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Johnson's Lives of the British poets completed by W. Hazlitt
Johnson's Lives of the British poets completed by W Hazlitt Author:Samuel Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 12 in Aldhelm's time were half barbarians, and little attentive to religious discourses; wherefore the holy man, placing himself upon a bridge, used often to ... more »stop them, and sing ballads of his own composition. He thereby gained the favour and attention of the populace ; and insensibly mixing grave and religious things with those of a jocular kind, he by this means succeeded better than he could have done by severity. As a composer of Anglo-Saxon verse, King Alfred places Aldhelm in the first rank; and we learn from William of Malmesbury that, so late as the twelfth century, some pieces which were attributed to him continued to be popular. He was also eminent as a musician. As a poet his best work is considered to be the jEnigmata, written in imitation of Symposius. Aldhem lived in great esteem till his death, which happened at Ditton, near West- bury, May 25th, 709. He was buried at Malmesbury. TATWINE. (Died 734.) Tatwine was a monk of Bredon, in Worcestershire, who, by his religion, his prudence, his solid knowledge of the Scriptures, and his talents, attained the dignity of Archbishop of Canterbury, on the 10th June, 731. He is presumed to have been at that time an old man ; at all events, he did not enjoy his honours long, for he died on the 30th July, 734. He had, however, the satisfaction, during his brief prelacy, of successfully pleading, before Pope Gregory III., the supremacy of Canterbury over York ; and he himself received, as metropolitan, the pallium from the Pope's hands. Besides a volume of jEnigmata, in Latin hexameters, the versification of which has considerable merit, Bale informs us that Tatwine wrote other poems, which, however, are not now extant. ETHELWOLF. (Circa. 765.) Ethelwolf, the third Anglo-Latin poet of whom we have any memorial, ...« less