Page:King Alfred's Old English version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies - Hargrove - 1902.djvu/21



King Alfred died exactly one thousand years ago. Great Britain and the English-speaking world have just held fitting commemorations of this event. It is an occasion when the civilized world dwells with admiration upon one of the world's greatest characters. His name is on all lips, his thoughts are in all minds, his heroic deeds fire all hearts. Eulogies have been pronounced and volumes written, but in this edition of one of his works the king speaks for himself in his own royal way. Alfred's version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies is probably his last writing extant, and for this reason alone deserves to be regarded with the veneration with which we hearken to the last words of the departed great and good.

But there is an intrinsic merit in the thoughts themselves. They pertain to the world-old subjects of the immortality of the soul and the search after God. Such themes appeal strongly to thinking men of all ages. An additional interest is given them by the fact that they spring from the yearning soul and great mind of the greatest of the Christian Fathers. St. Augustine, in his two books of Soliloquies, reveals an all-consuming thirst for wisdom and passion for God, which were, it is true, characteristic of his age, but which he possessed with greater intensity than any one else. Still keener is the interest at least to the student of English, when King Alfred, royal, in mind as in lineage, plays the rôle of translator, and