The poetical works which now bear Cædmon’s name received that name from Junius, the first editor, in 1655, on the ground of the general agreement of the subjects with Bede’s description of Cædmon’s works. In this book we find a first part containing the most prominent narratives from the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel; and a second part containing the Descent of Christ into Hades and the delivery of the patriarchs from their captivity, according to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and the constant legend of the Middle Ages. This comprises a kind of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Of all this, the part which has attracted most notice is a part of which the materials are found neither in Scripture nor in any known Apocrypha. The nearest approximation yet indicated is in the hexameters of Avitus.

  The original MS. of the poem, preserved in the Bodleian Library, is a small parchment volume in folio, containing two hundred and twenty-nine pages; the first two hundred and twelve of which are written in a fair, though not elegant hand, apparently of the tenth century. The remaining seventeen pages, forming a Second Book, are in an inferior handwriting: and as the orthography used in this part of the poem is less pure, and the language less grammatical than in the first part, it is perhaps to be considered as less ancient. Of the history of this MS. nothing more, I believe, is known, than that it was the property of Archbishop Usher, who presented it to Junius, by whom, with the rest of his MSS., it was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library. This work … was first given to the world by the learned foreigner above named, in a small quarto, printed at Amsterdam in 1655, containing the Saxon text, unaccompanied by translation or notes.

  There was in this abbess’s monastery a certain brother, particularly remarkable for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility, in English, which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from men, but from God; for which reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those which relate to religion suited his religious tongue.

  Cedmon’s memory remained in great veneration, not only at Streanshalh, but also through the whole kingdom of Northumberland, where his name was long honorably used as an appellative or proper name, and after the conquest was adopted as a surname; so that there yet remain to these our days some families in Whitby and its neighborhood that are known by the name of Cedmon or Sedman; a name with us the most honorable and ancient of all others.

  The obscurity attending the origin of the Cædmonian poems will perhaps increase the interest excited by them. Whoever may have been their author, their remote antiquity is unquestionable. In poetical imagery and feeling they excel all the other early remains of the North.

  Cædmon, of whom we have heard so much, was one of those gifted men, who have stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of their country, the impress of their own mind and feelings. He was the first Englishman—it may be, the first individual of Gothic race—who exchanged the gorgeous images of the old mythology for the chaster beauties of Christian poetry. From the sixth to the twelfth century, he appears to have been the great model, whom all imitated, and few could equal. For upwards of five centuries, he was the father of English poetry; and when his body was discovered in the reign of John, it seems to have excited no less reverence than those of the kings and saints by which it was surrounded. Nothing shows more clearly the influence which this extraordinary man exerted upon our national modes of thought and expression, than a comparison between the Anglo-Saxon and early Icelandic literatures. So striking is the contrast, both as to style and subject, that Rask has even ventured to maintain they were radically distinct. A better knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon would have shown him his mistake. But though it might easily be proved, that our fathers had poems on almost all the subjects which were once thought peculiar to the Eddas, yet the remains of them are so scanty, or the allusions to them so ambiguous, as rather to baffle criticism, than to enlighten it. The revolution effected by Cædmon appears to have been complete.

  We dare not place “the Milton of our forefathers” by the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognize. We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for that was too deplorable; but to place Cædmon in a parallel with Milton, which Plutarch might have done (for he was not very nice in his resemblances), we might as well compare the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of the original manuscript of Cædmon, with the noble conceptions and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel.

  The type of the Anglo-Saxon religious poetry was Cædmon, who, according to the legend, received miraculously in a dream the gift of song. We are far from believing, as some have wished to explain the matter, that this miracle really occurred, and that it may be accounted for naturally, on the presumption of the simple and easy construction of Anglo-Saxon verse. On the contrary, that Cædmon’s poems were exceedingly beautiful we have Bede’s own testimony, a man well skilled in and much attached to the poetry of his forefathers; and that they were by no means easy to compose, we may be convinced by a comparison of the older religious poetry with that which was certainly written at a later period, (when the minstrel, though he still existed, was no more the same personage he had been,) such as the metrical translations from Boethius attributed to King Alfred. The terms in which Bede speaks of the miracle, show how extraordinary it appeared to those who lived at the time, that one who had not been taught the profession of poetry, should be able to compose like a regular bard. All, indeed, that we are justified in concluding from this story is, that Cædmon was considered to be so far superior to his contemporaries in the same art, that it required (as has often been the case under similar circumstances) the formation of a particular legend to account for it.

