The labours of Mr. Thorpe, so well known as one of the very few accomplished Saxonists of whom we can boast, has now, after much discouragement, placed the Anglo-Saxon portion of Lappenberg’s history within the reach of English readers, and has given it a new value by his own additions and illustrations. The translation ought to be found in the library of every one among us who professes to study the history or to patronize the literature of his country.
The invasion or occupation of England by German tribes is involved in an obscurity, which does not disappear before a rigorous examination of its traditional details. On the contrary, the more we consider it the less certainly we can pronounce as to the truth. That on the departure of the Romans in the fifth century, a full and continuous stream of German population found its way into Britain, and that ere long the invading race gained the ascendant, and planted firmly in the soil their laws, their language, and their institutions, are facts established by a cloud of witnesses, and by that real evidence which lawyers consider superior to testimony. But how, or at what exact date this process commenced, under whose leadership or auspices it was carried on, and with what rapidity, or through what precise channels the tide flowed, are matters of more difficulty, on which, from the want of authentic materials, it is idle to dogmatise, however unpleasant it may be to remain in doubt. There is no want of ancient narratives of these supposed events; but though ancient as to us, they are neither so near the time to which they refer, nor so clear and consistent with probability, and with each other, as to command implicit deference.
Dr. Lappenberg, leaning perhaps too readily to the German theory of mythes, sees little in the history and achievements of Hengist and Horsa which can be considered authentic. Mr. Thorpe, on the other hand, is less sceptical, and while directing our notice to the fact that the northern tribes occasionally submitted to the command of double leaders, he has adduced in evidence the ancient poetical celebrity of Hengist as a Jutish hero. The episode from Beowulf, which he has inserted and ably translated in a note, is interesting and important in this view. But, after all, we confess that our mind remains in a state of suspense. We think the proof sufficient neither to justify a belief in the existence of the two chiefs, nor to authorise us in consigning them to non-entity; and we hold it an important duty in historical criticism to proportion our conclusions precisely to the premises from which they are deduced. Where there is good evidence, we should believe; where the evidence is incoherent or impossible, we should disbelieve. But there are conditions of a historical question where we can legitimately arrive at no opinion either way, and where we must be content to leave the fact in uncertainty, by a verdict of not proven.
There is no historian, we think, who mentions Hengist or Horsa, until at an interval of two or three hundred years after their supposed era; and what sort of interval had thus elapsed? A period of pagan obscurity, passed by the invaders in incessant conflicts, for a home and habitation, or for existence itself,—a period of which not a relic even of poetical tradition has survived, and in which the means of recording events, or of calculating time, were wholly different from our modern apparatus, and are too little known to let us judge of their sufficiency. The celebrity of Hengist in the old Saxon epics, but in which he is never, we think, connected with the invasion of England, appears to be a double-edged weapon, and may even account for his name being taken as a convenient stock to bear a graft of later romance. If we add to all this the tendency of the age to fiction and exaggeration, the marks of a fabulous character, so forcibly pointed out by Lappenberg in the recurrence of certain fixed numbers or periods of years, chiefly on an octonary system, as distinguished by conspicuous events, the divine genealogies attributed to the heroes, and the resemblance in incident to similar traditions in other ages or scenes, we shall easily see the unsteady footing on which the question stands, and be obliged to own, that, if our belief must be renounced in Romulus and Remus, we can scarcely go to the stake for Hengist and Horsa. It is remarkable, that while the Roman brothers are said to bear one and the same name in different forms, the appellations of the Anglo-Saxon leaders are also so far identical, as each signifying the warlike animal which is said to have been emblazoned on the Saxon banner.
It should be satisfactory to our West-British brethren, that Lappenberg sees no reason to distrust the existence of the illustrious Arthur, but he admits too readily the questionable discovery of his grave.
“The contemporary who records the victory at Bath gained by his countrymen in the first year of his life, and who bears witness of its consequences after a lapse of forty-four years, Gildas, surnamed the Wise, considers it superfluous to mention the name of the far-famed victor; but his wide-spread work, and the yet more wide-spread extracts from it in Beda, have reached no region in which the fame of King Arthur had not outstript them, the noble champion who defended the liberty, usages, and language of the ancient country from destruction by savage enemies; who protected the cross against the Pagans, and gained security to the churches most distinguished for their antiquity and various knowledge, to which a considerable portion of Europe owes both its Christianity and some of its most celebrated monasteries. Called to such high-famed deeds, he needed not the historian to live through all ages more brilliantly than the heroes of the chronicles, among whom he is counted from the time of Jeffrey of Monmouth; but, not to mention the works which, about the year 720, Eremita Britannus is said to have composed on the Holy Graal, and on the deeds of King Arthur, the rapid spread of Jeffrey’s work over the greater part of Europe, proves that the belief in the hero of it was deeply rooted. In the twelfth century a Greek poem, recently restored to light, was composed in celebration of Arthur and the heroes of the round table. Still more manifestly, however, do the numerous local memorials, which throughout the whole of the then Christian part of Europe, from the Scottish hills to Mount Etna, bear allusion to the name of Arthur; while on the other hand, the more measured veneration of the Welsh poets for that prince, who esteem his general, Geraint, more highly than the king himself, and even relate that the latter, far from being always victorious, surrendered Hampshire and Somersetshire to the Saxons, may be adduced as no worthless testimony for the historic existence of King Arthur. Even those traditions concerning him, which at the first glance seem composed in determined defiance of all historic truth,—those which recount the expedition against the Romans on their demand of subjection from him,—appear not totally void of foundation, when we call to mind that a similar expedition actually took place in Gaul; and are, moreover, informed, on the most unquestionable authority, of another undertaking in the year 468, on the demand of Anthemius, by the British general Riothamus, who led twelve thousand Britons across the ocean against the Visigoths in Gaul, and of his battles on the Loire. This very valuable narrative gives us some insight into the connexions and resources of those parts of Britain which had not yet been afflicted with the Saxon pirates.
