Part 10
When we consider the ignorance which prevailed in England before Alfred’s time, we can form an idea of the immense importance of his geographical labours and of the brightness of the light with which he dispelled outer darkness in the minds of his countrymen. His work was more especially useful in his own time, owing to the intercourse he encouraged with foreign lands, and to the frequent missions he despatched and received. Every year there was intercourse with Rome, when the alms for St. Peter were despatched, generally in charge of an alderman or a dignitary of the Church. Embassies were received from Germany and the northern countries, from France, and probably from the Emperor Leo the Philosopher at Constantinople, and from the great western Khalifa at Cordova. King Alfred even despatched a mission to India, at the head of which was Sighelm or Suithelm, the Bishop of Sherburn. In those days there were native dynasties at the principal seats of Hindu civilisation. The Chohan kings were reigning at Delhi and Ajmir. At Ujjayana the Malwa Rajas held a brilliant court, where literature flourished, and where Kalidasa and his school reached the highest flights of poetic imagination. At Madura, in Southern India, was the cultured Pandyon dynasty. It is probable that the visit of King Alfred’s envoy was to the Pandyon King of Madura, for his instructions were to seek out the shrine of St. Thomas, which has traditionally been placed on the Coromandel coast. It is recorded that the Bishop of Sherburn returned safely to England, bringing back with him gems and other products of a country which was destined, in after ages, to become the brightest gem in the diadem of the descendants of Alfred the Great.
Both through his promotion of intercourse with distant lands and through his literary work, our great king enlightened his people by disseminating geographical knowledge. The first to encourage Arctic exploration, the first to point the way to eastern trade by the Baltic, the first to open communication with India, his literary labours in the cause of geography are even more astonishing. There have been literary sovereigns since the days of Timæus of Sicily, writing for their own glory or for their own edification or amusement. Alfred alone wrote with the sole object of his people’s good; while in his methods, in his scientific accuracy, and in his aims, he was several centuries in advance of his time. After his death there was a dreary waste of ignorance, with scarcely even a sign of dawn on the distant horizon. A few Englishmen of ability, such as Roger Bacon and Sacrobosco, speculated and wrote on questions “_de sphærâ_,” but there was no practical geography until Eden and Hakluyt rose up, nearly seven centuries after the death of our great king. Richard Hakluyt was indebted to Alfred for portions of his work, and he resembled his illustrious precursor somewhat in his zeal, his patriotism, and his diligence. Hakluyt was, however, far behind Alfred in scientific precision and insight, although he lived so long afterwards, with seven more centuries of experience to guide him. Even now men of learning and research have their admiration aroused at the accuracy of King Alfred’s descriptions, and at the pains he must have taken to reject what was doubtful and to retain only what was true. This called for the exercise of ability of a high order, as well as patience.
Alfred the Great was, in the truest sense of the term, a man of science; and we hail him as one who stands alone and unrivalled—the founder of the science of geography in this country.
ALFRED AS A WRITER
BY REV. PROFESSOR EARLE
ALFRED AS A WRITER
Our estimate of the literary achievements of King Alfred will depend very much upon what we are in the habit of thinking about his early education. If we are content to accept the story in Asser, that he had reached his twelfth year before he had learned to read, then we must reckon his literary career as a prodigy, a phenomenon which defies explanation. Or, if that will not satisfy us, we may liken him to his grandfather’s contemporary the great Charles, who, being illiterate, knew the value of learning, and surrounded himself with learned men. On this theory it would follow that the writings of King Alfred are his only in that sense in which all works and monuments are said to belong to the king who has ordered them and paid for them. He who refuses to be satisfied with either of these alternatives can hardly fail to question the story about Alfred and the picture-book.
The Saxon Chronicle says that Alfred was sent to Rome in the year 853, at which time he was a little boy. This statement naturally suggests that he was sent to reside at the English College in Rome for the benefit of his education. But this is blurred in Asser by the further statement that he went to Rome a second time in the very next year; which has the effect of reducing his travels to mere excursions. The second journey to Rome is not in the Chronicle, and it looks rather like an artifice, designed to parry the natural inference that the journey to Rome was for a prolonged and educational residence. Perhaps the author of “Asser’s Life” was minded to make his hero a prodigy, and to this end the picture-book story must by all means be protected and maintained. These variations had the effect of shaking the credibility of the narrative, and raising doubts as to whether Alfred ever went to Rome at all. The statement in the Chronicle got involved in that cloud of unreality which overshadows so much of Alfred’s history.
