the mighty acts of Sacred History--(De Spiritalis Historiæ Gestis); and
this book has been regarded as the original source of some passages in
Cædmon and Milton.[6] The poem is in five books, of which the first
three--1. On the Creation; 2. The Disobedience; 3. The Sentence of
God--form a whole in themselves; while the remaining two books, which
are nominally on the Flood and the Red Sea, are really on Baptism and
the Spiritual Restoration of Man. So that the whole work comprises a
Paradise Lost and a Paradise Regained.

We now come to a book which, though not by a Christian author, is so
manifestly influenced by Christianity, and has been so fully recognised
by the Christian public, that it must be included in our list--viz.,
"The Comfort of Philosophy," by Boethius. Gibbon even called it a golden
volume, and one which, if we consider the barbarism of the times and the
situation of the author, must be reckoned of almost incomparable merit.
It was composed in the prison to which Theodoric had consigned the
wisest of the old Roman patriciate; and it is commonly regarded as
closing the canon of Roman literature. It was translated into all the
vernaculars, Alfred's translation into English being the first, and
Notker's into High German being the second.[7] Other works of Boethius
lived through the Dark and Middle Ages, especially his translations of
Aristotle, which were standards for the student in philosophy.

From this time we see a world fallen back into a wild and savage
infancy, and we shall witness the gradual operation of a spiritual power
reclaiming, educating, transforming it. The subject of Anglo-Saxon
literature derives, perhaps, its greatest interest from the fact that it
represents one great stage of this process.

As we approach the Saxon period we must take particular notice of a new