departure was a translation into English of the Gospel of St John, and that almost his last speech was the making of a few English verses, for, indeed, he was learned in English songs. (There is a translation from Bæda's History at page 169.)

The seat of learning at Bæda's death was transferred from Jarrow to York, where Ecgberht, Bæda's pupil, became an archbishop. The school he established at York may almost be termed a university. The education given was in all the branches of learning then known, in Ethica, Physica, and Logica. The library was the largest and the best outside of Rome, and was more useful than that at Rome. The arts were not neglected. The Latin Fathers; the Roman poets, grammarians, orators; the Natural History of Pliny, some of the Greek Fathers, and the Scriptures, were studied by a host of scholars from Ireland, Italy, Gaul, Germany, and England. When Ecgberht died Ælberht succeeded him, and with Alcuin's help increased the library and developed the education given in the schools. In 770 York and its library and schools was the centre of European learning. Ælberht's greatest friend was Alcuin (Eng. Ealhwine), the finest scholar York produced, and the last. His classical was as good as his patristic learning. His style has earned him the name of the Erasmus of his century. He loved Virgil so well that pious persons reproached him for it. His reputation came to the ears of Charles the Great, who was then starting the education of his kingdoms; and Alcuin, who had met Charles at Pavia about 780, and again at Parma in 781, left England—though he revisited it in 790-92-to remain on the Continent till his death in the abbey of St Martin of Tours in 804. He left many books behind him-learned, theological, and virtuous. Of his Latin poems, that dedicated to the history of the great men of the school of York is the best. The Letters-more than three hundred-which he wrote to Charles and to most of the important personages in England and Europe, have the best right to the name of literature, and prove how wide was his influence, and how useful his work to the centuries that followed. He brought all the scholarship of England to the empire of the greatest man in Europe, whose power sent it far and wide. And he did this at the very time when its doom had begun to fall upon it in England. Alcuin himself heard of the ravaging of Lindisfarne by the Vikings in 793, and of the attack in the following year on Wearmouth, and cried out with pity and sorrow. The years that followed were years of decay. Northumbria was the prey of anarchy from 780 to 798. The six years of quiet that followed were years in which the school of York, weakened by Alcuin's absence, sickened and failed. In 827 Ecgberht of Wessex put an end to the separate kingdom of Northumbria. In 867 the Danish army' invaded the north, conquered York, settled there, and destroyed every abbey, both in Deira and Bernicia. Bishoprics, libraries, schools

were all swept away. A little learning may have crept on in York, for the town was not destroyed, and it again flourished under Danish rule. Only one poor school of learning remained in that part of Mercia which was finally saved by Ælfred from the Danes. Worcester was the last refuge of the faded learning of Northumbria; and when Ælfred began the revival of education in England, collected the old poetry, attempted to restore monastic leisure and scholarship, and himself, having learnt Latin, originated English prose by the translation of Latin books, it was from Worcester that he fetched the only Englishmen who could help him in his work.

Ælfred.

Ælfred, whose character was even greater than his renown as warrior, ruler, and lawgiver, was also a king in English literature. With him, at Winchester, began the prose-writing of England. His books were chiefly translations, but they were interspersed with original work which reveals to us his way of thinking, the temper of his soul, the interests of his searching intelligence, and his passion for teaching his people all that could then be known of England, of the history of the world, of religion, and of the Divine Nature. They appealed to the clergy, to the people, to scholars, to the warriors and sailors of England. Their aim was the education of his countrymen.