Happily this particular point is now quite cleared up. A letter has been discovered, written by Leo IV., the reigning Pope in the year 853, and addressed to King Æthelwulf, the father of Alfred, announcing the safe arrival of the boy. This discovery has added a new confirmation to the Chronicle, and has established it once for all as a firm historical fact, that Alfred was sent to Rome in the year 853. If now we interpret this step in the most natural manner, as designed by his father to send the child out of the way in dangerous times, and to occupy his tender years with liberal studies, we find the course of Alfred’s literary development well and reasonably accounted for. Indeed, it seems in every way most probable that Alfred enjoyed the best opportunities for study that the times afforded, and that he used them so far as was compatible with the vocation of a warrior. How many years he spent in Rome is not known; in the reign of Æthered he was at home and he made a conspicuous military figure while yet in his teens, and this seems to indicate that he had never in his book-learning forgotten that he would have to fight for his country against the northern invaders.
The first seven years of his own reign (871-878) were years of deadly struggle. In 877 his cause seemed to be lost, but in 878 the King of Wessex was victorious. He made peace with the conquered Danes, and their king, Guthrum, was baptized. And now he had to guide in peace the nation which he had guided in war. He had to reconstruct the social and political fabric which had been shattered by the devastations and panics of three generations. In all his reconstruction there is manifested a purpose not only of restoration, but also of improvement and reform. This is conspicuous in his revision of the West Saxon Laws. The Law-book then in use was that of King Ina (688-726). When Alfred’s code was published, that of Ina was not abolished, but it was re-edited in the same volume, after the manner of an appendix to Alfred’s Laws. That a new departure was purposed is indicated by the new feature of a Prologue composed of the Decalogue and kindred selections from Scripture. This is to be understood partly as a consecration of the new Law-book; but further, as the inauguration of a new principle, namely, that laws are founded in right reason and have their highest sanction in religion. Before Alfred’s time laws had rested upon tradition, deriving their force from the fact that they were ancestral, or if reasoned at all were based upon a stunted and barbaric type of reasoning. We happen to have an extant example in which we can compare a law of Ina’s with Alfred’s reform of it. In the case of damage to a wood, the old law drew a distinction between injury by fire and injury by the axe, and that by fire was punished far more heavily than the other, for this assigned reason—that fire is a thief and works silently, whereas the axe announces itself.
“In case any one burn a tree in a wood, and it come to light who did it, let him pay the full penalty, let him give sixty shillings, because fire is a thief. If one fell in a wood ever so many trees, and it be found out afterwards, let him pay for three trees, each with thirty shillings. He is not required to pay for more of them, however many they might be, because the axe is a reporter and not a thief (forðon seo æsc biþ melda, nalles ðeof).”
This contrast could be retorted: for it might be urged that if fire is a thief relatively to the owner of the wood, so is it also relatively to the defendant, for it had started up afresh when he had left the place thinking that all was safe. The worst that could be proved upon him was the want of _sufficient_ caution. In fact, the law is only good as against arson, wanton or malicious; and for that case it is not severe enough. It may be assumed that in the bulk of cases damage by fire would be undesigned and accidental.
But where the axe is used there can be no doubt about the motive. The man who fells another man’s timber does so plainly with intent to steal, and the noise of the axe is not extenuating but rather aggravating by reason of its audacity.
In Ina’s law all such considerations were prevented by two venerable maxims which said, “Fire is a thief, but the axe is outspoken.” Jacob Grimm, in his _Antiquities of Law_, produced some parallels from old German codes, but he gave the palm to this of ours for its poetic tinge. Moreover, as an indication of the national instinct which is favourable to whatever is open and straightforward, it may be interesting; but the distinction was bad as law, and it was abolished by King Alfred. His new law equalised the penalty thus: “If a man burn or hew another man’s wood without leave, let him pay for every great tree with five shillings, and afterwards for each, let there be ever so many, with five pence;—and a fine of thirty shillings.”
The closing words of the king’s Prologue are as follows:—
“I, Alfred the King, gathered these (laws) together and ordered many to be written which our forefathers held, such as I approved, and many which I approved not I rejected, and had other ordinances enacted with the counsel of my Witan; for I dared not venture to set much of my own upon the statute-book, for I knew not what might be approved by those who should come after us. But such ordinances as I found, either in the time of my kinsman Ina, or of Offa, King of the Mercians, or of Ethelberht, who first received baptism in England—such as seemed to me rightest I have collected here, and the rest I have let drop.
