§ 47. Of later Chroniclers, Ethelwerd, at the end of the next century, bases his work mainly on the Chronicle. But, like Asser, he has good additions here and there; and as he was closely connected with the royal house of Wessex, being descended from Æthelred, Alfred’s brother, and was also highly placed as an ealdorman in Wessex, he may well have had access to authentic sources of information. Unfortunately there is no one who has worked at Ethelwerd, who will not echo Ranke’s sigh: ‘wenn er nur verständlich wäre[278]!’ ‘If only he were intelligible!’ The designation which he gives to himself: ‘Patricius consul Fabius Quaestor Ethelwerdus’ is but too true an index of the puerile pomposity of his style. Something of this unintelligibility is no doubt to be put down to the corruption of the text[279], of which no MS. is known to exist. But if he fails to make us understand his Latin, his blunders in translating the Chronicle show that he had a very imperfect acquaintance with the Saxon language[280]. It is possible that this fact may be due, as Professor York Powell once suggested to me, to his having been brought up on the Continent.
Florence of Worcester.
The careful Florence gives us less help than usual in this reign, because, as we have seen, he borrows so much from Asser. His splendid and inspiring panegyric on Alfred[281] is almost his only serious addition, though a worthy one, to what we learn from Asser and the Chronicle.
Henry of Huntingdon.
Henry of Huntingdon makes no use of Asser, and does little more than reproduce the Chronicle. There is no trace of the use of ancient ballads[282], such as we find in other parts of his history; no survival of personal traditions, like the splendid anecdotes of old Siward a century and a half later, one of which is the ultimate source of Shakespeare’s glorious lines:—
‘Had he his hurts before?’
‘Ay, on the front.’
‘Why then, God’s soldier be he!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
I would not wish them to a fairer death.’