Corruption of the text of Asser, largely due to editors.
§ 17. But before we can judge fairly of the work before us, we must try to do something to rescue the text from the very parlous condition in which it has come down to us. Indeed, with the exception of Ethelwerd’s Chronicle, hardly any work connected with Early English history has been textually so unfortunate as Asser. The only known manuscript of any antiquity perished almost entirely in the great Cottonian fire of 1731; the two existing manuscripts are paper copies of the sixteenth century. For our knowledge of the ancient Cottonian MS. we are dependent mainly on Wise’s edition of 1722; an excellent work for the time at which it was produced, but that it is not scrupulously accurate, according to modern notions, is proved by the fact that, whereas the facsimile given by Wise himself of the beginning of the MS. writes the name of Alfred’s birthplace, Uuanating, the text prints it Wanading. Moreover, the work has been shamefully tampered with by editors. Apart from longer interpolations, of which I shall speak presently, numberless smaller additions have been introduced into the text from the so-called Annals of Asser or of St. Neot[81], a compilation of the eleventh or twelfth century[82], largely based it is true on Asser for the period 851-887, and therefore available, within proper limits, like the works of other authors who have made use of Asser, for purposes of textual criticism; but not to be used, as has been done, for the wholesale depravation of the text. Even the editors of the Monumenta Historica Britannica were content to place these additions in brackets, instead of removing them altogether. Consequently they are often quoted by modern writers as if they were part of the original Asser.
Florence of Worcester’s use of Asser.
Of writers who have made use of Asser the most valuable, for our purposes, is Florence of Worcester. Very often he furnishes us with what is evidently the true reading[83], in one case at least a passage of some length can be recovered from his pages, which has been dropped out of our present text of Asser merely owing to homoioteleuton[84]. But even Florence must be used with caution for textual purposes. For just as his greater skill in composition led him (as we have seen[85]) to rearrange the materials with which Asser furnished him, so his better taste and greater command of Latin led him to revise and prune the language of his author. Moreover, in certain cases, Florence has corrected and supplemented Asser by the direct use of the Saxon Chronicle[86]. It must not therefore always be assumed that because Florence’s reading is better than Asser’s, it is therefore more original. Conversely, though rarely, Asser enables us to correct the text of Florence[87].
It is very curious that though Florence shows, by substituting the name Asser for the pronoun of the first person wherever it occurs, that he accepted Asser’s authorship of the work, he should place Asser’s death in 883, while continuing to use his narrative for four years longer.
Of the use of Asser by Simeon of Durham I shall have something to say presently[88].
The Oxford interpolation.
§ 18. Of the longer interpolations alluded to above, the first that must go is, of course, the famous passage about the University of Oxford[89]. This passage is a fine illustration of the remark, made in this place by my brilliant predecessor, Professor Maitland, that the earliest form of inter-university sports seems to have been a competition in lying. The different phases of that competition have been traced by Mr. James Parker in the first two chapters of his Early History of Oxford[90], and need not detain us here. This passage made its first appearance in the text of Asser under Camden’s auspices in 1603. It is much to be regretted that so worthy a name should be connected with so questionable a transaction[91]. I will only add that the use of the one word ‘Diuus’ instead of ‘Sanctus’ stamps the passage as a post-renaissance forgery.
The story of the cakes.
§ 19. The next passage which must go is what I must be pardoned for once more[92] calling the silly story about the cakes, and the yet more silly story of the tyranny and callousness of Alfred in the early days of his reign[93]. I hope to show later[94] how utterly inconsistent both these stories are with the genuine history of the reign. Here I need only say that the passage was introduced into our text by Archbishop Parker from the so-called Annals of Asser. It comes ultimately, as stated in the passage itself, from some life of St. Neot which I have not yet succeeded in identifying.