Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/16

viii Danish cap. It is therefore difficult for many to realize that Alfred wrote books, copies of which, written during his lifetime, are now lying in some our great libraries. Of these books all are interesting to us from the personal character impressed on them by the King - the Pastoral Care, for instance, for its admirable preface containing Alfred's observations on the state of learning in the England of his day, and the Orosius for the valuable geographical contributions which he inserted in his version of the once famous historian. But there is one of his books that more than the others is instinct with a certain anonymously personal note such as we look for in vain in English literature for hundreds of years after. This book is his version of the Consolations of Philosophy of Boethius, the making of which was to Alfred a love's labour. It satisfied his intellectual cravings and stimulated his uncultured but vigorous mind, and he resolved to give his still more unlettered lieges a share in the treat. So he turned it into his own tongue, as the King of the West Saxons might be expected to do, in a large and royal way, scattering up and down the work such notes and comments as he judged needful. His Boethius heads the roll of English philosophical writings; it likewise heads the roll of English lations.