Sharon Turner has observed that the paraphrase of Caedmon “exhibits much of a Miltonic spirit; and if it were clear that Milton had been familiar with Saxon, we should be induced to think that he owed something to Caedmon.”  And the elder D’Israeli has collated and compared similar passages in the two authors, in his “Amenities of Literature.”

Another remarkable Anglo-Saxon fragment is called Judith, and gives the story of Judith and Holofernes, rendered from the Apocrypha, but with circumstances, descriptions, and speeches invented by the unknown author.  It should be observed, as of historical importance, that the manners and characters of that Anglo-Saxon period are applied to the time of Judith, and so we have really an Anglo-Saxon romance, marking the progress and improvement in their poetic art.

Among the other remains of this time are the death of Byrhtnoth, The Fight of Finsborough, and the Chronicle of King Lear and his Daughters, the last of which is the foundation of an old play, upon which Shakspeare’s tragedy of Lear is based.

It should here be noticed that Saxon literature was greatly influenced by the conversion of the realm at the close of the sixth century from the pagan religion of Woden to Christianity.  It displayed no longer the fierce genius of the Scalds, inculcating revenge and promising the rewards of Walhalla; in spirit it was changed by the doctrine of love, and in form it was softened and in some degree—­but only for a time—­injured by the influence of the Latin, the language of the Church.  At this time, also, there was a large adoption of Latin words into the Saxon, especially in theology and ecclesiastical matters.

THE ADVENT OF BEDE.—­The greatest literary character of the Anglo-Saxon period, and the one who is of most value in teaching us the history of the times, both directly and indirectly, is the man who has been honored by his age as the venerable Bede or Beda.  He was born at Yarrow, in the year 673; and died, after a retired but active, pious, and useful life, in 735.  He wrote an Ecclesiastical history of the English, and dedicated it to the most glorious King Ceowulph of Northumberland, one of the monarchs of the Saxon Heptarchy.  It is in matter and spirit a Saxon work in a Latin dress; and, although his work was written in Latin, he is placed among the Anglo-Saxon authors because it is as an Englishman that he appears to us in his subject, in the honest pride of race and country which he constantly manifests, and in the historical information which he has conveyed to us concerning the Saxons in England:  of a part of the history which he relates he was an eye-witness; and besides, his work soon called forth several translations into Anglo-Saxon, among which that of Alfred the Great is the most noted, and would be taken for an original Saxon production.

It is worthy of remark, that after the decline of the Saxon literature, Bede remained for centuries, both in the original Latin and in the Saxon translations, a sealed and buried book; but in the later days, students of English literature and history began to look back with eager pleasure to that formative period prior to the Norman conquest, when English polity and institutions were simple and few, and when their Saxon progenitors were masters in the land.