[65] "Talis mihi videtur, vita hominum praesens in terris ad comparationem ejus, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad coenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio et calido effecto coenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniensque unus passerum, citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore quo intus est, hiemis tempestati non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidve praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit merito esse sequenda videtur." "Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum," book ii. cap. 13, year 627. [66] Je voudrais qu'a cet age, On sortit de la vie ainsi que d'un banquet, Remerciant son hote. (viii. 1.) [67] Ragnar Lodbrok, thrown among serpents in a pit, defies his enemies, and bids them beware of the revenge of Woden ("Corpus Poeticum Boreale," vol. ii. pp. 341 ff.). In the prisons, at the time of the Terreur, the guillotine was a subject for _chansons_. The mail steamer _la France_ caught fire, part of the cargo being gunpowder; the ship is about to be blown up; a foreign witness writes thus: "Tous jusqu'aux petits marmitons rivalisaient d'elan, de bravoure et de cette gaiete gauloise dans le peril qui forme un des beaux traits du caractere national." Baron de Huebner, "Incendie du paquebot la France," Paris, 1887. This account was written, according to what the author told me, on the day after the fire was unexpectedly mastered. [68] "Codex Exoniensis," "Seafarer," p. 306, "Wanderer," p. 291. See also "Deor the Scald's Complaint," one of the oldest poems in "Codex Exoniensis," the "Wife's Complaint," the "Ruin," also in "Codex Exoniensis"; the subject of this last poem has been shown by Earle to be probably the town of Bath. [69] T. Arnold's "Beowulf," p. 118, l. 1820. CHAPTER IV. _THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS._ I. Augustine, prior of St. Martin of Rome, sent by Gregory the Great, arrived in 597. To the Germanic pirates established in the isle of Britain, he brought a strange teaching. The ideas he tried to spread have become so familiar to us, we can hardly realise the amazement they must have caused. To these fearless warriors who won kingdoms at the point of their spears, and by means of their spears too won their way into Walhalla, who counted on dying one day, not in their beds, but in battle, so that the Valkyrias, "choosers of the slain," might carry them to heaven on their white steeds, to these men came a foreign monk, and said: Be kind; worship the God of the weak, who, unlike Woden, will reward thee not for thy valour, but for thy mercy.