nsis," the "Wife's Complaint," the "Ruin," also in "Codex
Exoniensis"; the subject of this last poem has been shown by Earle to be
probably the town of Bath.

[69] T. Arnold's "Beowulf," p. 118, l. 1820.

CHAPTER IV.

_THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS._

I.

Augustine, prior of St. Martin of Rome, sent by Gregory the Great,
arrived in 597. To the Germanic pirates established in the isle of
Britain, he brought a strange teaching. The ideas he tried to spread
have become so familiar to us, we can hardly realise the amazement they
must have caused. To these fearless warriors who won kingdoms at the
point of their spears, and by means of their spears too won their way
into Walhalla, who counted on dying one day, not in their beds, but in
battle, so that the Valkyrias, "choosers of the slain," might carry them
to heaven on their white steeds, to these men came a foreign monk, and
said: Be kind; worship the God of the weak, who, unlike Woden, will
reward thee not for thy valour, but for thy mercy.

Such was the seed that Rome, ever life-giving, now endeavoured to sow
among triumphant sea-rovers. The notion of the State and the notion of
the Church both rose out of the ruins of the Eternal City; ideas equally
powerful, but almost contradictory, which were only to be reconciled
after centuries of confusion, and alternate periods of violence and
depression. The princes able to foresee the necessary fusion of these
two ideas, and who made attempts, however rude, to bring it about were
rare, and have remained for ever famous: Charlemagne in France and
Alfred the Great in England.

The miracle of conversion was accomplished in the isle, as it had been
on the Continent. Augustine baptized King AEthelberht, and celebrated
mass in the old Roman church of St. Martin of Canterbury. The religion
founded by the Child of Bethlehem conquered the savage Saxons, as it had
conquered the debauched Romans; the difficulty and the success were
equal in both cases. In the Germanic as in the Latin country, the new
religion had to stem the stream; the Romans of the decadence and the men
of the North differed in their passions, but resembled each other in the
impetuosity with which they followed the lead of their instincts. To
both, the apostle came and whispered: Curb thy passions, be hard upon
thyself and merciful to others; blessed are the simple, blessed are the
poor; as thou forgivest so shalt thou