the dragons and serpents that made their home within the depths, he grasped a sword and plunged beneath the waves.  After sinking what seemed to him a day’s space, he saw Grendel’s mother, who came forward to meet him.  She dragged him into her dwelling, where there was no water, and the fight began.  The issue was for a time doubtful; but at last Beowulf ran her through with a gigantic sword, and she fell dead upon the floor of her dwelling.  A little distance away, he saw the dead body of Grendel.  The hero cut off the head of the monster and hastened away to Hrothgar’s court.  After receiving much praise and many presents, Beowulf and his warriors sailed to their own land, where he ruled as king for fifty years.

He engaged in his third and hardest conflict when he was old.  A firedrake, angered at the loss of a part of a treasure, which he had for three hundred years been guarding in a cavern, laid waste the land in the hero’s kingdom.  Although Beowulf knew that this dragon breathed flames of fire and that mortal man could not long withstand such weapons, he sought the cavern which sheltered the destroyer and fought the most terrible battle of his life.  He killed the dragon, but received mortal hurt from the enveloping flames.  The old hero had finally fallen; but he had through life fought a good fight, and he could say as the twilight passed into the dark:—­

“I have ruled the people fifty years; no folk-king was there of them that dwelt about me durst touch me with his sword or cow me through terror.  I bided at home the hours of destiny, guarded well mine own, sought not feuds with guile, swore not many an oath unjustly."[13]

The poem closes with this fitting epitaph for the hero:—­

  “Quoth they that he was a world-king forsooth,
  The mildest of all men, unto men kindest,
  To his folk the most gentlest, most yearning of fame."[14]

Wherein Beowulf is Typical of the Anglo-Saxon Race.—­Beowulf is by far the most important Anglo-Saxon poem, because it presents in the rough the persistent characteristics of the race.  This epic shows the ideals of our ancestors, what they held most dear, the way they lived and died.

I. We note the love of liberty and law, the readiness to fight any dragon that threatened these.  The English Magna Charta and Petition of Right and the American Declaration of Independence are an extension of the application of the same principles embodied in Beowulf.  The old-time spirit of war still prevails in all branches of the race; but the contest is to-day directed against dragons of a different type from Grendel,—­against myriad forms of industrial and social injustice and against those forces which have been securing special privileges for some and denying equal opportunity for all.

II. Beowulf is a recognition in general of the great moral forces of the universe.  The poem upholds the ideals of personal manliness, bravery, loyalty, devotion to duty.  The hero has the ever-present consciousness that death is preferable to dishonor.  He taught his thane to sing:—­