“Arthur fell in a conflict on the river Camel, in Cornwall, against his nephew, Medrawd; his death was, however, long kept secret, and his countrymen waited many years for his return, and his protection against the Saxons. The discovery of his long-concealed grave in the abbey of Glastonbury, is mentioned by credible contemporaries, and excited at the time no suspicion of any religious or political deception. Had the king of England, Henry the Second, who caused the exhumation of the coffin in the year 1189, wished merely, through an artifice, to convince the Welsh of the death of their national hero, he would hardly himself have acted so conspicuous a part on the occasion. Poem and tradition bear witness to the spirit and his ashes, and the gravestone to the life and name of Arthur. Faith in the existence of this Christian Celtic Hector cannot be shaken by short-sighted doubt, though much must yet be done for British story, to render the sense latent in the poems of inspired bards, which have in many cases reached us only in spiritless paraphrases, into the sober language of historic criticism.”
It appears not unlikely, that the period fixed by the traditions for the arrival of the Saxons does not truly indicate the first settlement of their countrymen on our shores. In East Anglia, (Norfolk and Suffolk) as well as in Northumbria, and perhaps indefinitely to the north-east, successive colonies of German immigrants had probably found a home on islands at the mouths of rivers, or on barren tracts of sea-beach, along a thinly peopled and ill cultivated country. The cautious and tentative occupation of the shore thus taken, may have ultimately suggested the invitation of the Saxons, or facilitated their invasion of Britain in the deserted and distracted state in which the Romanised inhabitants were left, when their masters and protectors withdrew.
The introduction of Christianity among the English Saxons, is the first great event in their annals, that stands brightly out in the light of history. To whom we are indebted for this mighty and merciful revolution, does not, we think, admit of controversy. Though no friends to the corruptions or ambition of Rome, we cannot withhold from the Roman see the honour that here belongs to it, and for the service thus rendered to England, to Europe, and to mankind, the name of Gregory the Great deserves a place in a nobler calendar than that in which the saints of his own church are enrolled. The liberal spirit in which the mission was in some respects organized, deserves high praise. “It is my wish,” writes Gregory, “that you sedulously select what you may think most acceptable to Almighty God, be it in the Roman, or in the Gallican, or in any other church, and introduce into the church of the Angles that which you shall have so collected; for things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things.” The intervention of the Pope was the more meritorious and seasonable from the conduct of the British clergy, in leaving their Saxon conquerors without an attempt to convert them. Such a course may have been natural and excusable, but it was not prompted either by Christian love or by enlightened policy; and we cannot altogether refrain from reading in the subsequent massacre of the monks of Bangor by the Pagan sword of Ethelfrid, the retribution which Augustine had denounced as awaiting the Celtic Church, for not preaching to the Angles the way of life.
The Irish clergy, useful as they afterwards were, had not then advanced so far in their progress, as to reach the Anglican border. It was in the year 563 that St. Columba passed over from Ireland to the Northern Picts, in whose conversion he was occupied about thirty years. And it was in 597 that Ethelbert of Kent was baptized, and was followed soon after to the font by ten thousand of his subjects. Whether there was any connexion between these simultaneous movements, beyond the ripening of events for so desirable a result, has not, so far, as we know, been traced by any inquirer.
The rapidity with which Christianity was then accepted implies a remarkable condition of the public mind. The bigotry, and even the confiding belief of the old religion, must in a great measure have passed away, and a certain dissatisfaction have come to be felt with its creed and its consolations. This is peculiarly visible in the course which the conversion took in Northumbria, where, if we can trust the traditionary accounts, a spirit of philosophical inquiry had pervaded the nobility, and even the priesthood, implying a high degree of intellectual advancement, and an earnest sense of the religious necessities of our nature. Let us take the well-known incidents of this event as they are given in the poetry of Wordsworth, rather than in any prose narrative.