, loyalty, devotion to duty. The hero has the ever-present
consciousness that death is preferable to dishonor. He taught his
thane to sing:--

"Far better stainless death
Than life's dishonored breath."

III. In this poem, the action outweighs the words. The keynote to
_Beowulf_ is deeds. In New England, more than a thousand years later,
Thoreau wrote, "Be not simply good; be good for something." In reading
other literatures, for instance the Celtic, we often find that the
words overbalance the action. The Celt tells us that when two bulls
fought, the "sky was darkened by the turf thrown up by their feet and
by the foam from their mouths. The province rang with their roar and
the inhabitants hid in caves or climbed the hills."

Again, more attention is paid to the worth of the subject matter and
to sincerity of utterance than to mere form or polish. The literature
of this race has usually been more distinguished for the value of the
thought than for artistic presentation. Prejudice is felt to-day
against matter that relies mainly on art to secure effects.

IV. Repression of sentiment is a marked characteristic of _Beowulf_
and it still remains a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon race. Some
people say vastly more than they feel. This race has been inclined to
feel more than it expresses. When it was transplanted to New England,
the same characteristic was prominent, the same apparent contradiction
between sentiment and stern, unrelenting devotion to duty. In _Snow
Bound_, the New England poet, Whittier, paints this portrait of a New
England maiden, still Anglo-Saxon to the core:--

"A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice."

No matter what stars now shine over them, the descendants of the
English are still truthful and sternly just; they still dislike to
give full expression to their feelings; they still endeavor to
translate thoughts into deeds, and in this world where all need so
much help, they take self-sacrifice as a matter of course. The spirit
of _Beowulf_, softened and consecrated by religion, still persists in
Anglo-Saxon thought and action.

THE CAEDMONIAN CYCLE

Caedmon.--In 597 St. Augustine began to teach the Christian religion
to the Anglo-Saxons. The results of this teaching were shown in the
subsequent literature. I