ABSTRACT

Beowulf and Waldere are the work of educated men, and they were intended, no doubt, as books to read. They are not, like the Elder Edda, a collection of traditional oral poems. It may be accident that has made it so, but it is the case that the Anglo-Saxon books in their handwriting and their shape have the air of libraries and learning about them, of wealth and dignity. The handsome pages of the Junius MS. in the Bodleian (the Cædmon manuscript) belong to a learned world. The book of Roland lying near it is different-an unpretending cheap copy, not meant for patrons of learning to read, but more probably for the minstrel who chanted it. The Beowulf MS., though not so fine as the Junius one, is intended as a book to be read, and is got up with some care. From the look of it, one places it naturally in the library of a great house or a monastic school; and the contents of it have the same sort of association; they do not belong to the unlearned in their present form.