Epic and Romance | Page 9

the Brocken. A similar discovery, in
regard to more honourable personages and other scenes, may be made
by other Gothic travellers in a "south-eastward" journey to heroic
Greece. The classical reader of the Northern heroics may be frequently
disgusted by their failures; he may also be bribed, if not to applaud, at
least to continue his study, by the glimmerings and "shadowy
recollections," the affinities and correspondences between the Homeric
and the Northern heroic world.
Beowulf and his companions sail across the sea to Denmark on an
errand of deliverance,--to cleanse the land of monsters. They are
welcomed by Hrothgar, king of the Danes, and by his gentle queen, in a
house less fortunate than the house of Alcinous, for it is exposed to the

attacks of the lumpish ogre that Beowulf has to kill, but recalling in its
splendour, in the manner of its entertainment, and the bearing of its
gracious lord and lady, the house where Odysseus told his story.
Beowulf, like Odysseus, is assailed by an envious person with
discourteous words. Hunferth, the Danish courtier, is irritated by
Beowulf's presence; "he could not endure that any one should be
counted worthier than himself"; he speaks enviously, a biting
speech--[Greek: thymodakês gar mythos]--and is answered in the tone
of Odysseus to Euryalus.[4] Beowulf has a story to tell of his former
perils among the creatures of the sea. It is differently introduced from
that of Odysseus, and has not the same importance, but it increases the
likeness between the two adventurers.
[Footnote 4: Od. viii. 165.]
In the shadowy halls of the Danish king a minstrel sings of the famous
deeds of men, and his song is given as an interlude in the main action.
It is a poem on that same tragedy of Finnesburh, which is the theme of
a separate poem in the Old English heroic cycle; so Demodocus took
his subjects from the heroic cycle of Achaea. The leisure of the Danish
king's house is filled in the same manner as the leisure of Phaeacia. In
spite of the difference of the climate, it is impossible to mistake the
likeness between the Greek and the Northern conceptions of a dignified
and reasonable way of life. The magnificence of the Homeric great man
is like the magnificence of the Northern lord, in so far as both are
equally marked off from the pusillanimity and cheapness of popular
morality on the one hand, and from the ostentation of Oriental or
chivalrous society on the other. The likeness here is not purely in the
historical details, but much more in the spirit that informs the poetry.
If this part of Beowulf is a Northern Odyssey, there is nothing in the
whole range of English literature so like a scene from the Iliad as the
narrative of Maldon. It is a battle in which the separate deeds of the
fighters are described, with not quite so much anatomy as in Homer.
The fighting about the body of Byrhtnoth is described as strongly, as
"the Fighting at the Wall" in the twelfth book of the Iliad, and
essentially in the same way, with the interchange of blows clearly noted,

together with the speeches and thoughts of the combatants. Even the
most heroic speech in Homer, even the power of Sarpedon's address to
Glaucus in the twelfth book of the Iliad, cannot discredit, by
comparison, the heroism and the sublimity of the speech of the "old
companion" at the end of Maldon. The language is simple, but it is not
less adequate in its own way than the simplicity of Sarpedon's
argument. It states, perhaps more clearly and absolutely than anything
in Greek, the Northern principle of resistance to all odds, and defiance
of ruin. In the North the individual spirit asserts itself more absolutely
against the bodily enemies than in Greece; the defiance is made wholly
independent of any vestige of prudent consideration; the contradiction,
"Thought the harder, Heart the keener, Mood the more, as our Might
lessens," is stated in the most extreme terms. This does not destroy the
resemblance between the Greek and the Northern ideal, or between the
respective forms of representation.
The creed of Maldon is that of Achilles:[5] "Xanthus, what need is
there to prophesy of death? Well do I know that it is my doom to perish
here, far from my father and mother; but for all that I will not turn back,
until I give the Trojans their fill of war." The difference is that in the
English case the strain is greater, the irony deeper, the antithesis
between the spirit and the body more paradoxical.
[Footnote 5: Il. xix. 420.]
Where the centre of life is a great man's house, and where the most
brilliant society is that which is gathered at his feast,