“I, then, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these laws to all my Witan, and they then said that they all approved of them as proper to be holden.”
The same spirit of improvement and vigorous initiative is manifested in his famous translations. Either by his own knowledge or by the good advice which he knew how to obtain and appreciate, he selected from the books then accessible those which were calculated to be most generally useful to his people. The chief books were five, the productions of four authors: one by Orosius, written about A.D. 412; one by Boethius, of about A.D. 522; two by Gregory the Great, written towards A.D. 600; and one by the Venerable Bede, which was brought to a close in the year 731. It may be useful to add a few particulars about each of the works which appear to have constituted the select library of King Alfred.
Orosius was a young priest who came out of Spain into Africa to visit Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, at the time when that Father of the Latin Church was writing his greatest work, which he entitled the _City of God_. The occasion for this work arose out of the sack of Rome by Alaric the Goth in the year 410. A great outcry was made by the pagans against Christianity, as if it had been the cause of calamities which they attributed to the displeasure of the ancient gods for their neglected altars. In his _City of God_, which was conceived as an answer to this charge, Augustine constructed his argument upon a broad view of human history, urging that events must not be interpreted in an isolated manner, but must be taken with their connection and sequence; and then we shall discern signs of a great providential purpose guiding mankind in a progressive course of amelioration. The old dispensation prepared men for a fuller revelation, and the spread of Christianity has brought manifest improvement in the condition of human life. The heathen empires of the world, as Babylon in the East and Rome in the West, have been active though unconscious factors in this vast and beneficent process. The book is in fact a philosophy of history, with the Gospel for its pivot, and all events subordinated to this master principle. The thesis is developed with an extraordinary wealth of reasoning and illustration. To make this great argument the more complete, Orosius undertook, at Augustine’s request, to write a compendium of general history in the same spirit, and accordingly he loses no opportunity of showing up the calamities of the old heathen times, and indicating the tendency of Christianity to mitigate the horrors of war. This book of Orosius became the recognised manual of general history down to the sixteenth century.
The _Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius was the chief if not the sole representative of the philosophy, the ethics, and the religious aspirations of the ancients during the Dark and early Middle Ages. The author is thus introduced by Gibbon: “The senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman.” Suspected by Theodoric, the Gothic King of Italy, of the crime of Roman patriotism, he was cast into prison, and a sentence of confiscation and death was pronounced against him, while he was denied the means of making his defence. Chained and in view of death he composed the _Consolation of Philosophy_, of which Gibbon says: “A golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author.”[26]
Gregory the Great, who in A.D. 597 sent Augustine with his missionary band to the King of Kent, is a name which through the whole extent of Anglo-Saxon literature is mentioned with a peculiar veneration. From his writings the king took two books to be included in his library of English translations. The first was his _Pastoral Care_ (_Cura Pastoralis_), a guide-book for the use of the priest, to instruct the consciences of those who come to him for spiritual counsel; and as it is the first, so it may safely be pronounced the best of all manuals of the kind. Gregory’s ideal is a world governed by conscience, and the spirit of the _Cura Pastoralis_ would transform all men into worthy citizens of such a polity.
The other book of Gregory’s which Alfred took was of a different kind. The _Dialogues_ are stories of a sensational or even grotesque character, with a religious moral. They are calculated for a childish level of intelligence, and were designed to compete with the degrading tales which were the entertainment of barbarian circles. This book, which enjoyed the highest popularity for centuries, and was among the earliest books to be printed, is now entirely neglected, and Alfred’s translation has not yet been edited.
Bede was born in the neighbourhood of Wearmouth in 672. In his seventh year he entered the abbey recently founded there by Benedict Biscop, who was the first abbot. In that and the sister house of Jarrow he continued to his death in 735. He wrote _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, the History of the Conversion of the Angles and Saxons and of their Earliest Ecclesiastical Institutions. No other national church possesses a history of equal merit.[27] This was the youngest book on Alfred’s list, and as Orosius was, what Pauli calls it,[28] a Chronicle of the World, so this was a History of England.