Born at Wantage in 849, he was the youngest son of Ethelwulf, and the grandson of the great Ecgberht. Rome, whither he went at the age of four years, and then again when he was six years old, made its deep impression on him. He stayed on his return at the court of Charles the Bald, and heard, no doubt, of the education which Charles the Great had given to the empire, for when he undertook a similar task in England he followed the methods and the practice of the emperor. When he arrived in England he sought for teachers, but found none. When he was twenty years old he heard with indignant sorrow of the destruction of all learning in England by the Danes; and the lover of learning as well as the patriot was whetted into wrath when, on the height of Ashdown, he and his brother Ethelred drove the Danes down the hill with a pitiless slaughter. Not long after this battle he became King of Wessex in 871. The work by which he made his kingdom belongs to history. It was only in 887 that he began his literary labour in a parenthesis of quiet. But he had made preparations for it beforehand. He had collected round him whatever scholars were left in England. They were few,-Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester; Denewulf, of the same town ; Plegmund, Æthelstan, and Werwulf, all three from Mercia. With these he exhausted England. Then he sent to Flanders for Grimbald, whom he made Abbot of Winchester; and to Corvei in Westphalia for John the Old Saxon, whom he placed over his monastic house at Athelney. But his

closest comrade in this work was Asser of St David's, whom he induced to stay with him for six months in the year, who taught him Latin, and whose Latin Life of the king is, with all its interpolations and errors, our best authority. The first thing they did together was Ælfred's Hand-book. When Asser quoted or Ælfred read out of the Bible or the Fathers any passage which interested the king, it was written down and translated into English in the note-book which the king kept in his breast. It was a book, then, of religious extracts, with here and there an illustration or a remark of Ælfred's added in his own words. This Hand-book, begun in November 887, was set forth for the use of the people in English in 888. The loss of it is a great misfortune.

The collection of the laws of Æthelberht, Ine, and Offa, with laws of his own, into a Law-book was the next work Ælfred undertook, and it was probably completed in 888. But the work of collection had most likely been begun in 885 or 886, for William of Malmesbury says that it was composed amid the noise of arms and the braying of the trumpetsthat is, during the short struggle with the Danes in 885-86, when Ælfred secured London for his kingdom. The book was then in hand for more than two years. By this time he was acquainted with Latin, and as the clergy were the teachers of the people, the first book he translated was for their benefit. It was the Cura Pastoralis, the Herdsman's Book, of Gregory the Great, a manual of the duties of the clergy, the description of the ideal of a Christian priest; and a copy was sent 'to every bishop's seat in my kingdom,' probably in the year 890. The book is the book of a beginner in translation. It is more close to its author than the other translations. Several paragraphs in the Preface seem to speak of the work as the first translation he issued. No long original matter is inserted; but the wellknown Preface is from Alfred's own hand, and it is the beginning of English prose literature. breathes throughout of the king's character. sketches the state of learning in England when he came to the throne, and we realise from it how much he did for literature, and the difficulties with which he had to contend. Its style is curiously simple and fresh, and it succeeds in its patriotic effort to be clear. It is plain here, as in his other writings, that Ælfred said to himself, 'I will try to make the most ignorant understand me.'

It

It

So many translations of this Preface have been published that it does not seem necessary to insert any quotation from it, but at the end Ælfred has added some verses of his own, and their simplicity, their faint imaginative note, their personal and tender religious feeling, their being perhaps the first verses that he wrote, induce me to paraphrase them :

These are the waters which the God of hosts promised for our comfort to us dwellers on the earth, and His will is that these ever-living waters should flow into all

the world from all who truly believe in Him; 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 waters should, noisy and shallow, flow over the land till it becomes a fen. But now draw near to drink it, for Gregory has brought to your doors the well of the Lord. Whoever have brought 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 was Bæda's Ecclesiastical History of the English, 890–91. It was done not only to instruct the clergy in the history of their Church, but also the people in the history of their own land. It omits several chapters of the original, and the king adds nothing of his own. We may wonder why he gave no particular account in it of the history of Church and State in Wessex, but this curious omission may be explained by the fact that in 891 he had begun to work up the English Chronicle into a national history, and did not care to write two accounts of the same matter.

A certain portion of the Chronicle already existed. This was probably made by Bishop Swithun of Winchester shortly after the death of Ethelwulf, and runs up to the year 855. It took the meagre

annals made at Winchester as its basis, filled them from tradition back to Hengest, and then told at some length the wars and death of Æthelwulf. Ælfred, finding this account, caused it to be carefully investigated and written up to date, with a full history of his wars with the Danes. The style of this history is of the same kind throughout, and it is more than probable that it was the work of his own hand. Condensed, bold, rough, and accurate, it is a fine beginning of the historical prose of England. This is the manuscript of the Annals of Winchester, presented by Archbishop Parker to the library of Corpus Christi at Cambridge, and the copy is in one handwriting.

