Lectures and Essays

by Goldwin Smith

The most striking proof of his multifarious activity of mind, and of the unlimited extent of the task which his circumstances imposed upon him, as well as of his thoroughly English character, is his undertaking to give his people a literature in their own tongue. To do this he had first to educate himself—to educate himself at an advanced age, after a life of fierce distraction, and with the reorganization of his shattered kingdom on his hands. In his boyhood he had got by heart Saxon lays, vigorous and inspiring, but barbarous; he had learned to read, but it is thought that he had not learned to write. "As we were one day sitting in the royal chamber," says Asser, "and were conversing as was our wont, it chanced that I read him a passage out of a certain book. After he had listened with fixed attention, and expressed great delight, he showed me the little book which he always carried about with him, and in which the daily lessons, psalms and prayers, were written, and begged me to transcribe that passage into his book." Asser assented, but found that the book was already full, and proposed to the king to begin another book, which was soon in its turn filled with extracts. A portion of the process of Alfred's education is recorded by Asser. "I was honourably received at the royal mansion, and at that time stayed eight months in the king's court. I translated and read to him whatever books he wished which were within our reach; for it was his custom, day and night, amidst all his afflictions of mind and body, to read books himself or have them read to him by others." To original composition Alfred did not aspire; he was content with giving his people a body of translations of what he deemed the best authors; here again showing his royal good sense. In the selection of his authors, he showed liberality and freedom from Roman, ecclesiastical, imperialist, or other bias. On the one hand he chooses for the benefit of the clergy whom he desired to reform, the "Pastoral Care" of the good Pope, Gregory the Great, the author of the mission which had converted England to Christianity; but on the other hand he chooses the "Consolations of Philosophy," the chief work of Boethius, the last of the Romans, and the victim of the cruel jealousy of Theodoric. Of Boethius Hallam says "Last of the classic writers, in style not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poetic exuberance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centuries; in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers; and mingling a Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks from his prison in the swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The philosophy which consoled him in bonds was soon required in the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gave no more light; the language of Tully and Virgil soon ceased to be spoken; and many ages were to pass away before learned diligence restored its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a few modern writers to 'surpass in eloquence' the Latinity of Boethius." Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the highest product of that memorable burst of Saxon intellect which followed the conversion, and a work, not untainted by miracle and legend, yet most remarkable for its historical qualities as well as for its mild and liberal Christianity, is balanced in the king's series of translations by the work of Orosius, who wrote of general and secular history, though with a religious object. In the translation of Orosius, Alfred has inserted a sketch of the geography of Germany, and the reports of explorations made by two mariners under his auspices among the natives dwelling on the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea—further proof of the variety of his interests and the reach of his mind.

In his prefaces, and in his amplifications and interpolations of the philosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an independent author, and shows us something of his own mind on theology, on philosophy, on government, and generally as to the estate of man. To estimate these passages rightly, we must put ourselves back into the anarchical and illiterate England of the ninth century, and imagine a writer, who, if we could see him, would appear barbarous and grotesque, as would all his equipments and surroundings, and one who had spent his days in a desperate struggle with wolfish Danes, seated at his literary work in his rude Saxon mansion, with his candle-clock protected by the horn lantern against the wind. The utterances of Alfred will then appear altogether worthy of his character and his deeds. He always emphasizes and expands passages which speak either of the responsibilities of rulers or of the nothingness of earthly power; and the reflections are pervaded by a pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. The political world had not much advanced when, six centuries after Alfred, it arrived at Machiavelli.

There is an especial sadness in the tone of some words respecting the estate of kings, their intrinsic weakness, disguised only by their royal trains, the mutual dread that exists between them and those by whom they are surrounded, the drawn sword that always hangs over their heads, "as to me it ever did." We seem to catch a glimpse of some trials, and perhaps errors, not recorded by Asser or the chroniclers.

In his private life Alfred appears to have been an example of conjugal fidelity and manly purity, while we see no traces of the asceticism which was revered by the superstition of the age of Edward the Confessor. His words on the value and the claims of a wife, if not up to the standard of modern sentiment, are at least instinct with genuine affection.

The struggle with the Northmen was not over. Their swarms came again, in the latter part of Alfred's reign, from Germany, whence they had been repulsed, and from France, which they had exhausted by their ravages. But the king's generalship foiled them and compelled them to depart. Seeing where their strength lay, he built a regular fleet to encounter them on their own element, and he may be called the founder of the Royal Navy.

His victory was decisive. The English monarchy rose from the ground in renewed strength, and entered on a fresh lease of greatness. A line of able kings followed Alfred. His son and successor, Edward, inherited his vigour. His favourite grandson, Athelstan, smote the Dane and the Scot together at Brunanburgh, and awoke by his glorious victory the last echoes of Saxon song. Under Edgar the greatness of the monarchy reached its highest pitch, and it embraced the whole island under its imperial ascendancy. At last its hour came; but when Canute founded a Danish dynasty he and his Danes were Christians.

"This I can now truly say, that so long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily, and after my death to leave my memory to my descendants in good works." If the king who wrote those words did not found a university or a polity, he restored and perpetuated the foundations of English institutions, and he left what is almost as valuable as any institution—a great and inspiring example of public duty.

THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME

"Has humanity such forces at its command wherewith to combat vice and baseness, that each school of virtue can afford to repel the aid of the rest, and to maintain that it alone is entitled to the praise of courage, of goodness, and of resignation?" Such is the rebuke administered by M. Renan to the Christians who refuse to recognise the martyrs of Stoicism under the Roman Empire. My eye fell upon the words when I had just laid down Professor Mommsen's harsh judgment of the last defenders of the Republic, and they seemed to me applicable to this case also.

It is needless to say that there has been a curious change of opinion as to the merits of these men who, a century ago, were political saints of the Liberal party, but whom in the present day Liberal writers are emulously striving, with Dante, to thrust down into the nethermost hell. Dante puts Brutus and Cassius in hell not because he knows the real history of their acts, or because he is qualified to judge of the moral and political conditions under which they acted, but simply because he is a Ghibelin, and they slew the head of the Holy Roman Empire; and the present change of opinion arises, in the main, not from the discovery of any new fact, or from the better sifting of those already known, but from the prevalence of new sentiments—Imperialism of different shades, Bonapartist or Positivist, and perhaps also hero-worship, which of course fixes upon Caesar. Positivism and Hero-worship are somewhat incongruous allies, for Hero-worship is evidently the least scientific, while Positivism aims at being the most scientific, of all the theories of history.