11. Translating in England during the 10th–11th centuries. King Alfred the Great and Abbot Aelfric as translators.

Thus King Alfred may be regarded as the first known writer of English literary prose. Abbot Ælfric, about a century after, recognized his debt to the King, saying that in his day ‘there were no other godly books in the English tongue save the books that King 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 of the De Consolatione would often have seemed mere nonsense. It has been proved that Alfred made considerable use of Latin commentaries which had already appeared before his day, just as they had appeared in the case of the old classical writers, and many of the additions that distinguish Alfred’s version, and till quite recently were unhesitatingly credited to him, are now seen to correspond, often word for word, with commentaries still extant in MSS. dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries1 . This, however, only shows that Alfred procured the best MSS. of the Consolation that he could, and used the commentaries written in the margin, just as modern scholars make use of the scholia in preparing their editions of the classical texts.

From a modern reader’s point of view these constant digressions seem to encumber the text and impede the free course of the argument, but we should remember that in Alfred’s day such things as footnotes were unknown, so that he was obliged to put everything into the text, unless he had chosen to imitate the scholia or explanatory notes written on the broad margins of the Latin manuscripts. Alfred’s arrangement, however, was exactly adapted to the purpose he had in view, for as books were in those days generally read aloud by one man in the presence of others, it was convenient that his reading should flow on without interruption from distracting notes. Another point in which Alfred’s version differs from the original is its distinctly Christian colouring. As we have said before, Boethius gives no sign in his Consolations of Philosophy that he was acquainted with or influenced by the Christian faith. Alfred, on the contrary, mentions Christ by name, speaks of ‘Christian men,’ ‘angels,’ ‘the devil’; and the name of God, which the Roman seldom directly mentions, occurs nearly two hundred times in the English version. Alfred’s allusions to Old Testament history form an entirely new feature, while as a Western Churchman he shows his disapproval of the Arian Theodoric as markedly as he shows his sympathy with the Catholic Boethius.

Frequently Alfred forgets his rôle of translator, and prompted by a word or phrase of his original, writes freely as his own feelings taught him. One of these spontaneous outpourings has a keen and enduring interest for Englishmen; revealing as it does the noble aims of him whom the late Professor Freeman called ‘the most perfect character in history.’ This is the passage on the duties of a king forming chapter xvii, where Alfred sets forth his aims in stirring words that deserve a place on every monument that Englishmen may raise to their national hero. ‘It has ever been my desire,’ he says, ‘to live honourably while I was alive, and after my death to leave to them that should come after me my memory in good works.’