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 Philosophie, 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 Elfred'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.

Whether he or another translated into English verse the Metra with which Boethius interspersed his prose is not as yet settled by the critics. If we believe the short poetical prologue to the oldest of the manuscripts, the English version of the Metra in poetry is the work of the king, and it would illustrate his intellectual activity if we could be sure he translated them into verse. But we do not know. Nor do we know for certain what else he did before his death. It is more or less agreed

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 Alfred,' 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 Alfred'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 Ælfred's request, by Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester. Ælfred 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.

Elfred 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 Philosophiæ.)

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 Ælfred to the Conquest. During the reign of Alfred 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 Elfred had read when he translated the Ecclesiastical History. Then also, Genesis A, whether by Cadmon 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

follows, and it is subtly borne. Adam rejects it; Eve yields, and after a whole day persuades Adam to eat the fruit. Then the scornful fiend breaks into a wild cry of satisfied vengeance. 'My heart is enlarged. I have never bowed the knee to God. O Thou, my Lord, who liest in sorrow, rejoice now, laugh, and be blithe; our harms are well avenged.'

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. 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.

The

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

Judgment, a poem from which Wulfstan quotes in 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 Ethelstan. 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, Alfred'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

the Danes were too many for the English, and the great Earl died on the field. And his thanes, save a few cowards, died round him, fighting to the last.

His death-song is not like that of Beowulf. For the first time in English battle - poetry the chieftain dies with a Christian cry upon his lips. It is the beginning of a new element in the poetry of war. He dies as the knights die in the Chansons de Geste. Their last words are a prayer to Christ. We seem to feel in this change the breath of a new life, of a new world -of the life and world of romance. After this poem silence follows. The Fight at Maldon is the last song of the war-poetry of England before the Conquest. Not til long after the Conquest did it rise again, and then it rose almost a stranger to the ancient English ways. The Celtic and the Norman spirit had transformed it; but deep below, and lasting through centuries of English song, the strong, constant, deep-rooted elements of the Teutonic race lay at the foundation of the English poetry of physical and moral battle.

Eve, after she has eaten of the Tree of
Knowledge.

Sheener to her seemed all the sky and earth;
All this world was lovelier; and the work of God,

Mickle was and mighty then, though 'twas not by man's device,

That she saw (the sight)—but the Scather eagerly
Moved about her mind.

Now thyself thou mayest see, and I need not speak it—

Continued from foot of page 24.]

mære tungol. glad ofer grundas. godes candel beorht, eces drihtnes. oth seo athele gesceaft sáh tó setle. thær læg secg monig. garum ageted. . guman northerne. ofer scyld scoten swilce scyttisc eac. werig wigges sæd. and wessexe forth andlangne dæg eored cýstum on last legdon lathum theodon. heowon here flymon hindan thearle mecum mylen scearpum myrce ne wýrndon heardes handplegan hæletha nanum. thara the mid anlafe. ofer ear gebland on lithes bosme land gesohton. fæge to gefeohte fife lagon. on tham campstede cingas geonge sweordum aswefde. swilce vii. eac eorlas anlafes, and unrím herges. flotan and scotta thær geflymed wearth. northmanna brego neade gebeded. to lides stefne lytle werode. cread cnear

The first entry in the page of the Chronicle facsimiled begins with the consecration of King Æthelstan, and ends with an unfinished sentence. Then follow the figures merely for the years 900-933, this particular MS. (of the Abingdon Chronicle) recording no fatts under those years; and after one entry for 934, and the figures for 935 and 936, it goes on, under 937, to give the famous entry on the battle of Brunanburh in alliterative verse, written straight on, like the specimens above from Beowulf and Cædmon, without regard to the division into alliterating lines.

O thou, Eve the good, how unlike to thy old self

Is thy beauty and thy breast since thou hast believed my words.

Light is beaming 'fore thee now,

Glittering against thee, which from God I brought,
White from out the Heavens. See thy hands may
touch it!

Say to Adam then, what a sight thou hast,
And what powers-through my coming!'

Then to Adam wended Eve, sheenest of all women,
Winsomest of wives, e'er should wend into the world,
For she was the handiwork of the heavenly King.
Of the fruit unblest

Part was hid upon her heart, part in hand she bore.
Adam, O my Lord, this apple is so sweet,
Blithe within the breast; bright this messenger;
'Tis an Angel good from God! By his gear I see
That he is the errand-bringer of our heavenly King!
I can see Him now from hence
Where Himself He sitteth, in the south-east throned,
All enwreathed with weal; He who wrought the world.
And with Him I watch His angels, wheeling round about
Him,

In their feathered vesture, of all folks the mightiest,
Winsomest of war-hosts! Who could wit like this
Give me, did not God Himself surely grant it me?
Far away I hear-

And as widely see-over all the world,
O'er the universe widespread !-All the music mirth
In the Heavens I can hear !-In my heart I am so clear,
Inwardly and outwardly, since the apple I have tasted.
See! I have it here, in my hands; O my good Lord!
Gladly do I give it thee; I believe from God it comes!'

Repentance of Adam and Eve.

'Thou mayst it reproach me, Adam, my beloved,
In these words of thine; yet it may not worse repent
thee,

Rue thee in thy mind, than it rueth me in heart.'
Then to her for answer Adam spoke again-
'O if I could know the All-Wielder's will,
What I for my chastisement must receive from Him,

oft from all foemen, warded their land, their hoard and their homes. Bowed down (was) the foe the folk of the Scots; and the ship-sailers, fated fell (dead). Sodden the field was with blood-sweat of men, when the sun upward, in morningtide, that far-famed star, glode over the meadows, bright candle of God, the Lord everlasting, till that great creature sank to its seat. There many a hero lay pierced with the spear, many a Northman shot over shield, so also the Scotsman, weary, war-sated. Forth the West Saxons all the long day, with well-proven warriors, lay on the track of the hateful folk, direfully hewed at the flank of the fliers,

with mill-sharpened swords. Withheld not the Mercians the hard hand-playing from any of men,

of those who with Anlaf, over the ocean,

in the ship's bosom, had looked for the land, fated for war. Five young kings

on the war-field lay dead,

put to sleep with the sword. So also seven earls of Anlaf. Unnumbered the horde

of sailors and Scotsmen. There forced to flight was the prince of the Northmen, driven of need to the stem of the ship, he, with small band, thrust his craft on the sea.