Between the Lord’s Prayer, laws of the land, and Beowulf, English had already sunk deep shafts into written language. Latin and Greek had created great bodies of literature in the classical past. In the East at about this time, Arabic and Chinese were being used as the languages of poetry. But at that time, no other language in the Christian world could match the achievements of the Beowulf poet and his anonymous contemporaries inside and outside the Church. Old English had found its home. It had fought its way to pre-eminence in a new, rich and diverse country. The adventure was under way.
