LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
KING ALFRED
KING ALFRED
AS EDUCATOR OF HIS PEOPLE AND MAN
OF LETTERS
BY
STOPFORD A. BROOKE
WITH AN APPENDIX
OF PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED, SELECTED
AND TRANSLATED FROM THE OLD ENGLISH
BY KATE M. WARREN
ILonfcon
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I9OI
First Edition published September 1901.
Reprinted November 1901.
t
PREFACE
THE little treatise on King Alfred which follows this Preface is
taken from a book of mine on Early English literature, and is one
of its chapters. It is chiefly concerned with the king's work as
an educator of his people, and as a man of letters, but it also
dwells briefly on him as the ruler, the lawgiver, the warrior, and
the statesman. No doubt, Alfred's lofty character is seen most
clearly in the work he did both in war and peace ; but there is
an inner life of thought and feeling in public men of which the
world sees little ; and this, which in Alfred was sorrowful,
sensitive, humble-minded, and profoundly religious, appears in
the additions he inserted into the translations he made of Latin
books for the instruction of his clergy, his nobles, his people,
and for his own private pleasure. The style too in which he
wrote- -childlike, at times, in its simplicity and sincerity, and
marked by an individual naivete is also a revelation of the way
in which his mind and spirit worked together.
Some of these personal additions to the originals I have
placed in the following chapter, and others have been placed in
the Appendix, which consists of passages selected and translated
from most of the books Alfred put into English. These have
been done, and the whole thrown into its present form, by
Miss Kate Warren. She offered to do this work, and it is
entirely her own. Her translations have been made with in-
tentional literalness, in order, if possible, to give in modem
English some resemblance to Alfred's style. It is, until we
VJ PREFACE
come to its directness and excellent brevity in the English
Chronicle, and to its greater ease in the Boethius, the style of a
beginner in prose, of one who^had no good models to learn
from or to imitate. But it is all the more interesting for that.
Alfred began literary English prose.
Four extracts have been made from the Cur a Pastoralis-
the Herdsman's Book. It will be felt, on reading them, how
difficult it was for Alfred to grasp the Latin idioms and transfer
them into English. He did better afterwards. These passages
from Gregory's book express ideas both on teaching and govern-
ing which illustrate the methods of Alfred's public work ; and
they lodged so deeply in his mind that their spirit appears in
the additions he made to the translation, done in his later years,
of the Consolation of Philosophy.
The passages taken from the king's translation of Baeda's
History are fairly known, and their importance suggested their
insertion. The first has become one of the universal illustra-
tions used in literature, and the second tells the tale of the
birth of English poetry written in England. It has been doubted
of late whether Alfred made this translation, first, because there
is no trace of a West Saxon original ; secondly, that the only in-
ternal evidence for the king's authorship is the insertion of the
West Saxon genealogy, which is not carried beyond his accession ;
thirdly, that the MSS. we possess are for the most part in an
Anglian (Mercian) dialect. For these reasons, and others too long
for record in this Preface, Dr. T. Miller infers that the Old English
translation of Breda was not made by Alfred, but probably in
a Mercian monastery by a Mercian scholar of the period. But
the statement of the king's authorship in ^Ifric's homily on
Gregory ; the Latin couplet-
Ilistoricus quondam fecit me Beeda latinum
Alfred rex Saxo transtulit ille pius
PREFACE vn
found in a MS. of the Old English Breda in Cambridge ; and
William of Malrnesbury's testimony, are strong confirmation of
the traditionary belief. As to the Mercian dialect-forms in the
translation, they probably came from the Mercian scholars who
lived with the king and no doubt assisted him in his translation.
v^Ethelstan and Werewulf, learned men whom he loved, his
chaplains, were Mercians. So was Werfrith of Worcester, who
was frequently with him. So was Plegmund of Canterbury.
All his English assistants were Mercians, and no one is likely to
imagine that Alfred did not entrust his earlier translations for
careful revision to his English friends and fellow-labourers. It
would not be surprising to find Mercian forms in the Herdsman s
Book.
The passages from the Orosius require no comment ; but a
large number have been made from that part of the English
Chronicle which is generally supposed to have been the work of
Alfred himself. Miss Warren has continued her extracts beyond
the year 891, where in the chapter on Alfred I make his work to
cease. I followed then what I considered the best authority ;
but I see no reason, if we believe that Alfred wrote the first
part of the Danish wars, why we should not believe that he also
wrote the second. The improvement in the style may be
accounted for. Alfred, in these later years, had gained greater
experience and ease in writing. There is no clear evidence that
he wrote any of this history ; but it is a conjecture as probable
as it is pleasant. It would suit Alfred's temper to record the
wars he waged with so much fervour on behalf of his people.
If he wrote this part of the Chronicle, the records he made
illustrate his character. They are concise, clear, practical. No
personal element intrudes, no boasting, no abuse of his foes, no
anger at their treachery honest, luminous, forcible history and
no more, And these elements in them present a curious contrast
vin PREFACE
to the sensitive, personal, spiritual, even the ornamented writing
in the king's translation of Boethius. It has been said that
similes are rare in Alfred's writing. Alfred invents some in the
BoethiuS) and we find others also in his work.
The extracts from the Consolation of Philosophy are naturally
the most numerous in the Appendix, for in that translation Alfred
let himself loose, and made many additions to his original. It
was his last large work, and we have in it an image of the temper
and spirit of the king when the labour of his life was, in a time
of long hoped for peace, drawing to its close. We touch in them
the lonely hidden spirit of Alfred. We feel the principles, social,
moral and spiritual, which ruled his life. We see him as his
children and his intimate friends saw him. The wise ruler
appears in them, the king conscious of his rank ; but strangely
mixed with that, the man to whom all men were equal if they
were good and true. Rank, wealth, and power were to Alfred
the mere clothing of the man. Goodness, truth, fidelity,
honourable work, trust in God, made the man who, if a king
were false to these righteous things, was greater than the king.
There was a Judge before whom power, cleverness, wealth, and
rank were worthless, and Alfred lived in that faith and ruled
himself as king thereby. In that faith was held his view of men,
and his behaviour to them. There are few pleasanter pictures
in history than those in which we see Alfred in equal social inter-
course with his friends, his followers, and the men who came to
tell him tales of far-off lands or to bring him knowledge. Irish
scholars, sea-captains, men from Jerusalem, India, Rome, from
European courts and monasteries, freemen who came on his
progresses to complain of the injustice of their lords, whom he
received while he was washing his hands, bards who brought
songs and MSS. from the North, his bishops whom he harried
into writing, his Ethelings whom he drove to read enough law to
PREFACE ix
do their duty as magistrates, all who had anything new or useful
to tell him, were welcomed frankly and talked to as man to man.
Yet with this sense of human equality, he was always the ruler,
the master who was resolved to do justice, to slay the evil-doer
whatever his rank, to secure the state, to make law prevail.
And well he did this work, knowing his time, himself, his foes,
and his people. Though he sometimes complained, as it were to
himself, of his unquiet life, he was one of those high-hearted men
who think themselves fortunate because they are born in evil times.
He was still more fortunate in that he had within himself the power
to meet them, to endure them when nothing but endurance was
possible, to master them when the hour of action arrived. He
took his world day by day, as men must do in these national crises,
and found himself equal to the moment. If he had not foreseen
a difficulty, he invented what was fitting to overcome it. When
he conquered it, he took care it should never occur again. What
he seized or won, he kept. Nor did he act with violence, or in
haste, or without a good-humoured smile for the weakness or
waywardness of men. No hard times made him unjust, or cruel,
or irritable. He had fierce fighting to do, incessant war for the
very life of his kingdom. He suffered sorely from painful and
recurring illness. He had to subdue to justice and education a
reluctant nobility, an ignorant Church, and a rude people. His
foes had no sense of truth and honour. They broke their
treaties with a laugh. They were men whose business was
plunder, who hated learning, civilisation, and any law and order
but their own wild code. Alfred loathed their ways, but he
managed them with a certain gentle and masterly tolerance, and
made them feel that he was their master. He expected treachery,
got it, and quietly bade them behave better for the future. He
was a real philosopher of mankind.
So he felt what life was, and was tolerant to humanity one of
PREFACE
those men who, passing through manifold experiences, mostly
sorrowful and hard, emerge at the end more kindly, gentle, and
wiser than before. Nor was he without noble consolations.
After the valley of the shadow of death, he had some years of
green pastures and sweet waters, when he could pursue and try to
fulfil the ideals of his youth. His friends were many, and they
clung to him. Nothing in his writings is more lovingly dwelt on
than the blessing of friendship. He drew even a deeper comfort
from the love he gave to his chieftains and his people which
made the atmosphere of his soul tender and bright, and from his
knowledge of their love for him. Liberty, the woman he loved
more than any earthly woman, was with him always like an angel ;
and his soul was humble and right with God. We feel these
consolations were his, when we read his comments on the book
of Boethius. Yet we see also from those comments how sensitive,
how delicately wrought was his spirit. There are passages which
seem written by one who had suffered in friendship, yet who believed
in men. There are passages which record how bitterly he longed
for quiet, yet he fought on. There are passages which seem
written by a retired philosopher, unfit for rude affairs. Yet he
was a great warrior, fighting hand to hand in front of the fray,
and in peace a great hunter. He was more than a warrior ; he
was a great general, strategist, and master of men. When he
appeared in the field, his face was lit like an angel's. The Danes
had conquered in battle all who opposed them in Europe. They
met more than their match in Alfred. He even beat them on
their own element of the sea, When we read of his fighting we
think he is unlikely to manage peace. Wlien we read of his
pleasure in the affairs of peace, we think he is not likely to
manage war. But he managed both excellently well. War was
his duty, peace his delight.
Peace and its work of learning, of the arts, of law, was the
PREFACE xi
ideal of his life. A weaker man, angry with events which pre-
vented his ideal, might have been so wearied with contrary winds
and with his own anger, that when peace came he would, in
sullenness or exhaustion, not use its opportunities. It was quite
the opposite with the king. When the contrary winds ceased to
blow, he was like a ship long cabined in harbour, who with joy
lets loose her sails, springs from her anchorage,* and with the
favouring breeze humming in her cordage and in her captain's
heart, flies forth to seek new lands, to fulfil her hopes, and reach
her goal. No one else in England had this ideal of a people
civilised by law, by education in learning and the arts, not his
brother, not the Thegns, not even the Church ; nor did he suc-
ceed in giving it to his sons and grandsons. They let fall from
their hands the tools he had made. It was not till nearly a
century afterwards that his work was taken up again.
Where did he find this high conception ? It partly grew out
of his own genius, a self-created tree. But before it took form
it had received divers elements which gave its seed the power
to grow. His boyhood had been nurtured by the influence of
Rome. The traditions of the aims and work of Charles the Great
for the education and civilisation of his empire had fallen into his
mind at the court of Charles the Bald ; and these were linked to
the past of his own country when Northumbria, as he knew, was at
the head of the scholarship of Europe. His boyhood had loved,
tradition tells us, the songs of his people, and when he became
king he inflamed his ardour for learning and moulded his ideal
for his people with the new elements he drew from these ances-
tral sagas, from the remnants of the glory of Northumbrian letters
and arts which filtered through Mercia to his Court, from the
learned men who visited him from Ireland and the Continent, till
the longing to realise his ideal for Wessex and for England grew
into an intensity which it never lost. This is even more remark-
o
xii PREFACE
able than his pre-emm/nce in war and government. In those,
many kings have been great, but fewhave also been great in this
as well.
Moreover he gave this ideal of learning a new turn. There
has been plenty, he thought, of cloistered learning in the past.
What is the good of it unless the people have it? Let the priests
master it, and the nobles learn it. Let them know the songs and
tales of their land and the history of their people and the world
and then give what they know to the folk, spread learning and the
arts over the nation, and bind all men together into unity by this
education, as well as by law and love of country. That was
Alfred's ideal ; it was only conceived in that age by one other
man, by Charles the Great; and it is, even to-day, a thing un-
common among emperors, kings, and governments.
That men should fight steadily was well; that good government
should be is well, but Alfred thought that war and government would
both be better if knowledge, literature, and the arts were common
among the people. They discipline, he thought, the brain, create
a soul, instil good manners into a nation. By better brains men win
battles more easily, and make better laws. When the powers of the
soul are developed, a people obey better, and the law-giver feels more
sensitively what a people need. Poetry may give wings to war, and
it makes a nation love its land, its customs, homes, and law ; and
when the spirit of a people, with Alfred, thinks little of wealth,
power, and rank in comparison with the invisible wealth and power
of goodness and love, and refers its national life to God it secures
that strong foundation on which it can rest steadfastly in the day
of trouble, and graciously in the hour of prosperity. These were
Alfred's thoughts, and the after-history of England has shown, both
in pursuit and in neglect of his ideal, how right he was.
It was an ideal too far advanced for the time in which he lived.
He failed in his effort. But the seed he sowed did not perish ;
PREFACE xiii
abiding its time. In the end, under EP ""^ar and his successors,
fruitage came ; and for centuries after, even under the Norman
oppression, even among the Normans themselves, Alfred's ideal
shone like a constant star above the realm of England. It shines
still, and England will do well, in times when power and wealth
claim a gross authority, to reverence and follow its light.
UNIVERSITY
ALFRED
, whom men have called the " Great " and the " Truth-
teller"; whom the England of the Middle Ages named "England's
Darling"; he who was the Warrior and the Hunter, the Deliverer
and the Law-maker, the Singer and the Lover of his people, -
" Lord of the harp and liberating spear " w r as, above all, for the
purposes of this book, the creator and then the father of English
prose literature. The learning w r hich had been lost in the North
he regained for the South, and York, where the centre of liter-
ature had been, was now replaced by Winchester. There,
ylfred in his king's chamber, and filled with longing to educate
his people, wrote and translated hour by hour into the English
tongue the books he thought useful for that purpose. They are
the origins of English prose.
