Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/38

xxx south of England as a branch of literature, had greatly declined in form and substance from the splendour to which it had attamed in the preceding century in Northumbria. The modern critic is too apt to compare C with this older poetry, much to the disadvantage of the former; whereas we should remember that C was most probably meant to be read aloud or chanted. Thus then the seemingly idle expansions and repetitions which we find in it, and the occurrence of words and phrases consecrated to the use of poetry, would have greatly added to its effect, and made it more acceptable to the illiterate but unspoiled West-Saxons, to whose ears the folk-songs were quite familiar. This is only an illustration of the fondness that all primitive races have for a regular chanted measure accompanied by a well-marked rhythm. Further, we learn from the Life attributed to Asser that Alfred loved the poetry of his native land, and learned much of it as a child, and we may well believe that he would welcome the chance of himself adding to the national store of verse. Nor should we forget that he has given us some specimens of his verses in the Preface to his Pastoral Care. To sum up then, there seems no reason to doubt the the tradition of antiquity and the testimony of the prefaces, even if these were not written by the King, that it was Alfred who turned the prose of B into the verse of C. We may imagine that, having completed the prose version of the De Consolatione, he felt that by versifying the metra he should be only doing the right thing by his author, and at the same time giving the lays of Boethius a form that would readily lend itself to learning by heart and recitation. There would be no necessity for bringing new