I have thus endeavoured to give some idea of the books chosen by Alfred, as regards their rank and place in general literature. Our next step is to consider how Alfred dealt with these books and what he made of them. In his mind the translator’s function was not to reproduce an ancient author, but to produce a useful work. How he treated Orosius may readily be seen by any one who will examine the latest edition of the translation, that by Dr. Sweet (Early English Text Society). He hit upon the admirable plan of printing opposite the translation the corresponding portions of the Latin text, using italics for such parts of the original as are not literally translated. How great was the freedom of adaptation is promptly seen by the swarms of italics with which the Latin pages are bespangled. Besides these adaptations there are substantial additions in the shape of original contributions by King Alfred to the knowledge of European geography. First there is a map-like description of the nations of Central and Northern Europe, which are comprised under the name of Germania. The author begins with a sketch of his area: by east and west, from the Don to the sea about Britain; by north and south, from the Danube and Euxine to the White Sea. Coming to details, he starts with the East Franks (whose land-mark and memorial now lives in Frankfort), and with these East Franks for a centre he gives the relative positions of Swabians, Bavarians, Bohemians, and Thuringians, to the north of whom lie the Old Saxons, who are bounded on the west by Elbe-mouth and Friesland. From this point the Old Saxons become the pivot of the description.
This new piece of geographical literature is followed by two narratives of northern voyagers: Oht-here, who had explored the coast of Norway from where is now Christiania to far round the North Cape; and Wulfstan, who explored the southern coasts of the Baltic, and describes the strange customs of the Esthonians.
These three pieces taken together constitute one homologous group of ninth-century geography, which fully justifies Reinhold Pauli’s estimate, that the “Germania” of Alfred is more extensive and better defined than the “Germania” of Tacitus.
Besides this large insertion there are several smaller ones in the course of the work, and these may easily be found by observing where blanks occur on the Latin page of Dr. Sweet’s edition. Where Orosius tells how M. Fabius refused a Triumph when it was offered to him by the Senate, the translator inserts two paragraphs, one describing a Roman Triumph, and the other relating the origin and functions of the Roman Senate. In Cæsar’s invasion of Britain, where Orosius tells how he reached the river Thames, which (says he) is fordable in one place only; the translator adds that the ford is now called Wallingford. In such occasional insertions we see the beginnings of that vast apparatus of modern learning which is now relegated to footnotes or to separate books of reference.
The conditions under which Boethius produced that unique work _The Consolation of Philosophy_ may have tended to give the book a special attraction for the mind of the trouble-tossed king. He certainly seems to have made great use of the book as a text for his own reflections and meditations. “For although King Alfred professed to translate the work of Boethius, yet he inserted in various parts many of his own thoughts and feelings,” etc. These are the words of one who up to the moment of writing was the latest editor of Alfred’s _Boethius_;[29] but now he must share the ground with Mr. Sedgefield, whose new and greatly improved text has just issued from the Clarendon Press. On Alfred’s manner of dealing with his originals Mr. Sedgefield says: “Even in his most faithful translation, that of the _Cura Pastoralis_, King Alfred is by no means what in these days would be called literal; while in his _Boethius_ it is the exception to find a passage of even a few lines rendered word for word.” And, we may add, it is precisely this free handling which gives to the king’s translations their personal interest, and nowhere is this peculiar attraction so strongly felt as in his adaptation of Boethius.
German research has somewhat modified the inference which ascribed to Alfred everything in his version which is not found in the text. Old Latin commentaries and scholia upon the _De Consolatione_ have been discovered in continental libraries, which contain similar expansions, especially those in the direction of Christian doctrine. This discovery enlarges the literary interest, with small detraction from the work of the king. His glory is not of a kind to rise and fall by little gradations of more or less. The suggestions supplied by these commentaries are in their nature very obvious. For, as was observed by Mr. Stewart, the most casual reader of Boethius cannot fail to be struck with the strong theism which breathes through his pages, and invites the touch of paraphrase to give it the full Christian sound, as when the city of Truth, from which Boethius represents himself as exiled, becomes under the translator’s hand the heavenly Jerusalem; a thought which is expressed in the recently discovered scholia. But in Lib. ii. metr. 4, where the translator brings in the striking sentence, “Christ dwelleth in the vale of Humility and at the monumental stone of Wisdom,” the old Latin annotator contributes only this—“The stone is Christ.” Of the famous simile which likens the world to an egg, there is this much found in the scholia—“That the sky and the earth and the sea are in configuration like an egg.” See how this is developed by the poet:[30]—