Some have come down from heathen times; some are quotations from the poets; others tell of war, of courts, of women, of games, of domestic life. They would have interested Ælfred; and it is probable that, collected at York, they were edited in Wessex in Ælfred's time. The Rune Song is an alphabet of the Runes, with attached verses, such as we still make at the present day on the letters of the alphabet. There are two dialogues between Solomon and Saturnus, in which Christian wisdom in Solomon and the heathen wisdom of the East in Saturnus contend together in question and answer. Such dialogues became frequent in medieval literature, but changed their form. Marculf takes the place of Saturn, and represents the uneducated peasant or mechanic, whose rustic wit often gets the better of the king and the scholar. But there is no trace of this rebellion against Church and State in the English dialogues. With them we may close the poetry of the ninth century. A few years after the death of Cynewulf the Danish terror began. Literature decayed; men had not the heart to write poetry; and when, shortly after 867, the 'army' (which had already ravaged East Anglia and the greater part of Mercia) stormed York and destroyed every. abbey and seat of learning from the Humber to the Forth, the poetry of Northumbria passed away. We may say that the farewell of Cynewulf in the Dream of the Rood was the dirge of Northumbrian song.

At the Judgment-Day.

Deep creation thunders, and before the Lord shall go
Hugest of upheaving fires o'er the far-spread earth!
Hurtles the hot flame, and the heavens burst asunder,
All the firm-set flashing planets fall out of their places.
Then the sun that erst o'er the elder world
With such brightness shone for the sons of men
Black-dark now becomes, changed to bloody hue.
And the moon alike, who to man of old
Nightly gave her light, nither tumbles down:
And the stars also shower down from heaven,
Headlong through the roaring lift, lashed by all the
winds.
(From the Crist.)

The Bliss of Heaven.
There, is angels' song; there, enjoyment of the blest ;
There, beloved Presence of the Lord Eternal,

To the blessed brighter than the beaming of the Sun! There is love of the beloved, life without the end of death;

Merry there man's multitude; there unmarred is youth by eld;

Glory of the hosts of Heaven, health that knows not pain;

Rest for righteous doers, rest withouten strife,

For the good and blessed! Without gloom the day,
Bright and full of blossoming; bliss that's sorrowless ;
Peace all friends between, ever without enmity;
Love that envieth not, in the union of the saints,
For the happy ones of Heaven! Hunger is not there
nor thirst,

Sleep nor heavy sickness, nor the scorching of the Sun;

Neither cold nor care; but the happy company,
Sheenest of all hosts, shall enjoy for aye
Grace of God their King, glory with their Lord.
(From the Crist.)

St Guthlac dies and is received into Heaven.
Then out-streamed a Light
Brightest that of beaming pillars! All that Beacon fair,
All that heavenly glow round the holy home,
Was up-reared on high, even to the roof of Heaven,
From the field of earth, like a fiery tower,

Seen beneath the sky's expanse, sheenier than the sun,
Glory of the glorious stars! Hosts of angels sang
Loud the lay of Victory! In the lift the ringing sound
Now was heard the heaven under, raptures of the Holy
Ones!

So the blessed Burgstead was with blisses filled,
With the sweetest scents, and with skiey wonders,
With the angels' singing, to its innermost recesses;
Heirship of the Holy One!
More onelike it was,

And more winsome there, than in world of ours
Any speech may say; how the sound and odour,
How the clang celestial, and the saintly song
Heard in Heaven were-high-triumphant praise of God,
Rapture following rapture.
All our island trembled,

All its Field-floor shook.

(From the Guthlac )

Latin Writers before Ælfred. When Augustine landed in Thanet in 597 and made Canterbury the first Christian town, he brought with him, to add to the development of English literature, the power, the wisdom, the amalgamating force, and the long traditions of Rome. But at first, though the Roman missionaries influenced the English thought, they did not use the English language. All that they wrote they wrote in Latin. The Celtic Church encouraged the English to shape their thought and feeling in their own tongue; the Roman Church discouraged this; and the south of England, where Rome was supreme as a teacher, did not till the days of Ælfred produce any important literature in English.

The Latin literature of the south began with Theodore of Tarsus, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 669. Benedict Biscop, a Northumbrian scholar, came with him from Rome; and Benedict, going to his home, was the proper founder of Latin literature in Northumbria. Hadrian, Theodore's deacon, joined in 671, and with his help Theodore set on foot the school of Canterbury, which soon became the centre of southern learning. Wessex and Kent now produced their own scholars, and their bishops were men who loved and nourished education. Daniel of Winchester was a wise assistant of Bæda; but the man who best represents the knowledge and literature of the south was Ealdhelm, who, educated by Mailduf, an Irishman, and also at Canterbury, became Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne. He may have helped to compile the Laws of Ine

after the middle of the eighth century active literary life died in Wessex, and when Ælfred came to the throne in 871, there was not a single priest left who could understand their service books or put them into English.

