Homer, among the Eastern Eall geondwliteth, Daeth is sio sothe We magon singan Swyle butan lease. Greeks, was erst The best of bards in all that country-side; And Homer often greatly praised the sun, He to the people sang her praises due. Yet can she not shine out, tho' clear and bright, But the Almighty Lord of worldly things, That is the true Sun, whom we rightly may Alfred is here commonly accused of an anachronism: but really without any cause. Was not Homer in spirit the friend and teacher of the Roman Epic Poet? if the Iliad had never existed, should we ever have heard of the Eneid ?-No:-let us vindicate the self-taught Anglo-Saxon even here; and not cease further to admire how he brings all his knowledge to the footstool of his God. Yet more, thou mayst know, If it list thee to mind, That many things go Over earth in their kind, In shape as in hue. Known or unknown Some forms of them all On earth lying prone Must creep and must crawl; By feathers help'd not, Nor walking with feet, As it is their lot Earth they must eat. Twofooted these, Its going wellknows, Yet to this earth Is everything bound, Bowed from its birth Down to the ground, Looking on clay And leaning to dust, Some as they may And some as they must. Man alone goes Of all things upright,— Whereby he shows That his mind and his might Ever should rise Up to the skies. Unless like the beast His mind is intent Downwards to feast,It cannot be meant This ends the list of the metrical paraphrases of Boethius, as given by King Alfred. A few of the odes were omitted by him,— probably from want of leisure to set them to music: but in the prose version of Boethius we shall probably find all such deficiencies supplied. Meanwhile, to make an end. The writer is more humbly aware than the severest possible critic would wish to make him, how little light he, for his part, has been able to throw upon Anglo-Saxon Metre in general. The fact seems to him to be, that there must have been supplied a running harp accompaniment which, with vocal adlibita also, made up the rhythm and possibly now and then the echoing rhyme, of the words as downwritten. Take any modern oratorio, and judge how little we can guess its melodies from the mere words. There would be naturally very little to guide us in words alone, if we remember that poetry in those early times of our tongue was far more the harper's craft than the scribe's. At the same time the present writer has so varied his measures (more often than Boethius) that, even be it but by chance, he may have lighted now and then on some approximation in English to the ancient poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. KING ALFRED'S PARLIAMENT AT SHIFFORD, A METRICAL FRAGMENT FROM THE ANGLO-Saxon. At Shifford many thanes were set; • We have to add the interesting fragment here appended: the authorship is disputable; but there is no doubt that it is a genuine echo of the words of Alfred, especially the latter part, the beautiful pathos of which, as addressed by the dying Alfred to his son and successor Essa s 32 There too England's own darling, Alfred, England's king and clerk, Thus quoth Alfred, England's love, 66 Meekly, O mine own dear friend, "Under Christ, who is not fill'd "With book lore, in law wellskill'd; "Letters he must understand, "And know by what he holds his land." Edward the Elder, is truly affecting. The Anglo-Saxon of this fragment has come down to us in a much more modern form, and is therefore not given here. The antiquary will hereafter find it among the original texts. Thus quoth Alfred: "Wealth is but a curse, "If wisdom be not added to the purse. 66 Though a man hold an hundred and threescore Acres of tilth, with gold all covered o'er "Like growing corn,-it all is nothing worth, "Unless it prove his Friend, not Foe, on earth. "For wherein, saving for good use alone, "Does gold-ore differ from a simple stone?" Thus quoth Alfred: "Never let the young 66 Despair of good, nor give himself to wrong, |