ABSTRACT
The poem of Judith is not only in the same MS. as Beowulf, one of about the year 1000, but it is in the same handwriting as the second part of that work. After her husband's death she herself led her forces against the Danes and recovered many cities from them, her greatest victories being between 915 and 918. The poet of the Judith has known how to use to the full the means at his command. He has selected a good subject for treatment, one in which he could blend the characteristics of the older and the later periods. His gift of vivid description is unsurpassed, whether in his picture of Judith, in that of the actual murder, or of the later battle scenes; he knows how to give reality by a definite detail here and there, as in the picture of the Assyrians standing, hesitating before Holofernes' tent and trying to awaken him by coughing.
