some extent be measured.  We can tell how many hours’ work we have done in a day; how many books we have written in a life’s working-time; how much faithful service we have consciously offered.  But by far the larger part of our work we cannot know.  We cannot know how much we may have influenced others for good, we cannot calculate the effect that we have had upon them, and, through them, upon others.  And to apply this thought specially to a poet, we may say that what he has done for others by suggesting, by stimulating, by inspiring, is not only a most valuable part of his work, but also an immeasurable part.  A poet may inspire another poet simply to sing; or he may inspire him to sing on subjects akin to those dearest to himself; and the second poet, or the third or fourth, as it may be, may sing better than the first.  But all the same, he owes it to the first poet, and, in a sense, the work of the latter poet is a part of the work of the earlier.

The poem “Genesis” is known to be the work of at least two people:  part of it is a version of an old Saxon paraphrase of the Old Testament, and must have been written later than Caedmon’s time.  It is always interesting to know who it was that wrote work we care for, but it is a more important matter to possess the work itself.  People in old times did not seem to care much whether their names were known or not.  The author, for example, of the book which for so long has been read and studied and cherished as one of the Church’s most treasured possessions, the “Imitation of Christ,” remained for a long time unknown; and this is by no means a solitary instance.  The interest in literary fame is mostly a modern thing.  Besides in these old times people worked in a different sort of way from now.  We must remember that the art of song went hand in hand with the art of verse-making.  All sorts of people sang the words they had heard, changing, adding, as it might be; adding to, or taking from the beauty and force of what they were dealing with, in proportion to the strength of their memory, or the quality of their imagination.

The story of the “Fall of the Angels” forms part of the “Genesis,” and it is well worth while to consider whether a very great poet of much later days, John Milton, may not have owed something when writing “Paradise Lost” to his early forerunner.

“Ten angel-tribes had the Guardian of all, the Holy Lord, created by the might of His hand, whom He well trusted to work His will in full allegiance to Him, for He had given them understanding and made them with His hands, the Lord Most Holy.

“He had set them in such blessedness.  One thereof had He made so strong, so mighty in his intellect; to him did He grant great sway, next to Himself in the Kingdom of Heaven.  So bright had He made him, so beautiful was his form in Heaven that was given him by the Lord of Hosts.  He was like unto the stars of light.  His duty was to praise the Lord, to laud Him because of his share of the gift of light.  Dear was he to our Lord.”