He was born in 849, at Wantage in Berkshire, the youngest
son of ^Ethelwulf and grandson of the great Ecgberht. At the
age of four years the boy saw Rome, voyaging with an embassy to
the centre of the world of thought and law. Leo IV. ordained
and anointed him as king and received him as his adopted son.
Two years later he went thither again with his father, who loved
him more than his other sons, and stayed in the city until he
was seven years old. The long journey through diverse countries,
the vast historic town, its noble architecture, the long tradition of
its law and story, its early Christian life; the spiritual power of
ALFRED
the Roman Church, even the temporal power which flowed from
it into Charles the Great of whom Alfred had heard so much,
must have made a profound impression, for inspiration and
education, on a boy of genius. We can trace some of the
results in his after-life. He was never satisfied till he was able
to read Latin literature ; he knit the Church of Rome and the
crown of Wessex into a close friendship. We know from the
Chronicle how often he sent embassies and gifts to Rome.
But this was not the only foreign influence which played
upon his youth. He lived, on his return from Rome, for three
months with Charles the Bald at the Frankish Court. The
memory of the intellect and power of Charles the Great still shed,
after nearly fifty years, a departing ray over the dying empire,
and it shone into the mind of the child. We may be sure that
the learned men of the court did not forget to talk with him of
the English scholar, Alcuin, who had brought, to the kingdoms
of Charles the treasures of learning from York. His own country
and his own folk had done this great work, and ^Elfred never
forgot it. When years had passed by, he recalled it in one of
his prefaces.
With these new impulses he returned to England, desiring
knowledge, but, as afterwards, there was none to teach him.
One thing, however, he could do he could learn the songs and
stories of his own people in his own tongue ; and the tale, with
all its difficulties, which Asser tells, at least embodies his early
love of books and of English verse. As he stood with his
brothers at his mother's knee, she read to them out of a
book of English songs. /Ethelstan and /Ethelred had no care for
book or poetry, but /Elfred, delighted by the beauty of the
illuminated letters, eagerly turned over the pages. " Whoever
of you first learns the songs," said the Queen, " shall have the
book," and ./Elfred had no rest till he won the prize. The love of
his native literature never left him. Night and day, we are told,
he was eager to learn the " Saxon songs," and in after-life one
of his chief pleasures was to recite English songs, to hear the
ALFRED
singers of the court declaim them, to collect Saxon poems, to
teach them to his children, to get his nobles to care for them,
and to have them taught in his schools. He knew the English
sagas, and the heroic names. He mentions Weland, the mighty
smith ; he told Asser the story of Offa's daughter Eadburga, a
tale which was imported into Mercian history from the legend
of OfTa of the ancient Engle-land ; and he recorded, with
added touches of personal interest, the story of the first poet of
England.
It may be imagined, then, with what bitter sorrow he heard at
the age of eighteen, in 867, that there was not one religious house
from the Tyne to the Humber which was not ravaged and burnt
by the heathen ; that not one trace, save perhaps in York and in
a few abbeys north of the Tyne, was left of the learning and
libraries of Northumbria. And his sorrow would be still more
bitter when in 869 the rich abbeys of East Anglia were destroyed
by the pirates Ivar and Hubba, and Wessex, his own land, lay
open to the ravager. Guthrum or Gorm led this new attack, and
the long-gathered wrath of the patriot and the lover of learning
whetted Alfred's sword when, on the height of Ashdown, around
the stunted and lonely thorn-tree, he and his brother ^Ethelred
made their final charge and beat the invaders down the hill with
a pitiless slaughter. In the battles that followed ^Ethelred was
wounded to death, and in 871 Alfred, now twenty-two years old,
became the king.
The first years of his reign were dark as the night. Wessex
barely held to life ; Mercia was a desolation ; all the seats of
learning in Bernicia were now ruined, and at the beginning of 878
the Danes were in the heart of Wessex, apparent conquerors.
But ^Elfred was greatest when all seemed lost. He refuged
himself at Athelney (the yEthelings' isle) a hill, defended by
morass and forest, at the confluence of the Parret with the Frome,
among the deep-watered marshes of Somersetshire. It is here
that legend places the scene of the cowherd's hut and Alfred
watching and forgetting the burning loaves; and it was here that
4 ALFRED
the famous jewel of gold and enamel was found, with the inscrip-
tion "^Elfred bade me to be wrought." There he sat for three,
perhaps for seven months, gathering a host ; and broke forth from
his solitudes in the spring of 878, attacked the Danish army at
Ethandun, drove them to their camp, forced their surrender in
a fortnight, and dragged from them the peace of Wedmore. That
peace, in spite of the later struggle of 885-886, settled England.
It broke the advance of the Danes and weakened their power in
England and abroad. It left Wessex and Kent in the hands of
/Elfred ; it secured for the English that part of Mercia which was
west of Watling Street from the Ribble to the Severn valley and
to the upper valley of the Thames. The rest of England from
the Tees to the Thames, including London (which Alfred, how-
ever, got in 886), was in the power of the Danes and is called the
Danelaw.
Over the Danelaw to interrupt for a moment the tale of
Alfred Danish customs, religion, and commerce prevailed ; the
Danish sagas were sung, and the Danish spirit grew. One would
think that these folk, especially when they became Christian,
would have left some traces of their keen individuality on the
poetry or prose of the Danelaw. The stories of Horn and
Havelok, rooted in Danish and Celtic traditions, were taken
up by the Anglo-Norman, and then by Middle-English poets.
There are, moreover, a few Danish legends in Layamon's poem.
But now, and after the Norman Conquest, there is nothing but
place-names and folk-tales to show us that more than half, and
in after-years, the whole, of England belonged to Danish kings
and to Danish folk. But the Danes who took England were
scarcely a nation ; when they settled down they became part of
the English people and absorbed their ways. And they did this
the more easily because they were of the same race and tongue
as the men they conquered. Christianity also knit them to the
English who made them Christians. With the loss of their wild
gods half their individuality fled away. The land also and its
scenery had their assimilating power on the new indwellers,
ALFRED 5
When /Elfred was forced to leave the Danelaw in Danish hands,
he little thought that he was making Englishmen.
But at present the English and the Danes were two, not one ;
and /Elfred had to keep the English elements uppermost. It was
well then, having this stern work at hand, that he was not only
the student and the singer, but also a great warrior, and active in
all bodily exercises. He was a keen hunter, falconer, rider, and
slayer of wild beasts. " Every act of Venery," says Asser, "was
known and practised by him better than by others." No man
was bolder in the fight, none more watchful in the camp or wiser
in the council. His people who fought along with him hailed him
with joy. His look shone, it is said, like that of a shining angel in
the battle. At Ashdown, " he charged again and again like a wild
boar," and the slow gathering, knitting together, and inspiration
of his men when he lay hid like a lion at Athelney and sprang
forth, roaring, to overwhelm his foes, shows that his prudence,
skill, and mastery of the art of war were as great as his personal
courage.
When Alfred had thus won peace for his people, he wished
to educate them. But he had at first something more needful to
do; and he spent the six years of quiet from 878 to 884 in re-
pairing the ruin made by the Danes, in reforming the army, in
building a navy, and in establishing just government and law.
The peace was broken in 885 by a fresh attack of the Northmen,
but was again secured in the following year. /Elfred was now
complete master, not only of his kingdom, but also of the national
imagination. "In that year," says the Chronicle, "all the Angel-
cyn turned to Alfred, except those in bondage to Danish men."
In the following year he began, with his mingled humility, good
sense and self-confidence, that revival of learning which he had
so long desired. The foundation for this great purpose had
already been partly laid. He had collected, and continued to
collect, around him a number of scholars who should be, first, his
teachers ; and afterwards enable him to teach the English people
in the English language what they ought to know as citizens of a
ALFRED
great country, and as pilgrims to a heavenly country. He called to
this work Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester, who himself presided
over the school in that town; Denewulf of Winchester; Plegmund,
whom he drew from Mercia to make Archbishop of Canterbury ;
two Mercian priests, /Ethelstan and Werwulf, who were his
chaplains and teachers (all three children of the college at
Worcester) ; and these exhausted all that England could do for
him. In this penury he turned to foreign lands for help. " Men
once came," he said, "from out-land countries to seek instruction
in England ; now if we need it we can only get it abroad." So he
called Grimbald from Flanders and put him over the new abbey
rising at Winchester, and John the Old Saxon from the monastery
of Corve'i in Westphalia to preside over the religious house his
gratitude had dedicated to God at Athelney.
His incessant spirit kept these men up to their work. He
translated books such as Gregory's Pastoral Care to teach the
clergy their duties ; he urged the bishops to give their leisure
to literature, and urged it as a religious duty. He gave them
books to translate and insisted on their being finished. He
may be said to have driven them to write, as much as he drove
the judges to learn the duties of their office and the Laws of
England.
The difficulties he had with the clergy were much greater with
the nobles. The English warriors and courtiers of mature age
were sorely troubled when the king compelled them to learn to
read and write, or if they could not learn, to hire a freeman or
slave to recite before them at fixed times the books needful for
their duties. When at last he despaired of the elder men, he
sent all the young nobility and many who were not noble into the
schools where his own children were educated, that they might;
learn how to read both English and Latin books, and to translate
the one language into the other. But this was afterwards. To
teach himself now was his first business, and /Ethelstan and
Werwulf, his daily tutors, were not enough for him. He needed
a better scholar and one whom he could love as a friend. So he
ALFRED 7
asked Asser of St. David's, in the farthest border of Wales, to
live and study with him. Asser saw the king at Dene, near Chi-
chester, in the early part of the year 884, and stayed three days
with him. " Stay with me always," said the king, and when Asser
objected his love of Wales and his duties there, the king replied,
"Stay with me at least six months in the year." A fever kept
Asser away for more than a year, but in July 886 he came to
Leonaford, and remained eight months at the court. It is prob-
able that then he went back slowly to Wales, and returned to
Alfred in the middle of the year 887. From that time he seems
to have spent six months every year with the king. Then Alfred's
close study began. "I translated and read to him," writes Asser,
" whatever books he wished, for it was his custom day and night,
amid all his afflictions of mind and body, either to read books or
have them read to him. " Thus he learned Latin, and the first result
of this association with Asser was Alfred's Handbook. One day
Asser quoted to him a phrase he liked out of some Latin author.
"Write it down for me," said the king, and he pulled out of his
breast a little note-book. The book was full, and Asser proposed
to begin a new book of quotations, which as the king made
he then translated into English. The new book grew till
it became almost as large as a Psalter; and he called it his
Handbook, finding no small comfort therein. This Handbook
was his first work, and he was thirty -five years old when
he began it. It consisted of extracts from the Bible and
the Fathers, and of a few scattered illustrations made of these
passages by/Elfred or Asser "divinorum testimoniorumscientiam
multimodos divinae scripturae flosculos . . . congregavit." " Quos
flosculos undecunque collectos," is afterwards said of this book.
William of Malmesbury has two extracts from this Manual. Both
have to do with the earlier history of England and of /Elfred's
own house, but it is exceeding improbable, as some have argued
from these quotations, that there was any history of Wessex in
the Handbook. " These passages are most likely only allusions
or illustrations which crept into this book of religious extracts.
8 ALFRED
Else William of Malmesbury would have used the whole book."
This remark of Wiilker's seems to settle the matter. This Hand-
book^ begun in Nov. 887, was fully set forth in English in 888
for the use of the people. It is a great misfortune that it is
lost.
The next piece of writing he did was the Law-book. He
compiled it out of the existing Codes of Kent, Wessex, and
Mercia, that is, out of the laws of yEthelberht, Ine, and Offa. It
had an introduction, followed by three parts (i) Alfred's Laws ;
(2) Ine's Laws ; (3) Alfred's and Guthrum's Peace and it was
composed, said William of Malmesbury, "inter fremitus armorum
et stridores lituorum." This suggests that the collation of the
laws had been begun in 885 or 886. The introduction begins
with the Decalogue of the second Nicaean Council and some
words on the Mosaic laws. ^Elfred adds the letter sent bv the
^
Apostles to the Church after the Council at Jerusalem. Then he
quotes "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do
ye even so unto them ; for this is the law and the prophets." He
tells every judge in the kingdom that "Judge so as ye would
be judged " is the foundation of their duty. As to the laws, he
did not make many of his own, but kept and rejected out of the
above codes those which by the counsel of his Witan he thought
best for his kingdom ; clinging like an Englishman to precedent.
The whole book, since the Scriptural quotations in the preface
suggest that it came after the Handbook, was probably issued in
888.
By this time he was fairly well acquainted with Latin, and as
the most necessary class to benefit were the clergy, the instructors
of the people, he chose as the first book to be translated the Cum
Pastoralis the "Herdsman's Book" -of Gregory the Great, a kind
of manual of the duties of the clergy. It recites in four divisions
the ideal of a Christian priest ; and the king took care that
a copy of it should be sent " to every bishop's seat in my
kingdom." A copy was sent, as mentioned specially in Alfred's
preface, to Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. Plegmund
yELFRED 9
was first made Archbishop in 890. The translation then was
probably done in 889, and sent to the bishops in 890.*
That this was his first book is maintained by some critics,
who support their view by arguments drawn from the well-known
preface which Alfred prefixed to it. I do not understand
how, after reading that preface, a number of other critics refer
the book to a much later period in Alfred's life. Almost every
paragraph suggests the beginning not the end of his translating
work. It is also not likely that after the small effort of the
Handbook he would undertake so long and difficult a business
as either the translation of Orosius, or of Bseda's history, or of
Boethius. The book is also done with more closeness to his
author than any other of his translations, and no clearly original
matter is inserted. He certainly paraphrases, omits, expands,
explains, and changes the place of his text, where he is anxious to
make things clear for his people, but he does this briefly, tenta-
tively, and less than elsewhere. The book 'is the book of a
beginner. In it, however, English literary prose may be said to
have made its first step. Baeda's translation of St. John's gospel,
that portion also of the English Chronicle which already existed
up to the death of ^thelwulf, can scarcely be called literary
prose. As we think, then, of the king, seated with Asser or
Plegmund in his bower at Winchester or Dene, and bending over
the Herdsman's book of Gregory, we think also of all the great
prose of England, the fountain of whose stream arose in these-
quiet hours of more than royal labour. It is well, though the
preface is long, to quote it in full. It is the first piece of any
importance we possess of English prose. It is redolent of
Alfred's character and spirit. It marks the state of English
literature at the time it was written. It makes us realise how
great was the work Alfred did for literature and the difficulties
with which he had to contend. 2
1 There are many different arrangements made by critics of the dates of
Alfred's translations. I have adopted the arrangement I think the best.
