Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Anglo-Saxon Language and Poetry. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Anglo-Saxon Language and Poetry. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. Anglo-Saxon Language and Poetry
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) Complete. From “The Poets and Poetry of Europe.”

WE read in history that the beauty of an ancient manuscript tempted King Alfred, when a boy at his mother’s knee, to learn the letters of the Saxon tongue. A volume which that monarch minstrel wrote in after years now lies before me so beautifully printed that it might tempt any one to learn, not only the letters of the Saxon language, but the language also. The monarch himself is looking from the ornamental initial letter of the first chapter. He is crowned and careworn; having a beard, and long, flowing locks, and a face of majesty. He seems to have just uttered those remarkable words, with which his preface closes: “And now he prays, and for God’s name implores, every one of those whom it lists to read this book, that he would pray for him, and not blame him, if he more rightly understand it than he could; for every man must, according to the measure of his understanding, and according to his leisure, speak that which he speaks, and do that which he does.”

1   I would fain hope that the beauty of this and other Anglo-Saxon books may lead many to the study of that venerable language. Through such gateways will they pass, it is true, into no gay palace of song; but among the dark chambers and moldering walls of an old national literature, all weather-stained and in ruins. They will find, however, venerable names recorded on those walls; and inscriptions, worth the trouble of deciphering. To point out the most curious and important of these is my present purpose; and according to the measure of my understanding, and according to my leisure, I speak that which I speak.

2   The Anglo-Saxon language was the language of our Saxon forefathers in England, though they never gave it that name. They called it English. Thus King Alfred speaks of translating “from book-latin into English” (of bec Ledene on Englisc); Abbot Ælfric was requested by Æthelward “to translate the book of Genesis from Latin into English” (anwendan of Ledene on Englisc tha boc Genesis); and Bishop Leofric, speaking of the manuscript he gave to the Exeter Cathedral, calls it “a great English book” (mycel Englisc boc). In other words, it is the old Saxon, a Gothic tongue, as spoken and developed in England. That it was spoken and written uniformly throughout the land is not to be imagined, when we know that Jutes and Angles were in the country as well as Saxons. But that it was essentially the same language everywhere is not to be doubted, when we compare pure West Saxon texts with Northumbrian glosses and books of Durham. Hickes speaks of a Dano-Saxon period in the history of the language. The Saxon kings reigned six hundred years; the Danish dynasty, twenty only. And neither the Danish boors, who were earthlings (yrthlingas) in the country, nor the Danish soldiers, who were dandies at the court of King Canute, could, in the brief space of twenty years, have so overlaid or interlarded the pure Anglo-Saxon with their provincialisms, as to give it a new character, and thus form a new period in its history, as was afterwards done by the Normans.

3   The Dano-Saxon is a dialect of the language, not a period which was passed through in its history. Down to the Norman Conquest, it existed in the form of two principal dialects; namely, the Anglo-Saxon in the South; and the Dano-Saxon, or Northumbrian, in the North. After the Norman Conquest, the language assumed a new form, which has been called, properly enough, Norman-Saxon and Semi-Saxon.

4   This form of the language, ever flowing and filtering through the roots of national feeling, custom, and prejudice, prevailed about two hundred years; that is, from the middle of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century, when it became English. It is impossible to fix the landmarks of a language with any great precision; but only floating beacons, here and there….

5   It is oftentimes curious to consider the far-off beginnings of great events, and to study the aspect of the cloud no bigger than one’s hand. The British peasant looked seaward from his harvest field, and saw, with wondering eyes, the piratical schooner of a Saxon Viking making for the mouth of the Thames. A few years—only a few years—afterward, while the same peasant, driven from his homestead north or west, still lives to tell the story to his grandchildren, another race lords it over the land, speaking a different language and living under different laws. This important event in his history is more important in the world’s history. Thus began the reign of the Saxons in England; and the downfall of one nation, and the rise of another, seem to us at this distance only the catastrophe of a stage play.

