He was born in Northumbiria and was a monk of Whitby. He paraphrased large portions or the Scripture, and has aptly been called the Anglo-Saxon Milton; indeed it is more than probable that the Puritan poet borrowed the ideas of his sublime soliloquy of Satan in Pandemonium from this Saxon monk; After Satan's overthrow, Caedmon says—[Footnote 215]
[Footnote 215: Thorpe's edition of Caedmon.]
"Then spake he worde:
This narrow place is most unlike
that other that we formerly knew
high in Heaven's kingdom,
which my master bestowed on me,
Though we it for the All·powerful
may not possess.
We must cede our realm."
So Milton—
"O how unlike the place from whence they fell!"
and in the words of Satan—
"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right."
Caedmon's notion of Pandemonium is the prototype of Milton:
"But around me lie
iron bonds;
presseth this cord of chain,
I am powerless!
me have so hard
the clasps of hell
so firmly grasped.
Here is a vast fire
above and underneath;
never did I see a loathlier landskip;
the flame abateth not
hot over hell.
Me hath the clasping of these rings,
this hard polished band,
impeded in my course,
debarred me from my way.
My feet are bound,
my hands are manacled
. . . . .
About me the
huge gratings
of hard iron,
forged with heat,
with which me God
hath fastened by the neck."
Nearly all these ideas are incorporated in Milton's sublime picture—