2 For the text of this preface, see Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, pp. 4-7.
to ALFRED
This Book is for Worcester
King ^Elfred biddeth greet Bishop Wserfer<5 with loving and friendly words,
and I let it be known to thee that it has come very often into my mind what
wise men there formerly were both among the clergy and the laymen, and
what happy times there were then throughout England ; and how the kings
who had rule over the people (in those days) obeyed God and his ministers,
and they kept peace, law and order at home, and also spread their lands
abroad ; and how it was well with them both in war and in wisdom ; and
also how keen were the clergy about both teaching and learning and all the
services they owed to God, and how men from abroad sought wisdom and
teaching hither in (our) land, and how we must now get them from without
if we would have them. So utterly had it (learning) fallen away in England
that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand
their service-books in English, or even put a letter from Latin into English ;
and I think there were not many beyond the Humber. So few there were
of them that I cannot think of even one when I came to the throne.
Thanks be to God Almighty that we now have any supply of teachers. And
therefore I bid thee do, as I believe thou art willing to do, free thyself from
the things of this world as often as thou canst that thou mayst put to work the
wisdom that God has given thee wherever thou canst. Think what punish-
ments have come upon us in the sight of the world when we neither loved it
(wisdom) ourselves, nor let other men have it. We only loved to have the
name of Christian, and (to have) very few (Christian) virtues.
When I remembered all this, I remembered also how I saw (before it was
all harried and burned), how the churches over all England stood filled with
treasures and books, and also a great host of God's servants ; and at that
time they knew very little use for those books, because they could not under-
stand anything of them, for they were not written in their own language. It
was as if they said : " Our forefathers, who held these places before us,
loved wisdom, and through it they got wealth and left it to us." Here one
can still see their footprints, but we cannot follow them because we have lost
both the wealth and the wisdom, since we would not bend our heart to follow
their spoor.
When I remembered all this then I wondered exceedingly about the
good and wise men who were formerly throughout England, and who had
fully learned the books that they did not not wish to turn any part of them
into their own tongue. But I soon answered myself and said : They
did not look for it that men would ever be so careless, and that learning
* O
would so fall away. For this desire they left it alone :-- wishing that
there should be the more wisdom here in the land the more we knew of
languages.
ALFRED n
Then I remembered how the Law was first given in the Hebrew tongue,
and again, how when the Greeks learned it, they turned it all into their own
tongue, and also all other books. And again, how the Romans did the same.
When they had learned it they turned all of it by wise translators into
their own tongue. And also all other Christian peoples turned some part of
(the old) books into their own tongue. Therefore it seemeth better to me, if
it seemeth so to you, that we also turn some books those which are most
needful for men to know into the tongue which we can all understand,
and that ye make means as we very easily can do, with God's help, if we
have stillness that all the youth now in England of free men who have the
wealth to be able to set themselves to it be put to learning while they
are not of use for anything else, until the time when they can well read
English writing ; but those whom one wishes to teach further, and to
forward to a higher place let them afterwards be taught further in the Latin
tongue.
When I remembered how the knowledge of the Latin tongue had before
this fallen away throughout England, and yet that many could read English
writing then I began amidst other divers and manifold occupations of this
kingdom to turn into English the book which in Latin is named Pastoralis,
and in English Shepherds Book ; sometimes word for word, sometimes mean-
ing for meaning, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser,
my bishop, and from Grimbold, my mass-priest, and from John, my mass-
priest. When I had learned it so that I understood it, and so that I could
quite clearly give its meaning, I turned it into English. And to each bishopric
in my Kingdom I will send one, and in each there shall be an "cestel " (indi-
catorium} worth fifty mancuses. And I command, in God's name, that
no one take the " restel " from the book nor the book from the minister ; it
is unknown how long there may be such learned bishops, as now, God be
thanked, are nearly everywhere. Therefore I would that they should be
always kept in that place, except the bishop wish to have the book with him,
or it be lent out anywhere, or any one be making a copy from it.
This ends the Preface. Then, after a short space, some
alliterative lines follow. They tell us that " this message
(Gregory's treatise) Augustine brought over the salt sea to the
island -dwellers, as the Pope of Rome, that warrior of the
Lord, had decreed. In many a Right-spell the wise Gregory was
versed. . . . Afterwards, King yElfred turned every word of me
into English and sent me south and north to his scribes to be
copied that he might send these copies to his Bishops,
12 ALFRED
because some who least knew the Latin tongue were in need of
them."
The translation follows, and at the end ^Elfred has added
some verses of his own. They have a faint touch of imagination ;
their simplicity reveals his childlikeness ; their rudeness of form
and phrase belongs to one w,ho had but begun to write, but they
mark his interest in English poetry. He who loves poetry will
try to write poetry.
These are the waters I paraphrase the verses which the God of
Hosts promised, for our comfort, to us dwellers on the earth ; and His will
is that from all who truly believe in Him these ever-living waters should
flow into the world ; and their well-spring is the Holy Ghost. . . . Some
shut up this stream of wisdom in their mind, so that it flows not everywhere
in vain ; but the well -abides in the breast of the man, deep and still. Some
let it run away in rills over the land ; and it is not wise that such bright
water should, noisy and shallow, be flowing over the land till it become
a fen.
But now, draw near to drink it, for Gregory has brought to your doors
the well of the Lord. Whoever have brought here a water-tight pitcher, let
him fill it now ; and let him come soon again. Whoever have a leaky
pitcher, let him mend it, lest he spill the sheenest of waters, and lose the
drink of life.
The second book^Elfred translated (890-91)
astical History of the English, and this was addressed not only to the
clergy but also to the laity, who ought to know the history of their
own land. This translation also clings closely to its original, but
omits many chapters not likely to interest the ordinary reader
letters from the Pope, theological disquisitions, the account of the
Easter controversy, and some purely Northumbrian affairs. But
yElfred takes pains, as if it were a subject of national interest, to
translate in full the story of the origin of English poetry. It is
a pity, but it is characteristic of his early translating, that he
inserts no original matter. No one could have given a better
account of the history of the Church in Wessex and of the
kingdom ; and this is precisely the point where Baeda is weak and
less accurate than usual. That /Elfred did not do this is
ALFRED 13
probably owing to the fact that about the year 891 he had begun
to work the Chronicle up into a national history, and saw no need
to put forth two accounts of the same matters. The loss is
indeed all but repaired in his editing of the English Chronicle.
That this editing came after his translation of Baeda is at least
suggested by the repetition in the Chronicle of certain mistakes
he made in that translation. Moreover, the king might naturally
feel that history should follow history.
It was the habit of the monasteries to put down on the Easter
Tables the briefest and driest records of the events of the year,
chiefly the deaths and enthronements of bishops and kings. For
Wessex and Kent this would be done at Winchester and Canter-
bury, but it is plain the Roll would be most carefully kept at
Winchester. Professor Earle has skilfully wrought out when the
various recensions were made before the reign of ^Elfred. It is
enough for our purpose to say that at the time of ^Ethelwulf or
shortly after his death, some one man, and probably Bishop Swithun
of Winchester, filled up the Winchester Annals from tradition back
to Hengest, combined them with the Canterbury Chronicle, made
a genealogy of the West Saxon kings from ./Ethelwulf to Cerdic,
from Cerdic to Woden, and from Woden to Adam ; and then,
having inserted new matter throughout, told at some length the
wars and death of ^Ethelwulf. This part of the Chronicle^ running
to 855, was found by Alfred on his accession and remained as it
was till the days of peace. Then about 891, having conceived
the notion of making it a national history, he caused the whole
to be gone over, and the part from the accession of his brother
^Ethelred, with a full account of his own wars with the Danes, to
be written in. It is, from its style, the work of one man, and it
may be that Alfred did it himself. As historical prose it is
rude, but also condensed and vigorous. 1 In this recension
many fresh entries were made from the Latin writers and
Beeda's history. This then is the manuscript of the Annals of
1 Some think that the first part, from 60 B.C. to A.D. 755, was not done
at /Ethelwulf's death, but now.
14 ALFRED
Winchester which, written by a single hand, was presented by
Archbishop Parker to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge ; and
it is the source of the historical prose of England. 1
The new book Alfred now translated, 2 most probably in the
years 891 to 893, was the History of the World by Orosius, a book
written originally in the year 418, at the suggestion of Augustine,
and with the purpose of proving, as Augustine himself tried to do
in the third book of his Civitas Dei, that the wars of the world and
the decay of the Roman Empire were not due, as the heathen
declared, to Christianity. Though a poor work, it became a
standard authority. It was the only book which the Middle
Ages read as a universal history. yElfred, knowing its value in
education, and anxious to inform his people not only of the
history of England but also of the world beyond, gave them
this book in their native tongue. He left out all the controversial
part, and all that he thought would be of no use or pleasure to
his readers. On the other hand, he inserted a number of new
facts, interspersed with original remarks full of his inquiring
and eager intelligence. But the chief insertion he made, in
a clear and simple style, was a full account of the geography of
Germany and of the places where the English tongue had of old
been spoken. "It bears traces, in its use, for example, of
Ostsii, instead of the Anglo - Saxon Eastsii, of being derived
from German sources." Indeed, the king made inquiries of every
traveller who came to Wessex, and when he heard of two in
particular who had made long sea-voyages, Ohthere and Wulf-
1 Alfred's work on the Chronicle ceases in 891. In 894 a writer of
ability and force took up the task, and carried it on to 897. From that date
to 910 the book was neglected. In 910 it was again undertaken by an
excellent writer.
: Not only does Wm. of Malmesbury mention the book as /Alfred's,
but the following allusion can only be to the history by Orosius :
II [/Elfred] fist escrivere un livre Engleis
DCS aventures e des leis
E do batailles de la terre
E des reis ki firent la guere
E niaint livre fist il escrivere
U li bon clerc vont sovent lire.
Geffrey Gaimar's Trans, of the Estorie des Engles, 11. 3451-36.
/ELFRED 15
stan, he had them up to his house, and while he sat at his desk,
made them dictate to him their travels along the coasts of
Norway and the German shores of the Baltic. "Ohthere,"it
begins, "said to his Lord King Alfred, that of all the North-
men he dwelt the farthest north," and he told how he had
sailed along the coast of Norway till he reached the White Sea
and the mouth of the Dwina ; and then of another voyage
past Denmark and the islands till he saw the Baltic running
many hundred miles up into the land. "He had passed by,"
says the king, "before he came to Haithaby, Jutland, Zealand,
and other islands on his right, where the Engle d\velt before
they came hither." Wulfstan then told his tale how he had
sailed from Haithaby along the northern shores of Germany for
seven days and nights until he reached the mouths of the Vistula
and the land of the Esthonians, of whose country and customs he
gives an account which must have delighted the keen curiosity of
the king. I give a short extract from Ohthere's voyage in order
to show Alfred's hand.
Ohthere tcld his lord, King Alfred, that he, of all northmen, dwelt the
farthest north. He said that he dwelt in that northward land by the West
Sea. That land, he said, is very long from there to the north, but it is all
waste except in a few places. Here and there the Finns dwell in it, hunting
in winter and fishing in summer, along the sea. He said that once he longed
to try how far that land stretched to the north, or whether any one dwelt
north of the waste. So he went due north along the land, the waste land on
the starboard, the open sea on the larboard, for three days. Then the land
bent right to the east, or the sea in on the land, he knew not which, but he
knew that he awaited there a north-west wind and sailed then east, along by
the land, as far as he could sail in four days. Then he had to wait for a
wind right from the north, because the land bent due south. Then he sailed
thence due south along the land as far as he could sail in five days. Then
there flowed a great stream up into the land, and they turned up into the stream,
because they durst not sail past it because of foes, for on the other side of the
stream the land was all inhabited. Nor had he before met any inhabited land
since he had set out from his own home. . . . Chiefly he went thither, in
addition to the viewing of the land, for the horse-whales (walrus), because
they had very excellent bone in their teeth, some of their teeth they brought
to the king and their hide is very good for ship-ropes. That whale is much
16 ALFRED
smaller than other whales ; it is not longer than seven ells. But in his own land
is the best whale-hunting. They are forty-eight ells long, and the greatest
fifty. Of those, he said, he was one of six who slew sixty (?) in two days.
There is a freshness as of a sea- voyage, a personal breath in
the simple writing which makes us realise how closely yElfred
listened to these rough seafarers, and how much he sympathised
with their spirit of discovery. This is the first record in English
of the mighty roll of great adventurers upon the ocean, and
Alfred was as eager to secure the geographical and national
knowledge of these men as the Geographical Society would be
to-day.