6   The Saxons came into England about the middle of the fifth century. They were pagans; they were a wild and warlike people; brave, rejoicing in sea storms, and beautiful in person, with blue eyes, and long flowing hair. Their warriors wore their shields suspended from their necks by chains. Their horsemen were armed with iron sledge hammers. Their priests rode upon mares, and carried into the battlefield an image of the god Irminsula; in figure like an armed man; his helmet crested with a cock; in his right hand a banner, emblazoned with a red rose; a bear carved upon his breast; and, hanging from his shoulders, a shield, on which was a lion in a field of flowers.

7   Not two centuries elapsed before the whole people was converted to Christianity. Ælfric, in his homily on the birthday of St. Gregory, informs us that this conversion was accomplished by the holy wishes of that good man, and the holy works of St. Augustine and other monks. St. Gregory beholding one day certain slaves set for sale in the market place of Rome, who were “men of fair countenance and nobly haired,” and learning that they were heathen, and called Angles, heaved a long sigh, and said: “Well-away! that men of so fair a hue should be subjected to the swarthy devil! Rightly are they called Angles, for they have angels’ beauty; and therefore it is fit that they in heaven should be companions of angels.” As soon, therefore, as he undertook the popehood (papanhad underfeng), the monks were sent to their beloved work. In the Witena Gemot, or Assembly of the Wise, convened by King Edwin of Northumbria to consider the propriety of receiving the Christian faith, a Saxon Ealdorman arose, and spoke these noble words: “Thus seemeth to me, O king, this present life of man upon earth, compared with the time which is unknown to us; even as if you were sitting at a feast, amid your Ealdormen and Thegns in winter time. And the fire is lighted, and the hall warmed, and it rains, and snows, and storms without. Then cometh a sparrow, and flieth about the hall. It cometh in at one door, and goeth out at another. While it is within, it is not touched by the winter’s storm; but that is only for a moment, only for the least space. Out of the winter it cometh, to return again into the winter eftsoon. So also this life of man endureth for a little space. What goeth before it and what followeth after, we know not. Wherefore, if this new lore bring aught more certain and more advantageous, then it is worthy that we should follow it.”

8   Thus the Anglo-Saxons became Christians. For the good of their souls they built monasteries and went on pilgrimages to Rome. “The whole country,” to use Malmesbury’s phrase, “was glorious and refulgent with relics.” The priests sang psalms night and day; and so great was the piety of St. Cuthbert, that, according to Bede, he forgot to take off his shoes for months together,—sometimes the whole year round;—from which Mr. Turner infers, that he had no stockings. They also copied the Evangelists, and illustrated them with illuminations; in one of which St. John is represented in a pea-green dress with red stripes. They also drank ale out of buffalo horns and wooden-knobbed goblets. A Mercian king gave to the Monastery of Croyland his great drinking horn, that the elder monks might drink therefrom at festivals, and “in their benedictions remember sometimes the soul of the donor, Witlaf.” They drank his health with that of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and other saints. Malmesbury says that excessive drinking was the common vice of all ranks of people. We know that King Hardicanute died in a revel; and King Edmund, in a drunken brawl at Pucklechurch, being, with all his court, much overtaken by liquor, at the festival of St. Augustine. Thus did mankind go reeling through the Dark Ages; quarreling, drinking, hunting, hawking, singing Psalms, wearing breeches, grinding in mills, eating hot bread, rocked in cradles, buried in coffins,—weak, suffering, sublime. Well might King Alfred exclaim, “Maker of all creatures! help now thy miserable mankind.”

9   A national literature is a subject which should always be approached with reverence. It is difficult to comprehend fully the mind of a nation; even when that nation still lives, and we can visit it, and its present history, and the lives of men we know, help us to a comment on the written text. But here the dead alone speak. Voices, half understood; fragments of song, ending abruptly, as if the poet had sung no further, but died with these last words upon his lips; homilies, preached to congregations that have been asleep for many centuries; lives of saints, who went to their reward long before the world began to scoff at sainthood; and wonderful legends, once believed by men, and now, in this age of wise children, hardly credible enough for a nurse’s tale; nothing entire, nothing wholly understood, and no further comment or illustration than may be drawn from an isolated fact found in an old chronicle, or, perchance, a rude illumination in an old manuscript! Such is the literature we have now to consider. Such fragments and mutilated remains has the human mind left of itself, coming down through the times of old, step by step, and every step a century. Old men and venerable accompany us through the Past; and, pausing at the threshold of the Present, they put into our hands at parting, such written records of themselves as they have. We should receive these things with reverence. We should respect old age.  “This leaf, is it not blown about by the wind? Woe to it for its fate! Alas! it is old.”

