Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/26

xix Bishop of Ross, sent an imitation of it to his royal and captive mistress in 1572. Its influence on European literature has been immense. Traces have been found in the ancient English poem of Beowulf. Chaucer's poems are steeped in it. Gower, Lydgate, and Spenser drank inspiration at this fountain, as the author of the Roman de la Rose in France, and the greater Dante and Boccaccio in Italy had done in their day.

The sad surroundings under which the Consolation of Philosophy was written have ever found a responsive chord of sympathy in the hearts of the oppressed, and never more readily than in those turbulent times when the great ones of the earth were liable to be reft in a day of rank and honours at the nod of a capricious tyrant.

Let us now glance at the life of the author of this classic of the Middle Ages, the man whom Gibbon styles 'the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman.'

About 400 years before King Alfred wrote, Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, starting from Wallachia, led a host of his folk over the Alps, and overthrowing Odovacar (Odoacer) reigned over Italy in his stead. Theodoric's rule for many years was just and impartial, neither unduly oppressing the orthodox nor favouring those of the Arian heresy to which he himself belonged. He also respected the Imperial traditions, so that the Roman Senate continued to exercise at least a show of its old functions.

Among the eminent Romans of the time one was marked out for high honour by the new ruler on account of