The preface to St. Augustine's Soliloquies quoted above carries with it a stimulus, not only to translation or compilation, but to work like that of Caedmon or cynewulf, essentially original in many respects, though based, in the main, on material already given literary shape in other languages.
"Early Theories of Translation"
Flora Ross Amos
Even in Anglo-Saxon times many legends clustered round his name, so that cynewulf, the religious poet of early England, wrote the poem of "Elene" mainly on the subject of his conversion.
"Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race"
Maud Isabel Ebbutt
There were many devotional works of the ordinary kind; there were 'reading-books for winter and summer,' and song-books, and especially 'night-songs'; but the greatest treasure of all was the 'great book of English poetry,' known as the Exeter Book, in which cynewulf sang of the ruin of the 'purple arch,' and set forth the Exile's Lament and the Traveller's Song.
"The Great Book-Collectors"
Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton