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Another fact which points the same way is the strong resemblance between the phraseology of the Chronicle and that of Alfred's translation of Orosius, of which I shall have more to say when I come to speak of that translation. Gaimar also, as is well known, has a most interesting passage in which he connects the composition of the Chronicle both with Alfred and with Winchester. Of course Gaimar is a very late authority. But his statement harmonises so well with the indications furnished by the Chronicle itself, and with the inherent probabilities of the case, that I am inclined to attach much weight to it. Moreover the moderation of Gaimar's statement is distinctly in its favour. He does not say that Alfred wrote the Chronicle, but merely that he caused it to be written.

Of the materials available for carrying out Alfred's design for a national Chronicle I have said enough elsewhere.

? 94. It may be convenient to mention here one or two works which have been attributed to Alfred more or less doubtfully, in order to clear the way for the consideration of those works as to the authenticity of which there is practically no doubt.

On the whole then we must leave the question undecided, until further evidence or further argument is brought forward.

? 95. I would however point out that even if the decision should be against Alfred's authorship, it is still possible that the prose portion of the Paris Psalter may be the work referred to by William of Malmesbury. The colophon at the end of the MS. gives the name of the scribe in the Latin form Wulfwinus. In the Cottonian Collection there is a MS. of the Saxon Gospels with the colophon: 'Wulfwi me wrat.' This was certainly a Malmesbury book, as is shown by the insertion of a Malmesbury Charter between the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John. If this Wulfwi could be identified with the Wulfwinus of the Paris Psalter, or its archetype, it would make it likely that that also was a Malmesbury book. William of Malmesbury was librarian of his monastery, and there may have been a tradition there that the prose translation was the work of Alfred; a tradition which would be interesting even if it were not strictly true.

There is a statement in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis that 'Alfred translated the whole Old and New Testaments for the blessing of the English nation.' I know no earlier evidence for this, and I believe the statement to have arisen from a misunderstanding of one of William of Malmesbury's rhetorical flourishes in which he says that Alfred 'gave to English ears the greater part of the Roman library ', meaning by the last phrase Latin authors. But Bibliotheca is a common name in the Middle Ages for St. Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, the library of divine books; hence Malmesbury's statement was misunderstood as meaning that Alfred had translated the greater part of the Latin Bible.

The statement of Ingulf that Alfred made a Domesday Book like William the Conqueror rests either on a confusion of D?mb?c with Domesday Book; or possibly on a confusion of William's Rotulus Wintoniae, as Domesday was sometimes called, with Alfred's Winchester Book; i.e. the Chronicle.

Other works which popular tradition has ascribed to Alfred are a collection of proverbs, a translation of AEsop's fables, and a treatise on falconry.

? 96. Very different in value from the Dialogues, according to our notions, is the other work of Gregory, the translation of which is due to Alfred, the Pastoral Care. It is a beautiful book, full of wise and loving spiritual counsel, and of sayings both shrewd and tender. It is greatly to the credit of the mediaeval Church that it set such store by this little manual. Alfred sent a copy of his translation to each of his bishops, to aid them in what Gregory himself so beautifully calls 'the art of arts, the care of souls.' I agree with Professor W?lker in thinking this the earliest of Alfred's translations, and largely for the reason that, as he points out, the Preface, as we have learnt to know it, is so obviously a preface, not merely to this work, but to the whole series of translations which Alfred contemplated, of 'the books which it is most needful for every man to know.' If what was said above is correct, the date of it cannot be earlier than 894, and it may be a little later. It has often been noticed that of all Alfred's works , this is the one in which he keeps closest to his original. I attribute this rather to his reverence for that original, than to any inability on his part to deal more freely with it, had he so desired. The omissions are few and unimportant. The additions are much more numerous, but as a rule they are very slight. They are mostly of the kind which a modern editor would place on the margin or in a footnote. A very large class consists merely of the insertion of the names of the various books of the Bible from which Gregory's scriptural quotations are taken. In the case of the psalms the number of the psalm is often given, which is possibly an illustration of Asser's statements as to the special fondness of Alfred for the Psalter. Other insertions consist of brief explanatory notes; an allusion or metaphor is cleared up, a foreign word or custom is explained, a quotation or story is completed. Thus after a reference to the institution of the Levirate among the Jews, Alfred adds: 'this was good law under the old covenant, and to us now it is a parable.' The manna is 'the sweet food that came down from heaven.' Shittim wood, we are told, never rots. It does not follow that the explanation is always correct. Thus to Christ's denunciation of the Pharisees for scrupulosity in tithing herbs is added the statement that they left untithed their more valuable possessions.

? 97. Occasionally Alfred interprets biblical things by Saxon analogies. Thus the Hebrew cities of refuge become a Saxon 'frithstow,' as they do also in Alfred's preface to his laws. The Doctors among whom the child Jesus was found were the wisest 'Witan' that there were in Jerusalem. Uriah, whom David murdered, was 'his own loyal thane.' In the Soliloquies Alfred speaks of the Apostles as Christ's thanes. This process is carried yet further in the sacred epic poetry both of the insular and continental Saxons, the disciples becoming Christ's 'comites' or 'gesiths,' who are bound to die with their Lord. Alfred here also, as in some of his other works, and in the Laws, lays great stress on the position of the Lord. Once or twice Alfred tones down his original; thus where Gregory speaking of the death of impenitent sinners says: 'they lament that they refused to serve God now that they can in no wise by service make good the evils of their former negligence,' Alfred in his pity inserts the clause: 'unless they be helped by repentance and God's mercy.' In one instance the explanation given is dogmatic, the reception of 'the spirit of adoption' of which St. Paul speaks, being referred to baptism. No doubt for many, if not most, of these additions Alfred was indebted to his clerical assistants. Often, without any very distinct addition being made to the text, it is rather freely expanded. Sometimes the rendering is rather loose, as if the meaning of the original had been imperfectly grasped; sometimes it is distinctly wrong. And throughout one may say that the translation is made rather 'sense by sense' than 'word by word.' And sometimes, though the phrase may be very close to the original, it seems to bear the stamp of Alfred's own experience. The heading of the fourth chapter must have come straight from his heart: 'that many times the business of government and rule distracts the mind of the ruler.' 'What,' he exclaims in another place, 'is rule and authority but the soul's tempest which is always buffeting the ship of the heart with the storms of many thoughts, so that it is driven hither and thither in very narrow straits, wellnigh wrecked among many mighty rocks?' Or again: 'the patient must be admonished to strengthen their heart after their great victory, and hold the burg of their mind against marauding bands, and fortify it with battlements.' Lastly: 'every host is the less effective when it comes, if its coming is known beforehand. For it finds them prepared whom it thought to take unprepared.' In these two last passages we seem almost to hear the echo of Alfred's experience in 878.

? 98. The next two works of Alfred to be considered are both historical, viz. the translations of Orosius' Universal History, and of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. There has been however considerable difference of opinion as to the order of these two works. The earlier critics, however much they might differ among themselves as to the succession of Alfred's works taken as a whole, all, with the exception of Dr. Bosworth, agreed in placing the Orosius before the Bede. But in recent times W?lker, August Schmidt, and my friend Professor Schipper of Vienna have argued in favour of the other view. The chief ground on which they have based their conclusion is the greater freedom of the Orosius both in translation and arrangement as compared with the Bede. In the latter the translation is sometimes quite unduly literal, so as to be almost unintelligible in places without a reference to the original; while as to arrangement, the modifications of the original are, for the most part, limited to omissions of matters like the Easter Controversy which had ceased to have any living interest, the additions and transpositions being very unimportant. The Orosius on the other hand is not only freer in translation, but is so recast by transposition, addition, and omission, as to be practically a new work.

It is argued that this greater freedom implies a more practised hand, and therefore a later date. The argument seems to me fallacious. As regards substantial alterations we must bear in mind the different character of the two originals. Bede's Ecclesiastical History has always been an almost sacred book to Englishmen. It needed no recasting, beyond a few omissions, to make it suitable for English readers in Alfred's day. But Orosius' work, written with the polemical object of enforcing the argument of Augustine's De Ciuitate Dei against the pagan contention that the troubles of the times were due to the introduction of Christianity, by showing, in a survey of universal history, that the evils of pre-Christian days were far greater, and full therefore of ecclesiastical gloating over the crimes and calamities of pagan history, required much more drastic treatment. On the occasional over-literalness of the Bede translation I shall have something to say presently. As regards the greater freedom of the Orosius, any one who has examined in one of our Pass Schools will bear witness that there is a kind of free translation, which is very far from implying a perfect mastery of the original. And I must confess that Alfred's freedom in the Orosius is often of the latter kind. I should say that there are far more serious blunders in translation in the Orosius than in the Bede; though on the other hand it must be remembered that Bede's Latin is a good deal easier than that of Orosius.