These translations were the work of about five years, from
888 to 893, years of the "stillness" that /Elfred loved, years when
he nourished in the arts of peace and literature, as he had done
in wars and government, that "desire I have to leave to men
who should live after me a memory of me in good deeds." I have
said that it is probable that during this time he received and
collected the Northumbrian poetry. Baeda's account of Caedmon
would have set him to inquire about it. Its translation into the
West Saxon dialect would follow, and I should like to have seen
^Elfred reading Beowulf for the first time, or Asser and Alfred
reading together the Crist of Cynewulf. Nor did literature alone
engage him. He still sang and listened to English song, but he
cared also for things and men beyond England. He kept open
house for all who brought him outlanders' tales ; he received
pagan Danes, Britons from Wales, Scots, Armoricans, voyagers
from Gaul and Germany and Rome, messengers from Jerusalem
and the far East. Irish scholars came to confer with him, 1
1 We find in the English Chronicle, under the year 891-892, the following
romantic entry, part of which reads like a myth like the voyage of
St. Brandan but which is in full accordance with Celtic love of adventure :
"And three Scots came to King Alfred in a boat without oars from
Hibernia" (Yrlande in another MS.), "whence they had stolen away, because,
for the love of God, they would be on pilgrimage they recked not where.
The boat in which they fared was wrought of three hides and a half, and they
took with them enough meat for seven nights. Then after seven nights tln-y
ALFRED
and we hear that he sent a messenger to visit the Christian
Churches in India. The arts also were not neglected. He re-
stored and developed the art of shipbuilding. He fetched
many architects from the continent, and was himself an architect.
He rebuilt the fortresses ; he rebuilt London into a goodly city.
He made new roads and repaired the old. He adorned and laid
with fair stone his royal country-houses. In his reign enamel
work, gold -weaving and gold-smithery flourished, and certain
mechanical inventions were his amusement. He still hunted ;
it is a tradition that he wrote a book on falconry ; and the forest
and the pools saw the king flying his royal birds and chasing the
boar and the stag with the eagerness but not the strength of
a young man. ' Through all this lighter work he pursued the
heavier work of ruling his kingdom and preparing it for war,
and in nis translation of Boethius there is a statement inserted
of the powers and means of Government, of the division into
classes a great king makes of his people for the sake of the
kingdom, of the necessity laid upon him to use this material
nobly. It is worth reading, not only for the insight it gives into
his kingship, but for the personal touches of sentiment which
give it a literary charm.
Reason ! indeed thou knowest that neither greed nor the power of this
earthly kingdom was ever very pleasing to me, neither yearned I at all
exceedingly after this earthly kingdom. But yet indeed I wished for
material for the work which it was bidden me to do, so that I might
guide and order with honour and fitness the power with which I was trusted.
Indeed thou knowest that no man can show forth any craft ; can order, or
guide any power, without tools or material material, that is, for each craft,
without which a man cannot work at that craft. This is then the material
of a king and his tools, wherewith to rule That he have his land fully manned,
that he have prayermen, and army-men, and workmen. Indeed, thou knowest
that without these tools no king can show forth his craft. This also is his
material That he have, with the tools, means of living for the three classes
came to land in Cornwall and went then straightway to King Alfred. Thus
were they named Dubslane, Maccbethu, and Maelinmum. And Swifneh,
the best teacher that was among the Scots, died."
i8 ALFRED
land to dwell upon, and gifts, and weapons, and meat, and ale, and
clothes, and what else the three classes need. . . .
And this is the reason I wished for material wherewith to order (my)
power, in order that my skill and power should not be forgotten and hidden
away, for every work and every power shall soon grow very old and be
passed over silently, if it be without wisdom ; because whatsoever is done
through foolishness no one can ever call work. Now would I say briefly
that I have wished to live worthily while I lived, and after my life to leave
to men who should come after me my memory in good deeds.
These were his happiest days, but he lived, as he said, "with a
naked sword always hanging over his head by a single thread,"
and his quiet was destroyed when the sword fell in 893, " Hard-
ship and sorrow a king would wish to be without, but this is not
a king's doom " ; and the sorrow came when the pirates from
Boulogne, with 250 vessels in their train, seized on the forest of
Andred, and Hasting, with 80 vessels, pushed his way up the
Thames. In 894 Hasting got into Hampshire, and shortly after
the whole of the Danelaw rose and joined the invaders.' It was
their dying effort. Alfred was well prepared, and the war, though
carried to Chester in the North and to Exeter in the South, was
victoriously finished by the capture of the Danish fleet in 897.
From that date till his death in 901 ^Elfred had peace; and he
returned, worn out but a conqueror, to his literary work.
The book he now undertook was Boethius' De Consolatione
Philosophiae. The translation, with its original handling of the
material, points to one who now had become an expert in
Translation, who boldly transferred himself into the soul of his
luthor. This self-confidence is that of a long practice in
translating, and places the book at the end of Alfred's life in
She years 897 and 898. His choice this time was directed not
so much by a desire to teach his people as by personal feeling.
The philosophic consolation of the book, to which /Elfred
added his own profound Christianity, was in harmony with
the temper of a man who had seen how fleeting were wealth
and power, bodily strength and fame ; and who needed and
loved to have a deep religious foundation in the soul. He
ALFRED 19
had known sore trouble, his life had been a long battle with
foes, with national ignorance and stupidity, and with bodily
disease ; and now, in this book which he made his own, he
mused, full of courage and of weariness, from his watch-tower
of quiet, on the tragic and changing world, on the rest of the
world to come, and on the power God had given him to act
for his kingdom and endure for his people. The preface
which I here give may have been dictated by /Elfred himself.
King Alfred was the translator of this book, and turned it from Latin into
English as it is now done. Sometimes he set down word for word, sometimes
meaning for meaning, as he could translate most plainly and clearly, in spite
of the various and manifold worldly cares which often occupied him in mind
and body. These cares, which in his days came on the kingship he had
undertaken, are very hard for us to number. And yet, when he had learned
this book and turned it from Latin into the English tongue, he then wrought
it afterwards into verse, as it is now done. And now he begs, and for God's
sake prays every one whom it may please to read the book, that he pray for
him, and that he blame him not if he understood it more rightly than he (the
king) could. For every one, according to the measure of his understanding
and leisure, must speak what he speaketh and do what he doeth.
The De Consolatione was written by Boethius in the prison
where Theodoric, King of the East Goths, had laid him on a
charge of conspiracy. Composed to comfort his heart in trouble,
it is a dialogue between him and Philosophy, who consoles him
for the evil changes of fortune by proving that the only lasting
happiness is in the soul. Inward virtue is all ; everything else is
indifferent. The wise and virtuous man is master of himself
and of events. The book is the last effort of the heathen philo-
sophy, and so near to a part of the spirit of Christianity that it
may be called the bridge between dying paganism and living
Christianity. And so much was this the case that the Middle
Ages believed Boethius to be a Christian, and his book was
translated into the main European languages. Alfred made it
popular in England, Chaucer got it into prose in the fourteenth
century ; in the fifteenth it was put into English verse ; under
Elizabeth it was again put into English prose.
20 ALFRED
Its serious and sorrowful note harmonised well with the
spiritual life of Alfred. He expands, but does not improve, the
grave ethical paragraphs. He does not wear the stoic robes with
grace. ^Sometimes, leaving his original aside, he writes out of
his own heart, and these passages are for the most part engaged
with that contempt of wealth and luxury and power which the
long harassment of his life had bred in him. He claims adversity
as his friend, not his foe ; and he speaks of wisdom and friend-
ship with an equal love. He adds to Boethius a deep religious
fervour. The prayers are the writings where he reaches most
beauty of expression. The sentences on the Divine nature,
steeped in reverence, awe and love, soar with ease into that
solemn thought and adoration which we may well believe filled
the silent hours of the king's meditation on his own stormy life
and on the peace of God. It is a contrast, as we have seen in
Cynewulf, which was dear to the English writers. Sometimes
he yields himself to the charm of metaphysics, and discusses
free will and the Divine preordination. In the fifth book, where
these excursions come, he puts his own work almost entirely in
place of his original, and explains the problems of Boethius
from the Christian point of view. Nowhere does ^Elfred
stand more clearly before us, and the clearer he is the nobler
he seems. As we read, our admiration of him as king and warrior
and law-giver is mingled with our pity and reverence. And the
pity is that tender pity which men feel for the veteran who has
laid by, sore wounded, sword and shield ; and for whom pity is
another word for love. It is now that the phrase England's
Shepherd, England's Darling may most justly be on our lips.
The prayer at the end of the book fitly closes a work he loved
to do, and reveals so intimately the man's heart, that we feel
he could never have published anything so personal had he
not felt that his people loved him dearly and were at one with
him.
I have said that we get close to Alfred's inner life in the
additions he makes, with great freedom, to this translation of
ALFRED 21
the De Consolatione. It seems worth our while to isolate a few of
these additions. They reveal him as man and king, but chiefly
as one who had thought all his life long on the temper of mind
and spirit which should rule over the doings of a king. ' In the
passage already quoted concerning the organisation of the
kingdom, he speaks directly to his subject. In these that follow,
on wealth and power and wisdom, there is no direct reference to
his kingship, but we feel that he is thinking while he writes of
his high place and its temptations ; and his nobleness and
humility, his deep sense of duty, his apartness from the baser
elements of the world, appear in every line.
Riches are better given than withheld. No man can have them without
making his fellowmen poorer. A good name is better than wealth. It
opens the hollow of the heart ; it pierces through hearts that are closed. It
is not lessened as it goes from heart to heart among men. No sword can
slay it, no rope can bind it.
The goods of life are good through the goodness of the man who has
them, and he is good through God. The goods of life are bad through the
badness of the man who has them.
True friends are, of all the goods in this world, the most precious. It
is God who unites friends. Indeed they are not of this world, but divine.
Evil fortune cannot bring them nor take them away.
Wisdom hath four virtues prudence, temperance, courage, and
righteousness. If thou wouldst build Wisdom, set it not up on covetous-
ness. No man builds his house on sandhills. As the drinking sand swallows
the river, so covetousness swallows the frail bliss of this world, because it
will always be thirsty.
He that will have eternal riches, let him build the house of his mind on
the footstone of lowliness. Not on the highest hill where the raging wind
of trouble blows or the rain of measureless anxiety.
Power is never a good unless he be good who has it. No one need care
for power or strive for it. If you be wise and good, it will follow you, though
you may not desire it. Thou shalt not obtain {and here he thinks of all
he has borne as king\ power free from sorrow from other peoples, nor yet
from thine own people and kindred.
Never without fear, difficulties, and sorrows, has a king wealth and
power. To be without them, and yet have them, were happy. But I
know that cannot be.
But whatsoever trouble beset a king, he would care only to rule over
22
ALFRED
a free people. \_ln a discussion on Free Will, Reason says :} " How would
it look to you if there were any powerful king and he had no free men in his
kingdom, but that all were slaves ? "
sElfred: " It would not be thought by me right or reasonable if enslaved
men should only attend on him."
"Then," quoth Reason, "it would be more unnatural if God, in all
His kingdom, had no free creature under His power."
Proud and unrighteous kings are adorned with gold and swords and
thegns ; but strip them of their trappings, and they are no more, even worse,
than many of their thegns. Let them fall from power, and their past
luxury makes them angry with their present, weak through sadness, useless
for getting back what they have lost.
This sentence, shortened from the original, reads as if he
were thinking of Athelney. Then, having disposed of wealth
and power as making a man, he passes on to rank.
"Art thou," he says, "more fair for other men's fairness? A man
will not be the better because he had a well-born father, if he himself is
nought. The only thing which is good in noble descent is this That it
makes men ashamed of being worse than their elders, and strive to do
better than they."
Two more phrases mark the man-
We underworth ourselves when we love that which is lower than
ourselves.
For me, I dread no ill weirds. They can neither help nor harm a
man. Ill luck is even happiness, though we do not think it is. One can
trust it ; what it promises is true.
What a pathetic note sounds through all these sentences !
It is the note of one who is almost overpowered by difficulty,
alone within, with few friends, sore troubled with disease of
one who works for justice and peace in his kingdom with
inadequate helpers, but who at every point just conquers life ;
having his ideal aims and faithful always to them ; and having,
beyond the storms of the world, a sure faith in the greater King.
We do not dwell in a history of literature on the religion of a
man, but no account of vElfred could be true which did not
say that he rested on God for his support and inspiration, that
his incessant work in this world was combined at every point
V
/ELFRED " , 23
with the life of his spirit in the diviner world. I quote one
passage out of many to emphasise this, and in itself it is a piece
of literature. It is the prayer at the end of the Boethius :
Lord God Almighty, shaper and ruler of all creatures, I pray thee for
thy great mercy, and for the token of the holy rood, and for the maidenhood
of St. Mary, and for the obedience of St. Michael, and for all the love of thy
holy saints and their worthiness, that thou guide me better than I have done
towards thee. And guide me to thy will to the need of my soul better than
I can myself. And stedfast my mind towards thy will and to my soul's need.
And strengthen me against the temptations of the devil, and put far from me
foul lust and every unrighteousness. And shield me against my foes, seen
and unseen. And teach me to do thy will, that I may inwardly love thee
before all things with a clean mind and clean body. For thou art my maker
and my redeemer, my help, my comfort, my trust, and my hope. Praise
and glory be to thee now, ever and ever, world without end. Amen.
"In the De Consolatione, Boethius interspersed his prose with
verses, with Metra. The prefaces of our two English manuscripts
tell us that the king, having translated the Metra in prose, put
them afterwards into poetry, and the oldest of the manuscripts
has this poetical version of the Metra. Some think we have
here the king's work. If we take the short poetical prologue
to be a true statement * and indeed it might be the king's own
writing the English versification of the Metra is his own. If so
he was only a poor versifier. But others say that these verses
were done from Alfred's prose by a writer of the age of the
manuscript, that is, of the tenth century. The question has
been argued at great length by a crowd of critics, and remains as
yet undecided. The argument does not seem worth the trouble.
The Metra in English verse are not good poetry. It is a pity, if
Alfred wrote them, to connect them with his name. If he did
1 Here are the first verses of the prologue
Thus Alfred us an old-spell told,
Set forth his song-craft, used a maker's skill,
King of West Saxons he ! And mickle lust he had
For this his folk to sing his song,
And mirth for men and sayings manifold !
