less interpolation about the history of the patriarch, is the work of a true poet; but there is nothing to show how far the writer may have been indebted to his Northumbrian predecessor. Nor can any clear traces of Cædmon's original authorship be discerned in the ‘Daniel,’ which is a pleasing and graceful rendering of the Bible narrative. The wide divergence between the two texts of the ‘Azarias’ portion of this poem is a significant illustration of the freedom with which the Anglo-Saxon poets permitted themselves to rewrite the compositions of earlier authors.
The three fragments at the end of the Bodleian manuscript, which form what is called ‘The Second Book of Cædmon,’ or ‘Christ and Satan,’ appear to be the work of a single author, but it is not likely that they originally formed part of a continuous poem. They have considerable poetic merit, and so far as their substance is concerned have a certain affinity with the ‘Story of the Fall.’ But their smooth and monotonous rhythm is very unlike the rugged and expressive versification of that poem; and their vocabulary and phraseology are in general those of later Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is probable that these fragments should be regarded as a free rendering of portions of Cædmon's poems in the manner of a later period.
It is right to state that the views here put forward are in conflict with those which are maintained by many scholars of high authority. Professor ten Brink, for example, considers that the less poetical portion of the ‘Genesis’ is substantially Cædmon's, and that no other specimen of his work has come down to us except the ‘Hymn.’ But, in the first place, the assumption that a tame and prosaic style is characteristic of the infancy of Old-English sacred poetry is refuted by the evidence of the Ruthwell cross. And, in the second place, a servile paraphrase of the biblical text can only have proceeded from a writer who was able to read his Latin bible; to a poet who, like Cædmon, had to depend on his recollection of extemporised oral translations, such a performance would have been absolutely impossible.
No discussion of the ‘Cædmon’ of the Bodleian manuscript would be complete without some reference to the interesting question of the influence which it is supposed to have exercised upon Milton in the composition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ The resemblances in matter and expression between some passages of Milton's poems and the Anglo-Saxon ‘Genesis’ are so remarkable that it is difficult to regard them as fortuitous. On the other hand, Milton became blind three years before the publication of Junius's edition of ‘Cædmon’ in 1655, so that he can have had no opportunity of studying the book in its printed form. The manuscript, however, was given by Archbishop Ussher to Junius in 1651, and had been for some time previous in the archbishop's library. It seems possible, although no evidence of the fact has been produced, that Milton may have been personally acquainted with Junius, or that he may have numbered among his friends some student of Anglo-Saxon who may have given him an account of the contents of the precious manuscript.
Junius's edition of ‘Cædmon’ was published at Amsterdam in 1655, and some copies of it were issued by James Fletcher at Oxford in 1752, with some notes from Junius's manuscripts added at the end. Fletcher also published in 1754 copies of the fifty pictures with which the Bodleian manuscript is adorned. In 1832 the Society of Antiquaries of London published Thorpe's edition of ‘Cædmon,’ based upon the original manuscript, with an English translation and notes; and in the following year the society issued a magnificent volume containing facsimiles of the illustrations, accompanied by an essay by Sir Henry Ellis. In 1849–54 K. W. Bouterwek published at Gutersloh an edition of ‘Cædmon,’ in two volumes, with introduction, notes, a prose translation, and glossary. Copious extracts from the poems were given in Ettmüller's ‘Engla and Seaxna Scôpas and Bôceras,’ Quedlinburg, 1850, the text being substantially that of the previous editors. The latest complete edition is that of C. W. Grein, in his ‘Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie,’ Göttingen, 1857. Grein also published a German translation, in alliterative metre, in his ‘Dichtungen der Angelsachsen, stabreimend übersetzt,’ Göttingen, 1863. A careful revision of the text may be expected in the new edition of Grein's ‘Bibliothek,’ by Professor Wülcker, which is now in course of publication.
