SOURCE: Stopford A. Brooke, "Poems Attributed to Cynewulf," in English Literature: From the Beginning to the Norman Conquest, The Macmillan Company, 1898, pp. 180-202.

In the following essay, Brooke discusses the five poems which were not signed by Cynewulf but have been attributed to him by various critics, with an emphasis on spiritual elements.

The most important of these poems are the Phaenix, the second part of the St. Guthlac, the Harrowing of Hell, the Andreas, and the Dream of the Rood. They have all been attributed to Cynewulf, but with regard to the two last there has been much difference of opinion, and present criticism tends to remove them from his hand.

The Phenix is in the Exeter Book, and runs to 677 lines. Its source is a Latin poem by Lactantius. Cynewulf, to whom almost all the critics attribute the poem, leaves his original at verse 380, and then...