Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/17

Rh. It is hoped that the modem English dress here given to the King's best book will help to make him less an unsubstantial shadow for Englishmen of to-day, and more a real man, practical, right-feeling, and earnest beyond his generation.

A few words on the method and aim of this modern version may be said here rather than in the Introduction. The Anglo-Saxon text followed is that edited by the translator for the Oxford University Press last year. The prose part is rendered quite literally, generally 'word by word,' as the King says of parts of his own version. Thus the simplicity and directness of the original Old English are kept. In the version of the alliterating verses, printed together after the prose, the metre of the original Old English has been retained as far as is allowed by the limitations of modern English, but literalness has not been thereby sacrificed. The result, I may hope, will give a fair idea of the original, which itself is far from echoing the hammer-and-anvil lines of the best Old English song-smiths, as we see them at work in the Beowulf. The Introduction is intended to give the general reader what he may like to know about Alfred's Boethius and his literary method in general, and the student of English literature will perhaps find interest in