certain poems and thus settled the question of their authorship. We
know nothing of his life except what we infer from his poetry. He was
probably born near the middle of the eighth century, and it is not
unlikely that he passed part of his youth as a thane of some noble. He
became a man of wide learning, well skilled in "wordcraft" and in the
Christian traditions of the time. Such learning could then hardly have
been acquired outside of some monastery whither he may have retired.

[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON MUSICIANS. _Illuminated MS., British
Museum._]

In variety, inventiveness, and lyrical qualities, his poetry shows an
advance over the Caedmonian cycle. He has a poet's love for the beauty
of the sun and the moon (_heofon-condelle_), for the dew and the rain,
for the strife of the waves (_holm-ðroece_), for the steeds of the sea
(_sund-hengestas_), and for the "all-green" (_eal-gr=ene_) earth. "For
Cynewulf," says a critic, "'earth's crammed with heaven and every
common bush afire with God.'"

Cynewulf has inserted his name in runic characters in four poems:
_Christ_, _Elene_, _Juliana_, a story of a Christian martyr, and the
least important, _The Fates of the Apostles_. The _Christ_, a poem on
the Savior's Nativity, Ascension, and Judgment of the world at the
last day, sometimes suggests Dante's _Inferno_ or _Paradiso_, and
Milton's _Paradise Lost_. We see the--

"Flame that welters up and of worms the fierce aspect,
With the bitter-biting jaws--school of burning creatures."[19]

Cynewulf closes the _Christ_ with almost as beautiful a conception of