although the speech of Wessex was the most developed among Anglo-Saxon dialects, the native language and literature at the beginning of the ninth century still remain torpid for want of an impulse, and the force that then arrived to break up the stolidity of Anglo-Saxon existence threatened to sweep away civilisation and national life along with it.

invasions

The epic of Beowulf has already acquainted us with Scandinavian Danish monarchs in the south of Sweden in the sixth century, whose spirit of enterprise carried their marauding expeditions as far as Friesland. From the early part of the sixth until near the end of the eighth century a pause takes place; we hear little of Scandinavian piracies, and the AngloSaxons are left to fight their battles among themselves, although Scandinavian auxiliaries would have been welcome to the weaker party, and would have been afforded great opportunities for conquest at the expense of both. In 787, however, a plundering Danish expedition landed in Dorsetshire; in 793 Lindisfarne Abbey, the Mecca of Northumbria, was burned; and by 830 the Scandinavian chieftains, probably impelled by the pressure of population, had organised their strength for systematic naval forays. They especially directed their attacks against Northumbria, the part of the island nearest their own habitations, and against the south-west, where the remnant of the ancient British population, still independent, or imperfectly subdued, was ready to side with them. The political events of the early part of the century should have augmented the Anglo-Saxon power of resistance; for Egbert, King of Wessex, had gradually pushed his conquests to the point of gaining recognition as "overlord" of the entire English part of the island. But his authority was rather nominal than real, there was little actual cohesion among his subjects, and the Danes, to employ the collective appellation commonly bestowed upon all Scandinavian invaders, though frequently defeated, were still more frequently victorious. And whereas the defeats they might sustain merely preluded their reappearance in some other quarter, every victory was signalised by the destruction, if not of a town or city, at least of a group of churches or monasteries, the sole asylums of literature and culture in a rude age. The influence of a milder religion, unaccompanied as yet by any sentiment of chivalry, had enfeebled the national vigour, not so much from any real incompatibility between the precepts of religion and the duty of selfdefence, as by the gradual and almost imperceptible transformation of a military into a monastic ideal of life. The Saxons fought bravely in particular instances, but never achieved the universal national uprising which could alone have delivered them from their enemy. The valour of the Danes, on the other hand, amounted to absolute contempt for death: and their strength and numbers may be estimated by the stupendous rampart of their raising which yet draws a semicircle around Flamborough Head. The Danish origin of this mighty work has been questioned, but without reason; the builders, whoever they were, could have had no other objects. than those of protecting their booty and their vessels drawn up, as the

Ruin of literature and learning

fishermen's barks are drawn up at this day, on the pebbly landing-places, and of acquiring a position from which they could sally forth against the surrounding country. Its construction may be probably connected with the great expedition of 867, in which York was taken and sacked, the Northumbrian army routed, and both the rival kings of Northumbria, united by the common peril, were slain in the same battle.

Hatred of Christianity may have contributed to direct the attacks of the Danes against monasteries, but they were also impelled by a more powerful motive, the place which, in a land destitute of fortified castles, monasteries filled as refuges of the helpless part of the population, and storehouses of their wealth. This double purpose was undoubtedly served by the round towers of Ireland, a country equally devastated by Danish incursions. These strongholds were evidently constructed with the view of allowing the enemy the fewest possible points of attack, the monasteries, not erected with prevision of a chronic state of warfare, having offered many. The Saxons do not seem to have often followed the example of the Irish in this respect, and their monasteries, though stoutly defended, everywhere became the prey of the invader. To appreciate the disastrous effect upon literature, it must be remembered that in those days the monastery was the college, and was not unfrequently, as at York, connected with a large teaching institution, intended for priests as well as monks, and available in some measure for inquisitive laymen. If the young Anglo-Saxon could not obtain knowledge there, he could obtain it nowhere, unless he emigrated; his parents' house had neither books nor teachers, and the tools of self-education were debarred. The youth who might have become a fair scholar for his time grew up devoid of knowledge, and when the time came when he should have taught others, he had nothing to impart. All literary culture might thus very conceivably die out in a generation. One faint link with the world of learning remained; the consolations of religion could not be foregone; and their efficacy was not thought to depend upon the intelligence either of teacher or hearer. The preacher, if able to read, might recite what he could not understand, if unable he might be taught to repeat it by rote to equal purpose. Priests, however, learned or unlearned, there must be. This explains the crass ignorance in which Alfred found his clergy-a condition not discreditable to them since they could not avert it; and even honourable, in so far as it attests their fortitude in remaining at, their posts at a period of universal desolation.

It certainly seemed as though the ninth century in England were destined to repeat the history of the fifth. In the fifth century Britain had been inhabited by a civilised people, whose upper classes, at all events, were not unacquainted with literature. But the sinews of the nation were relaxed by soft living, the hardy warriors who had for centuries relieved them from the burden of military service were withdrawn to contend with barbarians. nearer home; fierce enemies, until now held in check, pressed heavily

SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCES

41

upon them; and whether, deeming to cast out Satan by Satan, they really invoked the aid of another barbarous nation, or whether the latter were attracted by their weakness, they found themselves in presence not merely of conquerors but of exterminators. For a time the old civilisation seemed to have totally disappeared; the inhabitants of the land spoke a new language, and the ideal of literature, could such be said to exist, was something entirely different from the old. As, however, foreign influences began to creep in, something analogous to the old state of things seemed about to return. A Latin civilisation appeared to be becoming superimposed upon a Teutonic, as formerly upon a Celtic substratum; the blood and the language of the intruding race continued to differ from those of the race expelled, but the ideals of life and conduct were becoming the same, and those ideals threatened to do the new people the same service and disservice as they had done the old. That nothing might be wanting to the parallel, a people comparatively barbarous, at first mere marauders attracted by the hope of plunder, were finding out the goodness of the land and threatening to form permanent settlements and destroy or expel, not absorb, the Saxons, precisely as those had destroyed or expelled the Britons. The result must have been among other things the destruction of Anglo-Saxon speech and letters, and the provision of an entirely dissimilar groundwork for the literary culture which, under any circumstances, must have sooner or later established itself in Britain.

