The poem of Beowulf, an extract from Beda, and a similar extract from Procopius constitute the notices that continue the history--if so it can be called--of the Angles from the time of Ptolemy to the beginning of the seventh century, and even these are doubtful in their interpretation. Beowulf is a poem in the Anglo-Saxon language, and, in the alliterative metre of the Anglo-Saxon compositions in general, of unknown date and authorship, of upwards of six thousand lines; a poem which, although preserved in England, and in a form adapted to English hearers subsequent to the conversion of our island to Christianity, is essentially pagan and German--pagan in respect to its superstitions and machinery, and German in respect to the scene of action; for in Germany, and not in England, are all its actions achieved. This being the case, it cannot but tell us _something_ of the ancient Germans; and, as the hero is an _Angle_, the ancient Germans of whom this _something_ is told, are, more or less, the _Angle_ ancestors of the English in their original continental home. Much more than this it is unsafe to say. The composition itself is a poem--a romance--an epic. This is against the historical value of its subject-matter. Then, it has taken its present form under the hands of a Christian. This is against its value as cotemporaneous evidence. Thirdly, it has the character, to no small extent, not only of a rhapsody, but of a rhapsody of which the elements are heterogeneous. This is against its value as a piece of _Anglicism_. Nick and Grendel--the old Nick of the present English, and Grendel--probably, the Geruthus of Saxo Grammaticus--are the chief supernaturals, demons of the swamp and fen. These best localize the legends in which they appear; for which most parts of Hanover and the Cimbric Chersonesus suit indifferently, the Frisian portions pre-eminently, well. The more exalted mythology of Woden, Thor, and Balder, so generally considered to have been all-pervading in Germany and Scandinavia, finds no place in Beowulf. Our Devil and the Devil's Dam are rough analogues of Nick and Grendel. Heort is the great palatial hall of Hroðgar, the kingly personage of the poem, Beowulf being the hero. It stands in some part of the Cimbric Chersonese. Seeing in this, as a _word_, only another form of the name Hartz, I also see in it a proof of the rhapsodical character of the poem, and the heterogeneous character of its elements. An episode, of which Sigmund is the hero, gives us a narrative in which we have, in an altered form, and an obscure outline, a portion of the Nibelungenlied cycle--an element from the Rhine.