10   What an Anglo-Saxon glee-man was, we know from such commentaries as are mentioned above. King Edgar forbade the monks to be ale-poets (ealascopas); and one of his accusations against the clergy of his day was, that they entertained glee-men in their monasteries, where they had dicing, dancing, and singing till midnight. The illumination of an old manuscript shows how a glee-man looked. It is a frontispiece to the Psalms of David. The great psalmist sits upon his throne, with a harp in his hand, and his masters of sacred song around him. Below stands the glee-man; throwing three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catching them, as they fall, like a modern juggler. But all the Anglo-Saxon poets were not glee-men. All the harpers were not hoppesteres, or dancers. The sceop, the creator, the poet, rose, at times, to higher things. He sang the deeds of heroes, victorious odes, death songs, epic poems; or sitting in cloisters, and afar from these things, converted Holy Writ into Saxon chimes.

11   The first thing which strikes the reader of Anglo-Saxon poetry is the structure of the verse; the short exclamatory lines, whose rhythm depends on alliteration in the emphatic syllables, and to which the general omission of the particles gives great energy and vivacity. Though alliteration predominates in all Anglo-Saxon poetry, rhyme is not wholly wanting. It had line rhymes and final rhymes; which, being added to the alliteration, and brought so near together in the short, emphatic lines, produce a singular effect upon the ear. They ring like blows of hammers on an anvil. For example:—  “Flah mah fliteth,    The strong dart flitteth, Flan man hwiteth,    The spear man whetteth, Burg sorg biteth,    Care the city biteth, Bald aid thwiteth,    Age the bold quelleth, Wraec-faec writheth,    Vengeance prevaileth, Wrath ath smiteth.”    Wrath a city assaileth.

12   Other peculiarities of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which cannot escape the reader’s attention, are its frequent inversions, its bold transitions, and abundant metaphors. These are the things which render Anglo-Saxon poetry so much more difficult than Anglo-Saxon prose. But upon these points I need not enlarge. It is enough to have thus alluded to them.

13   One of the oldest and most important remains of Anglo-Saxon literature is the epic poem of “Beowulf.” Its age is unknown; but it comes from a very distant and hoar antiquity; somewhere between the seventh and tenth centuries. It is like a piece of ancient armor; rusty and battered, and yet strong. From within comes a voice sepulchral, as if the ancient armor spoke, telling a simple, straightforward narrative; with here and there the boastful speech of a rough old Dane, reminding one of those made by the heroes of Homer. The style, likewise, is simple,—perhaps one should say austere. The bold metaphors, which characterize nearly all the Anglo-Saxon poems we have read, are for the most part wanting in this. The author seems mainly bent upon telling us how his Sea-Goth slew the grendel and the firedrake. He is too much in earnest to multiply epithets and gorgeous figures. At times he is tedious; at times obscure; and he who undertakes to read the original will find it no easy task.

