All that we know of The Grave is that it was found written in the margin of a volume of Anglo-Saxon homilies, preserved in the Bodleian Library. It is of a period following Aldhelm’s era, and is in the dialect of East Anglia, while Aldhelm was of Wessex. But M. Taine himself demonstrates that it could not be Aldhelm’s. At page 50, he tells us Aldhelm died in 709, having previously stated (p. 46) that the fragment “was one of the last Anglo-Saxon compositions.” But among the finest Anglo-Saxon poetical compositions are the celebrated Ormulum, and various poems by Layamon, which were written about the year 1225. The Grave, moreover, so far from containing “a terrible Christianity,” has so essentially the tone and spirit of many well-known Catholic meditations on death, that it might have been written in a Spanish monastery or taken from a book of Christian devotions.
Of course, “the poor monks” can do nothing creditable in M. Taine’s eyes, and he comes to sad grief in undertaking to go, by specification, beyond the common counts of the ordinary declaration dictated by bigotry. At page 53, vol. i., he thus refers in contemptuous terms to the monks who compiled the Saxon Chronicle:
“They spun out awkwardly and heavily dry chronicles, a sort of historical almanacs. You might think them peasants, who, returning from their toil, came and scribbled with chalk on a smoky table the date of a year of scarcity, the price of corn, the changes in the weather, a death.”
And here a word as to this Chronicle, which is a national history generally conceded to have been established by King Alfred, under the advice of his counsellor Pflegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, about 870 A.D. It begins with a brief account of Britain from Cæsar’s invasion, and becomes very full in its narrative after the year 853.
The Chronicle shares with Bede’s history the highest place among authorities for early English history. Seven original copies of it are still in existence, and, making due allowance for the ravages of time and the elements, and the destruction by war, demolition of the monasteries, theft, spoliation, and the wilful mischief of religious bigotry, the survival of these seven copies would go far to prove the former existence of several hundreds. The copies yet extant are all evidently based upon a single original text, and it is presumed that the Chronicle was continued at all the monasteries in England, each one forwarding its local annals to some one special monastery, where a brief summary was compiled of the whole, copies of which were supplied to all the religious houses, to be incorporated with the general Chronicle, thus keeping up from year to year the general history of the nation. M. Taine gives some half-dozen dry-as-dust extracts from the Chronicle of this nature:
“902. This year there was the great fight at the Holme, between the men of Kent and the Danes.”
He adds:
“It is thus the poor monks speak, with monotonous dryness, who after Alfred’s time gather up and take notes of great visible events; sparsely scattered we find a few moral reflections, a passionate emotion, nothing more” (vol. i. p. 53).
But at page 42, M. Taine has given us as belonging to a period preceding Christianity in England, as a part of “the pagan current,” an extract from the song on Athelstan’s victory, of which he speaks in terms of enthusiastic admiration. “If there has ever been anywhere a deep and serious poetic sentiment, it is here,” etc. Now, this song, under the date of A.D. 937, is a part of the Saxon Chronicle, written by some poor monk “after Alfred’s time.”
“This year King Athelstane, the Lord of Earls,
Ring-giver to the warriors, Edmund too
His brother, won in fight with edge of swords
Lifelong renown at Brunanburh. The sons
Of Edward clave with the forged steel the wall
Of linden shields. The spirit of their sires
Made them defenders of the land, its wealth,
Its homes, in many a fight with many a foe.”[5]