possible that some of the rest may be the composition of the Northumbrian herdsman; but in the absence of any authenticated example of the poet’s work to serve as a basis of comparison, the internal evidence can afford no ground for an affirmative conclusion. ”

“ It is probably of southern origin, and can hardly be supposed to be even an imitation of Cædmon.
The Daniel is often unjustly depreciated. It is not a great poem but the narration is lucid and interesting. The author has borrowed some 70 lines from the beginning of a poetical rendering of the Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Children, of which there is a copy in the Exeter Book. The borrowed portion ends with verse 3 of the canticle, the remainder of which follows in a version for the most part independent, though containing here and there a line from Azarias. ”