CHAP. IV. Elfred. 878. 901. Birth of he would that we had at hand; for it is his constant wont, whatever be the hindrances either in mind or body, by day and by night, either himself to read books aloud or to listen to others reading them." 1 3 The work, however, which most told upon English culture was done not by these scholars but by Alfred himself. The king's aim was simple and practical. He desired that "every youth now in England that is freeborn and has wealth enough be set to learn, as long as he is not fit for any other occupation, till they well know how to read English writing; and let those be afterwards taught in the Latin tongue who are to continue learning and be promoted to a higher rank." 2 For this purpose he set up, like Charles the Great, a school for the young nobles at his own court. Books were needed for them as well as for the priests, to the bulk of whom Latin was a strange tongue, and the king set himself to provide English books for these readers. It was in carrying out this simple purpose that Ælfred changed the whole front of English literature. In the paraphrase of Cadmon, in the epic of Beowulf, in the verses of Northumbrian singers, in battle-songs and ballads, English poetry had already risen to a grand and vigorous life. But English prose hardly existed. Since Theodore's time theology had been the favourite study of English scholars, and theology naturally took a Latin shape. Historical literature followed Bæda's lead in finding 1 Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 47-51. 2 a Latin vehicle of expression.1 Saints' lives, which had now become numerous, were as yet always written in Latin. It was from Alfred's day that this tide of literary fashion suddenly turned. English prose started vigorously into life. Theology stooped to an English dress. History became almost wholly vernacular. The translation of Latin saint-lives into English became one of the most popular literary trades of the day. Even medicine found English interpreters. A national literature in fact sprang suddenly into existence which was without parallel in the western world.* 1 "The charters anterior to Alfred are invariably in Latin.” Palgrave, "Engl. Commonw." i. 56. 2 From the time of Ælfred's version of "The Pastoral Book," religious works like Elfric's Homilies are written in English. In this vernacular theology England stood alone. 3 From the days of Alfred to the eve of the Norman Conquest, when the "Vita Haroldi" forms an exception (for the Encomium Emma is hardly of English origin), we possess only a single Latin historian, the ealdorman Æthelweard. "The old English writers," says Mr. Sweet, "did not learn the art of prose composition from Latin models; they had a native historical prose, which shows a gradual elaboration and improvement, quite independent of Latin or any other foreign influence. This is proved by an examination of the historical pieces inserted into the Chronicle. The first of these, the account of the death of Cynewulf and Cynehard, is composed in the abrupt disconnected style of oral conversation: it shows prose composition in its rudest and most primitive form, and bears a striking resemblance to the earliest Icelandic prose. In the detailed narrative of Alfred's campaign and sea-fights the style assumes a different aspect; without losing the force and simplicity of the earlier pieces, it becomes refined and polished to a high degree, and yet shows no traces of foreign influence. Accordingly, in the Orosius,' the only translation of Alfred's which M CHAP. IV. Ælfred. 878 901. CHAP. IV. Ælfred. 878901. It is thus that in the literatures of modern Europe that of England leads the way. The Romance tongues, the tongues of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, were only just Alfred's emerging into definite existence when Elfred wrote. translations. Ulfilas, the first Teutonic prose writer, found no successors among his Gothic people; and none of the German folk across the sea were to possess a prose literature of their own for centuries to come. English therefore was not only the first Teutonic literature, it was the earliest prose literature of the modern world. And at the outset of English literature stands the figure of Ælfred. The mighty roll of books that fills our libraries opens with the translations of the king. He took his books as he found them; they were in fact the popular manuals of his day; the compilation of "Orosius," which was then the one accessible handbook of universal history, the works of Bæda, the "Consolation" of Boethius, the Pastoral Book of Pope Gregory. "I wondered greatly," he says, "that of those good men who were aforetime all over England and who had learned perfectly these from the similarity of its subject admits of a direct comparison, we find almost exactly the same language and style as in the contemporary historical pieces of the Chronicle. In the Bede, where the ecclesiastical prevails over the purely historical, the general style is less national, less idiomatic than in the 'Orosius,' and in purely theological works, such as the 'Pastoral,' the influence of the Latin original reaches its height. Yet even here there seems to be no attempt to engraft Latin idioms on the English version; the foreign influence is only indirect, chiefly showing itself in the occasional clumsiness that results from the difficulty of expressing and defining abstract ideas in a language unused to theological and metaphysical subtleties."-Introduction to Pastoral Book (E. E. Text Soc.), p. xli. 1 books, none would translate any part into their own language. But I soon answered myself and said, 'They never thought that men would be so reckless, and learning so fallen.'" As it was, however, the books had to be rendered into English by the king himself, with the help of the scholars he had gathered round him. "When I remembered," he says in his preface to the Pastoral Book, "how the knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and in English Shepherd's Book, sometimes word by word, and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learnt it from Plegmund my archbishop, and Asser my bishop, and Grimbald my mass-priest, and John my mass-priest. And when I had learnt it as I could best understand it, and as I could most clearly interpret it, I translated it into English." Alfred was too wise a man not to own the worth of such translations in themselves. The Bible, he urged with his cool common sense, had told on the nations through versions in their own tongues. The Greeks knew it in Greek. The Romans knew it in Latin. Englishmen might know it, as they might know the other great books of the world, in their own English. "I think it better therefore to render some books, that are most needful for men to know, into the language that we may all understand." But Elfred showed himself more than a translator. He 1 Alfred's Pastoral Book (ed. Sweet). CHAP. IV. Elfred. *878901. Their character. CHAP. IV. Ælfred. 878901. The English became an editor for his people. Here he omitted, there he expanded. He enriched his first translation, the "Orosius," by a sketch of new geographical discoveries in the north. He gave a West-Saxon form to his selections from Bæda. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, and the churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak against abuses of power. The cold acknowledgement of a Providence by Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgement of the goodness of God.' As Elfred writes his large-hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me," he prays with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better than I, for every man must say what he says and do what he does according to his ability." 2 3 Among his earliest undertakings was an English version of Bæda's history; and it was probably the making of this version which suggested the thought of a work which was to be memorable in our literature.* Winchester, like most other episcopal monasteries, 1 See the instances given from his "Boethius" by Sharon Turner, "Hist. Ang. Sax." ii. cap. 2. 2 Pref. to the "Boethius," Pauli's Ælfred, p. 174. 3 Pauli ("Life of Alfred," p. 180) shows that the Bæda must have preceded the English rendering of the Chronicle, as this follows the version of Bæda in one of its most characteristic blunders. 4 In this sketch of the earlier history of the English Chronicle I have mainly followed Mr. Earle (“Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel," 1865, Introduction), whose minute analysis has placed the question of its composition on a critical basis. |