? 99. In the Introduction to the second volume of my Saxon Chronicle I argued in favour of the priority of the Orosius, on the ground of the affinity in diction and expression between it and the Saxon Chronicle. That argument I need not repeat here; I still think that it has force, though I possibly laid too much stress upon it, as one is apt to do when one gets hold of an idea which one fancies to be new. It is however capable of being reinforced. The second chapter of Bede's first book contains an account of Caesar's invasions of Britain. This is a matter which one would take to be of great interest to all inhabitants of this island. Yet in the Bede translation it is, in the older recension, omitted altogether, and even in the later recension is passed over with the barest mention. But this chapter is almost wholly taken from Orosius; and when we turn to the Orosius version, we find that Alfred has not only translated the passage in question, but has enriched it with his own local knowledge, telling us that Caesar's first two engagements with the natives were 'in the land which is called Kent-land,' and that the third took place 'near the ford which is called Wallingford.' If the Orosius translation preceded the Bede, we can understand why Alfred omitted the corresponding passage in the latter. Again, in chapter v of the same book, Bede expressly corrects a mistake of Orosius' as to the wall of Severus, saying that it was not properly a wall, but a rampart of sods with a ditch; Alfred not only adopts this correction here, but in another place of the Bede seems to emphasise it, where there is no special emphasis in the original. In the Orosius passage the mistake is uncorrected. Alfred shows in many ways that he had a good memory, and that he did not shrink from correcting his authors where he thought they needed it; he would hardly have ignored Bede's correction had he been cognisant of it when he was making the translation of Orosius. The only serious argument on the other side is one which has not, as far as I am aware, been previously noticed. I mean the affinity of passages in the Orosius with passages in the Boethius, which is, as we shall see, almost certainly later than either the Orosius or the Bede. Of these the most important are two in which Alfred without any hint from the original protests against the doctrine that all things happen by fate, a subject which occupies a prominent place in the Boethius. There would, however, be nothing impossible in the supposition that Alfred may have read the Consolation of Boethius before he undertook the work of translating it, or the subject may have been suggested to his active mind in some other way. On the whole the question of precedence as between the Orosius and the Bede must be left uncertain; though in accordance with my own view I shall take the Orosius first.

? 100. It would be impossible to discuss in detail the modifications made by Alfred in his original. They occur on almost every page. I can only indicate their general character, and give a few specimens of some of the more important. And in doing this I very willingly acknowledge the help which I have derived from Dr. Hugo Schilling's useful dissertation on the subject.

It may give some measure of the extent of Alfred's changes to note that whereas the original consists of seven books divided into 236 chapters, the Saxon version contains six books with only 84 chapters. The most important additions are to be found in the geographical introduction which Orosius prefixes to his work. It is here that Alfred inserts the well-known description of the geography of Germany, which for him includes all central Europe from the Rhine on the west to the Don on the east, and from the Danube on the south to the White Sea on the north. Here too are inserted the yet more famous accounts of the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, on which so much has been written. Ohthere's account begins: 'Ohthere told his lord king Alfred that of all the Northmen he dwelt furthest to the North'; and this is the only direct evidence which the work contains as to its authorship. These accounts and also the description of Germany, which, like them, must have been carefully derived from oral information, illustrate what Asser tells of Alfred's intercourse with strangers and his eagerness to learn from them, a trait which was characteristic also of the great Charles. In the historical part the chief additions are the description of a Roman triumph, and of the temple of Janus. But there are endless smaller additions; and of these one of the most interesting is the anecdote, ultimately derived from Suetonius, how Titus used to say that the day was a lost day on which he had done no good to any one. This saying is quoted also in the Chronicle, and is one of the links connecting the two works. We can understand how this saying of the 'deliciae generis humani' would come home to the heart of England's darling. Some of these shorter insertions are brief explanatory notes like those which we have already met with in the Cura Pastoralis, and, like them, are by no means always correct.

