If we may still be interested in watching the primitive vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow ourselves, as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre, squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature of Cædmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime. We have seen the ideal being, Whose stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plumed-- by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, "fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet bound." Cædmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam with the apples,-- Some in her hands she bare, Some in her bosom lay, Of the unblest fruit. However natural or downright may be this specification, it is what could not have occurred with "the bosom" of our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical conception eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples-- ------------from the tree returning, in her hand _A bough of fairest fruit_.--ix. 850. In Cædmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the sturdy Adam, an honest Saxon, to "the dark deed;" and her prudential argument that "it were best to obey the pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion," however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may be certain of Adam's fall--for ----------in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt, Which with bland words at will, she thus address'd. A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of the old Saxon monk! We dare not place "the Milton of our forefathers" by the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognise. We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for that was too deplorable; but, to place Cædmon in a parallel with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he was not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well compare the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of the original manuscript of Cædmon,[18] with the noble conceptions and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel. FOOTNOTES: [1] Sir Francis Palgrave's "Dissertation on Cædmon," in the Archæologia.