containing circle. Reverse-open quatrefoil ornament with quatrefoil in centre: leaves (sepals) in cusps moneyer's name, etc., in compartments of quatrefoil (see illustration, p. 250). Type x. (old type).-Small cross pattée: around inscription in four divisions. Reverse-name of mint in monogram (Londonia) between moneyer's name, etc., in two lines across field: small cross pattée before and after monogram (No. 8 in illustration opposite). Type xix. -name of king and mint (Ohsnaforda) in three lines across field: ornaments. Reverse-moneyer's name (old type), etc., in two lines across field, divided by long cross on two slips. Sideways-pellets in angles of cross: ornaments1 (No. II in illustration). The artistic work on these coins is inferior in skill to that on the earlier coins of Offa, who is said to have employed Italian coiners, and to the later coins of Athelstan. The need of providing a coinage rapidly, the sudden demands of the Danes, which compelled Alfred to debase the coinage, and the unsettlement of the times, would all tell against the production of first-rate work and prevent the king from improving the coinage. The work of the illuminators and writers of manuscripts is better in its kind than the work of the coiners. The manuscripts of Alfred's day which 1 British Museum Catalogue of English Coins. Anglo-Saxon series, vol. ii. D, cf. pp. 34-35-37. have survived are well written. The characteristics of the handwriting are freedom, lightness, and elegance. There is generally a tendency to slope the letters a little and to join and interlace them. In the next generation the handwriting begins to lose its artistic character, it becomes thicker and heavier, and gradually begins to approximate to "that ne plus ultra of barbarism the black letter."" The initial letters of the chapter are regularly decorated, but without great splendour. Dragons or monsters of the bird species, and distorted human faces are drawn with a black pencil round the base of the letters, and red is added for shading. The monks of Athelney and the nuns of Shaftesbury, both Alfred's foundations, were specially devoted to the work of the Scriptorium. There is a manuscript produced by the monks of Alfred's monastery at Winchester, and a volume of Gospels and other readings produced at Canterbury, which are said to be as good as anything produced in Europe in the ninth century; and fifty years later than Alfred's time, when the effect of his work might be expected to appear most clearly, there is a Benedictional written for Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, which is regarded by competent 1 Cf. Illustration opposite page 264. 2 Sweet's edition of Gregory's "Pastoral Care." 3 Pauli. judges as the culmination of the art of the AngloSaxon school.1 It is wonderful that Alfred was able to do so much; but the true estimate of his service is seen rather when we measure it from his standpoint than from that of Art. The love for things beautiful is his rather than the power to create them. The artistic impulse and quality which the king himself seems to have had as a child, had little chance of free development. He was too much employed in dealing with rough material to concern himself greatly with form. His work was roughhewing rather than polishing. His services were of a kind calculated to tell more in the next generation than his own; for everything which raises the general level of intelligence, and quickens the pursuit of the ideal in a nation, shows itself eventually on a higher standard of artistic conception and performance. Art is always a secondary rather than a primary result of a nation's awakening and social progress. § 3. BUILDERS One of the most fruitful pieces of work which Alfred did was to initiate an era of building and fortress construction. It was also one of his most 1 A very beautiful page from this Benedictional has been recently reproduced as frontispiece to Gollancz's edition of Cynewulf's "Christ." |