Part 3
The last, not the least, of his achievements is that to Alfred we owe the foundations of our literature: the most noble literature that the world has ever seen. He collected and preserved the poetry based on the traditions and legends brought from the German Forests. He himself delighted to hear and to repeat these legends and traditions: the deeds of the mighty warriors who fought with monsters, dragons, wild boars, and huge serpents. He made his children learn their songs: he had them sung in his Court. The tradition goes that he could himself sing them to the music of his own harp. This wild and spontaneous poetry which Alfred preserved is the beginning of our own noble choir of poets. In other words, the foundation of that stately Palace of Literature, built up by our poets and writers for the admiration and instruction and consolation of mankind, was laid by Alfred. Well, but he did more than collect the poetry, he began the prose. Before Alfred there was no Anglo-Saxon prose.
I have already quoted Green’s remark that in everything that Alfred designed or accomplished he put aside every personal aim or ambition in order to devote himself wholly to the welfare of those over whom he ruled. In his capacity as author this remark is specially illustrated. You all know that it is the leading characteristic—or the infirmity—of the poet, author, writer, to consider himself as part of his message. Alfred put himself aside: he presented his works in translations: they were, indeed, translations: but embellished, altered, enriched by his own work thus modestly presented. There is one book, now quite neglected, which for a thousand years profoundly moved the world of Western Europe. It is a book, written in prison by a noble Roman named Boethius, a philosopher, soldier, poet, and mathematician. It is entitled the _Consolation of Philosophy_. Fortunately the author, who wrote it from a prison, had time to finish it before they executed him. This book Alfred translated or imitated. For he filled his translations with his own thoughts and his own judgments. He gives his own theories of government: of the duties of a king: of maintaining the population, and especially the proper proportion of the different classes required to keep the nation in a state of efficiency. Every man in the country is a weapon which may be—and should be—used for the advancement of the general welfare. It is the king’s duty to select the best instruments, and to use them to the best advantage. We even find brief notes of his own thoughts. “This,” says the king, among these notes, “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.”
It is not the part of this Introduction to dwell upon the whole of Alfred’s literary work. It is enough if we recognise that he introduced education and restored learning. In the course of time, innumerable books were attributed to him: it is said that he translated the Psalms. A book of proverbs and sayings is attributed to him—each one begins with the words “Thus said Alfred.” The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and contemporary record of events is said to have been commenced by him. And since it is certain from the life of the king by one of his own Court that he was regarded by all classes of his people with the utmost reverence and respect, I think it is extremely likely that some of his people listened and took down in writing the sayings of the king, so that the book of Alfred’s sayings may be as authentic as the sayings of Dr. Johnson, recorded by his admirer Boswell.
There is next to be observed the permanence of Alfred’s institutions. They do not perish, but remain. His Witenagemot—Meeting of the Wise—is our Parliament—it has developed into our many Parliaments. His order of King, Thane, and Freeman is our order of King, Lords, and Commons. His theory of education was carried out in some of the towns, and in all the monasteries and cathedrals: there are schools still existing which owe their origin to a period before the Norman Conquest. His foundation of all law upon the Laws of God remains our own: his liberties are our liberties: his navy is the ancestor of our navy: the literature which he planted has grown into a goodly tree—the Monarch of the Forest: the foreign trade that he began is the forerunner of our foreign trade: it would seem as if there was hardly any point in which we have reason to be grateful or proud which was not foreseen by this wise king.
To look for the secret of his wisdom is like looking for the secret of making a great poem or writing a great play: it may be arrived at and described, but it is not therefore the easier of imitation. Alfred’s secret is quite simple. _His work was permanent because it was established on the national character._ It was in order to make this point clear that I dwelt at length on the character of the people over whom Alfred ruled. He knew their character, and by instinct, which we call genius, he gave his people the laws and the education, and the power of development for which they were fitted. No other laws, no other kind of government, will enable a people to prosper except those laws to which they have grown and are adapted. Only those institutions, I repeat, are permanent which are based on the national character. That was the secret of King Alfred the law-giver.
