It is not meant to be a formal course of reading, but a sort of talk, as
it were, about beautiful things said and sung in old days: things which
to have learned to love is to have incurred a great and living debt. I
have tried to clothe some of these in the nearest approach I could find
to the native garb in which their makers had sent them forth, with the
humblest acknowledgement that nothing comes up to that native garb
itself. In writing the book I have naturally incurred debt in various
directions; debt of which the source would be difficult always to trace.
I may mention my obligations to the work of Professor Morley, Professor
Earle, Professor Ten Brink, and Professor Albert S. Cook: also to the
writers of Chapters I-VII of "The Cambridge History of English
Literature," vol. i.

If this little book in any way fulfils the wishes of those Catholic
teachers who have asked me to print some thoughts of mine about English
Literature, I shall be glad indeed.

EMILY HICKEY.




CHAPTER I

The beginnings of Literature in England. Two poets of the best period of
our old poetry, Caedmon and Cynewulf. The language they wrote in.
The monastery at Whitby. The story of Caedmon's gift of song.


How many of us I wonder, realise in anything like its full extent the