A fragment of a third MS. has been lately found by Prof. Napier,
24 ALFRED
not write them, it would be well if they could be forgotten. Yet
the personal touches in them, if we could be sure of Alfred's
authorship, are interesting ; moreover, though one does not care
for the poetry, yet, were it Alfred's, it would illustrate his
intellectual activity that he should attempt verse as well as
prose.
What else the king did before his death is not quite clear.
A translation of the Soliloquia of St. Augustine has been im-
puted to him, and is very probably his. There is a preface,
which, if this book belong to the end of Alfred's life, is a
pathetic farewell to all that he has done as a translator of good
books for his people, and a call to his fellow-workers to continue
his labours for the sake of their English brethren. This is put
in the form of a parable ; * and its personal feeling and imagina-
tive form the first so common, the second so rare in Alfred's
writing make it worth quoting.
Then I gathered me darts 2 and pillar-shafts and stead-shafts, and handles
for" each of the tools which I was able to work with, and "bay timbers " and
"bolt timbers," and for each of the works which I knew how to work, the
most beautiful wood, which, felling, I could bear away. Neither came I
home with an overweight ; it pleased me not to bring all the wood home,
(even) if I could carry it all. On each tree I saw somewhat of that which
I needed at home. Therefore I advise every one who may be strong enough
and have many a wain, that he go to the same wood where I cut these pillar-
shafts, and there fetch himself more, and load his wains with branches, so that
he may make many a trim wall and many a beautiful house, and build a fair
town of them, and there may dwell joyfully and peacefully both winter and
summer as I (till) now have not yet done. But he who taught me, to whom
the wood was pleasant, he can make me dwell more peacefully, both in this
passing dwelling on this wayfaring, while I am in this world ; and also in the
1 The suggestion of the parable is Walker's. The houses ^Elfred
mentions as built by him are the books he has translated, fetching his
materials from the wood (of Literature). But much more material remains
behind. Let others, his friends, go and fetch it in, and build with it, as he has
done. Yet here, in St. Augustine and others, there is the material for another
house, eternal in the Heavens.
1 "Darts," "javelins," must mean here poles sharpened at one end like
spears, for driving into the ground.
ALFRED 25
eternal home which he hath bid us hope for through St. Augustine, St. Gregory,
and St. Jerome, and many of the holy fathers ; even so I believe also that he
will make (for the worthiness of them all) both this wayfaring better than it
was ere this time ; and especially enlighten the eyes of my mind, to this end,
that I may find the way to the everlasting home, and everlasting honour and
everlasting rest which is promised to us through the holy fathers. . . .
May God grant that I have power for both to be useful here, and surely to
go thither.
The translation is made up from Augustine's Latin into two
English books ; and a letter of Augustine's De Videndo Deo is
added. The letter is thrown into a dialogue, and this is done in
order to harmonise it with the Soliloquia which are couched in
the form of a dialogue between Augustine and his Reason. The
first book is called by the editor a collection of flowers. "Here
end the blossoms of this book"; and this flower-title is given
also to the second book. The third book (that derived from
Augustine's Letter] closes with the words : " Here end the
sayings of King Alfred," etc. The date is probably 900.
But his eager spirit, even when tamed by the approach of
death, would have desired to do something new. And William
of Malmesbury tells us that he translated part of the Psalms of
David. " Psalterium transferre aggressus, vix prima parte ex-
plicata vivendi finem fecit." It is supposed that we have in the
first fifty Psalms in prose of a Psalter called the Paris Psalter,
this last piece of Alfred's literary labour; 1 and it is a work we
may well imagine his spiritual intellect would do with comfort
before he died. He did not live to finish it. In 901, "the un-
shakeable pillar of the West Saxons, a man full of justice, bold in
arms, learned in speech, and above all, filled with the knowledge
which flows from God," passed away and was buried at Winchester.
This is a suggestion, merely a suggestion, of Wiilker's. Wichmann has
endeavoured to prove Alfred's authorship of these fifty Psalms. But Dr.
Douglas Bruce of Pennsylvania, in an elaborate dissertation on the Anglo-
Saxon version of the Psalms, commonly called the Paris Psalter, has, I think
with good reason, shown that /Alfred's authorship of these Psalms is open to
the gravest doubt. But this doubt does not deny that ^Elfred did translate
some of the Psalms only that the Paris Psalter Psalms are his work.
26 ALFRED
Only two books not done by himself appeared, as far as
we know, in his reign. The first was the Dialogues of Gregory,
translated at Alfred's instance by Werfrith of Worcester, and
with a preface written by the king. Werfrith is not mentioned
in the preface, but both Asser and William of Malmesbury speak
of him as the translator. These Dialogues are divided into four
books, and contain the conversation of Gregory with his deacon
Peter. Their subject is the lives and miracles of the Italian saints,
and in the fourth book the life of the soul after death. The
doctrine of Purgatory, as held in the Middle Ages, may be said
to have been settled in this fourth book. Alfred's preface,
given in full by Earle in his Anglo-Saxon Literature, brings us,
as usual, close to his character.
I, /Elfred, have clearly known that it is specially asked of those to
whom God has given high rank on this earth, that they should bend their
minds to the divine law, in the midst of earthly carefulness ; therefore I
sought of trusty friends that they would translate the following dialogues, that
I, being strengthened through their warning and love, may at whiles think on
heavenly things amid the troubles of this world.
The other is the Book of Martyrs. This is allowed, after
Cockayne's arguments, to date from Alfred's time, and was prob-
ably compiled at his desire. It begins with the 3ist of December,
with St. Columba; and ends with the 2ist of December, with St.
Thomas. Of course, the fewness of these remains does not assert
that no other books were made in English. But the silence is
expressive. And Alfred's loneliness and sadness, as he drew to
the close of life, makes all the more impression on us, when we
think that his effort to make a literary class was a failure, and
that he himself was the only important English writer in his
kingdom. Asser's Life of the King 1 was written in Latin.
Plegmund and John the Old Saxon seem to have been quite
1 That Asser wrote this book has been questioned again and ngain. But
we have little reason to doubt that the bulk of the book is by the man whose
name it bears. Additions have probably been made to it, legends inserted,
events coloured and heightened to glorify the King, but on the whole its
record is historical, and contemporary with /Elfred.
ALFRED 27
silent. The writer of the king's wars with the Danes in the
English Chronicle was probably Alfred himself. Werfrith appears
to have been forced into translating the Dialogues of Gregory,
and to have done no more. The king really stands by himself;
and yet he had far heavier work to do than any of his friends.
No figure is lonelier and nobler in the long gallery of the literary
men of England.
The character of Alfred as warrior, ruler, and statesman has
been sufficiently displayed by historians old and new, but of that
part of his character which appears in his literary work we may
here say a few words before we bid him farewell. The more
intimate personality of the king, that tender, naif, simple, humble,
self-forgetful nature, which played like a child with the toys of
knowledge, with the Greek and the Roman tales ; which would
have been weak through sensitiveness "were it not for the resolute
will to attain the full height of his royal duties, would have
remained unknown to us, had he not been a writer as well as a
king. What that inner personality was is sufficiently clear from
the extracts I have given, and those who read them will, each
in his own way, feel the man.
'There are, however, points belonging to the intellectual
character of Alfred which have a remarkable interest. He
was the only man in his kingdom who was filled with so great
a curiosity for knowledge, and whose range of interests was so
wide, that his spirit might justly be compared with that of the
men of the Renaissance. In this he stood far above mere scholars
like Asser or Werfrith, who were probably more than content with
what they knew. Alfred was never satisfied. This was the peculiar
grace in him, that he would not only live well as king, but learn
the life beyond a king's, know as well as act, belong to the world
where pursuit and its object had no end. No limit lay to learning.
It may be that the first seeds of this unquenchable curiosity
were sown in Rome, where he lived among the records and ruins
of the past, where every stone still awakens the desire to know.
It is more than probable that at the Frankish court he heard
28 ALFRED
the story of the love of learning which was so strong in Charles
the Great, and that, even as a boy, he urged himself to imitate
the Emperor. It is certainly true that when he came to the
throne, he acted precisely as Charles had acted. He sent for
foreigners to help him in educating his people, as Charles had
sent for Alcuin and others. He tried, as Charles had done, to
get a nest of learned men in his court. He made, like Charles,
schools for his nobles, and forced them, like Charles, to learn.
He set up schools and monasteries, without the success of Charles.
Asser and Werfrith and other men had the same friendly relation
with him that Einhard and Alcuin, Peter of Pisa, and Paul the
Lombard had with Charles. And he collected the old songs of
his English people, as Charles had reduced to writing and learnt
by heart the old Teutonic sagas " those most ancient songs of
the barbarians, in which the actions of the kings of old and their
wars were chanted." Indeed, in this collecting of his country's
songs, Alfred began to feed his curiosity ; and his main curiosity
was to find out everything he could about his own land. Nothing
lay deeper in his heart than love of England, even though he ruled
over so small a part of it. English songs, as we have seen,
engaged his boyhood ; English poetry his manhood. He sought
from Bseda's history to know the foundations of English policy
and English religion. He sought from sailors who had seen the
Baltic to know what manner of land it was where the English
lived before they came to his own England. He mastered the
existing English laws ; he set on foot a national history ; he
recorded what he himself had done for England in war and peace.
He determined to learn Latin, because knowledge was hidden in
that tongue ; and when he had gained it, he made all he read into
English that his own people might know all that he knew. It was
a misery to him that England was not as athirst for knowledge as
himself. The words in which he expresses his pity for England's
loss of learning in the past, and his hope for all she might gain
in the future, are such as a Roman scholar of the early Renaissance
might have used concerning his own country.
ALFRED
29
But his curiosity was not satisfied with the knowledge of
England. He desired to know the world beyond ; not only what
he could learn from the men he fetched from the Continent, not
only the courts and nations with which he was politically con-
nected this might be the desire of any king but also the past
history of great peoples, their manners, their ways in war and
peace, the stories of their poets, the theories of their philosophers,
the course of religious life among them, the geography of ancient
lands, and the discoveries of new lands. He sent messengers even
to the East. It is strange, in the midst of an England dead to
pleasure of this kind, to suddenly meet with this eager personage.
It is not strange to find, when he lives in this sphere, that he then
forgot his kingship and only remembered the new worlds of
learning which he had to conquer. When he is talking to Asser
or Ohthere, when he is writing to Werfrith or to his people about
literature, kinghood slips off him. When he is speaking of Greece
or Rome or the Germans, he writes without a trace of insularity.
Hence in all his work, even in his policy to the Danes, there
is an extraordinary absence in ^Elfred of any national feeling as
against other nations. His patriotism, his sense of kingship,
were strong, but they were modified by a clear recognition that
all men who loved knowledge were of the same country and of
the same rank one in the commonalty of literature. This also
is characteristic of a man of the Renaissance. *Along with this
eagerness to learn there was the same eagerness to teach which
marked the men of the New Learning. He risked his popularity
as a king by his endeavour to make his people study. He seems
to think that his nobles, clergy, and people must feel on this
matter as intensely as himself. To educate became a part even
of his religion. To give money for a school was to give to God.
But that which, even more than a passion for knowledge and
for teaching, brings him into line with the scholars and artists of
the New Learning is his individuality. The personal element
stands forth clear in all his literary work. It is this which takes
even translations out of the region of the commonplace, and
ALFRED
which lifts his prefaces into literature. In war, and as a king,
he had genius ; but in literature he is either a plodder or a
child. He never rises into any original power, not even in the
Chronicle, or in the additions to the De Consolatione Philosophiae.
But the aspiring personality of the man animates and pervades
the poverty of the work with a humanity which pleases us more
even than good writing. He has all the gracious naivete of a
child. He plays with the Greek stories like those of Orpheus
and of Ulysses and Circe, with the same kind of natural sim-
plicity with which Turner treated them in painting; and this
naturalness has so much charm that we should regret to lose it in
finish of style and in art of words. In all that is personal he
belongs to literature. He creates his character in his subjects,
and the impression he made upon the future writing of England
is owing to that, and not to his literary ability. It was a great
thing to do.
What, then, is his place ? He has no originality as a worker
in literature, no creative power. He was a good receiver and a
good reproducer of knowledge. Even where he seems to be
original, he may not be so. We do not know how much of the
additions to the Boethius may be derived from Asser's conversa-
tion. But the style is his own ; its simplicity is as effective in
prayer and philosophy as it is in the Chronicle, and very pleasant
coming from a great king. It is also pervaded by a strong
desire for clearness and for use, and by a love of his people.
It succeeds in being clear and useful, and it pleases by the force
of these elements ; but most of all, perhaps, by the deep feeling
for his people which animates and warms it. We might also say
that his long intercourse with public affairs and with the manage-
ment of wars adds a weight to the style, of which, as we read,
we are vaguely conscious. But even when all this has been said,
the king, in literature, is but a learner, not, in any sense of the
word, a master.
APPENDIX
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF KING
ALFRED, SELECTED AND TRANSLATED
FROM THE OLD ENGLISH BY KATE M.
WARREN
KING ALFRED AT WORK
The following account of Alfred is not from his own writings, but
from the Latin "Annals" of his reign written by Asser. It
forms a fitting preface to the king^s work in literature. The
translation is that given in Bohrfs edition.