It may be asked, what manner of man to look at was this great king? His biographer, Asser, who knew him well, has not thought fit to tell us. He only says in words of flattery that Alfred was more comely and gracious of aspect than his brothers. These brothers, four in number, were all kings before him, and all died young. Alfred himself was afflicted by a disease which never left him. It is therefore presumable that there was some congenital weakness in them all. This was not physical weakness: whatever the disease, it did not interfere with Alfred’s courage or his prowess in battle. This is proved by the fact that the Saxon kings actually fought in person in the forefront of the battle, and on foot. Alfred, for instance, fought in a dozen battles at least, and always with the valour that belongs to a strong man. I take him to have been a man of good stature and of strong build: a man whose appearance was kingly: who impressed his followers with the gallant and confident carriage of a brave soldier. But as to his face, or the colour of his hair or eyes, I can tell nothing. Fair hair he had, I think, and blue eyes: or the more common type of brown hair and gray eyes. When a king resigns all personal ambitions and seeks nothing for himself, it seems natural and fitting that, while his works live after him, he himself should vanish without leaving so much as a tradition of his face or figure.
From time to time in history—generally in some time of great doubt and trouble: or in some time when the old ideals are in danger of being forgotten: or in some time when the nation seems losing the sense of duty and of responsibility: there appears one, man or woman, who restores the better spirit of the people by his example: by his preaching: by his self-sacrifice: by his martyrdom. He is the prophet as priest: the prophet as king: the prophet as law-giver. There passes in imagination before us a splendid procession of men and women who have thus restored a nation or raised the fallen ideals. Among them we recognise many faces: there are Savonarola: Francis of Assisi: Joan of Arc: our own Queen Elizabeth, greatest and strongest of all women: the Czar Peter. But the greatest figure of them all—the most noble—the most god-like—is that of the ninth-century Alfred, king of that little country which you have upon your map. There is none like Alfred in the whole page of history: none with a record altogether so blameless: none so wise: none so human. We have allowed the memory of him to be too much forgotten: only here and there a historian—such as Freeman or Green—lifts up his voice and proclaims aloud that he has no words with which to speak adequately of this great Englishman. Perhaps the noble lines of Tennyson, written for another prince whose memory is dear to us all, may be referred to Alfred:
Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was, redressing human wrong; Who spake no slander, no, nor listen’d to it; Who loved one only and who clave to her— We know him now: we see him as he moved: How modest, kindly, all-accomplish’d, wise, With what sublime repression of himself; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of wing’d ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but thro’ all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.
It is the purpose—the wise and patriotic purpose—of certain persons to erect, for these and other reasons, a monument, visible to all, to the memory of King Alfred.
Some of the points which I have recalled in this paper may help to show why such a monument would have been fitting at any time during the last thousand years. There is, however, a special reason which makes the erection of such a monument very necessary—I use the word necessary advisedly—at the present time. In the year 1897—on that memorable day when we were all drunk with the visible glory and the greatness of the Empire—there arose in the minds of many a feeling that we ought to teach the people the meaning of what we saw set forth in that procession—the meaning of our Empire—not only what it is, but how it came—through whose creation—by whose foundation. Now so much is Alfred the Founder that every ship in our Navy might have his name—every school his bust: every Guildhall his statue. He is everywhere. But he is invisible. And the people do not know him. The boys do not learn about him. There is nothing to show him. We want a monument to Alfred, if only to make the people learn and remember the origin of our Empire—if only that his noble example may be kept before us, to stimulate and to inspire and to encourage.
It seems unnecessary to urge that a monument to Alfred must be set up in Winchester, and not in London or in Westminster, or anywhere else. Here lies the dust of the kings his ancestors, and of the kings his successors. Thirty-five of his line made Winchester their capital: twenty were buried in the Cathedral. In this city Alfred received instruction from St. Swithin: the city was already old and venerable when Alfred was a boy. He was buried first in the Cathedral, and afterwards in the Abbey, which he himself founded, hard by. The name of Alfred’s country, well-nigh forgotten, except by scholars, has been revived of late years by a Wessex man—Thomas Hardy. But the name of Alfred’s capital continues in the venerable and historic city of Winchester, which yields to none in England for the monuments and the memories of the past.
I venture, lastly, to express my own personal hope that great as were the achievements of Alfred—the keynote to be struck and to be maintained will be that Alfred is, and will always remain, the typical man of our race—call him Anglo-Saxon, call him American, call him Englishman, call him Australian—the typical man of our race at his best and noblest. I like to think that the face of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the face of Alfred. I am quite sure and certain that the mind of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the mind of Alfred: that the aspirations, the hopes, the standards of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest are the aspirations, the hopes, the standards of Alfred. He is truly our Leader, our Founder, our King. When our monument takes shape and form let it somehow recognise this great, this cardinal fact. Let it show somehow by the example of Alfred the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest—here within the circle of the narrow seas, or across the ocean; wherever King Alfred’s language is spoken; wherever King Alfred’s laws prevail; into whatever fair lands of the wide world King Alfred’s descendants have penetrated.
