battle-songs and ballads, English poetry had already risen to a grand and vigorous life.

But English prose hardly existed. Since Theodore's time, theology had been the favorite study of English scholars, and theology naturally took a Latin shape. Historical literature followed Bæda's lead in finding a Latin vehicle of expression. Saints' lives, which had now become numerous, were as yet always written in Latin. It was from Ælfred's day that this tide of literary fashion suddenly turned. English prose started vigorously into life. Theology stooped to an English dress. History became almost wholly vernacular. The translation of Latin saint-lives into English became one of the most popular literary trades of the day. Even medicine found English interpreters. A national literature, in fact, sprang suddenly into existence which was without parallel in the Western world.

It is thus that in the literatures of modern Europe that of England leads the way. The Romance tongues · the tongues of Italy, Gaul, and Spain were only just emerging into definite existence when Elfred wrote. Ulfilas, the first Teutonic prosewriter, found no successors among his Gothic people; and none of the German folk across the sea were to possess a prose literature of their own for centuries to come. English, therefore, was not only the first Teutonic literature it was the earliest prose literature of the modern world. And at the outset of English literature stands the figure of Ælfred. The mighty roll of books that fills our libraries opens with the translations of the king. He took his books as he found them they were, in fact, the popular manuals of his day: the compilation of Orosius, which was then the one accessible hand-book of universal history, the works of Bæda, the Consolation of Bothius, the Pastoral Book of Pope Gregory. "I wondered greatly," he says, "that of those good men who were aforetime all over England, and who had learned perfectly these books, none would translate any part into their own language. But I soon answered myself, and said, "They never thought that men would be so reckless and learning so fallen.'

As it was, however, the books had to be rendered into English by the king himself, with the help of the scholars he had gathered round him. "When I remembered," he says, in his preface to the Pastoral Book, "how the knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of

this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and in English Shepherd's Book, sometimes word by word, and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbald, my mass-priest, and John, my mass-priest. And when I had learned it as I could best understand it, and as I could most clearly interpret it, I translated it into English." Ælfred was too wise a man not to own. the worth of such translations in themselves. The Bible, he urged, with his cool commonsense, had told on the nations through versions in their own tongues. The Greeks knew it in Greek. The Romans knew it in Latin. Englishmen might know it, as they might know the other great books of the world, in their own English. "I think it better, therefore, to render some books that are most needful for men to know into the language that we may all understand."

But Ælfred showed himself more than a translator. He became an editor for his people. Here he omitted, there he expanded. He enriched his first translation, the Orosius, by a sketch of new geographical discoveries in the north. He gave a WestSaxon form to his selections from Bæda. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, and the churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak against abuses of power. The cold acknowledgment of a Providence by Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgment of the goodness of God. As Ælfred writes, his large-hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me," he prays, with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better than I, for every man must say what he says and do what he does according to his ability."

§ 5. The Old English Chronicle

Among his earliest undertakings was an English version of Bæda's history; and it was probably the making of this version which suggested the thought of a work which was to be memorable in our literature. Winchester, like most other Episcopal monasteries, seems to have had its own Bishop's Roll, a series of meagre and irregular annals in the Latin tongue, for the most part mere jottings of the dates when West-Saxon bishop and WestSaxon king mounted throne and bishop-stool. The story of this

Roll and its aftergrowth has been ingeniously traced by modern criticism, and the general conclusions at which it has arrived seem probable enough. The entries of the Roll were posted up at uncertain intervals and with more or less accuracy from the days of the first West-Saxon bishop, Birinus. Meagre as they were, these earlier annals were historical in character and free from any mythical intermixture; but save for a brief space in Ine's day they were purely West-Saxon, and with the troubles which followed Ine's death they came to an end altogether.

