sfolk,
teachers, must be only partly in what we do directly. This can to some
extent be measured. We can tell how many hours' work we have done in a
day; how many books we have written in a life's working-time; how much
faithful service we have consciously offered. But by far the larger part
of our work we cannot know. We cannot know how much we may have
influenced others for good, we cannot calculate the effect that we have
had upon them, and, through them, upon others. And to apply this thought
specially to a poet, we may say that what he has done for others by
suggesting, by stimulating, by inspiring, is not only a most valuable
part of his work, but also an immeasurable part. A poet may inspire
another poet simply to sing; or he may inspire him to sing on subjects
akin to those dearest to himself; and the second poet, or the third or
fourth, as it may be, may sing better than the first. But all the same,
he owes it to the first poet, and, in a sense, the work of the latter
poet is a part of the work of the earlier.

The poem "Genesis" is known to be the work of at least two people: part
of it is a version of an old Saxon paraphrase of the Old Testament, and
must have been written later than Caedmon's time. It is always
interesting to know who it was that wrote work we care for, but it is a
more important matter to possess the work itself. People in old times
did not seem to care much whether their names were known or not. The
author, for example, of the book which for so long has been read and
studied and cherished as one of the Church's most treasured
possessions, the "Imitation of Christ," remained for a long time
unknown; and this is by no means a solitary instance. The interest in
literary fame is mostly a modern thing. Besides in these old times
people worked in a different sort of way from now. We must remember that
the art of song went hand in hand with the art of verse-making. All
sorts of people sang the words they had heard, changing, adding, as it
might be; adding to, or taking from the beauty and force of what they
were dealing with, in proportion to the strength of their memory, or the
quality of their imagination.

The story of the "Fall of the Angels" forms part of the "Genesis," and
it is well worth while to consider whether a very great poet of much
later days, John Milton, may not have owed something when writing
"Paradise Lost" to his early forerunner.

"Ten angel-tribes had the Guardian of all