and in his weakness. The samples of his historical style already given
will suffice for illustration of his Latin works; but it must not be
forgotten that he was also one of the first writers to try his hand at
regular English prose in his translation of St. John's Gospel. A few
English verses from his lips have also come down to us, breathing the
old Teutonic spirit more deeply than might be expected from his other
works.

During the interval between the Northumbrian and West Saxon
supremacies–the interval embraced by the eighth century, and covered by
the greatness of Mercia under Æthelbald and Offa–we have few remains of
English literature. The laws of Ine the West Saxon, and of Offa the
Mercian, with the Penitentials of the Church, and the Charters, form the
chief documents. But England gained no little credit for learning from
the works of two Englishmen who had taken up their abode in the old
Germanic kingdom: Boniface or Winfrith, the apostle of the heathen
Teutons subjugated by the Franks, and Alcuin (Ealhwine), the famous
friend and secretary of Karl the Great. Many devotional Anglo-Saxon
poems, of various dates, are kept for us in the two books preserved at
Exeter, and at Vercelli in North Italy. Amongst them are some by
Cynewulf, perhaps the most genuinely poetical of all the early minstrels
after Cædmon. The following lines, taken from the beginning of his poem
"The Phœnix" (a transcript from Lactantius), will sufficiently
illustrate his style:–

I have heard that hidden Afar from hence
On the east of earth Is a fairest isle,
Lovely and famous. The lap of that land
May not be reached By many mortals,
Dwellers on earth; But it is divided