? 101. Sometimes the explanations are longer; and many of these are due entirely to Alfred's imagination, and are intended to make clear to us how, in his view, the event narrated came about. It is not in accordance with our modern notions that editorial explanations of this kind should be incorporated in the text of an author. But the idea of literary property is a comparatively modern one, and footnotes and appendices had not then been invented. It is more questionable when the phrase 'cwae? Orosius' which Alfred frequently uses to indicate that a sentiment or a statement is his author's, not his own, is used, as is the case in one or two instances, to introduce something for which there is no warrant in the original; for instance, one of the passages about fate alluded to above.

Of these editorial explanations the most interesting perhaps are those which relate to military matters; because they seem in some cases to reflect Alfred's own military experience--a point which Schilling has not noticed. For instance, when Alfred gives as Hannibal's reason for his terrible winter march over the Apennines, that 'he knew that Flaminius the consul was fancying that he might remain securely in his winter quarters, ... being fully persuaded that no one would attempt such a march by reason of the intense cold,' we think of the sudden swoop of the Danes on Alfred at Chippenham that Epiphany tide 878; the stratagem of a simulated flight, by which he explains the defeat of Regulus, is one which there is reason to believe that the Danes more than once resorted to; as also the device which he attributes to Hannibal, without any warrant from the original text, of sending out parties to ravage in various directions in order to make the enemy imagine that his whole force was occupied in this manner; though this also closely resembles the feigned attacks which Alfred himself made from Athelney, in order to mask his advance in force to Ethandun.

? 103. Often the additions and expansions let us see Alfred's own sentiments; his religious feelings, his admiration for genius, patriotism, and courage, as exemplified in such men as Alexander, Scaevola, Regulus, the two Scipios and Caesar; his disgust at ingratitude to God and man, at cruelty, treachery, or sloth. The omissions are often dictated by similar motives. He leaves out or abridges many of the civil wars, the calamities, the crimes, the unclean mythologies, over which Orosius gloated as proofs of heathen depravity; though often the omissions have no special motive beyond the necessity for shortening the work. It must be confessed that these omissions frequently have the effect of wholly dislocating the succession of events. And it may be said generally that Alfred, though he apprehends individual incidents with extraordinary vividness, is by no means clear as to the connexion of events. For the latter quality greater knowledge was required than was accessible in his day. In regard to the additions, moreover, we must bear in mind the possibility that some of them may be due, not to Alfred himself, but to interpolations or glosses in the MSS. which he used. This, as we shall see, is a consideration of great importance in the case of the Boethius, but it has been proved to apply to one or two passages of the Orosius also. That there are many errors as to persons bearing the same or similar names, many confusions of personal and geographical appellations, many quaint mistakes of translation and of fact, as when he says that Augustus took his name from the eighth month of the year instead of vice versa, turns the snake-charming tribe of Psylli into a kind of serpent, and infers from Augustus' heart-broken exclamation, 'Vare, redde legiones,' that that ill-fated commander had escaped alive from his defeat; this is only what we might expect, and it would be ungracious to dwell upon such things. Dr. Schilling has truly and excellently said of the Orosius: 'We see Alfred here weak in historical and linguistic knowledge; but we see him also simple, high-hearted, and earnest; full of warm appreciation for all that is good, and of scorn for all that is evil; putting himself to school that he may educate and raise his people.'