The history of Latin literature in the MidEngland kingdom of Mercia is even of less importance than it is in Wessex. Under Æthelbald the country seems to have won a reputation for learning; and Ecgwin, Bishop of Worcester, is said to be our first autobiographer. The Life of St Guthlac, written by Felix of Crowland for an East Anglian king, in outpuffing Latin, is the only work we know of. But Æthelbald and his successor Offa were munificent to monasteries; and the school at Worcester was the last refuge of learning, when its cause was lost all over England in the ninth century.

The career of Latin literature in Northumbria was more continuous and more important than it was in Wessex or Mercia. The names of many of its scholars were known over the world, and are famous to this day. Northumbrian scholarship founded a great school, almost a university, at York, from which flowed the learning which, received and cherished by Charles the Great, produced an early Renaissance in Europe. The story of its rise and its fall belongs to York. The story of its growth and development belongs to Wearmouth and Jarrow.

Christianity reached York in the year 627, when Paullinus baptised Eadwine. But after Eadwine's death Northumbria relapsed into heathenism, Paullinus fled, and Latin literature was stifled in its birth. Literature and religion again took fresh life under Oswald in 634, but they were now in Celtic, not in Roman hands. The monasteries set up were ruled by Celtic monks from Iona; the bishops came from the same place; the kings and princes of the Northumbrian house were, for the most part, educated at Iona, spoke Irish, and knew the poetry and learning of Ireland. And the Irish, accustomed to praise God and their heroes and saints in their own tongue, encouraged the Northumbrians to write in their own tongue. The first literature of Northumbria was in English.

Rome was naturally unsatisfied with this predominance of the Celtic Church; Northumbria must be drawn into the Latin fold; and Theodore, Wilfrid, and others, with Prince Alchfrith, fought their battle so well that in 664, at the Synod of Whitby, Northumbria joined the Latin Church. And now, though the Celtic influence lasted for many years, Latin learning, which had begun in Ripon and Hexham, took deep root in the north. Benedict Biscop, who had been at Rome with Theodore, built in 674 the monastery of St Peter at Wearmouth, and in 682 the sister house at Jarrow. He and the large libraries he collected for these abbeys were the real foundation of the Latin literature and learning of the north. Scholars and writers soon began to multiply.

Wilfrid's biography-the first written in England -was done by his friend Eddius Stephanus about 709. The Life of St Cuthbert was written at Lindisfarne. Wilfrid's closest friend, Acca, Bishop of Hexham, increased the library which John of Beverley had ministered to. These are the chief

names of the early Latin writers of the north.

It is

But the learning was scattered. It was gathered together and generalised by Bæda of Jarrow. He is the master of the time, and his books became not only the sources of English, but of European learning. To this day his name is revered; he is still called the 'Venerable Bede;' all the science, rhetoric, grammar, theology, and historical knowledge of the past which he could attain he absorbed, edited, and published. He increased in his Homilies and Commentaries the religious literature of the world; he made delightful biographies, and he wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation with skill and charm. our best authority. His first books, on the scientific studies of the time, were written between 700 and 703. They were followed by a primer of the history of the world-De sex ætatibus Sæculi, 707; by the Commentaries on almost all the books of the Old and New Testaments, and these range over many years after 709; by the Lives of Cuthbert and the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, 716-20; and by the De Temporum ratione in 726. The Ecclesiastical History was finished in 731, and his last work, the Letter to Egbert, was done in the year of his death, 735. These thirty-five years were thus filled with that learning and teaching and writing in which he had always great delight; and the little cell at Jarrow, whence he rarely stirred, was continually visited by men of many businesses and of all ranks in life. He kept in touch with all the monasteries of England, and with many in Europe. Even so far away as Rome he had scholars who worked for him among the archives. His greatest book is the Ecclesiastical History. He took so much pains to make it accurate, and to write nothing without consulting original and contemporary authorities, that the modern historical school claim him as their own. He shows in the book that power of choice and rejection of material so necessary for a historian; and, what chiefly concerns us here, he filled it with a literary charm and beauty of statement when the subject permitted this self-indulgence. It is here that his personality most appears; that we feel his happy, gentle, loving, and simple nature. His character adorns his style. The stories which embellish the book have a unique clearness and grace, a vivid grasp of character, a human tenderness, which make us feel at times as if we were present with him in his room at Jarrow and listening to his charitable voice. Cuthbert, one of his pupils, gives an account of his fair death in his cell among his books; and it is pleasant to think that the last work on which he was engaged on the day of his