That

The next book the king translated, about 891-93, was the History of the World by Orosius. history was written in 418 at the suggestion of St Augustine. It was the standard historical authority during the Middle Ages, and Ælfred edited it to teach his people all that was known of the world beyond England. He left out what he thought needless for them to know, and he filled it up from his own knowledge with matters of interest to Englishmen and with comments of his own. Among these was a full account of the geography of Germany, and of the countries where the English tongue had been spoken of old. To this he added the personal tales of two voyagers, Ohthere and Wulfstan, who had sailed along the coasts of Norway and the German shores of the Baltic. Ohthere had made two voyages, one northward as far as the mouth of the

Dwina where it poured into the White Sea, the other down the eastern coast of Denmark till he saw the Baltic running upwards into the land; and the king adds, 'He had gone by the lands where the Engle dwelt before they came hither.' Wulfstan, starting from Haithaby, the capital of the old Engle-land, went for seven days and nights along the German coast till he reached the Vistula. These journeys the king, sitting in his chamber in the royal house, wrote down, probably from the dictation of the mariners. It is a pleasant scene to look upon. The style of this writing is, as usual, concise, simple, and straightforward, with a touch of personal pleasure in it.

These translations were the work of about five years, from 888 to 893. In the latter year he was interrupted by the invasion of the Viking Hasting and the rising of the Danelaw. This was the last effort of the Danes against him, and in 897 he had completely crushed it by the capture of the Danish fleet. From that date till his death in 901 he had the stillness he loved, and he returned to his literary work. The book he now undertook to translate (897-98) was the De Consolatione Philosophia, which Boethius had written in prison to comfort his heart. It is a dialogue between him and Philosophy, who consoles him for trouble by proving that the only lasting happiness is in the soul. The wise and virtuous man is master of all things. The book is the final utterance of heathen Stoicism, but was So near to the conclusions of Christianity that the Middle Ages believed the writer to be a Christian; and his book was translated into the leading languages of Europe. Its serious, sorrowful, but noble argument suited well with the circumstances of Ælfred's life and with his spiritual character. He added to Boethius long passages of his own ; and the fifth book is nearly altogether rewritten by the king. He filled the Stoic's thought with his own profound Christianity, with solemn passages on the Divine Nature and its relation to man's will and fate, with aspiring hopes and prayers. Many inserted paragraphs have to do with his own life, with the government of his kingdom, with his thoughts and feelings as a king, with his scorn of wealth and fame and power in comparison with goodness. He stands in its pages before us, a noble figure, troubled, but conqueror of his trouble; master of himself; a lover of God and his people, dying, but with a certain hope of immortal peace.

i

that he made a translation which we possess of the Soliloquia of St Augustine, and the Preface to this book by the writer is a pathetic farewell to his work as a translator, and a call to others to follow his example for the sake of England. Its parabolic form makes it especially interesting. A letter of St Augustine's, De Videndo Deo, is added to the Dialogue between St Augustine and his Reason. The English translation of the whole is divided into three dialogues, and the first two are called a 'Collection of Flowers.' The third dialogue closes with 'Here end the sayings of King Ælfred,' and the date is probably 900.

His last work-and it fits his dying hand-was a translation of the Psalms of David. It is supposed, but very doubtfully, that we have in the first fifty psalms of the Paris Psalter this work of Ælfred's. He did not live to finish it. In 901 this noble king, the 'Truth-teller,' 'England's Darling,' 'the unshakable pillar of the West Saxons, full of justice, bold in arms, and filled with the knowledge that flows from God,' passed away, and was laid to rest at Winchester.

