Lived probably in the 8th century A.D. A Northumbrian (?) poet. He was a scop or bard, but there is no evidence that he was a priest. He was the author of “Elene,” “Julian,” “Crist” (?), “Riddles” (?), perhaps of “Phœnix,” “Guthlac;” and the reputed author of the “Wanderer,” etc. Even “Beowolf” has been credited to him.

  Cynewulf the poet was unknown until the runes were read by which he had worked his name into his poem of “Elene.” Those runes were first read in the year 1840 by two independent workers—by Jacob Grimm in his edition of “Andreas” and “Elene,” and by John Mitchell Kemble in his essay upon Anglo-Saxon Runes, published that year in the “Archæologia.” Each discoverer of the names endeavored also to find who Cynewulf was, and when he lived. Grimm placed him in the eighth century. Kemble placed him in the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh, by suggesting that he was the Cynewulf who was Abbot of Peterborough between the years 992 and 1006, who succeeded Ælfeage as Bishop of Winchester in the year 1006.

  The poems of Cynewulf show us the artist with whom Christian ideas have become spontaneous, who is completely filled with the fervour of Christian feeling, and who, at the same time, disposes like a master of the rich legacy of epic diction and perception. His taste is not so cultivated as his faculty of imagination and his power of language. Sometimes his subject-matter is obnoxious to our sense; at other times our ardour is dampened by the ever-crowding outbreaks of the poet’s enthusiasm. In the last instance the discord between the old form and the new matter prevents a quite complete enjoyment.

  Perhaps the most genuinely poetical of all the early minstrels after Cædmon.

  Here [Elene] more than in any other piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry we feel near the mediæval drama. Almost every canto is like a scene; and little adaptation would be required to put it upon the stage. The narrative at the beginning is like a prologue, and then after the close of the piece we have an epilogue, in which the author speaks about himself, and weaves his name with Runes into the verses.

  Of England’s early poets, Cædmon’s name is still the most familiar—perhaps because he was the first, and because his name and history were embalmed in the pages of the Venerable Bede and other writers. But a greater poet than Cædmon was to follow him a century later—and that greater was the poet Cynewulf.

  Constantine’s vision of the cross, after having experienced the terrors of imminent danger, is the type of Helena’s vision of the true cross, after braving the dangers of the deep, hostile peoples, and conspiring enemies. From one vision to another we are led without much clogging of dramatic action, save that due to the peculiarities of Old English style, in describing effects of events by corresponding states of mind, in adding predicate after predicate to personalities, etc. On the whole, however, little time is lost, few words wasted, in picturing fully Helena’s journeyings, her pleadings, her stratagem, and her success. One cannot help feeling that the climax has been reached with the discovery of the cross. The historical account of Judas sounds like an author’s postscript to tell the reader what became of a certain character; while Helena’s anxiety about the nails may contribute to the perfection of her saintly character, but in nowise to the unity and harmony of the poem.

  Shelley, who was himself an ancient Nature-worshipper born out of due time, a maker of Nature-myths, and as innocent as a young Aryan in doing so, is on that account very like Cynewulf when both are writing about natural phenomena. Both of them write as the people talked in old time about the Wind, and the Clouds, and the Sea; and in Cynewulf’s case this is all the plainer when we compare his work with the riddles on the same subject which Ealdhelm and Eusebius put forth, which use the classical conventions, and which gave to Cynewulf nothing but the theme of his poem…. We possess then not only his name, but we can also realise him as a man; and he is not unlike some of our own poets, though so many centuries have passed away. He is, for instance, as personal as Cowper, and in much the same way. No other of the Anglo-Saxon poets has this fashion of talking about himself, and it is so unique, and the manner of it so distinct, that when I find it in a poem which is not signed by him—in the “Dream of the Rood”—it seems to me to be as good as his signature.

  It seems almost certain then that the “Christ” is an Anglian poem, written before Northumbria ceased to be the great centre of poetical activity, i.e., before the beginning of the ninth century, and critics are at one in placing the “floruit” of its poet during the second half of the eighth century.

  One of the few poets of the Anglo-Saxon period known by name, and the greatest of all.

  A great number of critics are even enthusiastic on behalf of Cynewulf, whom in point of sublimity they are ready to raise to a level with Cædmon. This is an estimate I must venture, with all deference, to question, and I am inclined to think that those who have formed it have been misled by the exuberance in Cynewulf of a poetical diction, which often continues after the genuine springs of inspiration have begun to fail.

  That ancient bard is indeed a problematical character; he has roamed like a restless ghost through centuries far apart, appearing now in the latest, now in the earliest period of the literature. He has been identified as an abbot of the eleventh century, as a bishop of the eighth, and, finally, all ecclesiastical rank has been denied him. To increase our uncertainty, there has been a tendency to attribute to him almost all the floating, anonymous minor poems in the language; besides his Riddles, the Phœnix, and Elene—the Finding of the Cross,—Andreas, Crist, Juliana, Guthlac, and the Wanderer have been fathered upon him. His case is a notable example of the difficulty that attends any attempt at a reliable interpretation of the development of the literature.