ON a certain day we were both of us sitting in the king's chamber,
talking on all kinds of subjects, as usual, and it happened that I read
to him a quotation out of a certain book. He heard it attentively
with both his ears, and addressed me with a thoughtful mind, show-
ing me at the same moment a book which he carried in his bosom,
wherein the daily courses, and psalms, and prayers which he had
read in his youth were written, and he commanded me to write the
same quotation in that book. Hearing this, and perceiving his
ingenuous benevolence, and devout desire of studying the words of
divine wisdom, I gave, though in secret, boundless thanks to
Almighty God, who had implanted such a love of wisdom in the
king's heart. But I could not find any empty space in that book
wherein to write the quotation, for it was already full of various
matters ; wherefore I made a little delay, principally that I might
stir up the bright intellect of the king to a higher acquaintance with
the divine testimonies. Upon his urging me to make haste and
write it quickly, I said to him, " Are you willing that I should write
that quotation on some leaf apart ? For it is not certain whether we
shall not find one or more other such extracts which will please you ;
and if that should so happen, we shall be glad that we have kept them
apart." " Your plan is good," said he, and I gladly made haste to
r>
34 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
get ready a sheet, in the beginning of which I wrote what he bade
me ; and on that same day I wrote therein, as I had anticipated, no
less than three other quotations which pleased him ; and from that
time we daily talked together and found out other quotations which
pleased him, so that the sheet became full, and deservedly so ;
according as it is written, " The just man builds upon a moderate
foundation, and by degrees passes to greater things." Thus, like a
most productive bee, he flew here and there, asking questions as he
went, until he had eagerly and unceasingly collected many various
flowers of divine Scripture, with which he thickly stored the cells of
his mind.
Now when that first quotation was copied, he was eager at once
to read, and to interpret in Saxon, and then to teach others. . . .
Inspired by God he began to study the rudiments of divine Scripture
on the sacred solemnity of St. Martin (Nov. 11), and he continued
to learn the flowers collected by certain masters, and to reduce them
into the form of one book, as he was then able, although mixed one
with another, until it became almost as large as a psalter. This
book he called his Enchiridion or Manual, because he carefully kept
it at hand clay and night, and found, as he told me, no small
consolation therein.
FROM ALFRED'S OLD ENGLISH VERSION OF
GREGORY'S PASTORAL CARE
(See pp. 8-12)
How THE TEACHER OUGHT TO VIEW HIS AUTHORITY
ONE man is born like another, but the difference of their merits
keepeth some back behind others, and their sins hold them there.
Verily, then, the Divine Judgment remembereth the difference which
cometh from their sinfulness, and that all men cannot be alike, and
willeth that one should be upraised through another. Therefore all
those who have to be above others must not think so much nor so
often of their own lordship as of how like they are to other men in
nature ; and they must not rejoice that they are over other men so
much as that they can be very useful to other men. So it is said
that our forefathers were shepherds, and also the Lord said to Noah
and to his children, " Grow ye, and multiply, and fill the earth, and
your awe and your fear shall be over all the beasts of the earth."
He did not say over other men, but over beasts ; while he was for-
bidden power over men he was allowed it over beasts. Man is in
nature better than unthinking beasts, but he is not better than other
men. Therefore it is not said that other men ought to fear him, but
the beasts. For it is unnatural overbearingness that a man should
wish that his like should fear him ; and yet it is needful that a man
should fear his lord, and the servant his master. Therefore when the
teachers perceive that those who are under them fear God too little,
then there is need that they make them at least fear human might,
so that they who dread not the Divine Judgment may not dare to sin.
(Chap. XVII.)
WHY THE TEACHER SHOULD DESIRE POPULARITY
It is fitting that good rulers should desire to please men, so that
through their own pleasantness they may make their Lord pleasing to
the people, and through the honour in which they are held they may
36 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
draw their neighbours to love of the truth ; not only because they
desire that men should love them themselves especially, but so that
the love of them may be a way by which they can lead to the love
of our Maker the hearts that are willing to hear them. And it is
very hard for a man to hear willingly a teacher whom he doth not
love. Therefore he who is to be over others must strive to please, so
that he may be listened to. And yet he may not seek love of him-
self for himself, lest he find that he is the enemy, in the hidden
thought of his mind, of Him of whom, in his daily service, he is
openly the servant. (Chap. XIX.)
DIFFERENT MEN MUST BE TAUGHT IN DIFFERENT WAYS
It is not fitting that we should teach all men in one way, because
they are not all of one mind and of one behaviour. For often the
same teaching which helpeth one hurteth another, even as herbs and
grass of many kinds are in nature. On some beasts fatten, on some
they die. Even as with soft whistling one quieteth a horse, so also
with the same whistling one may rouse a hound. There are also many
leechdoms which lessen some diseases and strengthen others ; bread,
also, which increaseth the might of strong men lesseneth that of
children. Because of the difference of the hearers must the words of
the teacher be different, so that he may fit himself to all his hearers,
to each after his own measure, and yet not so as to swerve at all
from the law and from right teaching.
What may we say, then, are the inmost thoughts of men but as it
were the strings of a harp tightly stretched, which the harper very
diversely striketh and moveth, and thereby causeth that they make
no sound different from that which he desireth ? He toucheth all
with one hand because he willeth that they should make one tune,
though he may move them diversely. So must every teacher with
one teaching, but with varied counsels, stir up the mind of his
hearers to one love and one belief. (Chap. XXIII.)
How BEST TO REPROVE THE PROUD
It is to be borne in mind that one can often the better reprove
the proud, if amidst the reproving one feedeth them with some prais-
ing. One ought to tell them of some good things which they have in
themselves, or which they might have if they have not. So may we
best cut away that which we mislike in them, if we first make them
hear from us somewhat that may please them, and so draw their
mind to us that it may be the more pleasant to hear whatsoever we
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 37
will for them of blame or of teaching. Therefore they are to be
reminded of the good things which they have done before, so that
they may be the more pleased to hear what one wisheth to tell them.
Even as with wild horses, when we first have caught them, we smooth
them down, and stroke them with outspread hands, and subdue them,
so that after a time we may fully teach and tame them with rods.
So also the physician, when he prepareth bitter herbs for a certain
drink, he sweeteneth it with honey, lest he (i.e. the sick man} perceive at
the first the bitterness of the herb which is to heal him ; but when
the taste of the bitterness is hidden by the sweetness then is the
deadly humour in the man slain by the bitter drink. So with proud
men, one must temper the beginning and the opening of reproof and
of blame, and mingle it with praise, so that for the pleasantness of
the praise and the flattery which they love, they may also suffer the
blaming and the reproving which they shun.
Also we may often the better persuade the proud to our will if we
let them know what great need we have of them, as if it were more
needful to us than to themselves that they do well, and we further-
more ask them that for our sake they cease from their evil ways.
The proud are the more easily turned to good if they know that other
men also have need of them. (Chap. XLI.)
FROM ALFRED'S OLD ENGLISH VERSION OF BREDA'S
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH
PEOPLE !
(See pp. 12-13)
KING EADWINE TAKES COUNSEL AS TO THE ADOPTION
OF CHRISTIANITY IN HIS KINGDOM IN PLACE OF HEATHENISM
THEN had the king speech and counsel with his wise men, and
asked them all singly how it seemed to them this new teaching
should be looked at, and the worship of the Divine Nature which was
therein taught.
Then answered him his head-priest, named Coifi, " See thou, O
King, what this teaching is that is now preached to us. I truly avow
to thee that I have surely learned that no power or usefulness at all
hath the faith which up till now we have held and followed. For
none of thy thegns more straitly or more gladly gave himself to the
worship of our gods than I, and nevertheless there are many who
have received greater gifts and benefits from thee than I have, and
in all things have had greater profit. Jndeed I am sure, if our gods
had any power, that then would they help me more because I the
more earnestly served and obeyed them. Therefore if thou see that
these things newly preached to us are better and stronger, me-
thinketh it be wise that we receive them."
Another counsellor of the king, an ealdorman, agreed with these
words, and took up the speaking, and thus said: "In this way, O thou
King, seemeth to me this present life of man on earth when likened
with the time unknown to us: it is even as if thou shouldst be sitting
at meat with thine ealdormen and thegns in wintertide, and a fire be
kindled, and the hall warmed, and it rain and snow and storm without,
and a sparrow should come and fly swiftly through the house, coming
through one door and going out through the other. Behold, for the
time he is within he is not touched by the storm of winter, yet that is
1 Recent scholarship has expressed some doubt as to Alfred's authorship of this
translation, but there is as yet no sufficient evidence against it.
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 39
but the twinkling of an eye and the smallest while, and forthwith from
winter into winter he goeth back. So also this life of man appeareth
for a little while ; what may go before or what may follow after, we
know not. Therefore if this teaching bring us aught surer and more
seemly, it is worthy that we follow it." Like words to these spake
other ealdormen and counsellors of the king.
Then again Coifi said further that he wished more carefully to
hear Paulinus the bishop speaking about the God whom he
preached. Then the king bade it so be done. When he then had
heard his words he cried out and said thus : " Plainly I see that that
was naught which we followed. For so much as I the more carefully
sought in that faith the very truth, so I found it the less. Now, then,
I openly avow that, in this teaching, the very truth shineth that can
grant us the gift of eternal blessedness and the salvation of eternal
life. Wherefore, then, I now advise thee, O King, that the temple
and the altars which we have hallowed, without the gain of any good,
we now quickly spoil and burn with fire." So, therefore, the king
then openly avowed to the bishop and to them all that he would
firmly forsake idolatry and receive the faith of Christ. (A.D. 627.)
(Book II. Chap. X.)
HOW C^EDMON BECAME A POET
In the monastery of this Abbess 1 there was a certain brother
especially famous and marked out by a divine gift, for he was wont
to make seemly songs concerning faith and goodness, so that whatso-
ever he learned from scholars of the divine writings, that, after a little
while, he brought forth well-wrought in verse, with the greatest
sweetness and liveliness, in the English tongue. And by his songs
the minds of many men were often fired to disdain of the world and
to fellowship with the heavenly life. And so also many others after
him, among the English people, made devout songs, but yet none
could do that like unto him. For he was not taught by men or
through a man to know the craft of verse, but he was divinely helped,
and through the grace of God received song-craft. And he therefore
could never make any light or idle song, but even that only which
had to do with goodness and which it was seemly for his devout
tongue to sing.
He had lived in the worldly state until the time when he was
grown in years and had never learned any song. And therefore
often at the merrymaking where for sake of mirth it was ordered that
they all in turn should sing to the harp, when he saw the harp
coming near him he arose for shame from the table and went home
1 Abbess Hild at Streoneshalh or Whitby (A.D. 657-680).
40 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
to his house. When at one time he had done this, he left the house
of good-fellowship and went out to the cattle-shed, of which the care
had been given to him that night. When he then at due time had
there thrown his limbs upon the bed and slept, there stood by him a
certain man in a dream and hailed him and greeted him and called
him by his name : " Caedmon, sing me something." Then answered
he and said, " I cannot sing, and for that I went out from this merry-
making and came hither, because I could not sing." Again he who
was speaking with him said, " Yet thou couldst sing." Then said
he, "What must I sing?" He said, "Sing me the beginning of all
things." When he then had received this answer he began at once
to sing in praise of God the Maker verses and words which he had
never heard, of which the manner is this :
Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard,
meotudes meahte and his modge]?anc,
weorc wuldorfaeder, swa he wundra gehwaes,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He aerest sceop eorSan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend ;
]->a. middangeard, monncynnes weard,
ece drihten, aefter teode
firum foldan, frea aelmihtig. 1
Then he arose from that sleep and all that he had sung in sleep he
had fast in mind, and to those words straightway added many words
of noble song to God in the same measure. Then came he in the
morning to the town-reeve who was his ealdorman, telling him what
gift he had received ; and he forthwith led him to the Abbess and
spoke and made it known to her. Then she bade assemble all the
most learned men and the scholars, and had him tell of the dream in
their presence and sing the song, so that by the judgment of them
all it should be decided how or whence it had come.
Then was it seen by them all, even as it was, that a heavenly gift
had been given to him by the Lord Himself. Then they set forth
and told him a certain holy story and words of divine lore, and bade
him then, if he could, turn it into the sweet sound of verse. When
he had then received the matter he went home to his house ; and he
came again in the morning and sang and returned to them, wrought
in the best of verse, what had been given over to him.
1 The literal translation of Alfred's West Saxon verse is as follows : " Now
must we praise the Guardian of the heaven-realm, the Maker's might and the
thought of His mind, the work of the Glory-Father, how He, the eternal Lord, set
the beginning of every wonder. He first shaped, for the children of earth, heaven
for roof, holy Shaper ! Then middle-earth, the Guardian of mankind, the eternal
Lord, afterwards made, as floor for men, Lord Almighty ! "
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 41
Then the Abbess honoured and loved the gift of God in the man,
and she advised and charged him to leave the worldly state and take
on monkhood, and he fully agreed. And she received him into the
monastery with his goods and united him to the congregation 'of the
servants of God ; and bade him be taught the whole course of holy
history and narrative. And he kept in his memory all that he could
learn by listening, and, even as a clean beast chewing the cud, he
turned it all into the sweetest verse. And his song and his verse
were so winsome to hear that his teachers themselves wrote them
down from his mouth and learned them.
(Book IV. Chap. XXIV.)
FROM ALFRED'S OLD ENGLISH VERSION OF THE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD BY OROSIUS
(See pp. 14-16)
THE WEALTH OF OHTHERE
(This passage is a continuation of that given on p. 226)
HE was a very wealthy man in those goods in which their wealth
lieth, that is in wild-deer. He had then, when he came to the king,
of unsold tame deer, six hundred. Those deer they call rein-deer ;
six of them were decoy-deer, which are very valuable among the Fins
because they catch the wild rein-deer with them. He was among the
first men in that land, yet he had not more than twenty head of
cattle and twenty sheep and twenty swine, and the little that he
ploughed he ploughed with horses. But their wealth is mostly in the
tribute which the Fins pay to them. That tribute is in deer-skins,
and in feathers of birds and whale-bone, and in the ship-ropes which
are made of whale's hide and seal's. Each payeth according to his
rank. The highest rank must pay fifteen marten-skins, and five of
rein-deer, and one bear-skin, and ten measures of feathers, and a
kirtle of bear or otter skin, and two ship-ropes, each to be sixty ells
long, one made of whale's hide and the other of seal's.