Only two books not done by himself were, as far as we know, set forth in his reign. One was the Dialogues of Gregory, translated, by Alfred's request, by Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester. Alfred wrote the Preface, and it breathes throughout of his kingly character. The other was the Book of Martyrs, a year's calendar of those who had witnessed to the Faith. It does not follow that no other books but these were written during his reign in English, but it is probable that Ælfred stood almost alone as an English writer. Asser's Life of the king was in Latin. On the whole Ælfred's efforts to make a literary class, even the schools he established for that purpose, were a failure. It was not till nearly a hundred years after him that the work he did for English bore fruit in the revival of English prose by Ælfric.

Ælfred was not a literary artist, but he had the spirit of a scholar. His desire for knowledge was insatiable. His love of the best was impassioned. It is a pity Asser did not bring him into contact with Virgil and the rest of the great Romans. But England had the first claim on him, and he collected with eagerness the English poems and songs. He translated from Bæda his country's history; he himself shaped a national history; he collected and arranged the English laws of his predecessors, and he added new laws of his own and his Witan's. He taught his people the history of other lands. He had as great an eagerness to teach as to learn. He was not only the warrior, the law-giver, the ruler, but the minister of education. And the style in which he did his work reveals the simple, gracious, humble, loving character of the man. is steeped in his natural personality, and it charms through that more than through any literary ability. It is always clear; its aim is to be useful to his people; and it gains a certain weight and dignity from his long experience in public affairs, in war

It

and policy. The impression he has made on England is indelible, and his spirit has not ceased to move among us.

Alfred and the Work of a King. 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 prayer-men, 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-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.

(From the De Consolatione Philosophia.)

Alfred's Preface to the 'De Consolatione.' 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.

Alfred's Prayer.

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.

(De Cons., Bk. v.)

Poetry from Alfred to the Conquest. During the reign of Ælfred poetry was not altogether neglected in Wessex. It is more than probable that it was at the king's instance that the poetry of Northumbria was collected and translated into the dialect of Wessex, in which dialect we now possess it. Among the rest we may surely count the lost poems of Cadmon of which Alfred had read when he translated the Ecclesiastical History. Then also, Genesis A, whether by Cædmon or not, now appeared in West Saxon. Now, there was a great gap in the manuscript after the line 234, and some copyist of the poem inserted, in order to fill up the space, lines 235-851, out of an Old Saxon poem (it is supposed) which had been translated into West Saxon. It is thought from certain similarities in diction, manner, and rhythm that this Old Saxon poem (some lines of which, identical with corresponding lines in the West Saxon insertion, have been lately discovered) was written by the writer of the Heliand or by some imitator of his in Old Saxony. At any rate this poem was brought to England, translated, and a portion of it, relating to the Fall of Man, was used to fill up the gap in Genesis A. We call this portion Genesis B, and it differs from the earlier Genesis not only in manner, metre, and language, but in sentiment and thought.

It opens with the fall of the rebel angels already told in Genesis A. Lucifer, 'beauteous in body, mighty of mind,' seems to himself to be equal with God, and his pride is injured by the creation of man. And the fierce soliloquy into which his insolent Teutonic individuality outbreaks is one of the finest passages in Anglo-Saxon poetry. He is flung into hell, and hafted down by bars across his neck and breast in the centre of that abyss of pain-swart, deep-valleyed, swept at morn by north-east wind and frost, and then by leaping flame and bitter smoke. 'Oh, how unlike,' he cries, this narrow stead to that home in heaven's high kingdom which of old I knew! Adam holds my seat; this is my greatest sorrow! But could I break forth for one short winter hour with all my host-but God knew my heart, and forged these gratings of hard steel, else an evil work would be between man and me. Oh, shall we not have vengeance! Help me, my thanes; fly to earth; make Adam and Eve break God's bidding; bring them down to hell; then I shall softly rest in my chains.' One of his thanes springs up, and beating the fire aside, finds Adam at last and Eve standing beside the two trees in Eden. The temptation

Adam and Eve are left conscious of their fall. Their love is not shattered; there is no mutual reproach. Eve's tenderness is as deep as Adam's repentance, and they fall to prayer. This is the close of Genesis B. It is full of Teutonic feeling. The fierce individuality; the indignant pride; the fury for vengeance, the joy of its accomplishment; the close comradeship between the lord and his thanes; the tenderness and devotion of the woman; the reverence of the man for the woman; the intensity of the repentance-may all be matched from the Icelandic sagas, and they prove that the spirit which afterwards made those sagas was alive in England in the ninth and tenth centuries.

