ich were found in the subjugated race. They
developed slowly. Those steady qualities which were to save the
Anglo-Saxon genius from the absolute destruction which threatened it at
the time of the Norman Conquest resulted in the production of literary
works evincing, one and all, such a similitude in tastes, tendencies,
and feelings that it is extremely difficult to date and localise them.
At the furthest end of the period, the Anglo-Saxons continued to enjoy,
Christian as they were, and in more and more intimate contact with
latinised races, legends and traditions going back to the pagan days,
nay, to the days of their continental life by the shores of the Baltic.
Late manuscripts have preserved for us their oldest conceptions, by
which is shown the continuity of taste for them. The early pagan
character of some of the poetry in "Beowulf," in "Widsith," in the
"Lament of Deor," is undoubted; still those poems continued to be copied
up to the last century of the Anglo-Saxon rule; it is, in fact, only in
manuscripts of that date that we have them. An immense amount of labour,
ingenuity, and knowledge has been spent on questions of date and place,
but the difficulty is such, and that literature forms such a compact
whole, that the best and highest authorities have come on all points to
contrary conclusions. The very greatness of their labour and amplitude
of their science happens thus to be the best proof of the singular
cohesion between the various produce of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Of all the
poets of the period, the one who had the strongest individuality, as
well as the greatest genius, one whom we know by name, Cynewulf, the
only one whose works are authentic, being signed, who thus offered the
best chance to critics, has caused as many disagreements among them as
any stray leaf of parchment in the whole collection of Anglo-Saxon
poetry. According to Ten Brink he was born between 720 and 730;
according to Earle he more probably lived in the eleventh century, at
the other end of the period.[42] One authority sees in his works the
characteristics of the poetry of Northumbria, another inclines towards
Mercia. All possible dates have been assigned to the beautiful poem of
"Judith," from the seventh to the tenth century. "Beowulf" was written
in Northumbria according to Stopford Brooke, in Mercia according to
Earle, in Wessex according to Ten Brink. The attribution of "Andreas" to
Cynewulf has just been renewed by Gollancz, an