  Cædmon was treated as one inspired. He could not read, he did not understand Latin. But when any passage of the Bible was interpreted to him, or any of the sublime truths of religion unfolded, he sate for some time in quiet rumination, and poured it all forth in that brief alliterative verse, which kindled and enchanted his hearers. Thus was the whole history of the Bible, and the whole creed of Christianity, in the imaginative form which it then wore, made at once accessible to the Anglo-Saxon people. Cædmon’s poetry was their bible, no doubt far more effective in awakening and changing the popular mind than a literal translation of the Scriptures could have been. He chose, by the natural test of his own kindred sympathies, all which would most powerfully work on the imagination, or strike to the heart of a rude yet poetic race.

  His style not unfrequently is meagre and flat; his epithets have the Homeric vagueness of idea, and precision of application, which belong to an early literature; the reflections are often commonplace…. The style of Milton is no doubt unapproachable; but the mere story, as told by Cædmon, has been less hampered by theological difficulties, and is freer and grander than the Puritan poem.

  We must not forget that the poems which Cædmon made were written down from his dictation, and that we have not even the original manuscript thus written. In all such cases it is absurd to expect perfect literal accuracy; and, indeed, where religious people have had to deal with such matters, we shall generally find that they have been somewhat unscrupulous in their treatment of their original; they have been ready to make it coincide with their ideas of what it ought to be. I have no doubt that much which is not Cædmon’s has been interpolated, and that he had little to do with the so-called second book.

  Drawing epic, lyrical, didactic matter into its domain Cædmon’s poetry seems, according to Beda’s account, to have embraced all classes, and most of the range of material to which the Old English religious poetry is in any sense congenial. The question is pertinent if, of the numerous works of Cædmon, nothing besides that short hymn is preserved; if among the considerable remnants of the older ecclesiastical literature, the majority of which have reached us without the names of their authors, one or more are not to be traced to Cædmon. To this inquiry there is no satisfactory answer. It has been customary, since the time of Junius, to connect the poems contained in the Bodleian manuscript, Jun. XI., with Cædmon’s name, but belief in the authority for this has been more and more abandoned. In the course of time an ever greater variety of elements and diversity of style have been discovered in the contents of that codex; and at present hardly any one feels justified in ascribing even a part of it to the most ancient Christian poet of England.

  Ground can be found … on which to raise an opinion that, although the poem—a poem, and a noble one—exists, and cannot itself be explained out of existence, yet at least there never was a man named Cædmon by whom it could have been written. If so, we should lose little, having the poem. Somebody wrote it, and for want of other name Cædmon will serve to represent him; or them, if we walk in the new paths of criticism and distribute the work in fragments among a little company of authors, and allot the shares due to the several members of the firm of Cædmon and Co.

  With this fine passage close the poems that bear the name of Cædmon. Whatever their several dates be, they are a noble beginning to English song. Whoever be their several writers, they owe their impulse to the man who on that night took care of the cattle in the monastery of Hild. Honour from all the English race, from all the poets, greatest of the English race, is due to his name. He was the first (and I borrow some of Ebert’s phrases) who, like a Scop singing heroic tales, sang to the people in their own tongue the tales of the Old Testament and the subject-matters of Christianity. He showed how this new material might be assimilated by the genius of the people. He made the bridge which led to the artistic poetry which begins, after him, to handle the same subjects. The old singers of heathendom, crossing it, became the new singers of Christianity.

  He could compose nothing but religious poetry, but in this he stood supreme. “Others after him strove to compose religious poems, but none could compete with him, for he learnt the art of poetry, not from men, but from God.” One is loath to cast a doubt upon so sweet a story, which Bede repeated, as it was generally current in his own day; but it bears a suspicious resemblance to stories which are told of others who possessed, what no art can teach, the divine gift of poesy. But there can be no reasonable doubt that he was a poet—born, not made—and that he exercised his gift on the highest of all subjects, and thus was a glory of the Church of his day.

  In regard of his origin and idiosyncrasy Cædmon is rather the prototype of a modern people-poet like Burns: the one summoned from the oxstall, the other from the plough, to tell of the things of the spirit; both humble in birth and occupation, and with distinct folk-traits and sympathies. The Whitby poet sings in strong, sweet speech of the Israelitish quest of the Promised Land, or of such stirring happenings as those which centre around Judith as protagonist. And throughout his Bible-inspired epics it is curious to see the moody earnestness of the Saxon merged in the solemn, mystic-dreamy, or jubilant joy of the neophyte; this blend of character and influence coloring the touches of nature as it does other phases of the work. His verses are paraphrase in the broadest, freest sense. When so the singer wills, he expands, interpolates, introduces so much of local color that the composition comes to have independent and creative worth.