(Book I. Chap. I.)
A ROMAN TRIUMPH
( The description of the Triumph itself is entirely Alfreds insertion)
The Romans were so greatly slaughtered there (in a battle ivit/i
the Etruscans, etc., B.C. 480), though they had the victory, that the
only one of their consuls who was left refused the triumph which they
brought towards him when he was coming home, and said that they
would have clone better to meet him with wailing than with a triumph.
What they called a Triumph was when they had overcome any
people in battle then it was their custom that all their senators should
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 43
come to meet their consuls after the battle, six miles from the city,
with a chariot adorned with gold and gems, and they must bring two
white four-footed beasts. As they went homeward then must their
senators ride in chariots after the consuls, and drive before them,
bound, the men who had been taken captive, so that their honour
should be the more glorious. But when they had got any such people
into their power without a battle, then, as they came homeward, one
had to bring to meet them from the city a chariot which was adorned
with silver, and one of each kind of four-footed beasts, in honour of
their consuls. That was then a Triumph. (Book II. Chap. IV.)
JULIUS CAESAR'S INVASION OF BRITAIN
After he had overcome the Gauls, he went into the island of
Britain, and fought against the Britons, and was put to flight in the
land that one calleth Kentland. Soon after that he fought again with
the Britons in Kentland and they were put to flight. Their third
fight was near the river that one calleth the Thames, near the ford
that one calleth Wallingford. After that fight the king and the towns-
people who were in Cirencester bowed to him, and then all who were
in the island. (Book V. Chap. XII.)
FROM THE OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLE
(See pp. 13-14)
KING ALFRED'S WARS WITH THE DANES
871. IN this year came the Danish army to Reading in Wessex,
and three nights after two earls rode up into the land. Then Ealdor-
man ./Ethelwulf met them at Englefield, and there fought with them
and had the victory. Four nights after that King /Ethelred and
/Elfred his brother led a great army to Reading and fought with the
Danish army, and there was great slaughter on either hand, and
Ealdorman /Ethelwulf was slain, and the Danes kept the field.
And four nights after, /Ethelred the king and Alfred his brother
fought with the whole Danish army at Ashdown. And they were in
two companies ; in one was Bagsecg and Healfdene, the heathen
kings, and in the other were the earls. And King /Ethelred fought
with the company of the kings, and King Bagsecg was slain ; and
/Elfred his brother fought with the company of the earls, and there
were slain Earl Sidroc the elder, and Earl Sidroc the younger, and
Earl Osbearn, and Earl Fraena, and Earl Harold ; and the Danish
companies were both put to flight, and many thousands slain, and
they were fighting until night.
And fourteen nights after that King /Ethelred and /Elfred his
brother fought with the Danish army at Basing, and there the Danes
had the victory. And two months after King /Ethelred and ^Elfred
his brother fought with the Danish army at Merton, and they were in
two companies, and they put both to flight and far into the day had
the victory ; and there was great slaughter on either hand ; and the
Danes kept the field. And there Bishop Heahmund was slain and
many good men. And after this fight came a great summer army.
And the Easter after that King /Ethelred died ; and he had
reigned five years ; and his body lieth at Wimborne.
Then his brother /Elfred, son of /Ethel wulf, took the kingdom of
the West Saxons.
And about one month afterwards, King /Elfred with a little band
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 45
fought the whole Danish army at Wilton, and far into the day put
them to flight, and {but} the Danes held the field.
And in this year were nine pitched battles fought with the whole
army in the kingdom south of the Thames, besides that /Elfred the
king's brother and single ealdormen and king's thegns often rode at
them in raids which one did not count ; and during this year were
slain nine earls and one king ; and in this year the West Saxons
made peace with the Danish army.
878. In this year the Danish army stole away in mid-winter to
Chippenham and harried the land of the West Saxons, and settled
there, and drove many of the people over sea ; and the greater part
of the rest they harried, and the people bowed to them, except King
yElfred, who, with a little band, went to the woods and into the moor-
fastnesses. And this same winter was the brother of Ingwrer and
Healfdene in Devonshire in Wessex, with twenty-three ships, and
they slew him there, and eight hundred and forty men of his army
with him.
And the Easter after, King yElfred, with a little band, built a
stronghold at ^Ethelney, and from that stronghold was fighting
against the army, together with that part of the men of Somerset
who were nearest. Then in the seventh week after Easter he rode
to Egbert's Stone, east of Selwood, and there came to him all the
men of Somerset and Wiltshire and that part of Hampshire which is
on this side of the sea, and were fain of him. And he went one
night from the camp to Iglea (Highley ?) and the night after to
Ethandune (Eddington ?), and there fought the whole army and put it
to flight, and rode after them to the stronghold, and encamped there
fourteen nights. And then the Danish army gave him hostages and
great oaths that they would go from his kingdom, and promised him
also that their king would receive baptism ; and they fulfilled that.
And three weeks after Godrum the king, with nine and twenty of the
men who were worthiest in the army, came to Aller, which is over
against ^Ethelney. And the king received him there in baptism, and
his chrism-loosening l was at Wedmore ; and he was twelve nights
with the king, and he greatly honoured him and his companions
with gifts.
893. In this year the great Danish army which we have before
spoken of went again from the East Kingdom {Kingdom of the East
Franks} westward to Boulogne, and there were shipped so that they
got over in one crossing, with horses and all ; and they then came up
1 The ceremonious removal of the linen band which was put about the head
when anointing took place at baptism.
46 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
the mouth of the Limen with 250 ships. That mouth is on the east
of Kent, at the east end of the great wood that we call Andred. The
wood is along from east to west 120 miles long, or longer, and thirty
miles broad. The river which we have before spoken of runneth out
from that weald. On this river they towed up their ships to the
wood, four miles from the outside of the mouth, and there took a
stronghold ; within -this fastness were a few countrymen, and it was
half-built.
Then soon after that came Haesten with eighty ships up into the
mouth of the Thames, and built a stronghold at Milton, and the other
Danish army was at Appledore.
896. In that same year the aforesaid army built a stronghold on
the Lea, twenty miles above London. After that, in the summer,
there went out a great part of the townsfolk and also of the other
people until they came to the Danish stronghold ; and there they
were put to flight and some four of the king's thegns slain. Then in
harvest time the king encamped in the neighbourhood of the town
while they reaped their corn, so that the Danes might not hinder them
from taking the harvest.
And upon a certain day the king rode up by the river, and looked
where the river might be blocked up, so that they could not bring out
their ships. And they then did this : they built two strongholds on the
two sides of the river. When they had then already begun the strong-
hold and had therefore encamped, then the Danish army perceived
that they could not bring out their ships. So they left them and
went overland until they came to Bridgenorth on the Severn and
there built a stronghold. Then the king's army rode west after the
Danish army, and the men of London fetched the ships, and all those
which they could not bring they broke up, and those which were
fit for use they brought into London.
And the Danes had their women fast in East Anglia before they
left that stronghold. Then they encamped the whole winter at
Bridgenorth. That was three years after they came hither over the
sea to the mouth of the Limen.
897. Then afterwards in this year, in the summer, the Danish
army broke up, some went into East Anglia, and some to North-
umbria, and those who were moneyless got ships and went south
over sea to the Seine.
The Danish army had not, by the grace of God, utterly broken the
Angle race, but they were much more broken in those three years by
the deaths of cattle and men, most of all because many of the best
of the king's thegns died in those three years. ... In that same
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 47
year the Danish forces in East Anglia and in Northumbria greatly
harassed the West Saxon land on the south coast with their preying
bands, most of all with the " aescs " (ships] which they had built
many years before. Then King /Elfred bade long ships be built
against the " aescs " ; those were very nearly twice as long as the
others. Some had sixty oars, some more ; they were both swifter
and steadier and also higher than the others. They were not shapen
in the Frisian nor the Danish fashion but as it seemed to him that
they might be most useful.
Then at a certain season in the same year there came six ships to
Wight, and these did much evil both in Devonshire and everywhere
along the sea-coast. Then the king bade go to them with nine of
the new ships, and get in front of them in the open sea before the
mouth. Then came they (tJie Danes] with three ships out against
them, and three stood above the mouth on the dry, the men were
gone from them up into the land. Then they (the English) took two
of the ships at the outer mouth and slew the men, and the one (ship)
escaped. In that one also were all the men slain but five. Those
got away because the ships of the others (the English) were aground.
They, also, were very awkwardly stranded : three were aground on
the side of the water where the Danish ships were stranded, and the
others all on the other side, so that one could not come to the other.
And when the water had ebbed many furlongs from the ships then
went the Danes from those three ships to the other three which were
be-ebbed on their side, and they fought them there. There was slain
Lucumon the king's reeve, and Wu If heard the Frisian, and yEbbe the
Frisian, and ^Ethelhere the Frisian, and /Ethelferth the king's com-
panion, and of all men, Frisian and English, sixty-two, and of the
Danes, one hundred and twenty.
But the flood -tide came first to the Danish ships, before the
Christians could shove theirs out, and they therefore rowed away out.
Then were they so disabled that they could not row along by the
land of the South Saxons, but the sea washed two of them to land,
and they took the men to the king at Winchester, and he bade hang
them. And the men who were in the one ship came into East
Anglia sorely wounded.
That same summer, no less than twenty ships, with men and all,
were lost on the south coast.
FROM KING ALFRED'S OLD ENGLISH VERSION OF
THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY BY BOETHIUS
(See pp. 17-24)
(The passages given below arc largely made up of King Alfred^
original additions to the text of Boe thins)
THE FIRST AGE OF THIS WORLD
EALA ! how blessed was the first age of this world when there
seemed enough to every man in the fruits of the earth ! There
were not then wealthy dwellings, nor many dainty meats nor
drinks, nor did they care for costly raiment, because these were not
yet ; nor in any wise had they seen or heard of them. They cared
not for any evil luxuries, but most meetly followed nature ; they
always ate once in the day and that was at evening. Fruits of the
trees they ate, and roots ; they drank not any bright wine, nor knew
they how to mingle honey with water, nor did they care for silken
garments of many colours. They always slept out under the shadow
of the trees, and they drank clear water of the wells. Nor had any
trader seen island or shore, nor had any man then yet heard of a ship-
army, 1 nor, indeed, heard at all of a fight. Nor then was the earth as
yet stained with blood of the slain, nor furthermore, had any man
been wounded. No one had yet seen evil-minded men, and none
such had honour, nor did any one love them. Eala ! that our times
now might be such ! ' But now the greed of men is as burning as
that fire in the hell which is in the mountain called yEtna in the
island of Sicily. That mountain is always burning with brimstone,
and it burneth up all the places round about. Eala ! who was the
first greedy one who earliest began to dig after gold and gems, and
found the perilous treasure that before was hidden and covered with
the earth ? (Chap. XV.)
1 i.e. a war-fleet ; an allusion to the Danish pirates.
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 49
THE HIGHEST HAPPINESS
When Wisdom had sung this song then she left off singing, and
was silent a while, and began to think deeply in her inmost mind,
and then said : " Every mortal man troubleth himself with divers
and manifold cares, and yet all wish by different paths to come to
one end ; that is, they wish by different merits to come to one
blessedness, which then is God, who is the beginning and the end
of every good, and He is the Highest Happiness.'
Then said the Mind : " This it seemeth to me is the Highest Good,
that one should need no other good, nor moreover care for it, when he
hath that which is the roof of all other goods, because it holdeth all
other goods that are without, and hath all within itself. It were not
the Highest Good if any were outside, for it then would have to desire
a certain good which it had not."
Then answered Wisdom and said : " It is very clear that that is
the Highest Happiness because it is both the roof and floor of all good.
What is that then but the best happiness which gathereth into itself
all other happinesses, and encircleth those which are without, and
holdeth them within itself, and hath want of none nor need of none,
but they all come from it and go back to it even as all waters come
from the sea and all come back to the sea ? There is no spring so
little that it seek not the sea, and back from the sea flow in upon the
earth ; and so it is creeping over the earth until it come back to the
same spring from which it before outflowed, and so back to the sea.
" This is now an example of the true happiness which all mortal
men long to get, though they think to come at it by various ways.
For each man hath natural good in himself, because each mind
longeth to get the good, but is hindered by the fleeting goods because
it is more inclined thereto. So some men think that it is the best
happiness that one should be so wealthy that he should not need
anything more, and after this they long all their life. Some men
think it is the highest good to be the most honoured among their
fellows, and with all their might strive after that. Some think that
the highest good is in the greatest power ; these wish for one of two
things, either themselves to rule or to attach to themselves the friend-
ship of rulers. Some then consider it the best that one should be
renowned beyond others, and far famed, and have great glory ; they
strive for that in peace and war. Many hold it for the greatest good
and the greatest happiness that one should be always merry in this
present life and fulfil all desires. Some then who want wealth, want
it because thereby they would have greater power, so that they might
enjoy these worldly pleasures more securely, and also this wealth.
Many there are of those who wish for power because they would
E
50 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
gather unmeasured riches, or again they wish to spread abroad the
glory of their name.
" For such and other such fleeting and failing honours is the inmost
mind of every man troubled with yearning and striving. It thinketh
that some high good hath been won when it hath captured the flattery
of the people, but to me it seemeth that it hath bought a very empty
glory. Others seek after wives with great eagerness, so that they may
beget many children and also live pleasantly. Now, I say, that true
friends are the most precious thing of all this worldly happiness ; they
are not indeed to be counted as worldly goods, but as divine. For
deceitful Fortune bringeth them not forth, but the God who made them
by nature to be our kinsmen. For every other thing in this world a
man wanteth either because he can come to power thereby, or to some
worldly pleasure, except a true friend; him a man loveth sometimes
for love and for faithfulness, though he expect no other gift from him.
So Nature joineth and glueth friends together with most undividable
love. But by these worldly things, and by this present weal, one
maketh oftener foes than friends.