The second part of the poems which pass under the name of Cædmon, and which had the name of Christ and Satan, are now allotted by the majority of critics to the tenth century, and, presumably, to Wessex. Their simple, direct, and passionate elements, their imaginative grasp of their subjects, seem more Northumbrian than West Saxon, and this is not an impossible opinion. They are now divided into three poems or fragments of poems, the first of which is called the Fallen Angels, the second the Harrowing of Hell, and the third the Temptation. The character of Satan in them differs greatly from that in Genesis A or B, and so does the description of hell. The bond of comradeship between his thanes and Satan has perished, but not that between Christ and His thanes. Satan, in an agony of longing for heaven, repents, but no mercy is given to him. Dialogue enlivens the poems, and their exultant bursts of religious praise recall the spirit of Cynewulf. The personages are drawn with much humanity. The descriptions are vivid and imaginative. We see Satan wandering and wailing in his misty hall, the weltering sea of fire outside, the cliffs and burning marl of hell, the fiends flying before Christ when He comes to break down the gates. We watch the good spirits in Hades lifting themselves, leaning on their hands when He came ; their ascent with Him to the feast in the heavenly burg, and the fall of Satan from the Mount of Temptation through a hundred thousand miles to the abyss of hell.

These are the last religious poems before the Conquest which show any traces of imaginative or original power. The rest of which we know seem to be the dry and lifeless productions of monks in the cloisters, and are nothing better than alliterative prose. There are a crowd of versions of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Canticles. The Last

a homily of 1010; a saints' calendar entitled the Menologium, a metrical translation of fifty psalms, scattered through a service book; the translation of the Metra of Boethius, if Ælfred did not do it ; a poem advising a gray-haired warrior to a Christian life, and another urging its readers to prayer, almost exhaust the religious poetry of the tenth and eleventh centuries before the Conquest. With the exception of a few lines describing in the Menologium the coming of summer, they are totally devoid of any literary value. Religious poetry had died.

But this was not the case with secular poetry. Ballads and war-songs on any striking story of the lives of kings or chiefs, dirges at their deaths, were made all over England. The old sagas were put into new forms; the country families and the villages had their traditionary songs. None of these are left with the exception of the Battle of Brunanburh and the Battle of Maldon, and a few fragments inserted in the Chronicle. A few prose records, also, in the Chronicle are supposed to be taken from songs current at the time. Moreover, it is plain from the statements of Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury that they used ballads of this time in their histories. Moreover, the old sagas were sung by wandering minstrels at every village fair, in the halls of the burgs, in the tents and round the bivouacs of the soldiers; and the chieftain's bard, after every deed of war, sang the doings and the deaths of the warriors when the feast was set at night. There may have been other poems of a more thoughtful character, like the Rhyme-Poem in the Exeter Book, which belongs to the tenth century. It is the only poem in the English tongue which is written in the Scandinavian form called Runhenda, in which the last word of the first half of the verse is rhymed, in addition to the usual alliteration, with the last word of the second half. This form was used by Egill Skallagrimsson, the Icelandic skald, in the poem by which he saved his life from Erik Blood-Axe in 938. Egill was twice in England, and was a favourite of King Æthelstan. It is supposed that he made known this form of poetry to the writer of the Rhyme-Song, and this supposition is the origin of the date assigned to it-940-50. It is worth little in itself, and its subject is one common to English song--the contrast between a rich and joyous past and a wretched present.

It is pleasant to turn from it to the noble songs of Brunanburh and Maldon. At Brunanburh, in the year 937, England, under Æthelstan, Ælfred's grandson, vindicated her short-lived unity against the Danes, the Welsh, and the Scots, under Anlaf the Dane and Constantinus the king of the Scots. The song, recast by Tennyson, is no unworthy beginning of the war-poetry of England. Its patriotism is as haughty as that of the 'Fight at Agincourt,' the 'Battle of the Baltic,' and the