LECTURE VI

LITERARY WORKS ; SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

? 104. We have seen that in the case of the Orosius, the only direct hint of authorship contained in the book itself is the address of Ohthere to 'his lord King Alfred'; and the earliest external testimony on the subject is to be found in William of Malmesbury in the early part of the twelfth century. But no one has ever doubted King Alfred's authorship. Till recently the same might have been said of the Bede; in 1877 Professor W?lker spoke of Alfred's authorship of the Bede as 'a fact which no one hitherto has doubted or could doubt.' Since then, however, Mr. Sweet, in his Anglo-Saxon Reader, and Dr. Thomas Miller in his edition of the Bede translation, published by the Early English Text Society, have tried to overthrow the traditional view; the former, mainly on the ground of that occasional over-literalness of the version already alluded to; the latter, because he thinks that it shows Mercian characteristics incompatible with a West Saxon origin. Now we must admit at once that the book itself contains no direct evidence of authorship, not even such a hint as is dropped in the Orosius. On the other hand the external evidence is very much earlier. AElfric, the homilist, distinctly quotes the book as Alfred's. In his homily on St. Gregory he says: 'Many books tell of his conversation and holy life, as does Historia Anglorum, which King Alfred translated out of English into Latin.... We will however tell you something about him because the fore-said book is not known to all of you, although it is translated into English.' This was written within a hundred years of Alfred's death. For many books of which the authorship has never been doubted we cannot produce evidence anything like as early. I may note in passing that in speaking of the translation of Gregory's Dialogues AElfric makes no assertion as to the Alfredian authorship, merely saying 'the book has been translated into English, and in it any one who will read it may learn profitably of these matters.' In another place he gives interesting evidence that, till he himself took pen in hand, Alfred's translations were the only books accessible to those who did not know Latin.

Moreover the Cambridge University MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Bede, which is said to be of the middle of the eleventh century, has at the beginning and end the following distich:--

'Historicus quondam fecit me Beda Latinum, Alfred, rex Saxo, transtulit ille pius.'

The same MS. contains, between Bede's Preface and the History proper, a copy of the West Saxon genealogy in the exact form in which it appears in MS. A of the Saxon Chronicle; i.e. it comes down to the accession of Alfred, and no further. This again connects the work with Alfred. The Cambridge MS. is, as far as we can test it, an undoubted copy of one which exists in the library of my own college. This is unfortunately imperfect, both at the beginning and the end. But if, as is likely, it also contained originally the distich and the pedigree, the evidence is thrown yet further back.

Curiously enough both La?amon and Rudborne speak of the Saxon version as if it were Bede's own.

? 105. The question of its authorship must not be regarded as outside the pale of discussion. Only I do not think that the arguments hitherto advanced are sufficient to establish a negative conclusion. As to Dr. Miller's Mercian theory, I may say at once that I have no pretensions to pose as an expert in early English dialects. I can get up no enthusiasm for the minute distinctions of form and spelling which form their criteria. They have for me only the practical and unpleasant interest that they oblige me often to look up a word in three or four different places in the dictionary before finding it. I may however mention that Professor Schipper, the latest editor of the Anglo-Saxon Bede, does not regard the Mercian theory as established. But even if it were established, it does not seem to me incompatible with Alfred's authorship. It is agreed that all our existing MSS. go back to a single archetype, though they branch off into two groups which form to some extent a twofold recension. The scribe of that archetypal MS. may have been a Mercian, and there may have been other MSS. in which these Mercian peculiarities were wanting. Even if it be assumed , that this Mercian archetype was the original MS. of all, it is equally open to us to suppose that the scribe to whom Alfred dictated his translation in the first instance may have been a Mercian. Or again it is quite possible that the Mercian characteristics, if they exist, may be due to the influence of the Mercian scholars who assisted Alfred in his work--Plegmund, Werferth, and the two Mercian chaplains mentioned by Asser. And it is some confirmation of this that there is a certain affinity noticeable between the diction and style of the Bede translation and that of the earlier or unrevised version of the Dialogues, which, as we have seen, there is good reason to attribute to Werferth.