14   The poem begins with a description of King Hrothgar the Scylding, in his great hall of Heort, which re-echoed with sound of harp and song. But not far off, in the fens and marshes of Jutland, dwelt a grim and monstrous giant, called Grendel, a descendant of Cain. This troublesome individual was in the habit of occasionally visiting the Scylding’s palace by night, to see, as the author rather quaintly says, “how the doughty Danes found themselves after their beer carouse.” On his first visit, he destroyed some thirty inmates, all asleep, with beer in their brains; and ever afterwards kept the whole land in fear of death. At length the fame of these evil deeds reached the ears of Beowulf, the Thane of Higelac, a famous Viking in those days, who had slain sea monsters, and wore a wild boar for his crest. Straightway he sailed with fifteen followers for the court of Heort; unarmed, in the great mead hall, and at midnight fought the Grendel, tore off one of his arms, and hung it up on the palace wall as a curiosity; the fiend’s fingers being armed with long nails, which the author calls the hand spurs of the heathen hero (haethenes hond-sporu hilde-rinces). Retreating to his cave, the grim ghost (grima gast) departed this life; whereat there was great carousing at Heort. But at night came the Grendel’s mother, and carried away one of the beer-drunken heroes of the ale-wassail (beore druncne ofer eolwaege). Beowulf, with a great escort, pursued her to the fen lands of the Grendel; plunged, all armed, into a dark-rolling and dreary river, that flowed from the monster’s cavern; slew worms and dragons manifold; was dragged to the bottom by the old wife; and seizing a magic sword, which lay among the treasures of that realm of wonders, with one fell blow let her heathen soul out of its bone-house (ban-hus). Having thus freed the land from the giants, Beowulf, laden with gifts and treasures, departed homeward, as if nothing special had happened; and, after the death of King Higelac, ascended the throne of the Scyldings. Here the poem should end, and, we doubt not, did originally end. But, as it has come down to us, eleven more cantos follow, containing a new series of adventures. Beowulf has grown old. He has reigned fifty years; and now, in his gray old age, is troubled by the devastations of a monstrous firedrake, so that his metropolis is beleaguered, and he can no longer fly his hawks and merles in the open country. He resolves, at length, to fight with this firedrake; and with the help of his attendant, Wiglaf, overcomes him. The land is made rich by the treasures found in the dragon’s cave; but Beowulf dies of his wounds.

15   Thus departs Beowulf, the Sea-Goth, of the world-kings the mildest to men, the strongest of hand, the most clement to his people, the most desirous of glory. And thus closes the oldest epic in any modern language; written in forty-three cantos and some six thousand lines. The outline, here given, is filled up with abundant episodes and warlike details. We have ale revels, and giving of bracelets, and presents of mares, and songs of bards. The battles with the Grendel and the Firedrake are minutely described; as likewise are the dwellings and rich treasure-houses of those monsters. The fire stream flows with lurid light; the dragon breathes out flame and pestilential breath; the gigantic sword, forged by the Jutes of old, dissolves and thaws like an icicle in the hero’s grasp; and the swart raven tells the eagle how he fared with the fell wolf at the death feast. Such is, in brief, the machinery of the poem. It possesses great epic merit, and in parts is strikingly graphic in its descriptions. As we read, we can almost smell the brine, and hear the sea breeze blow, and see the mainland stretch out its jutting promontories, those sea-noses (sae-naessas), as the poet calls them, into the blue waters of the solemn main.

16   In the words of Mr. Kemble, I exhort the reader “to judge this poem not by the measure of our times and creeds, but by those of the times which it describes; as a rude, but very faithful picture of an age, wanting, indeed, in scientific knowledge, in mechanical expertness, even in refinement; but brave, generous, and right principled; assuring him of what I well know, that these echoes from the deserted temples of the past, if listened to in a sober and understanding spirit, bring with them matter both strengthening and purifying the heart.”

17   The next work to which I would call the attention of my readers is very remarkable, both in a philological and in a poetical point of view; being written in a more ambitious style than “Beowulf.” It is Cædmon’s “Paraphrase of Portions of Holy Writ.” Cædmon was a monk in the minster of Whitby. He died in the year 680. The only account we have of his life is that given by the Venerable Bede in his “Ecclesiastical History.”

18   By some he is called the “father of Anglo-Saxon poetry,” because his name stands first in the history of Saxon songcraft; by others, the “Milton of our forefathers,” because he sang of Lucifer and the Loss of Paradise.

