Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/37

Rh 3. Another thing to notice is that not all the metra of B have been turned into Terse in C; and the omitted ones are not introduced and dismissed with the customary words 'Then Philosophy began to sing,' or 'When Philosophy had song this song.'

4. Only a few lines in C contain new thoughts. Of these additions the chief is the simile where the earth is compared to. an egg (metr. xx. ll. 169-175), and this was derived from a Latin commentary.

Now, putting aside the Prefaces, the opponents of the King's authorship of C base their case on two considerations, one being the third of the above-mentioned facts. (a) The King, they say, would not have omitted any metra when turning B into C. (b) Further, they object that C is but a weak diluted version of the terse and often vigorous prose of B, and more likely to have been the work of some clerical versifier than of the King himself, who shows vigour and character in his literary work, and who would have added to and improved on B if he had resolved to recast it in a metrical form.

To the first of these two arguments it may be replied that as the Latin original was laid aside, and B only was used in the preparation of C, Alfred might have easily overlooked some of the metra which were not preceded nor followed by the usual formulas; or again, he might have purposely omitted them for some reason or other. The second argument takes it for granted that Alfred must have been a good poet as well as a good king; and further, it puts C in a false light. We have to bear in mind that in the days of King Alfred, poetry, if ever it had been cultivated in the south