Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/31

Rh Alfred skilfully translated from Latin into English.' Ælfric formed himself consciously on the style of the King, and in his hands English prose became smoother and clearer, more elegant, and more suited to the expression of shades of thought.

It is now time to see how the English King went to work in turning the Consolations of Philosophy into his own tongue. A glance over his version will at once show that it is very far from being even a free translation of the original work. Alfred evidently realized that a literal rendering, such as we find in his version of the Pastoral Care, would be a difficult task for himself, and would be largely unintelligible to the people for whom it was intended. So he resolved to omit what seemed to him unessential, or too hard to translate, or too stiff for plain men's comprehension, and he did not hesitate to amplify where he thought a fuller treatment needed. Thus at the very beginning of the work he supplies a historical Introduction, and boldly transposes and condenses the first few sections of the Latin; a treatment to which he occasionally resorts throughout the book, particularly at the end. One is soon struck in reading Alfred's version by the large number of explanatory notes inserted in the text. The King watches his chance, and explains allusions, mythological, historical, and geographical, with evident pleasure, and sometimes at great length.

This plan was also followed by Alfred in his Orosius, and here we see his anxiety that obscurities should be removed, so that his book might be truly a popular one, and read by persons who had no knowledge of the ages that lay behind them, and to whom a literal translation