? 106. As to the over-literalness of the translation in places, the fact must be admitted, though the extent of it has been, I think, somewhat exaggerated. The cases fall under three heads: where a Latin construction is unidiomatically imitated in the Saxon; this applies especially to constructions with the ablative absolute, the accusative and infinitive, and the use of the passive voice, the range of which is much more restricted in Saxon than in Latin; where a Latin word is translated by a Saxon one which may correspond fairly well with the general meaning of the Latin word, but does not give its sense in the particular passage; where a phrase or sentence is translated, to use Alfred's own expression, 'word by word,' instead of 'sense by sense.' To all these classes the explanation suggested by Professor Schipper would often apply, viz. that the translator may have embodied in his work interlinear glosses which had been made to assist him; and he cites in illustration the difference between the West Saxon and Northumbrian versions of the Gospels, the former of which is a genuine translation, while the latter is an interlinear gloss made word for word. Some however of the cases where Latin constructions are reproduced, and also one or two of the second class, give me the impression, not that the translator could not have translated more idiomatically if he had pleased, but rather that he was trying experiments with the language. The development of early prose in almost all European languages has been largely influenced by Latin models, and it was only experience which could show how far the process of assimilation might be carried. Similarly for some two centuries after the Renaissance English prose literature is full of experimentally transplanted Latinisms, of which a large proportion failed to make good their footing in the language. Another possibility must also be borne in mind; that the Bede may never have received Alfred's final revision. We have seen that in the case of the Dialogues an extensive revision was found desirable at a later time, and we seem to have traces of a partial revision of the Bede in the younger group of MSS. mentioned above, in which not only does the translation vary, at times very considerably, but a passage is inserted which the earlier recension omits, and conversely. When this partial revision was made I cannot say, but probably not by Alfred himself. On the whole, then, I do not regard Mr. Sweet's or Dr. Miller's argument as conclusive, either against Alfred's authorship of the Bede translation, or against the priority of the Orosius.

? 107. I have already said that the principal changes made by Alfred in the Bede are in the way of omission, the additions being comparatively slight. It is worth while to see what considerations guided him in this. First of all he omits almost all documents, in two instances he just gives a brief summary of a letter in oratio obliqua. He seems at first to have intended to omit the interrogations and responses of Augustine and Gregory, but afterwards to have changed his mind, as in all the MSS. they occur after the third book instead of in their proper place near the end of the first. He also omits all the metrical compositions, epitaphs, &c., which occur in the course of the work. Then, too, he omits almost everything bearing on the Easter Controversy; partly no doubt because he felt, as modern readers feel, the intolerable tediousness of the whole thing; but partly also, we may well believe, because he disliked the bitterness which even the gentle Bede shows on this question, for there are little touches which seem to prove that the piety and self-devotion of the Celtic missionaries had made a deep impression on his heart. The early history prior to the conversion of the Saxons is also a good deal abbreviated, no doubt as having less direct interest for his readers. So the description of the sacred places which Bede largely borrowed from Arculfus is omitted, probably for similar reasons.

? 108. It has often formed a subject both of wonder and regret that Alfred should not have enriched the Bede with additions drawn from his own knowledge of the traditions of his people, as he might so easily have done. Reverence for his original may have had something to do with this; but I agree with Professor W?lker that the main reason probably was, because all that Alfred desired in this line had already been done in the compilation of the Saxon Chronicle. It is confirmatory of this that the chronological summary appended to his history by Bede, which had, as I have elsewhere shown, such an important influence on the development of annalistic writing in general, and of the Saxon Chronicle in particular, is omitted in the Bede translation.

Smaller additions and expansions there are, but they seldom really add anything to the narrative. They are as a rule merely inserted to make it a little more clear, or a little more vivid, or a little more in accordance with the translator's ideas. Occasionally, though rarely, they show a touch of personal feeling; as where Diocletian is characterised as the bad emperor, Constantine as the good emperor, and Aidan as the good bishop. Sometimes, as in the other works, they are brief explanations of things which the readers might not know. Occasionally statements of Bede's are altered, or omitted, because they were no longer applicable, or they are marked distinctly as being Bede's and not Alfred's. But in other cases similar statements are retained, though it would not be safe to argue from this that the state of things indicated still subsisted in Alfred's day.

Here too there are mistakes, though fewer and less serious than in the Orosius. In some cases they may be due to erroneous readings in the MS. which Alfred used. In one or two instances Alfred's version shows a remarkable divergence of historical fact, which can hardly arise wholly from misunderstanding.

But on the whole the translation is a worthy one, preserving, and in one or two instances enhancing, the beauty of the original, the most beautiful historical work which the Church had produced since Luke and John wrote their Gospels.

One incidental merit of the translation, as Stubbs has remarked, is that it enables us to equate the Saxon technical terms of officers and institutions with the corresponding Latin ones.

