{ 5 } 'beowulf is a half-baked native epic the development of which was killed by latin learning ; it was inspired by emulation of virgil , and is a product of the education that came in with christianity ; it is feeble and incompetent as a narrative ; the rules of narrative are cleverly observed in the manner of the learned epic ; it is the confused product of a committee of muddle-headed and probably beer-bemused anglo-saxons ( this is a gallic voice ) ; it is a string of pagan lays edited by monks ; it is the work of a learned but inaccurate christian antiquarian ; it is a work of genius , rare and surprising in the period , though the genius seems to have been shown principally in doing something much better left undone ( this is a very recent voice ) ; it is a wild folk-tale ( general chorus ) ; it is a poem of an aristocratic and courtly tradition ( same voices ) ; it is a hotchpotch ; it is a sociological , anthropological , archaeological document ; it is a mythical allegory ( very old voices these and generally shouted down , but not so far out as some of the newer cries ) ; it is rude and rough ; it is a masterpiece of metrical art ; it has no shape at all ; it is singularly weak in construction ; it is a clever allegory of contemporary politics ( old john earle with some slight support from mr. girvan , only they look to different periods ) ; its architecture is solid ; it is thin and cheap ( a solemn voice ) ; it is undeniably weighty ( the same voice ) ; it is a national epic ; it is a translation from the danish ; it was imported by frisian traders ; it is a burden to english syllabuses ; and ( final universal chorus of all voices ) it is worth studying . '