That oe Epic

Beowulf, that poem of unequalled tediousness and unparalleled circumlocution whose ambitions after an expansive magnificence are circumscribed only by the paucity of the author's invention, his conviction that epic grandeur can be achieved by the constant repetition of the epithet "greatest," by a retelling of the whole story twice over on the slightest occasion—this monument of dullness which he has just read is the showpiece, so that the means and the end of his story prove to be identical. He has wasted his time in an intellectual treadmill which could not have dissipated more thoroughly his energies if it had been consciously designed for the purpose. (There is, to use an expressive if colloquial phrase, no future in it). OE literature has sprung an ill favoured Minerva from the first page of his first book of selections, a mensk lady on molde mon may hir calle, for Gode!