[715] See the table in Wülker, Grundriss, p. 393. Wack, u. s. p. 58, would put the Orosius even before the Cura Pastoralis.
[716] Wülker, u. s. p. 396.
[717] In his useful dissertation: Untersuchungen über K. Ælfred’s Bedaübersetzung, 1889.
[718] Gegenwärtiger Stand der Forschung über K. Ælfred’s Bedaübersetzung, 1898 (Sitzungsber. of the Vienna Academy of Sciences).
[719] Cf. Ælfric’s saying: ‘every one who translates from Latin into English should strive that the English may have its own idiom, otherwise it is very misleading to any one who does not know the Latin idiom,’ Preface to Heptateuch.
[720] See below, and cf. Schilling: ‘there are many mistakes in translation due to carelessness and want of grammatical knowledge,’ p. 9; ‘his knowledge of Latin was still small when he translated the Orosius,’ p. 61.
[721] pp. cvi-cviii.
[722] I did not then know that Mr. Sweet had already noticed this affinity, though he gave no examples, and drew no inference from it, Preface to Pastoral Care, p. xl.
[723] It is true that in the Orosius Alfred omits the conquest of Britain by Claudius (vii. 6), but this may be, as Schilling suggests (p. 21), from quasipatriotic motives, because of the ease with which the island was conquered. He does however give it in the Bede (H. E. i. 3), and this fact might be used as an argument in favour of the priority of the Bede translation.
[724] Ed. Schipper, p. 13; the corresponding capitulum is however translated in both recensions.