It was first printed as prose by Thwaites at
the close of his "Heptateuch, Book of Job, and Gospel of Nicodemus"
(1698), and has been often reprinted, its shortness and excellence
making it a popular piece for inclusion in Anglo-Saxon Readers. A most
complete edition has been recently (1888) issued by Professor Albert S.
Cook, with an excellent introduction, a translation, and a glossary. A
Bibliography is given by Professor Cook (pp. 71-73), and by Wuelker
(_Grundriss_, p. 140 ff.). To the translations therein enumerated may be
added the one in Morley's "English Writers" (II. 180 ff.). Professor
Cook has also given (pp. lxix-lxxii) the testimonies of scholars to the
worth of this poem. To these the attention of the reader is especially
called. The JUDITH has been treated by both ten Brink and Wuelker as
belonging to the Caedmon circle, but the former well says (p. 47): "This
fragment produces an impression more like that of the national epos than
is the case with any other religious poetry of that epoch;" and Sweet
(Reader, p. 157) regards it as belonging "to the culminating point of
the Old Northumbrian literature, combining as it does the highest
dramatic and constructive power with the utmost brilliance of language
and metre."
III. The ATHELSTAN, or Fight at Brunanburh, is found in four manuscripts
of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" and in Wheloc's edition (1643), printed
from a MS.
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