WALTER BESANT.
ALFRED AS KING
BY FREDERIC HARRISON
ALFRED AS KING
It is a commonplace with historians—and with the historians of many countries and different schools of opinion—that our English Alfred was the only perfect man of action recorded in history; for Aurelius was occasionally too much of the philosopher; Saint Louis usually too much of the saint; Godfrey too much of the Crusader; the great Emperors were not saints at all; and of all more modern heroes we know too much to pretend that they were perfect. Of all the hyperboles of praise there is but one that we can safely justify with the strictest canons of historic research. Of all the names in history there is only our English Alfred whose record is without stain and without weakness—who is equally amongst the greatest of men in genius, in magnanimity, in valour, in moral purity, in intellectual force, in practical wisdom, and in beauty of soul. In his recorded career from infancy to death, we can find no single trait that is not noble and suggestive, nor a single act or word that can be counted as a flaw.
In the history of modern Europe there is nothing which can compare in duration and in organic continuity with the unbroken evolution of our English nation. And now that the royal house of France has passed from the sphere of political realities into that of historic memories, there is no dynasty in Europe which can be named in the same breath with that which has seen a succession of forty-nine sovereigns since Alfred; nor has any King or Cæsar a record of ancestry which can compare with that of the royal Lady who through thirty-two generations traces her lineal descent to the Hero-King of Wessex.
We have long given up the venerable fables which once gathered round the name of Alfred, as round Romulus, or Theseus, King Arthur, or the Cid. Every schoolboy knows that Alfred was not formally King of all England; nor did he introduce trial by jury, or electoral institutions; he did not found the University of Oxford; nor write all the pieces which are attributed to his pen; he was perhaps too practical a man to let his own supper get burnt on the hearth; and too wary a general to go about masquerading with a harp in the enemy’s camp. But the historic Alfred whom we know to-day is a personage more splendid and lifelike than the legendary Alfred ever was. Though much of what our grandsires believed about Alfred is now known to be poetry and pious fraud, the traditional Alfred was quite just in general effect, and modern research has given us a portrait both nobler and more definite than that drawn by the patriotic imagination of a less critical age. Patriotic imagination itself falls far short of scrupulous scholarship when it seeks to draw the likeness of a real hero.
It is true that the field of Alfred’s achievements was relatively small, and the whole scale of his career was modest indeed when compared with that of his imperial compeers. He inherited a kingdom which covered only a few English counties, and at one time his realm was reduced to a smaller area than that of some private landlords of modern times. Beside the great Emperor Charles, or the German Ottos, Henrys, and Fredericks of the Middle Ages, his dominions, his resources, his armies, his battles, his fleets, his administrative machinery, his contemporary glory—all these were almost in miniature—hardly a tithe of theirs. But, we should remember, it is _quality_ not _quantity_ that weighs in the impartial scales of History. True human greatness needs no vast territories as its stage—nor do multitudes add to its power. That which tells in the end is the living seed of the creative mind, the heroic example, the sovereign gift of leadership, the undying inspiration of genius and faith.
Turn to the _Chronicle_ and to Asser’s _Life_, with recent historians and scholars, and mark those miracles of patience, valour, indomitable energy by which the great king rescued from the savage Norsemen the England of our forefathers. Watch him as he returns to the charge after every repulse, rallies his exhausted men, gathers up new armies, plans fresh methods of war, and at last wins for his people prosperity, honour, and peace. The scale of these campaigns was narrow—the armies were small—not indeed weaker than were the Greeks at Thermopylae and Marathon; but the annals of war have nothing grander than the long record of sagacious heroism by which Alfred saved England for the English. Then note the genius with which he saw that the Norsemen must be met on the sea, with which he organised a navy of ships built on a new design of his own. Alfred is not only the forerunner of Marlborough and Wellington, but he was the first to teach the Saxon to be a seaman.
A fine land that had once known prosperity, and even culture, lay utterly ruined and desolate when Alfred undertook the vast task of its restoration—its material, moral, intellectual reform. He said in his Will, “we were all despoiled by the Heathen Folk.” He found the enemy in possession of something like a standing army of disciplined soldiers; and we should note how the _Chronicle_ calls the Norsemen “the army.” He met this by instituting a regular militia with local garrisons and a reserve force capable of systematic war. When Alfred marshals a new campaign we find that the era of wild raids to be met by casual musters of countrymen is a thing of the past. Alfred at last has his “army” too. We are dealing with regular armies capable of sustaining organised campaigns.
