Remnants of ancient poetry and legend have again an immediate value in proportion as they exhibit a free play of fine imagination; that is, according as they possess the power of stirring to response the aesthetic feeling of subsequent ages,—­as they possess the true poetic quality.  This gift of imagination varies greatly among races as among individuals, and the earliest manifestations of it frequently throw a clear light upon apparently eccentric tendencies developed in a literature in later times.

For these reasons, added to a natural family pride in them, the early literary monuments of the Anglo-Saxons should be cherished by us as among the most valued possessions of the race.

The first Teutonic language to be reduced to writing was the Moeso-Gothic.  Considerable portions of a translation of the Bible into that language, made by Bishop Ulfilas in the fourth century, still remain.  But this cannot be called the beginning of a literature; for there is no trace of original creative impulse.  The Gothic movement, too, seems to have ceased immediately after its beginning.  It is elsewhere that we must seek for the rise of a real Teutonic literature.  We shall not find it till after the lapse of several centuries; and we find it not among the tribes that remained in the fatherland, nor with those that had broken into and conquered parts of the Roman empire, only to be absorbed and to blend with other races into Romanic nations.  The proud distinction belongs to the Low German tribes that had created an England in Britain.

The conquest of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, begun in 449, seemed at first to promise only retrogression and the ruin of an existing civilization.  These fierce barbarians found among the Celts of Britain a Roman culture, and the Christian religion exerting its influence for order and humanity.  Their mission seemed to be to destroy both.  In their original homes in the forests of northern Germany, they had come little if at all into contact with Roman civilization.  At any rate, we may assume that they had felt no Roman influence capable of stemming their national and ethnical tendencies.  We cannot yet solve the difficult problem of the extent of their mingling with the conquered Celts in Britain.  In spite of learned opinions to the contrary, the evidence now available seems to point to only a small infusion of Celtic blood.  The conquerors seem to have settled down to their new homes with all the heathenism and most of the barbarism they had brought from their old home, a Teutonic people still.

In these ruthless, plundering barbarians, whose very breath was battle, and who seemed for the time the very genius of disorder and ruin, there existed, nevertheless, potentialities of humanity, order, and enlightenment far exceeding those of the system they displaced.  In all their barbarism there was a certain nobility; their courage was unflinching; the fidelity, even unto death, of thane to lord, repaid the open-handed generosity of lord to thane; they honored truth; and even after we allow for the exaggerated claims made for a chivalrous devotion that did not exist, we find that they held their women in higher respect than was usual even among many more enlightened peoples.