19   The poem is divided into two books. The first is nearly complete, and contains a paraphrase of parts of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. The second is so mutilated as to be only a series of unconnected fragments. It contains scenes from the New Testament, and is chiefly occupied with Christ’s descent into the lower regions; a favorite theme in old times, and well known in the history of miracle plays, as the “Harrowing of Hell.” The author is a pious, prayerful monk; “an awful, reverend, and religious man.” He has all the simplicity of a child. He calls his Creator the Blithe-heart King; the patriarchs, Earls; and their children, Noblemen. Abraham is a wise-heedy man, a guardian of bracelets, a mighty earl; and his wife Sarah, a woman of elfin beauty. The sons of Reuben are called Sea Pirates. A laugher is a laughter-smith (hleahtor-smith); the Ethiopians, a people brown with the hot coals of heaven (brune leode hatum heofon-colum).

20   Striking poetic epithets and passages are not, however, wanting. They are sprinkled here and there throughout the narrative. The sky is called the roof of nations, the roof adorned with stars. After the overthrow of Pharaoh and his folk, he says, the blue air was with corruption tainted, and the bursting ocean whooped a bloody storm. Nebuchadnezzar described as a naked, unwilling wanderer, a wondrous wretch and weedless. Horrid ghosts, swart and sinful,  “Wide through windy halls Wail woeful.” And, in the sack of Sodom, we are told how many a fearful, pale-faced damsel must trembling go into a stranger’s embrace; and how fell the defenders of brides and bracelets, sick with wounds. Indeed, whenever the author has a battle to describe, and hosts of arm-bearing and war-faring men draw from their sheaths the ring-hiked sword of edges doughty (hring-maeled sweord ecgum dihtig), he enters into the matter with so much spirit that one almost imagines he sees, looking from under that monkish cowl, the visage of no parish priest, but of a grim war wolf, as the brave were called in the days when Cædmon wrote.

21   The genuineness of these remains has been called in question, or, perhaps, I should say, denied, by Hickes and others. They suppose the work to belong to as late a period as the tenth century, on account of its similarity in style and dialect to other poems of that age. Besides, the fragment of the ancient Cædmon, given by Bede, describing the Creation, does not correspond exactly with the passage on the same subject in the Junian or Pseudo Cædmon; and, moreover, Hickes says he has detected so many Dano-Saxon words and phrases in it, that he “cannot but think it was written by some Northumbrian (in the Saxon sense of the word), after the Danes had corrupted their language.” Mr. Thorpe replies very conclusively to all this; that the language of the poem is as pure Anglo-Saxon as that of Alfred himself; that the Danisms exist only in the “imagination of the learned author of the Thearsus”; and that, if they were really to be found in the work under consideration, it would prove no more than that the manuscript was a copy made by a Northumbrian scribe, at a period when the language had become corrupted. As to the passage in Bede, the original of Cædmon was not given; only a Latin translation by Bede, which Alfred, in his version of the venerable historian, has retranslated into Anglo-Saxon. Hence the difference between these lines and the opening lines of the poem. In its themes the poem corresponds exactly with that which Bede informs us Cædmon wrote; and its claim to genuineness can hardly be destroyed by such objections as have been brought against it.

22   Such are the two great narrative poems of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Of a third, a short fragment remains. It is a mutilated thing; a mere torso. Judith of the Apocrypha is the heroine. The part preserved describes the death of Holofernes in a fine, brilliant style, delighting the hearts of all Anglo-Saxon scholars. The original will be found in Mr. Thorpe’s “Analecta”; and translations of some passages in Turner’s “History.” But a more important fragment is that on the “Death of Byrhtnoth” at the battle of Maldon. This, likewise, is in Thorpe; and a prose translation is given by Conybeare in his “Illustrations.” It savors of rust and antiquity, like “Old Hildebrand” in German. What a fine passage is this, spoken by an aged vassal over the dead body of the hero, in the thickest of the fight!

23   “Byrhtwold spoke; he was an aged vassal; he raised his shield; he brandished his ashen spear; he full boldly exhorted the warriors. ‘Our spirit shall be the hardier, our heart shall be the keener, our soul shall be the greater, the more our forces diminish. Here lieth our chief all mangled; the brave one in the dust; ever may he lament his shame that thinketh to fly from this play of weapons! Old am I in life, yet will I not stir hence; but I think to lie by the side of my lord, by that much loved man!’”

