Page:King Alfred's Old English version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies - Hargrove - 1902.djvu/51

 ALFRED'S VERSION OF THE SOLILOQUIES XLV

-bable, for the reasons which follow: First, he not only compassed the work as finished by Augustine, but added a third book built up from other selections from the Fathers and Scripture; secondly, internal evidence proves that the work of Alfred has an air of completeness - it does not end abruptly; thirdly, the kind of rendering he gave demanded greater thought and pains than a more literal translation, such as he gave in Book I.

In order to establish these facts more clearly, it is necessary to look somewhat in detail at the changes made.

The subject-matter of Book II of the Alfredian version is the first that calls for special comment. Whereas Augustine gives a learned disquisition on truth and falsity, similitude and dissimilitude, as a means of substantiating the immortality of the soul, Alfred approaches the subject mainly through authorities quoted, and with the common sense of a practical Christian of his time. Near the beginning of Book II the inquirer admits the immortality of God, but expresses a doubt about the immortality of the soul. Reason is surprised that one should want to know what no man while in the prison of the flesh can know, yet it under takes to prove the immortality of the soul so clearly as to cause shame to the doubter. Then the colloquy develops the fact that Augustine has such faith in Theodorius, his king, and Honorius, son of the king, as to believe anything that he might never have heard of, except from their lips; but further, that he has as much more faith in God and Christ, the Son of God, than in Theodorius and Honorius, as the former are wiser and better than the latter:

'What spake God then oftener, or what said he more truthfully through his prophets to his people, than about the immortality of souls? Or what said the apostles and all the holy fathers, if they spake not about the eternity of souls and about their immortality? Or what did Christ

1 59.12ff.