Ruin of literature and learning

fishermen's barks are drawn up at this day, on the pebbly landing-places,
and of acquiring a position from which they could sally forth against the
surrounding country. Its construction may be probably connected with
the great expedition of 867, in which York was taken and sacked, the North-
umbrian army routed, and both the rival kings of Northumbria, united by
the common peril, were slain in the same battle.

Hatred of Christianity may have contributed to direct the attacks of
the Danes against monasteries, but they were also impelled by a more
powerful motive, the place which, in a land destitute of fortified castles,
monasteries filled as refuges of the helpless part of the population, and
storehouses of their wealth. This double purpose was undoubtedly served
by the round towers of Ireland, a country equally devastated by Danish
incursions. These strongholds were evidently constructed with the view
of allowing the enemy the fewest possible points of attack, the monasteries,
not erected with prevision of a chronic state of warfare, having offered
many. The Saxons do not seem to have often followed the example of
the Irish in this respect, and their monasteries, though stoutly defended,
everywhere became the prey of the invader. To appreciate the disastrous
effect upon literature, it must be remembered that in those days the
monastery was the college, and was not unfrequently, as at York, con-
nected with a large teaching institution, intended for priests as well as
monks, and available in some measure for inquisitive laymen. If the
young Anglo-Saxon could not obtain knowledge there, he could obtain
it nowhere, unless he emigrated; his parents' house had neither books
nor teachers, and the tools of self-education were debarred. The youth
who might have become a fair scholar for his time grew up devoid of
knowledge, and when the time came when he should have taught others,
he had nothing to impart. All literary culture might thus very conceivably
die out in a generation. One faint link with the world of learning re-
mained; the consolations of religion could not be foregone; and their
efficacy was not thought to depend upon the intelligence either of teacher
or hearer. The preacher, if able to read, might recite what he could not
understand, if unable he might be taught to repeat it by rote to equal
purpose. Priests, however, learned or unlearned, there must be. This
explains the crass ignorance in which Alfred found his clergy-a condition
not discreditable to them since they could not avert it; and even honour-
able, in so far as it attests their fortitude in remaining at, their posts at a
period of universal desolation.

It certainly seemed as though the ninth century in England were destined to repeat the history of the fifth. In the fifth century Britain had been inhabited by a civilised people, whose upper classes, at all events, were not unacquainted with literature. But the sinews of the nation were relaxed by soft living, the hardy warriors who had for centuries relieved them from the burden of military service were withdrawn to contend with barbarians nearer home; fierce enemies, until now held in check, pressed heavily

SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCES

41

upon them; and whether, deeming to cast out Satan by Satan, they really invoked the aid of another barbarous nation, or whether the latter were attracted by their weakness, they found themselves in presence not merely of conquerors but of exterminators. For a time the old civilisation seemed to have totally disappeared; the inhabitants of the land spoke a new language, and the ideal of literature, could such be said to exist, was something entirely different from the old. As, however, foreign influences began to creep in, something analogous to the old state of things seemed about to return. A Latin civilisation appeared to be becoming superimposed upon a Teutonic, as formerly upon a Celtic substratum; the blood and the language of the intruding race continued to differ from those of the race expelled, but the ideals of life and conduct were becoming the same, and those ideals threatened to do the new people the same service and disservice as they had done the old. That nothing might be wanting to the parallel, a people comparatively barbarous, at first mere marauders attracted by the hope of plunder, were finding out the goodness of the land and threatening to form permanent settlements and destroy or expel, not absorb, the Saxons, precisely as those had destroyed or expelled the Britons. The result must have been among other things the destruction of Anglo-Saxon speech and letters, and the provision of an entirely dissimilar groundwork for the literary culture which, under any circumstances, must have sooner or later established itself in Britain.

It is a curious consideration that English literature actually did receive Scandinaviun influences a strong Scandinavian influence, but through a psychical, not a philological channel. The Northmen came again and actually prevailed. But in the interim a change had come over the invaders themselves. Settled in France for several generations, they had disused their original tongue, and the language they had adopted was saturated with the Latin influence which in the ninth century they would have extirpated. Instead of the adversaries of a higher culture they had become its promoters. Had the Northmen's conquest been effected in the days of Alfred, our language at this day would have resembled Danish, both by philological affinity and by the absence of any noticeable Latin element: and English literature must have been very different from what it is now. While, however, the Scandinavian element, at first repulsed, afterwards absorbed, failed to exert any special influence on British literature, the Scandinavian mind became a most important factor. The Northmen had not laid aside their nationality with their language, and the Conquest, notwithstanding its partial Latinisation of the English speech, invigorated instead of impairing the Teutonic elements of character which it found in possession. If we sought for the persons who have exercised the most decisive influence upon our literature, we might find them in two of our kings, William the Conqueror and Alfred, but for whose action at critical periods of our history Latin and its derivatives. would have remained mere exotics, instead of vital constituents of our tongue. Neither had this aim consciously before him. William never

Life of
Alfred the
Great

knew that he was infusing a new element into English, and never dreamed of giving it a new lease of life; he would much sooner have obliterated it. If, as stated, he endeavoured to learn it, he was solely actuated by political considerations. If Alfred became the first Anglo-Saxon author of his day, his aim was not the preservation of the language, but the instruction of the people who spoke it. Alike, nevertheless, by his achievements in this comparatively limited department, and from the more important circumstance that the preservation of Anglo-Saxon as the basis of British speech is mainly due to him, he deserves the fullest notice at the hands of the literary historian.

