There are other points which illustrate Alfred’s studies, tastes, and circumstances; the saying that in the golden age no one had heard of a pirate host[877]; the allusion to the wise goldsmith, Weland[878]; the explanations about India and Thule[879].
And there are things in the text itself which evidently come home to Alfred; the beauty of gems[880], the fairness of the country-side—the fairest of all God’s creations[881], the song of the birds in the woods[882], the worth of friends[883]; the stories of kings reduced to poverty[884], of the sword of Damocles[885], the joy of a calm haven after storms[886].
Omissions.
Here too, as in the case of the Orosius, Alfred has modified his original by omissions as well as additions; but it is unnecessary to go minutely into this point, as Mr. Sedgefield has prefixed to his edition of Alfred’s version an elaborate table showing the relation of that version to the original[887].
No doubt as to Alfred’s authorship of the prose translation. Did he also write the alliterative version of the Metra? The negative arguments for the most part purely subjective.
§ 112. In regard to the translation as a whole no doubt has ever been expressed as to the authorship of Alfred[888]; and it is the only one of Alfred’s works which is mentioned by name by Ethelwerd, who wrote towards the end of the tenth century[889]. There is, however, an interesting literary question connected with it, which is this. The translation exists in only two MSS., one in the Cottonian Collection[890], the other in the Bodleian[891]. In the older or Cottonian MS. the metrical parts of Boethius are, with three exceptions[892], rendered into alliterative Saxon verse; in the later or Bodleian MS. they are rendered into prose. It is as to Alfred’s authorship of the alliterative poems that the controversy has raged; and those who deny their authenticity are compelled to deny also the authenticity of the two proems in prose and verse[893], in both of which the poems are distinctly ascribed to Alfred. The question, though interesting as a literary problem, is not intrinsically of great importance. The poems are not of the highest order, though they have been, I think, unduly depreciated. Alfred’s fame will not be much exalted if he wrote them, or much depressed if they should be adjudged to another. I must confess, however, that a great deal of the argument on the negative side seems to me to be of that purely arbitrary and subjective kind which in its ultimate analysis amounts to this: ‘it can’t have been so, because I don’t think that it was[894].’
Logical result of this style of criticism.
§ 113. One thing is agreed on all sides; the verse translation is made from the prose translation, and is not an independent rendering made direct from the Latin; and the main argument of the negative critics is that it is impossible to suppose that a man like Alfred can have occupied himself in turning his own vigorous prose into indifferent verse. On this I would remark: first, does it follow, because Alfred was a great man and a great prose-writer, that he was also necessarily a considerable poet[895]? Secondly, if Alfred wrote the verses, does it necessarily follow that he thought them poor and unworthy of the trouble of making? Great writers are not always gifted with the faculty of self-criticism; otherwise we should not have Wordsworth taking apparently equal pleasure in the composition of Betty Foy and of Laodamia. Indeed, on my conscience, I believe that he liked Betty Foy the better of the two[896]. Thirdly, even if Alfred were conscious of his limitations as a poet, is it not possible that his conscientious spirit may have felt bound to give as true a representation of the original as possible, by reproducing one of its most salient features, the alternation of verse and prose? In truth this style of criticism, if logically carried out, would lead us very far. It would prove, for instance, that at least two hands were concerned in the composition of the third book of Wordsworth’s Prelude. That book contains the glorious and well-known lines:—
‘And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of Moon or favouring Stars, I could behold