departure was a translation into English of the Gospel of St John, and that almost his last speech was the making of a few English verses, for, indeed, he was learned in English songs. (There is a translation from Bæda's History at page 169.) The seat of learning at Bæda's death was transferred from Jarrow to York, where Ecgberht, Bæda's pupil, became an archbishop. The school he established at York may almost be termed a university. The education given was in all the branches of learning then known, in Ethica, Physica, and Logica. The library was the largest and the best outside of Rome, and was more useful than that at Rome. The arts were not neglected. The Latin Fathers; the Roman poets, grammarians, orators; the Natural History of Pliny, some of the Greek Fathers, and the Scriptures, were studied by a host of scholars from Ireland, Italy, Gaul, Germany, and England. When Ecgberht died Elberht succeeded him, and with Alcuin's help increased the library and developed the education given in the schools. In 770 York and its library and schools was the centre of European learning. Ælberht's greatest friend was Alcuin (Eng. Ealhwine), the finest scholar York produced, and the last. His classical was as good as his patristic learning. His style has earned him the name of the Erasmus of his century. He loved Virgil so well that pious persons reproached him for it. His reputation came to the ears of Charles the Great, who was then starting the education of his kingdoms; and Alcuin, who had met Charles at Pavia about 780, and again at Parma in 781, left England-though he revisited it in 790-92-to remain on the Continent till his death in the abbey of St Martin of Tours in 804. He left many books behind him-learned, theological, and virtuous. Of his Latin poems, that dedicated to the history of the great men of the school of York is the best. The Letters-more than three hundred-which he wrote to Charles and to most of the important personages in England and Europe, have the best right to the name of literature, and prove how wide was his influence, and how useful his work to the centuries that followed. He brought all the scholarship of England to the empire of the greatest man in Europe, whose power sent it far and wide. And he did this at the very time when its doom had begun to fall upon it in England. Alcuin himself heard of the ravaging of Lindisfarne by the Vikings in 793, and of the attack in the following year on Wearmouth, and cried out with pity and sorrow. The years that followed were years of decay. Northumbria was the prey of anarchy from 780 to 798. The six years of quiet that followed were years in which the school of York, weakened by Alcuin's absence, sickened and failed. In 827 Ecgberht of Wessex put an end to the separate kingdom of Northumbria. In 867 the Danish army' invaded the north, conquered York, settled there, and destroyed every abbey, both in Deira and Bernicia. Bishoprics, libraries, schools

were all swept away. A little learning may have crept on in York, for the town was not destroyed, and it again flourished under Danish rule. Only one poor school of learning remained in that part of Mercia which was finally saved by Ælfred from the Danes. Worcester was the last refuge of the faded learning of Northumbria; and when Ælfred began the revival of education in England, collected the old poetry, attempted to restore monastic leisure and scholarship, and himself, having learnt Latin, originated English prose by the translation of Latin books, it was from Worcester that he fetched the only Englishmen who could help him in his work.

Ælfred.

Ælfred, whose character was even greater than his renown as warrior, ruler, and lawgiver, was also a king in English literature. With him, at Winchester, began the prose-writing of England. His books were chiefly translations, but they were interspersed with original work which reveals to us his way of thinking, the temper of his soul, the interests of his searching intelligence, and his passion for teaching his people all that could then be known of England, of the history of the world, of religion, and of the Divine Nature. They appealed to the clergy, to the people, to scholars, to the warriors and sailors of England. Their aim was the education of his countrymen.

Born at Wantage in 849, he was the youngest son of Æthelwulf, and the grandson of the great Ecgberht. Rome, whither he went at the age of four years, and then again when he was six years old, made its deep impression on him. He stayed on his return at the court of Charles the Bald, and heard, no doubt, of the education which Charles the Great had given to the empire, for when he undertook a similar task in England he followed the methods and the practice of the emperor. When he arrived in England he sought for teachers, but found none. When he was twenty years old he heard with indignant sorrow of the destruction of all learning in England by the Danes; and the lover of learning as well as the patriot was whetted into wrath when, on the height of Ashdown, he and his brother Ethelred drove the Danes down the hill with a pitiless slaughter. Not long after this battle he became King of Wessex in 871. The work by which he made his kingdom belongs to history. It was only in 887 that he began his literary labour in a parenthesis of quiet. But he had made preparations for it beforehand. He had collected round him whatever scholars were left in England. They were few-Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester; Denewulf, of the same town ; Plegmund, Æthelstan, and Werwulf, all three from Mercia. With these he exhausted England. Then he sent to Flanders for Grimbald, whom he made Abbot of Winchester; and to Corvei in Westphalia for John the Old Saxon, whom he placed over his monastic house at Athelney. But his

closest comrade in this work was Asser of St David's, whom he induced to stay with him for six months in the year, who taught him Latin, and® whose Latin Life of the king is, with all its interpolations and errors, our best authority. The first thing they did together was Alfred's Hand-book. When Asser quoted or Ælfred read out of the Bible or the Fathers any passage which interested the king, it was written down and translated into English in the note-book which the king kept in his breast. It was a book, then, of religious extracts, with here and there an illustration or a remark of Ælfred's added in his own words. This Hand-book, begun in November 887, was set forth for the use of the people in English in 888. The loss of it is a great misfortune.

