Anglo-Saxon prose displays, as a general thing, a simple, direct, and clear style.  There is, of course, a considerable difference between the prose of the earlier and that of the later period, and individual writers show peculiarities.  It displays throughout a marked contrast with the poetic style, in its freedom from parallelisms in thought and phrase, from inversions, archaisms, and the almost excessive wealth of metaphor and epithet.  In its early stages, there is apparent perhaps a poverty of resource, a lack of flexibility; but this charge cannot be sustained against the best prose of the later period.  In the translations from the Latin it shows a certain stiffness, and becomes sometimes involved, in the too conscientious effort of the translator to follow the classic original.

No attempt will be made here to notice, or even to name, all the large number of literary works of the Anglo-Saxons.  It must be sufficient to examine briefly a few of the most important and characteristic productions of this really remarkable and prolific movement.

The ‘Song of Widsith, the Far Traveler,’ is now generally conceded to be, in part at least, the oldest existing Anglo-Saxon poem.  We do not know when it assumed its present form; but it is certain that it was after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, since it has interpolations from the Christian scribe.  The poem seems to give evidence of being a growth from an original song by a wandering scop, or poet, who claims to have visited the Gothic king Eormanric, “the grim violator of treaties,” who died in 375 or 376.  But other kings are mentioned who lived in the first half of the sixth century.  It is probable, then, that it was begun in the fourth century, and having been added to by successive gleemen, as it was transmitted orally, was finally completed in the earlier part of the sixth.  It was then carried over to England, and there first written down in Northumbria.  It possesses great interest because of its antiquity, and because of the light it throws upon the life of the professional singer in those ancient times among the Teutons.  It has a long list of kings and places, partly historical, partly mythical or not identified.  The poem, though narrative and descriptive, is also lyrical.  We find here the strain of elegiac sadness, of regretful retrospection, so generally present in Anglo-Saxon poetry of lyric character, and usually much more pronounced than in ‘Widsith.’

‘Beowulf’ is, in many respects, the most important poetical monument of the Anglo-Saxons.  The poem is undoubtedly of heathen origin, and the evidence that it was a gradual growth, the result of grouping several distinct songs around one central figure, seems unmistakable.  We may trace it, in its earliest stages, to the ancient home of the Angles in North Germany.  It was transplanted to England in the migration of the tribes, and was edited in the present form by some unknown Northumbrian poet.  When this occurred we do not know certainly, but there seems good reason for assuming the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century as the time.