It is an interesting circumstance that our chief authority for the life of the great Anglo-Saxon monarch should be not a Saxon but a Celt. Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, was a monk of St. David's, and was invited by Alfred to his court along with other learned men. Of these, and of Asser himself,

Coin of Alfred the Great

and his biography of his royal patron down to the year 887, we shall find other opportunities of speaking. For the present it is enough to say that, though interpolated with legendary matter, separable with no great difficulty from the genuine original, his record appears to be authentic. At the very beginning of the story, however, we are confronted by a chronological difficulty. Alfred, the fifth and youngest son of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex, is said by Asser to have been born in 849. His eldest brother, Ethelstan, however, was of an age to be invested with the government of the sub-kingdom of Kent upon the succession of his father to the kingdom of Wessex in 839; and the third son, Ethelbald, fought the Danes along with his father in the great battle of Ockley in 851, when Alfred would have been only two years old. It seems unlikely that there could have been such an interval between the birth of Alfred and those of his brothers, and the difficulty is increased when we read that Alfred was sent to Rome in 853. It is scarcely probable that so young a child would have been exposed to the risks of what was then a toilsome and dangerous journey. If we may put Alfred's birth eight or nine years back the chronological difficulties will be removed, and it will become easy to understand how the youthful promise which Alfred must have given may have inspired his father with the idea of sending him for a time to reside at the capital of Western Christendom. The step becomes more intelligible when viewed in connection with the character of Ethelwulf, the dominant note of which was a deep feeling of religion. Ethelwulf seems, indeed, to have impersonated those superstitious and quietist tendencies of the Anglo-Saxon character which so greatly impaired the national strength in conflict with the fierce Northmen, but which on the other hand indicated a refinement of nature upon which the moral and intellectual promise of his youngest son would

THE YOUTH OF ALFRED

43

not be lost. History, however, and no doubt with good reason, ascribes a still stronger influence upon Alfred's development to his mother Osburga. The anecdotes of his youth handed down may belong to the domain of legend, but if so this is the legend which has its basis in truth, and only comes into being to recompense posterity for the loss of truth through the injury of time. It may be added that Asser's story of Osburga having shown her son a manuscript with a beautifully illuminated initial letter, and promised it to him on condition of his learning to read it, if authentic, we

might almost say, if generally believed, proves that Alfred's birth must have occurred some years before 849. Historians have perceived that it could not have taken place in Alfred's infancy, between his birth in 849 and his visit to Rome in 853, and as upon his return to England his father had another wife, they have supposed that Osburga was repudiated by her husband, and that the incident occurred while she lived in retirement after her dethronement. Such a transaction would not have been devoid of precedent; Charlemagne himself had divorced his first wife, Desiderata, but she had lived with him only a year, and he had no children by her; and the proceeding appears inconsistent with the religious character of King Ethelwulf, and with the Pope's special patronage of him and his legitimate son, and the scandal and contention it must have excited would not have

Alfred's education

escaped the notice of history. The new queen, moreover, was the daughter
of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, who would hardly have allowed
her to occupy so invidious a position as the consort of a sovereign whose
legitimate wife was still alive. Some clue may be afforded to the problem
of Alfred's birth-year by the curious fact that in Camden's edition of Asser
855 is stated to be his eleventh year, which is inconsistent with all the rest
of the chronology. It looks very much as though a variant chronology
existed in some MS., and this conjecture is favoured by the circumstance
that Asser, whose history of Alfred ends in 887, speaks of him as in his
forty-fifth year, which would precisely agree with his birth in 843.

The date of Alfred's birth is no idle question, for his age at the
period of his visit to Rome has an important bearing on his after
history. It continued from 853 to 856. The influence of the Eternal
City, and all else that a prolonged visit to the continent implied, must
have been slight upon a child between four and seven years of age,
compared with that which it might exert upon a boy between ten
and thirteen. In the former case Alfred could only bring back impres-
sions of childish wonder and curiosity, in the latter his stay would
have been fertile in knowledge and instruction absorbed by one of the
most receptive of human minds, and in external impressions registered
and elaborated by one of the most intelligent. Rome indeed no less
than other cities of Western Europe lay immersed in barbarism; yet in
comparison with Alfred's own country its intellectual condition must have
been as light to darkness. If the abstract love of humane studies was
insufficient to keep these alive, ecclesiastical and political interests com-
pelled their maintenance at as high a standard as the circumstances of
the age allowed. There must have been much better schools than then
possible in England, distracted by Danish invasions; and a boy between
ten and thirteen would be just at the age when their teaching would
be most helpful. The indirect influences, nevertheless, would be more
potent and valuable than any direct instruction. We can but feebly
imagine the transition from the incivility of the West Saxon capital to
the spiritual metropolis of Latin Christendom, with the actuality of a
spiritual empire and the memories and traditions of
traditions of a secular, its
monuments of the past, more numerous and imposing than now, the
undimmed gorgeousness of its recent works in mosaic and incrusted
metal, the art-ideal of their time, its embassies and its pilgrims, the
constant coming and going of men from all lands bound upon all
errands, Greeks, Jews, Syrians, perhaps even Saracens, tribes and nations
regarded in Anglo-Saxondom as strange creatures, whose existence was
easier to admit than to realise. The character of the Pope and the
circumstances of his day would also be powerful educational influences,
supposing Alfred old enough to profit by them. Leo the Fourth was
one of the greatest of the Popes. An Italian of Northern extraction,
as it would seem, he had been elected as the fittest person to defend