The collection of the laws of Æthelberht, Ine, and Offa, with laws of his own, into a Law-book was the next work Ælfred undertook, and it was probably completed in 888. But the work of collection had most likely been begun in 885 or 886, for William of Malmesbury says that it was composed amid the noise of arms and the braying of the trumpetsthat is, during the short struggle with the Danes in 885-86, when Ælfred secured London for his kingdom. The book was then in hand for more than two years. By this time he was acquainted with Latin, and as the clergy were the teachers of the people, the first book he translated was for their benefit. It was the Cura Pastoralis, the Herdsman's Book, of Gregory the Great, a manual of the duties of the clergy, the description of the ideal of a Christian priest; and a copy was sent to every bishop's seat in my kingdom,' probably in the year 890. The book is the book of a beginner in translation. It is more close to its author than the other translations. Several paragraphs in the Preface seem to speak of the work as the first translation he issued. No long original matter is inserted; but the wellknown Preface is from Elfred's own hand, and it is the beginning of English prose literature. It breathes throughout of the king's character. It sketches the state of learning in England when he came to the throne, and we realise from it how much he did for literature, and the difficulties with which he had to contend. Its style is curiously simple and fresh, and it succeeds in its patriotic effort to be clear. It is plain here, as in his other writings, that Ælfred said to himself, 'I will try to make the most ignorant understand me.'

So many translations of this Preface have been published that it does not seem necessary to insert any quotation from it, but at the end Ælfred has added some verses of his own, and their simplicity, their faint imaginative note, their personal and tender religious feeling, their being perhaps the first verses that he wrote, induce me to paraphrase them :

These are the waters which the God of hosts promised for our comfort to us dwellers on the earth, and His will is that these ever-living waters should flow into all

the world from all who truly believe in Him; and their well-spring is the Holy Ghost. Some shut up this stream of wisdom in their mind so that it flows not everywhere in vain, but the well abides in the breast of the man, deep and still. Some let it run away in rilis over the land, and it is not wise that such bright waters should, noisy and shallow, flow over the land till it becomes a fen. But now draw near to drink it, for Gregory has brought to your doors the well of the Lord. Whoever have brought a water-tight pitcher, let him fill it now, and let him come soon again. Whoever have a leaky pitcher, let him mend it, lest he spill the sheenest of waters and lose the drink of life.

The second book Elfred translated was Bæda's Ecclesiastical History of the English, 890-91. It was done not only to instruct the clergy in the history of their Church, but also the people in the history of their own land. It omits several chapters of the original, and the king adds nothing of his own. We may wonder why he gave no particular account in it of the history of Church and State in Wessex, but this curious omission may be explained by the fact that in 891 he had begun to work up the English Chronicle into a national history, and did not care to write two accounts of the same matter.

A certain portion of the Chronicle already existed. This was probably made by Bishop Swithun of Winchester shortly after the death of Æthelwulf, and runs up to the year 855. It took the meagre annals made at Winchester as its basis, filled them from tradition back to Hengest, and then told at some length the wars and death of Æthelwulf. Ælfred, finding this account, caused it to be carefully investigated and written up to date, with a full history of his wars with the Danes. The style of this history is of the same kind throughout, and it is more than probable that it was the work of his own hand. Condensed, bold, rough, and accurate, it is a fine beginning of the historical prose of England. This is the manuscript of the Annals of Winchester, presented by Archbishop Parker to the library of Corpus Christi at Cambridge, and the copy is in one handwriting.

The next book the king translated, about 891-93, was the History of the World by Orosius. That history was written in 418 at the suggestion of St Augustine. It was the standard historical authority during the Middle Ages, and Ælfred edited it to teach his people all that was known of the world beyond England. He left out what he thought needless for them to know, and he filled it up from his own knowledge with matters of interest to Englishmen and with comments of his own. Among these was a full account of the geography of Germany, and of the countries where the English tongue had been spoken of old. To this he added the personal tales of two voyagers, Ohthere and Wulfstan, who had sailed along the coasts of Norway and the German shores of the Baltic. Ohthere had made two voyages, one northward far as the mouth of the

as