" By these and by many like things it may be known to all men that
all bodily good is less worthy than the powers of the soul."
(Chap. XXIV.)
WEALTH AND POWER ARE NOT THE HIGHEST GOOD
Wisdom maketh her lovers wise and worthy, temperate, patient,
and just, and filleth him who loveth her with all seemly ways. That
they cannot do who have power in this world ; nor can they give those
who love them any virtue from their wealth, if they have it not in their
nature. By that it is very clear that the great have no special power
from their worldly wealth, but the wealth has come to them from
without, and they cannot have from without anything of their own.
... If then honour were the natural kindred of wealth, and were of
it, or the wealth of the wealthy were his own, then- it could not
forsake him. If the man who owned it were in any land soever that
he might be, then were his wealth and his honour with him ; but
because wealth and power are not his own therefore they leave him.
And since they have by nature no good in themselves therefore they
are lost as shadow or smoke. 'Yet the false thinking and the
imagination of foolish men persuade them that power and wealth are
the highest good ; but it is all otherwise. When the great are in a
strange land, or in their own country among wise men, then both to
the wise and to the strangers their wealth is for naught as soon as
they perceive that they (the great) were not chosen for any virtue but
because of the praise of foolish folk. But if these there had aught of
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 51
their own, or of natural good, in their power, they would then have
that with them, though they had lost their authority. Nor would they
have lost any natural good, but that would always follow them and
make them ever worthy in whatsoever land they were.
(Chap. XXVII.)
TRUE HIGH-BIRTH is IN THE MIND
Why vaunt ye over other men for your birth, without ground, now
that ye can find no man not high-born ? But all are of like birth if
ye will remember the first creation, and the Creator, and, since that,
the begetting of each of you. But true high-birth is in the mind, it
was never in the flesh, even as we have said before. But every man
who is altogether enslaved by his evil ways forsaketh his Creator and
his first origin and his high-birth, and from thence shall be lowered in
degree until he shall become as (one) low-born. (Chap. XXX.)
A HYMN OF ADORATION
Eala ! Lord, how great and how wonderful Thou art ! . . . Thou
who movest all restless creatures to Thy will, and Thyself remainest
ever at rest and unchanging. For none is mightier than Thou, none
like to Thee, nor was it any need that taught Thee to make that
which Thou hast made, but by Thine own will and by Thine own
power Thou hast wrought all things, though none of them was need-
ful to Thee. Most wonderful is the nature of Thy goodness, because
it is all one, Thou and Thy goodness ; the good did not come to Thee
from without, but it is Thine own. But all that we have of good in
this world has come to us from without, that is, from Thee. Thou
hast no envy towards anything because none is more skilful than
Thou, nor is any Thy like ; for all good Thou didst plan and work
by Thine own thought. No man gave Thee example, for there was
none before Thee who could make aught or naught ; for Thou didst
make all things most good and most fair, and Thou Thyself art the
highest good and the fairest. . . . Thou hast made the soul that she
must ever turn on herself even as all this sky turneth, or as a wheel
turneth, musing about her Maker, or about herself, or about these
earthly things. When she thinketh about her Maker then is "she
above herself ; when she thinketh about herself then is she in herself,
and she is beneath herself when she loveth those earthly things and
admireth them. Lo, Thou, O Lord, hast given to souls a dwelling in
heaven, and givest to them there worthy gifts, each according to its
deserving, and makest them to shine most brightly and yet with most
diverse brightness, some brighter, some less bright, even as the stars,
52 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
each according to his deserving. Lo, Thou, O Lord, has brought to-
gether heavenly souls and earthly bodies, and dost mingle them in this
world. Even as they have come hither from Thee so they also go
hence to Thee. Thou didst fill the earth with divers kinds of cattle,
and afterwards didst sow it with seed of trees and herbs. Grant
now, O Lord, to our minds, that they may rise to Thee through the
hardships of this world, and by those troubles come to Thee; and
with the open eyes of our mind we may see the noble Fount of all
good ; the which Thou art. Give us therefore sound eyes for our
mind, that we may fasten them on Thee, and drive away the mist
which now hangeth before the eyes of our mind, and enlighten the
eyes with Thy light, for Thou art the brightness of the true light,
and Thou art the soft resting-place of the righteous, and Thou
art the beginning and the end of all things. Thou bearest up all
things without labour. Thou art both the way and the guide, and
the dwelling whither the way leadeth. Towards Thee all men are
moving. (Chap. XXXIII.)
TRUTH is IN THE SOUL
Whosoever will search deeply with his inmost mind after right,
and will not that any man or any thing should hinder him, let him
then begin to seek within himself what he before sought for without
himself, and forsake useless taking of thought as much as he can, and
gather about that one thing, and say to his own mind that it can
find within itself all the good it seeketh from without. Then will he
be able very quickly to perceive all the evil and the vanity that he
before had in his mind, as clearly as thou might see the sun ; and thou
shalt perceive thine own inner thought to be much brighter and lighter
than the sun. For no heaviness of the body nor no evil habit can
altogether draw away righteousness from the mind, though the
sluggishness of the body and evil habits often trouble the mind with
forgetfulness, and lead it astray by the mist of error, so that it cannot
shine as brightly as it would. Yet a grain of the seed of truth is ever
dwelling in the soul while the soul and the body are together.
(Chap. XXXV.)
THE TRUE BLESSEDNESS
Then said Wisdom, "Well, O men, well! Let every one who is
free strive towards goodness and blessedness ; and whoso now is
bound by the vain love of this earth let him seek freedom that he
may come to blessedness. For that is the one resting-place of all
our toil, that is the one haven always calm after all the tempests and
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 53
the surgings of our toiling. That is the one place of peace and the
one comfort of the miserable after all the miseries of this present life.
But gold and silver stones, and every kind of gem, and all this
present weal, enlighten not at all the eyes of the mind, nor at all whet
their sharpness for beholding true happiness ; but they rather blind
the eyes of the mind than sharpen them. For all the things which
please us here in this present life are earthly and are therefore fleet-
ing. But the wonderful Brightness which enlighteneth all things, and
ruleth all things, willeth not that souls should perish, but willeth to
enlighten them. If then any man can see the brightness of the
heavenly light with the clear eyes of his mind, then will he say that
the brightness of the shining of the sun is darkness beside the
eternal brightness of God." (Chap. XXXIV.)
WISDOM THROWS OPEN THE DOOR OF TRUTH
Now I avow to thee, (Wisdom), that I have found a door, there
where I before saw only a little chink, so that I could hardly see a very
little gleam of light from out this darkness. And though thou didst
before show me the door, I could not the more find it, only I groped
about for it where I saw the little light twinkle. I said to thee, long
ago, before, in this same book, that I knew not what was the begin-
ning of all things ; then thou didst show me that it was God. Then
again I knew not the end, until thou didst show me again that that
was also God. Then I said to thee that I knew not how He ruled
all created things, but thou hast now very clearly shown me. It is as
if thou hast thrown open the door which before I had been seeking.
(Chap. XXXV.)
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
" Thou needest not wonder greatly though we are (still) searching
into that which we have begun upon, either with less words or with
more, by whichever we can (best) explain it. Though we now must
give many and diverse examples and parables, yet our mind hangeth
alway on that into which we are searching. Nor do we take up
these examples and these parables for love of the false tales, but
because we would betoken the truth thereby, and would that it should
be of use to the hearers. Straightway I call to mind a certain saying
of the wise Plato, how he said that the man who would tell a parable
ought not to take a story too unlike the matter he then would speak
of. But hear now patiently what I now wish to tell, though once it
seemed to thee vain."
54 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
Then Wisdom began to sing, and said : " Happy is the man who
can see the clear well-spring of the Highest Good and can cast off
from himself the darkness of his mind. We must tell thee once
more a parable from the old false tales.
"It happened of yore that there was a harper in the country called
Thracia, which was in the realm of the Greeks. The harper was
very unusually good, and his name was Orpheus. He had a very
peerless wife, who was called Eurydice. They used to say of the
harper that he could harp so that the wood swayed, and the rocks
stirred themselves for the sound, and the wild beasts would run to
him, and stand, as if they were tame, so still that though men or hounds
went toward them they shunned them not. They said that the
harper's wife died and her soul was taken to hell. Then the harper
became so sad that he could not be among other men, but withdrew
to the woods, and sat upon the hills both by day and night, and was
weeping and harping so that the woods trembled, and the waters
stood still, and no hart shunned any lion, nor no hare any hound, nor
did any beast know any anger or fear towards another, because of the
sweetness of the sound. Then it seemed to the harper that nothing
pleased him in this world, and then he thought that he would seek
the hell-gods and soothe them with his harp, and pray that they would
give him back his wife. When he had gone thither then there came
towards him a certain hell-hound, whose name was Cerberus, who
had three heads ; and he showed gladness with his tail, and leapt
about him for his harping. There was also there a very horrible
gate-warder whose name was Charon, he had also three heads and
was exceedingly old. Then the harper begged that he would protect
him while he was there and bring him safe back from thence. And
he promised him that, because he longed greatly after the rare music.
Then he went further, until he met with the dread goddesses which
men of the people call Parcas ; they say that these have no mercy on
any man but visit every man according to his works ; they say that
they rule the fate of every man. Then he begged for their favour,
whereupon they wept with him. Then he went further, and there ran
towards him all the hell-dwellers, and took him to their king, and
began to speak with him and to pray for that which he prayed. And
the unstill wheel to which Ixion, King of the Levitas (LapitJuc), was
bound for his guilt, stood still for his harping. And Tantalus the
king, who was unmeasuredly greedy in this world, and whom that
same sin of greediness followed there, was quieted ; and the vulture,
they say, left off tearing the liver of King Tityus whom before he had
thus been tormenting ; and all the torments of the hell-dwellers were
stilled while he was harping before the king. When he long and
long had harped, then the king of the hell-dwellers cried out and
PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED 55
said : ' Let us give back his wife to the man, for he hath earned her
with his harping.' Then he bade him see well to it that he never
looked back after he once was on the way thence ; and said that if
he looked back he must lose the woman. But one can very hardly,
or not at all, forbid love. Wellaway ! verily Orpheus led his wife
with him until he came upon the borderland of light and dark, and
the woman went after him. When he came forth into the light, he
looked back towards the woman, whereupon she was straightway
lost to him.
" These false fables teach every man who would flee the darkness of
hell and come to the light of the True God, that he should not look
back to his old evil doings, so that he do them again as fully as he
did before. For whosoever with full will turneth his mind to the evil
deeds which he before had left, and then doeth them fully, and they
please him fully, and he never now thinketh to leave them, then he
shall lose all his former good, except he repent." (Chap. XXXV.)
WISDOM SPEAKS ONLY TO THOSE WHO SEARCH FOR HER
Then said I, " Nothing ever seems to me so true as thy teaching
at the times when I hear it. But if I turn me to the judgment of
this people then not only will they not believe thy words, but they
will not even hear them." Then said she, "That is no wonder.
Verily thoti knowest that the men who have unsound eyes cannot
look full easily towards the sun when it shineth brightest, nor do they
even like to look on the fire, or anything bright, if the apple of the
eye be weak. So are sinful minds blinded with their evil will that
they cannot look at the light of the Bright Truth which is the Highest
Wisdom. . . . Wherefore they do not like to search into every
teaching until they know the right, but turn to their vain wills and
search into those. So I know not of what use it is that thou showest
me to foolish men who never search after me. I never speak to
them, but I speak to thee, because thou dost set thyself to search
after me, and dost toil more hardly on the track than they do. Nor
do I reck what they think." (Chap. XXXVIII.)
ON THE NATURE OF GOD
"We ought with all our might to search after God that we may know
what He is. Though it may not be within our power to know what
He is, yet we ought to seek to know, according to the*measure of the
understanding which He giveth us, even as we said before that one
has to know each thing according to the measure of our understand-
ing, because we cannot know each thing such as it is. Yet every
56 PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF ALFRED
creature, both reasoning and unreasoning, maketh it clear that God is
eternal ; for never would so many creatures so mighty and so fair
bow down to a lesser creature and a lesser power than they all are
themselves, nor, furthermore, to one of like greatness."
Then said I, "What is eternity?" Then answered Wisdom,
" Thou askest me what is great and difficult to understand ; if thou
wilt know it thou must first have the eyes of the mind clean and clear.
. . . One thing therein thou must of need know why God is called
the Highest Eternity." Then said I, "Why?" Then answered she,
" Because we know very little of that which was before us except by
memory and by asking, and still less of that which cometh after us.
That only is truly present to us which at the time is ; but to Him is
all present, both what was before and what now is, and what shall be
after us ; all that is present with Him. His wealth waxeth not, like-
wise it never waneth. Nor doth He ever remember aught, for He
hath never forgotten aught. He seeketh nothing nor pondereth any-
thing, for He knoweth it all. He seeketh nothing because he hath
lost nothing. Nor pursueth He any creature because no creature can
flee Him. Nor doth He dread any creature because He hath none
stronger than Himself, nor indeed any like. He is always giving and
naught of His ever waneth. He is ever Almighty because He ever
willeth good and never evil. Nothing is needful to Him. He is
ever looking, He sleepeth never. He is ever kind alike. Alway He
is eternal, for the time never was that He was not, nor ever shall be.
Alway He is free, nor is He forced to any work. Because of His
godlike power He is everywhere present. His greatness can no man
measure ; yet is that to be thought of as not of the body, but of
the Spirit, even as now Wisdom is, and Righteousness, for He
Himself is that." (Chap. XLII.)
UNIVERSITY
or
;
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Kdinbnrgh.
I
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY
Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
pw
JAN? 7
,
REC'D LD
NOV 1 6 1962
IKTERL1BRARY IW
APR --
UNW. OF CM? ,
LD 21-100m-7,'52(A2528sl6)476
159-
U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES
CDMbblDEflD
4