It was not until the revival of West-Saxon energy under Ecgberht that any effort was made to take up the record again and to fill up the gap that its closing had made. But Swithun was probably the first to begin the series of developments which transformed this Bishop's Roll into a national history; and the clerk to whom he intrusted its compilation continued the Roll by a series of military and political entries to which we owe our knowledge of the reign of Ethelwulf, while he enlarged and revised the work throughout, prefixing to its opening those broken traditions of the coming of our fathers which, touched as they are here and there by mythical intermixture, remain the one priceless record of the conquest of Britain.

It was this Latin chronicle of Swithun's clerk that Ælfred seems to have taken in hand about 887, and whose whole character he changed by giving it an English form. In its earlier portions he carried still further the process of expansion. An introduction dating from the birth of Christ, drawn from the work of Bæda, was added to its opening, and entries from the same source were worked into the after-annals. But it was where Swithun's work ended that Ælfred's own work really began, for it is from the death of Æthelwulf that the Roll widens into a continuous narrative a narrative full of life and originality, whose vigor and freshness mark the gift of a new power to the English tongue.

The appearance of such a work in their own mother-speech could not fail to produce a deep impression on the people whose story it told. With it English history became the heritage of the English people. Bæda had left it accessible merely to noble or priest; Ælfred was the first to give it to the people at large. Nor was this all. The tiny streams of historic record, which had been dispersed over the country at large, were from this time drawn into a single channel. The Chronicle for from this time we may use the term by which the work has become famous served even more than the presence of the Dane to put an end to

the existence of distinct annals in Northumbria and Mercia, and to help on the progress of national unity by reflecting everywhere the same national consciousness.

When his work on Bæda was finished, Alfred, it is thought, began his translation of the Consolation of Bothius; and it is not improbable that the metrical translation of the Metra of Boethius was also from his hand. From philosophy and this effort at poetry he turned to give to his people a book on practical theology. As far as we know, the translation of the Pastoral Rule of Pope Gregory was his last work, and of all his translations it was the most carefully done. It is only as we follow the king in the manifold activity of his life that we understand his almost passionate desire for that "stillness" which was essential to his work. But it was only by short spaces that the land was "still," and once more Ælfred's work of peace was to be broken off by a renewal of the old struggle.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Plummer, Life and Times of Alfred the Great. Pauli, Life of King Alfred, an old but still useful work. Conybeare, Alfred in the Chroniclers, especially valuable for the source material collected. Stevenson, Asser's Life of King Alfred, a critical edition of this famous work. Bowker (editor), Alfred the Great (1899). Ramsay, Foundations of England, Vol. I, chap. xv, a dry but reliable account. Hodgkin, A Political History of England to 1066, chap. xvii.

CHAPTER V

THE REIGN OF CNUT

THOUGH Alfred's successors wrested from the Danes the English territory which had been lost, they were not able to establish a stable and permanent government strong enough to resist all attacks on national independence. Toward the close of the tenth century the Danes began to harry and invade the land in their old fashion. For a time they were bought off with heavy grants of money, but they were bent on conquest. In 1016 Edmund Ironside, badly supported by his own followers, was forced to share his kingdom with the Danish leader Cnut, and, as the English king died in the same year, the latter was able to make himself master of the country.

§ 1. Accession of Cnut and Settlement of his Kingdom 1

1

Immediately after the death of Eadmund, his powerful vassal, Cnut, summoned the bishops, ealdormen, thanes, and all the chief men of England to a great assembly at London. On their appearance before him, as if distrustful of his own memory, he desired those who were witnesses of what had passed between him and Eadmund, when they agreed to divide the kingdom, to declare what had been said regarding the brothers and sons of the latter; whether in the case of his surviving Eadmund, the throne should devolve on him or on them. The base and selfish courtiers immediately declared on oath that Eadmund, neither in his lifetime nor when at the point of death, had ever designed any portion of his kingdom for his brothers; but that Cnut, according to the known will of Eadmund, should aid and support his children until they were of age to assume the reins of govern

ment.

1 Lappenberg, A History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, Vol. II, pp. 196 ff.