THE STORY OF BEOWULF

'Beowulf' may rightly be pronounced the great national epic of the
Anglo-Saxon race. Not that it exalts the race so much as that it
presents the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, the ideals and aims,
the manners and customs, of our ancestors, and that it does so in
setting before us a great national hero. Beowulf himself was not an
Anglo-Saxon. He was a Geat-Dane; but he belonged to that confraternity
of nations that composed the Teutonic people. He lived in an heroic
age, when the songs of the wandering singers were of the great deeds of
outstanding men. The absolute epic of the English people has yet to be
written. To some extent Arthur, though a British King--that is to say,
though he was King of the Celtic British people, who were subsequently
driven into the West, into Cornwall and Wales and Strathclyde, by our
Saxon ancestors--became nationalized by our Anglo-Norman ancestors as
a typical King of the English people. He has become the epic King of
the English in the poetry of Tennyson. It is always a mystery to the
writer that no competent singer among us has ever laid hands upon our
own Saxon hero, King Alfred. It is sometimes said that there is nothing
new under the sun, that there is nothing left for the modern singer
to sing about, and that the realm of possible musical production is
fast vanishing out of view. Certainly this is not true of poetry. Both
Alfred and Arthur are waiting for the sympathetic voice that will tell
forth to the world the immortal splendour of their personalities. And
just as the Anglo-Normans idealized Arthur as a hero-king of the
English nation, though he really fought against the English, so the
Saxon singer of Beowulf has idealized this Geatish chieftain, and in
some way set him forth as the idealized chieftain of the Teutonic race.