Page:King Alfred's Old English version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies - Hargrove - 1902.djvu/62

LVI avenues to wisdom by the highways and by-paths that lead to the king's royal seat?

As to the dialogue form, Alfred followed Augustine, who no doubt took as his exemplar Cicero, and remotely Plato. Indirectly, then, the Dialogues of Plato in Greek became the model of Alfred's Old English version of the Soliloquies. This will be more readily seen when we remember that Boethius drew his dialogue method from Cicero, on whom he wrote commentaries, and Alfred became well acquainted with this manner of enlivening a philosophical discussion from his translation of Boethius. It was an easy transition from Boethius to Augustine.

Alfred showed his originality and sense of harmony in his adaptation of the dialogue style to the new parts in Book III, where, in the Latin, there is no dialogue. But he departs more and more from the use of dialogue the nearer he reaches the close, so that it is hard to say just when he makes the conscious transition to monologue with which, it is certain, he rounds off the concluding remarks.

In estimating Alfred's style we must remember that here, as elsewhere, he was a foundation-layer. There was no real Old English prose before him. So that if there are faults - and there are - we need not be surprised. But he blazed the way, and set a high standard for other writers to follow. In him, if we read closely, we may see the embryonic prose style of Chaucer, Milton, and Addison while in his impulse to translate religious works into English, he allies himself with a multitude of later writers.

He who strives not only to visualize the outward life, but also to retrace the thoughts and experience the emotions of King Alfred, must by that very effort rise to a higher and better life. To enter into the conscious life of Alfred's age is to reconstruct for one's delectation and edification one of the most fruitful periods of the much underrated