? 109. We come now to what is in many respects the most interesting and important of all Alfred's literary works, viz. the translation of Boethius on the Consolation of Philosophy. It is here that the additions made by Alfred to his original give us the clearest insight into his own character and modes of thought. And the original is in itself one of the most noteworthy books of the Middle Ages. Just as Orosius was to those ages the accepted manual of universal history, and the Cura Pastoralis their accepted manual of Spiritual Counsel, so the Consolatio of Boethius was their accepted manual of practical and speculative philosophy; the one channel through which some tincture of ancient speculation passed into the popular thought of the early Middle Ages. Perhaps no book except the Bible and the Imitatio has been translated into so many languages; and in more than one European country the early translations of the Consolatio have had an important influence on the development of a vernacular literature. For this popularity several reasons may be given. Something was probably due to the form of the work, which is written in that mixture of verse and prose known as the Satura Menippaea. The lyrics of the Consolatio won the enthusiastic admiration of the great Renaissance scholar, F. C. Scaliger, and I must confess that to me they seem extremely beautiful, though their beauty is of a somewhat frosty order. But if they have something of the hardness and coldness of marble, they have also its purity and high polish. But the chief reason was, no doubt, sympathy with the author's misfortunes, whose sudden fall, from being the favourite and chief minister of Theodoric, to prison and to death, made him one of the most signal examples in that ever-lengthening treatise De casibus illustrium uirorum, on which the Middle Ages pondered with intense and morbid interest, feeding that contempt for the world and all things human, which finds such passionate expression in many mediaeval writings:--

'O esca uermium, o massa pulueris, O ros, o uanitas, cur sic extolleris?'

? 110. It might have been thought that this absence of any distinctively Christian character would have militated against the popularity of the Consolatio in the Middle Ages. That it did not do so was due partly to causes already enumerated, partly to the fact that the non-Christian character of the work was to some extent concealed by the Christian interpretation given to various passages in the commentaries and glosses on Boethius; which interpretations were in turn embodied in the different translations of the Consolatio, at the head of which stands Alfred's version.

This interesting fact, that many of the additions in Alfred's Boethius, especially those of a distinctly Christian character, are not really due to Alfred himself but to the glosses and commentaries which were used by him or his learned assistants, was first pointed out by Dr. Schepss in a very suggestive article in the Archiv f?r's Studium der neueren Sprachen. It is much to be regretted that Dr. Schepss' death prevented him from pursuing this line of investigation further. Till this field has been fully explored, we incur the danger of citing as specially characteristic of Alfred something which he only borrowed from others. In some instances I have noticed that the additions made by Alfred are really taken from, or at least suggested by other passages in the text of Boethius. But, when all deductions have been made, there remains enough that we may safely take as evidence of Alfred's thought and feeling. I have already cited the passage bearing on the needs and instruments of a king. This was to some extent suggested by a commentary, but it is instinct with the mind of Alfred, as is the oft-quoted sentence with which the chapter closes: 'My will was to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after my memory in good works.' Very Alfredian too are the thoughts that reward should not be looked for in this world, but should be sought from God alone; that a good name is better than any wealth; that true nobility is of the mind, not of the body; that an honest purpose is accepted, even though its accomplishment be frustrated; that a king without free subjects is nothing worth; that no one should be idle, or wish to live a soft life. But perhaps the noblest passage is that in which by a splendid metaphor Philosophy is made to say: 'When I with my servants mount aloft, then do we look down upon the stormy world, even as the eagle when he soars above the clouds in stormy weather, so that the storms cannot hurt him';--a metaphor which so strikingly expresses Alfred's own soaring superiority to what he elsewhere calls 'the wind of stern labours, and the rain of excessive anxiety.'

And this brings me to another point. If any one will look through the additions made by Alfred to the text of Boethius, which are very conveniently distinguished by italic type in Mr. Sedgefield's handy rendering of Alfred's version into modern English, he can hardly fail to notice how many of them consist in metaphors and similes; none perhaps so fine as that just quoted, but often of great interest and beauty. Even where the simile was suggested by something in the text or commentary which Alfred had before him, it is often developed at much greater length. This is a point of some interest, because it shows that Alfred's mind was of the class which delights in parable and figure, and makes it not unreasonable to look for deeper meanings in what he wrote and wrought.

? 111. I have said that the subject of fate occupies a prominent place in the Consolatio and in Alfred's translation of it. The relation of fate to providence, of divine foreknowledge to human freedom, the nature of evil, the existence of chance, these are the high themes round which much of the latter part of the argument circles. They are the themes which occupied the more intellectual spirits among Milton's fallen angels:--

'Others apart sat on a hill retired In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.'

