§ 109. We come now to what is in many respects the most interesting and important of all Alfred’s literary works, viz. the translation of Boethius on the Consolation of Philosophy. It is here that the additions made by Alfred to his original give us the clearest insight into his own character and modes of thought. And the original is in itself one of the most noteworthy books of the Middle Ages. Just as Orosius was to those ages the accepted manual of universal history[834], and the Cura Pastoralis their accepted manual of Spiritual Counsel, so the Consolatio of Boethius was their accepted manual of practical and speculative philosophy; the one channel through which some tincture of ancient speculation passed into the popular thought of the early Middle Ages. Perhaps no book except the Bible and the Imitatio has been translated into so many languages; and in more than one European country the early translations of the Consolatio have had an important influence on the development of a vernacular literature[835]. For this popularity several reasons may be given. Something was probably due to the form of the work, which is written in that mixture of verse and prose known as the Satura Menippaea[836]. The lyrics of the Consolatio won the enthusiastic admiration of the great Renaissance scholar, F. C. Scaliger[837], and I must confess that to me they seem extremely beautiful, though their beauty is of a somewhat frosty order. But if they have something of the hardness and coldness of marble, they have also its purity and high polish[838]. But the chief reason was, no doubt, sympathy with the author’s misfortunes, whose sudden fall, from being the favourite and chief minister of Theodoric, to prison and to death, made him one of the most signal examples in that ever-lengthening treatise De casibus illustrium uirorum, on which the Middle Ages pondered with intense and morbid interest, feeding that contempt for the world[839] and all things human, which finds such passionate expression in many mediaeval writings:—
‘O esca uermium, o massa pulueris,
O ros, o uanitas, cur sic extolleris?[840]’
Was Boethius a Christian? The Consolatio not distinctively Christian.
To this power of the work as a record of human suffering pathetic testimony is borne by the title of an anonymous French translation of the fifteenth century, which announces itself as the work of ’un pauvre clerc désolé, quérant sa consolation par la traduction de cestui livre[841]’; it is the book to which Dante resorted for comfort after the death of Beatrice[842]; and our own Sir Thomas More while in prison wrote an imitation of Boethius, which he calls ‘Three Books of Comfort in Tribulation[843].’ ‘Dost thou think,’ asks Philosophy of Boethius in Alfred’s translation, ‘that to thee alone such change of state and sorrow have come[844]?’ And, in spite of Tennyson, the fact ‘that loss is common’ does ‘make Our own less bitter[845]’; and the ‘sense of tears in mortal things[846]’ knits mankind together in bonds of sympathy which do make the common burden lighter. And in the case of Boethius this natural feeling was heightened by the erroneous impression, which prevailed in the Middle Ages, that the sufferings of Boethius were due to the rage of an Arian ruler against his Catholic servant[847]. A superficial inspection of dates is sufficient to dispel this illusion[848]; and how little support it derives from the work itself is shown by the fact, that few questions in literary history have been more keenly debated than the question, whether the author was a Christian at all[849]. The question turns largely on the authenticity of certain theological tracts which bear the name of Boethius, and do not concern us here[850]. On the whole it is probable that Boethius was by profession a Christian, though it would seem that his Christianity did not go very deep. Certainly in the hour of trouble, which generally shows the real basis of a man’s thought and character, he turns for consolation, not to the doctrines of Christianity, but to the teachings of Neo-platonic philosophy; and I unhesitatingly affirm that there is far more of the spirit of Christianity in the writings of acknowledged pagans like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, than in this work of a nominal Christian, who enforces the duty of prayer, not by the authority of Christ and His Apostles, but by that of Plato in the Timaeus[851].
This non-Christian character concealed by glosses and commentaries, from which many of Alfred’s additions are derived.
§ 110. It might have been thought that this absence of any distinctively Christian character would have militated against the popularity of the Consolatio in the Middle Ages. That it did not do so was due partly to causes already enumerated, partly to the fact that the non-Christian character of the work was to some extent concealed by the Christian interpretation given to various passages in the commentaries and glosses on Boethius; which interpretations were in turn embodied in the different translations of the Consolatio, at the head of which stands Alfred’s version.
Yet the additions illustrate Alfred’s thought.
This interesting fact, that many of the additions in Alfred’s Boethius, especially those of a distinctly Christian character, are not really due to Alfred himself but to the glosses and commentaries which were used by him or his learned assistants, was first pointed out by Dr. Schepss in a very suggestive article in the Archiv für’s Studium der neueren Sprachen[852]. It is much to be regretted that Dr. Schepss’ death prevented him from pursuing this line of investigation further. Till this field has been fully explored, we incur the danger of citing as specially characteristic of Alfred something which he only borrowed from others. In some instances I have noticed that the additions made by Alfred are really taken from, or at least suggested by other passages in the text of Boethius[853]. But, when all deductions have been made, there remains enough that we may safely take as evidence of Alfred’s thought and feeling. I have already cited the passage bearing on the needs and instruments of a king[854]. This was to some extent suggested by a commentary, but it is instinct with the mind of Alfred, as is the oft-quoted sentence with which the chapter closes: ‘My will was to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after my memory in good works[855].’ Very Alfredian too are the thoughts that reward should not be looked for in this world[856], but should be sought from God alone[857]; that a good name is better than any wealth[858]; that true nobility is of the mind, not of the body[859]; that an honest purpose is accepted, even though its accomplishment be frustrated[860]; that a king without free subjects is nothing worth[861]; that no one should be idle[862], or wish to live a soft life[863]. But perhaps the noblest passage is that in which by a splendid metaphor Philosophy is made to say: ‘When I with my servants mount aloft, then do we look down upon the stormy world, even as the eagle when he soars above the clouds in stormy weather, so that the storms cannot hurt him[864]’;—a metaphor which so strikingly expresses Alfred’s own soaring superiority to what he elsewhere calls ‘the wind of stern labours, and the rain of excessive anxiety[865].’
Wealth of similes in the translation.