ory detail,
are more general characteristics, though in greatly varying degrees. As
some critic has well said, the Anglo-Saxon poet seems to presuppose a
knowledge of his subject-matter by those he addresses. Such a style is
capable of great swiftness of movement, and is well suited to rapid
description and narrative; but at times roughness or meagreness results.

The prevailing tone is one of sadness. In the lyric poetry, this is so
decided that all the Anglo-Saxon lyrics have been called elegies. This
note seems to be the echo of the struggle with an inhospitable climate,
dreary with rain, ice, hail, and snow; and of the uncertainties of life,
and the certainty of death. Suffering was never far off, and everything
was in the hands of Fate. This is true at least of the earlier poetry,
and the note is rarely absent even in the Christian lyrics. A more
cheerful strain is sometimes heard, as in the 'Riddles,' but it is
rather the exception; and any alleged humor is scarcely more than a
suspicion. Love and sentiment, in the modern sense, are not made the
subject of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and this must mean that they did not
enter into the Anglo-Saxon life with the same intensity as into modern
life. The absence of this beautiful motive has, to some degree, its
compensation in the exceeding moral purity of the whole literature. It
is doubtful whether it has its equal in this respect.

Anglo-Saxon prose displays, as a general thing, a simple, direct, and
clear style. There is, of course, a considerable difference between the
prose of the earlier and that of the later period, and individual
writers show peculiarities. It displays throughout a marked contrast
with the poetic style, in its freedom from parallelisms in thought and
phrase, from inversions, archaisms, and the almost excessive wealth of
metaphor and epithet. In its early stages, there is apparent perhaps a
poverty of resource, a lack of flexibility; but this charge cannot be
sustained against the best prose of the later period. In the
translations from the Latin it shows a certain stiffness, and becomes
sometimes involved, in the too conscientious effort of the translator to
follow the classic original.

No attempt will be made here to notice, or even to name, all the large
number of literary works of the Anglo-Saxons. It must be sufficient to
examine briefly a few of the most important and characteristic
productions of this really remarkable and prolific movement.