24   Shorter than either of these fragments is a third on the “Fight of Finsborough.” Its chief value seems to be, that it relates to the same action which formed the theme of one of Hrothgar’s bards in “Beowulf.” Mr. Conybeare has given it a place in his work. In addition to these narrative poems and fragments, two others, founded on “Lives of Saints,” are mentioned, though they have never been published. They are the “Life and Passion of St. Juliana,” and the “Visions of the Hermit Guthlac.”

25   There is another narrative poem, which I must mention here on account of its subject, though of a much later date than the foregoing. It is in the “Chronicle of King Lear and His Daughters,” in Norman-Saxon; not rhymed throughout, but with rhymes too often recurring to be accidental. As a poem it has no merit, but shows that the story of Lear is very old; for, in speaking of the old King’s death and burial, it refers to a previous account, “as the book telleth” (ase the bock telleth). Cordelia is married to Aganippus, king of France; and, after his death, reigns over England, though Maglaudus, king of Scotland, declares that it is a “muckle shame, that a queen should be king over the land.”

26   Besides these long, elaborate poems, the Anglo-Saxons had their odes and ballads. Thus, when King Canute was sailing by the abbey of Ely, he heard the voices of the monks chanting their vesper hymn. Whereupon he sang, in the best Anglo-Saxon he was master of, the following rhyme:—  “Merry sang the monks in Ely, As King Canute was steering by; Row, ye knights, near the land, And hear we these monks’ song.”

27   The best and properly speaking, perhaps the only, Anglo-Saxon odes we have, are those preserved in the “Saxon Chronicle,” in recording the events they celebrate. They are five in number. “Æthelstan’s Victory at Brunanburh,” A.D. 938; the “Victories of Edmund Ætheling,” A.D. 942; the “Coronation of King Edgar,” A.D. 973; the “Death of King Edgar,” A.D. 973; and the “Death of King Edward,” A.D. 1065. The “Battle of Brunanburh” is already pretty well known by the numerous English versions and attempts thereat, which have been given of it. This ode is one of the most characteristic specimens of Anglo-Saxon poetry. What a striking picture is that of the lad with flaxen hair, mangled with wounds; and of the seven earls of Anlaf, and the five young kings, lying on the battlefield, lulled asleep by the sword! Indeed, the whole ode is striking, bold, graphic. The furious onslaught; the cleaving of the wall of shields; the hewing down of banners; the din of the fight; the hard hand-play; the retreat of the Northmen, in nailed ships, over the stormy sea; and the deserted dead, on the battle ground, left to the swart raven, the war hawk, and the wolf;—all these images appeal strongly to the imagination. The bard has nobly described this victory of the illustrious war smiths (wlance wig-smithas), the most signal victory since the coming of the Saxons into England; so say the books of the old wise men.

28   And here I would make due and honorable mention of the “Poetic Calendar,” and of King Alfred’s “Version of the Metres of Boethius.” The “Poetic Calendar” is a chronicle of great events in the lives of saints, martyrs, and apostles, referred to the days on which they took place. At the end is a strange poem, consisting of a series of aphorisms, not unlike those that adorn a modern almanac.

29   In addition to these narratives and odes and didactic poems, there is a vast number of minor poems on various subjects, some of which have been published, though for the most part they still lie asleep in manuscripts,—hymns, allegories, doxologies, proverbs, enigmas, paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer, poems on Death and the Day of Judgment, and the like. A great quantity of them is contained in the celebrated Exeter Manuscript; a folio given by Bishop Leofric to the Cathedral of Exeter in the eleventh century, and called by the donor, a “mycel Englisc boc be gehwylcum thingum on leothwisan geworht,” a great English book about everything, composed in verse. A minute account of the contents of this manuscript, with numerous extracts, is given by Conybeare in his “Illustrations.” Among these is the beginning of a very singular and striking poem, entitled, “The Soul’s Complaint against the Body.” But perhaps the most curious poem in the Exeter Manuscript is the “Rhyming Poem,” to which I have before alluded.

