children is to be of the givers and bestowers. The Catholic
Church is the source of fine literature, of true art, as of noble speech
and noble deed.

We are going to look at a small portion of that part of our Catholic
heritage which consists of our early literature; we are going to think
about the beginning of Christian work of this kind in the form of poetry
and prose in England. When I say Christian poetry and prose, I am using
the word Christian as opposed to pagan, and inclusive of secular as well
as religious verse, though the amount of secular verse is, in the
earliest time, comparatively very small. Some of the pagan work was
retouched by Christians who cared for the truth and strength and beauty
of it. The ideal of the English heathen poet was, in many respects, a
fine one. He loved valour and generosity and loyalty, and all these
things are found, for instance, in the poem "Beowulf," a poem full of
interest of various kinds; full, too, as Professor Harrison says, "of
evidences of having been fumigated here and there by a Christian
incense-bearer." But "the poem is a heathen poem, just 'fumigated' here
and there by its editor." There is a vast difference between
"fumigating" a heathen work and adapting it to blessedly changed belief,
seeing in old story the potential vessel of Christian thought and
Christian teaching. To fumigate with incense is one thing--to use that
incense in the work of dedication and consecration is another. For
instance, the old story of the "Quest of the Graal," best known to
modern readers through Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," has been
Christianised and consecrated. And so it was with some fine old English
(or Anglo-Saxon) poetry. But, just now, we are going to listen to
Catholic poets and teachers only.

We begin with the work of poets. Out of all those who wrote in what was
the best period of our old poetry, a period that lasted some hundred and
fifty or seventy-five years, we know the names of two only, Caedmon and
Cynewulf.

And here may I say that scholars agree that the names are to be
pronounced _Kadmon_ and _Kun-e-wolf_; in the second name we sound the
_y_ like a French _u_, make a syllable of the _e_, not sounding it as
_ee_, but short, and make the last syllable just what we now pronounce
as _wolf_.

Both of these poets deserve our love and our praise, as singers and
inspirers of other singers, but we know much more about Caedmon's life
than we know about his share in