And we need scarcely less that force of individual character which was the secret, as we have seen, of so much of Alfred’s power. To realise this, we have only to compare him for instance with Henry II, a man who in mere intellectual capacity was possibly his superior, and whose reign conferred incalculable benefits upon England. But his aims were merely selfish, and his life impure; and so the greatness of his achievement is known to few beyond professed students of history[937].
Comparison with other sovereigns; Queen Victoria, Marcus Aurelius, Charles the Great.
§ 120. Of some points in which our late Queen resembled her great ancestor I had the honour of speaking before the University in another place[938]. But when we think of kings and emperors worthy to be compared with our own Alfred, the four names which perhaps most readily occur to us are Marcus Aurelius, the imperial saint of paganism, Louis IX, the royal saint of mediaevalism, Charles the Great, and our own Edward I. But the sad self-suppression of Marcus Aurelius, the melancholy refrain which seems to sigh through the golden book of his thoughts,
‘Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren[939],’
is as unlike Alfred’s glad and willing service as anything can be.
Charles the Great is of course one of the most towering figures in the whole of history. Alike in physical and intellectual strength he is head and shoulders above all his predecessors and successors. We have noticed several points of taste and character in which Alfred resembled him[940], and they were alike too in the large and generous activities of their many-sided natures. Charles worked no doubt on a gigantic scale, to which Alfred can make no pretence. But this very fact has given to Alfred’s work a permanence which is wanting to that of Charles. Every succeeding century has but verified more and more Alfred’s vision of a united England, and has led her on gradually to an empire of which neither Charles nor Alfred could have dreamed[941]. Every succeeding century has given the lie to Charles’s system of a united Germany and France:
μέγα ἔργον, ὃ οὐ δύο γ’ ἄνδρε φέροειν,
οἶοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσ’, ὁ δέ μιν ῥέα πάλλε καὶ οἶος[942].
But, apart from this, there are stains on Charles’s character, from which Alfred is free; the lax morality for which Walafrid Strabo in a curious passage places him in purgatory[943], the occasional outbursts of cruelty which on one occasion led him to execute 4,500 rebel Saxons on a single day[944], have no counterpart in our English hero-king.
Edward I.