Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/24

xvi from their conquest of Britain up to the end of the seventh century, chiefly ecclesiastical, enlivened with accounts of saints and miraculous occurrences.

3. The Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, a popular book, describing the lives and miracles of Italian saints, and treating of the life of the soul after death.

4. The Pastoral Care of the same Gregory, a practical manual of the duties of the clergy.

5. The De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius.

6. The Soliloquies of St. Augustine.

Of these books the History of Orosius, the Consolation of Philosophy, the Pastoral Care and the Soliloquies were put into English by the King himself. The Dialogues of Gregory were perhaps translated by Bishop Werfrith at Alfred's suggestion, and it is probable that the English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History in its original form was also the work of one of the King's learned priests.

By far the most important of these works was the famous treatise of Boethius. It was the philosophical vade-mecum of the Middle Ages, and countless scholars during a thousand years knew little else of abstract reasoning save what they found in its pages. The influence that it exercised on the expression of abstract thinking during many centuries is hardly conceivable by us moderns, who can range freely over the best of ancient dashed literature and wield a philosophical vocabulary ready made for us. Its influence and popularity, indeed, as a book of practical piety, can only be compared