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The first literary man of note was a monk of Whitby named Caedmon, who wrote poems on biblical subjects when he did not have to monk. His works were greatly like those of Milton, and especially like "Paradise Lost," it is said. Gildas was the first historian of Britain, and the scathing remarks made about his fellow-countrymen have never been approached by the most merciless of modern historians.
It is quite certain that he could not read Latin, so that all that he put into verse had to be taught to him by some more learned brother. And some one, too, must have written down the verses which Caedmon sang. We can imagine the pious, humble monk listening while another read and translated to him out of some Latin missal.
'Sing the beginning of created beings, said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God." Caedmon remembered the poetry that he had composed in his dreams, and repeated it in the morning to the inmates of the monastery. They concluded that the gift of song was divinely given and invited him to enter the monastery and devote his time to poetry.
"Paradise Lost," one thousand years later, was but the echo of this poet-peasant, who was the Milton of the 7th Century. These were but the early lispings of Science; but they held the germs of the "British Association" and of the "Royal Society;" for as English poetry has its roots in Caedmon, so is English intellectual life rooted in Baeda.
Certainly just before 700 A.D., that first singer of the English tongue, Caedmon, had learned to paraphrase the Bible. We may recall the Venerable Bede's charming story of him, and how he came by his power of interpretation. Bede himself was a child when Caedmon died, and the romance of the story makes it one of the finest in our literature.
But he refused to be taken away from his beloved books. "The office," he said, "demands household care, and household care brings with it distraction of mind, hindering the pursuit of learning."* *H. Morley, English Writers. As Caedmon is called the Father of English Poetry, Bede is called the Father of English History.
Then she commanded Caedmon, "in the presence of many learned men, to tell his dream and repeat the verses that they might all give their judgment what it was and whence his verse came." So the simple farm laborer, who had no learning of any kind, sang while the learned and grave men listened.
Abbess Hild called together all the most learned men and the students, and by her desire the dream was told to them, and the songs sung to them that they might all judge what this might be and whence the gift had come. And they were all sure that a divine gift had been bestowed on Caedmon by God Himself.
After praising Dafydd as the Welsh Ovid and Horace and Martial, he says: "Finally, he was something more; he was what not one of the great Latin poets was, a Christian; that is, in his latter days, when he began to feel the vanity of all human pursuits, when his nerves began to be unstrung, his hair to fall off, and his teeth to drop out, and he then composed sacred pieces entitling him to rank with we were going to say Caedmon had we done so we should have done wrong; no uninspired poet ever handled sacred subjects like the grand Saxon Skald but which entitle him to be called a great religious poet, inferior to none but the protege of Hilda."
And in these two monasteries Bede spent all the rest of his life. When Bede was eight years old Caedmon died. And although the little boy had never met the great, but humble poet, he must have heard of him, and it is from Bede's history that we learn all that we know of Caedmon. There is almost as little to tell of Bede's life as of Caedmon's.
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