And fallen man has succeeded as little as fallen angel in solving these high doubts. Alfred realises, as indeed does Boethius, the arduous nature of the inquiry; and his conclusion is, as we should expect, much more than is the case with Boethius, the conclusion of Christian faith and practical Christian piety: 'I say, as do all Christian men, that it is the divine purpose that rules, and not Fate.' He sees, as all moralists have seen, that morality is only possible on a basis of freedom, that fatalism reduces vice and virtue, punishment and reward to unmeaning terms. 'To men and to angels God gave the gift of freedom that they might do good or evil, whichever they pleased.... But if it be true that the good and the wicked are so made as to be unable to act otherwise than they do, then vain is our labour when we pray, and fast, or give alms, if we have no more thank therefor than those who in all things ... run after their fleshly lusts; ... and vain too is the commandment which God gave to man that he should eschew evil and do good.' God knows all our works, before we even conceive them in our thought; but this knowledge is not a cause compelling us so to act, any more than the knowledge of the steersman that a storm is coming, is the cause of the storm.

There are other points which illustrate Alfred's studies, tastes, and circumstances; the saying that in the golden age no one had heard of a pirate host; the allusion to the wise goldsmith, Weland; the explanations about India and Thule.

And there are things in the text itself which evidently come home to Alfred; the beauty of gems, the fairness of the country-side--the fairest of all God's creations, the song of the birds in the woods, the worth of friends; the stories of kings reduced to poverty, of the sword of Damocles, the joy of a calm haven after storms.

Here too, as in the case of the Orosius, Alfred has modified his original by omissions as well as additions; but it is unnecessary to go minutely into this point, as Mr. Sedgefield has prefixed to his edition of Alfred's version an elaborate table showing the relation of that version to the original.

? 112. In regard to the translation as a whole no doubt has ever been expressed as to the authorship of Alfred; and it is the only one of Alfred's works which is mentioned by name by Ethelwerd, who wrote towards the end of the tenth century. There is, however, an interesting literary question connected with it, which is this. The translation exists in only two MSS., one in the Cottonian Collection, the other in the Bodleian. In the older or Cottonian MS. the metrical parts of Boethius are, with three exceptions, rendered into alliterative Saxon verse; in the later or Bodleian MS. they are rendered into prose. It is as to Alfred's authorship of the alliterative poems that the controversy has raged; and those who deny their authenticity are compelled to deny also the authenticity of the two proems in prose and verse, in both of which the poems are distinctly ascribed to Alfred. The question, though interesting as a literary problem, is not intrinsically of great importance. The poems are not of the highest order, though they have been, I think, unduly depreciated. Alfred's fame will not be much exalted if he wrote them, or much depressed if they should be adjudged to another. I must confess, however, that a great deal of the argument on the negative side seems to me to be of that purely arbitrary and subjective kind which in its ultimate analysis amounts to this: 'it can't have been so, because I don't think that it was.'

'And from my pillow, looking forth by light Of Moon or favouring Stars, I could behold The antechapel where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.'

But it also contains the no less well-known, but most inglorious line:

It would also prove that the late Professor Conington never wrote a verse translation of the Aeneid. Unlike Alfred, Mr. Conington was, as we all know, a very considerable Latin scholar; but I must be pardoned for saying that, like Alfred, he was not a very considerable poet. He wrote a prose translation of the Aeneid, of which he thought so little that it was not published till after his death; he wrote a verse translation of the same poem, of which he evidently thought a good deal. Yet can we not imagine a German critic a thousand years hence arguing that the author of the prose translation could never have penned a couplet like the following?--

'Three calves to Eryx next he kills, A lambkin's blood to Tempest spills.'

Another point which, as Hartmann showed, tells in favour of Alfred's authorship is the way in which in the poems references are made to the prose portions of the work.

On the whole I regard the attack on Alfred's authorship of the Metra as having decidedly broken down; and in this opinion I am glad to have the concurrence of a very competent critic in the Times of August 20, 1901. I am breaking no confidence in identifying that critic with my friend and teacher Professor Earle.

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