30   I will close this introduction with a few remarks on Anglo-Saxon prose. At the very boundary stand two great works, like landmarks. These are the “Saxon Laws,” promulgated by the various kings that ruled the land; and the “Saxon Chronicle,” in which all great historic events, from the middle of the fifth to the middle of the twelfth century, are recorded by contemporary writers, mainly, it would seem, the monks of Winchester, Peterborough, and Canterbury. Setting these aside, doubtless the most important remains of Anglo-Saxon prose are the writings of King Alfred the Great.

31   What a sublime old character was King Alfred! Alfred, the Truth-Teller! Thus the ancient historian surnamed him, as others were surnamed the Unready, Ironside, Harefoot. The principal events of his life are known to all men,—the nine battles fought in the first year of his reign; his flight to the marshes and forests of Somersetshire; his poverty and suffering, wherein was fulfilled the prophecy of St. Neot, that he should “be bruised like the ears of wheat”; his life with the swineherd, whose wife bade him turn the cakes, that they might not be burnt, for she saw daily that he was a great eater; his successful rally; his victories, and his future glorious reign; these things are known to all men. And not only these which are events in his life, but also many more, which are traits in his character, and controlled events; as, for example, that he was a wise and virtuous man, a religious man, a learned man for that age. Perhaps they know, even, how he measured time with his six horn lanterns; also, that he was an author and wrote many books. But of these books how few persons have read even a single line! And yet it is well worth one’s while, if he wish to see all the calm dignity of that great man’s character, and how in him the scholar and the man outshone the king. For example, do we not know better, and honor him more, when we hear from his own lips, as it were, such sentiments as these? “God has made all men equally noble in their original nature. True nobility is in the mind, not in the flesh. I wished to live honorably whilst I lived, and, after my life, to leave to the men who were after me my memory in good works!”

32   The chief writings of this royal author are his translations of Gregory’s “Pastoralis,” Boethius’s “Consolations of Philosophy,” Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History,” and the “History of Orosius,” known in manuscripts by the mysterious title of “Hormesta.” Of these works the most remarkable is the Boethius; so much of his own mind has Alfred infused into it. Properly speaking, it is not so much a translation as a gloss or paraphrase; for the Saxon king, upon his throne, had a soul which was near akin to that of the last of the Roman philosophers in his prison. He had suffered, and could sympathize with suffering humanity. He adorned and carried out still further the reflections of Boethius. He begins his task, however, with an apology, saying, “Alfred, king, was translator of this book, and turned it from book-latin into English, as he most plainly and clearly could, amid the various and manifold worldly occupations which often busied him in mind and body”; and ends with a prayer, beseeching God, “by the sign of the holy cross, and by the virginity of the blessed Mary, and by the obedience of the blessed Michael, and by the love of all the saints and their merits,” that his mind might be made steadfast to the divine will and his own soul’s need.

33   Other remains of Anglo-Saxon prose exist in the tale of “Apollonius of Tyre”; the “Bible Translations” and “Colloquies” of Abbot Ælfric; “Glosses of the Gospels,” at the close of one of which the conscientious scribe has written, “Aldred, an unworthy and miserable priest, with the help of God and St. Cuthbert, overglossed it in English”; and, finally, various miscellaneous treatises, among which the most curious is a “Dialogue between Saturn and Solomon.”

34   Hardly less curious, and infinitely more valuable, is a “Colloquy” of Ælfric, composed for the purpose of teaching boys to speak Latin. The Saxon is an interlinear translation of the Latin. In this “Colloquy” various laborers and handicraftsmen are introduced,—plowmen, herdsmen, huntsmen, shoemakers, and others; and each has his say, even to the blacksmith, who dwells in his smithy amid iron fire sparks and the sound of beating sledge hammers and blowing bellows (isenne fyrspearean, and swegincga beatendra slecgea, and blawendra byliga).

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