The unknown writer of Beowulf cannot be praised for his skill in
composition; the verse is rude, as was the language in which it was
written. But it is of the greatest interest to us because of the pictures
it gives of the everyday lives of the people whose heroic deeds it
relates,--the drinking in the mead-halls, the relation of the king to his
warriors, the description of the armor, the ships, and the halls. The
heroes are true Anglo-Saxon types,--bold, fearless, ready to go to the
assistance of any one in trouble, no matter how great the risk to
themselves; and as ready to drink mead and boast of their valor after the
peril is over. In spite of the attempt to Christianize the poem, it is
purely pagan; the most careless reader can discover the priestly
interpolations. And it has the greater value to us because it refused to
be moulded by priestly hands, but remained the rude but heroic monument of
our Saxon ancestors.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, BEOWULF.
B. Ten Brink's Early English Literature, Tr. by Kennedy;
S. A. Brooke's History of Early English Literature, 1892, p. 12;
W. F. Collier's History of English Literature, p. 19;
G. W. Cox and E. H. Jones's Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, 1871, pp.
382-398; in 1880 ed. pp. 189-201;
Isaac Disraeli's Amenities of Literature, i.
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