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    minds and tastes . Kindred aits were also resorted to for the same purpose . One of the teachers of Wolstan , Bishop of Worcester , in the tenth century , had recourse to a more simple device to entice his pupils by means of their curiosity into literary pursuits ; making use for this purpose of a Psalter and Sacramentary , whose capital letters he had most richly gilt and illuminated .

    The great Alfred , who commemorates the policy and _ zeal of Aldbelm , felt and applauded the diligent cultivation and improvement of the vernacular tongue , as the only sure road to enlighten , instruct , and ameliorate the con * dition of his people . His endeavours towards this end are well known . His exertions could be accomplished only through the ecclesiastical institutions . He accordingly required the establishment of a school in every convent and bishop ' s seat , to which every freeholder of two hides was required

    to send his children . He himself translated a laborious and ( according to the opinion of the times ) useful work of religious edification—Gregory ' s Dialogues , in 116 folio pages , containing the lives and miraculous doings of the Saints ; and he was engaged at his death in a more useful work , that of translating part of the Scriptures , in which he was followed by CElfric the Archbishop , who translated and adapted to the use of his contemporaries many parts of the Holy Scriptures , and was also the author of several homilies .

    Translations of portions of the Scriptures into the Anglo-Saxon are indeed numerous ; and the earliest remains ( for we have seen no sufficient reason for doubting that all the pieces which bear the name of Coedmon belong to the poet of that name , commemorated by Bede as a monk of Whitby , who died in 680 ) are hymns and poetical paraphrases of biblical history . Bede mentions Coedmon as a sort of founder of a school of devotional and

    religious poetry , and one who had many imitators . He himself , among other indefatigable labours , was engaged at his death ( in 735 ) in translating the Gospel of St . John , and in the same century all the four Gospels were completed in an interlineary version by Aldred , a priest . When it is considered , too , that almost all the other remains of the literature of the Anglo-Saxon

    age , such as the Saxon Chronicle and the works of Bede , belong entirely , and owe their origin , formation , and preservation , to ecclesiastical institutions , we shall not be thought to overrate the obligations which we ougjht to acknowledge to the piety and ( if it must be so ) the superstitions of the venerable confessors of the Christian Church .

    In a later age too when the modern English language was in the progress of fashioning itself out of an intermixture of the ancient Saxon with the more fashionable Norman French , the same assistance was derived from the necessity of adapting scriptural and religious instruction to the capacity of the lower orders . Many of the French popular works were for this purpose translated ; such as paraphrases of the gospel history , lives of the saints ,

    homilies , hymns , psalters , and metrical histories of the festivals throughout the year ; in which appear all sorts of progression in the formation of the tongue and the alphabetic characters . In some , however , the language ( making due allowance for uncertain orthography ) assumes a character not far removed from perfect English , as in a piece ( of the twelfth cfentury ) en ~ titled the " Visions of St . Paul , won [ when ] he was rapt into Paradys , " which is one of the works avowedly composed for Sunday use in the churches . We « iay , perhaps , be allowed to quote a few lines as a specimen of the language :

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    • Review . —Cony beards Anglo-Saxon Poetry . ' 405 t

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1828, page 405, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2561/page/45/