A navy needed to be created and not simply reformed. And the safety of the southern shores of England—the first command of the Channel—must be dated from the day when Alfred began the formation of an adequate fleet. It is true that in the absence of competent seamen in Wessex, he had to man his earliest ships with Frisians from over the sea. But in later years he came to have a really English fleet of his own. And it is plain that in a true sense he is the inventor, but not the actual founder, of a national navy: of that sea-power which is the birthright of this island.
When Alfred was chosen king, “almost against his will,” we are told, the prospect was one to appal the stoutest heart. In his boyhood the Northmen had begun to winter in Kent, had taken Canterbury and London by storm, and pushed up the Thames. A few years later they stormed Winchester and ravaged Kent. In the reign of his brother, Ethelred, they stormed York, and invaded Mercia, whose king, Burhred, had married Alfred’s sister. They next laid waste East Anglia, martyred its king, Edmund, and threatened Wessex. The Danes (as they were now known) sailed up the Thames, and formed a camp round Reading. In a fierce battle at Ashdown a victory had been won for the moment by the energy and valour of Alfred; but defeats followed, Surrey was lost, and Ethelred died, it is supposed of his wounds.
The young king of twenty-two came to the throne of his ancestors in a dark hour. The supremacy of Wessex in England, won by his grandfather, Egbert, had vanished. Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and parts of Wessex had been desolated; the abbeys had been sacked, the monks murdered, the churches, schools, and homesteads ruined. The Danish invaders were masters of all Northern, Eastern, and Central England, and the heart of Wessex was open to assault. The young king met them at Wilton with a small force, but after a stubborn fight was beaten off. He was forced to purchase a precarious truce.
In this year, 871, the _Chronicle_ relates (in its grim, laconic style), the [Danish] army came to Reading, and three nights after, the Alderman Ethelwulf fought them. Four nights after this, Ethelred and Alfred led a large force to Reading, and “there was great slaughter on both sides; the Alderman Ethelwulf was slain, and the Danes held possession of the battle place.” “And four nights after, Ethelred and Alfred fought with all the army at Ashdown”; many thousands were slain; “and they were fighting until night.” And fourteen nights after, King Ethelred and Alfred his brother fought against the army at Basing, and there the Danes gained the victory. “And two months after, King Ethelred and Alfred his brother fought against the army at Merton ... and there was great slaughter on each side, but the Danes held possession of the battle place. And after this fight there came a great summer force [of Danes] to Reading. And the Easter after, King Ethelred died. Then Alfred his brother succeeded to the kingdom of the West Saxons, and one month after, with a small force, he fought against all the army at Wilton, but the Danes held possession of the battle place. _And this year nine great battles were fought against the army in the kingdom south of the Thames; besides which Alfred, the king’s brother, and individual aldermen, and king’s thanes, often rode raids on them, which were not reckoned._”
Such were the disasters with which Alfred’s reign began. His fighting-men were exhausted or slaughtered; his kingdom torn from side to side, and its chief towns stormed: the northern, central, and eastern kingdoms had been blotted out. Burhred of Mercia was driven over sea, and Wessex was forced to buy a brief rest with gold. Alfred equipped a few ships and gained some temporary success. But soon after, the Danes with a great fleet swept round the south coast and penetrated into Dorsetshire and Devonshire. Thence passing northwards into Gloucestershire, and reinforced by a new fleet in the Bristol Channel, the Danish host suddenly fell upon Wiltshire. The Saxon defence was broken in pieces. “The [Danish] army harried the West Saxons’ land, and settled there, and drove over sea much of the people, and of the rest the most they harried. _And the people submitted to them, save the King Alfred; and he, with a little band, withdrew to the woods and fastnesses in the moors._”
Alfred seemed utterly ruined. He, the grandson of Egbert overlord of England, the successor on the throne of Wessex of his father and his three brothers, had been king just seven years, and in scores of battles he had been fighting the Danes for ten years. He had seen the three northern kingdoms of Angles broken up and the reigning house in each exterminated. Step by step he had seen Kent, Surrey, and Wessex overrun; assailed by sea and land, from the coast, the rivers, and the Bristol Channel. His own people had been driven across sea, or crushed into submission; and he himself, with a small band of followers, was forced to find shelter in woods and swamps. His lot seemed hopeless, but he alone did not despair.