It is a curious consideration that English literature actually did receive Scandinavian a strong Scandinavian influence, but through a psychical, not a philo- influences logical channel. The Northmen came again and actually prevailed. But in the interim a change had come over the invaders themselves. Settled in France for several generations, they had disused their original tongue, and the language they had adopted was saturated with the Latin influence which in the ninth century they would have extirpated. Instead of the adversaries of a higher culture they had become its promoters. Had the Northmen's conquest been effected in the days of Alfred, our language at this day would have resembled Danish, both by philological affinity and by the absence of any noticeable Latin element: and English literature must have been very different from what it is now. While, however, the Scandinavian element, at first repulsed, afterwards absorbed, failed to exert any special influence on British literature, the Scandinavian mind became a most important factor. The Northmen had not laid aside their nationality with their language, and the Conquest, notwithstanding its partial Latinisation of the English speech, invigorated instead of impairing the Teutonic elements of character which it found in possession. If we sought for the persons who have exercised the most decisive influence upon our literature, we might find them in two of our kings, William the Conqueror and Alfred, but for whose action at critical periods of our history Latin and its derivatives would have remained mere exotics, instead of vital constituents of our tongue. Neither had this aim consciously before him. William never

Life of
Alfred the
Great

knew that he was infusing a new element into English, and never dreamed of giving it a new lease of life; he would much sooner have obliterated it. If, as stated, he endeavoured to learn it, he was solely actuated by political considerations. If Alfred became the first Anglo-Saxon author of his day, his aim was not the preservation of the language, but the instruction of the people who spoke it. Alike, nevertheless, by his achievements in this comparatively limited department, and from the more important circumstance that the preservation of Anglo-Saxon as the basis of British speech is mainly due to him, he deserves the fullest notice at the hands of the literary historian.

It is an interesting circumstance that our chief authority for the life of the great Anglo-Saxon monarch should be not a Saxon but a Celt. Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, was a monk of St. David's, and was invited by Alfred to his court along with other learned men. Of these, and of Asser himself,

and his biography of his royal patron down to the year 887, we shall find other opportunities of speaking. For the present it is enough to say that, though interpolated with legendary matter, separable with no great difficulty from the genuine original, his record appears to be authentic. At the very beginning of the story, however, we are confronted by a chronological difficulty. Alfred, the fifth and youngest son of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex, is said by Asser to have been born in 849. His eldest brother, Ethelstan, however, was of an age to be invested with the government of the sub-kingdom. of Kent upon the succession of his father to the kingdom of Wessex in 839; and the third son, Ethelbald, fought the Danes along with his father in the great battle of Ockley in 851, when Alfred would have been only two years old. It seems unlikely that there could have been such an interval between the birth of Alfred and those of his brothers, and the difficulty is increased when we read that Alfred was sent to Rome in 853. It is scarcely probable that so young a child would have been exposed to the risks of what was then a toilsome and dangerous journey. If we may put Alfred's birth eight or nine years back the chronological difficulties will be removed, and it will become easy to understand how the youthful promise which Alfred must have given may have inspired his father with the idea of sending him for a time to reside at the capital of Western Christendom. The step becomes more intelligible when viewed in connection with the character of Ethelwulf, the dominant note of which was a deep feeling of religion. Ethelwulf seems, indeed, to have impersonated those superstitious and quietist tendencies of the Anglo-Saxon character which so greatly impaired the national strength in conflict with the fierce Northmen, but which on the other hand indicated a refinement of nature upon which the moral and intellectual promise of his youngest son would

THE YOUTH OF ALFRED

43

not be lost. History, however, and no doubt with good reason, ascribes a still stronger influence upon Alfred's development to his mother Osburga. The anecdotes of his youth handed down may belong to the domain of legend, but if so this is the legend which has its basis in truth, and only comes into being to recompense posterity for the loss of truth through the injury of time. It may be added that Asser's story of Osburga having shown her son a manuscript with a beautifully illuminated initial letter, and promised it to him on condition of his learning to read it, if authentic, we

might almost say, if generally believed, proves that Alfred's birth must have occurred some years before 849. Historians have perceived that it could not have taken place in Alfred's infancy, between his birth in 849 and his visit to Rome in 853, and as upon his return to England his father had another wife, they have supposed that Osburga was repudiated by her husband, and that the incident occurred while she lived in retirement after her dethronement. Such a transaction would not have been devoid of precedent; Charlemagne himself had divorced his first wife, Desiderata, but she had lived with him only a year, and he had no children by her; and the proceeding appears inconsistent with the religious character of King Ethelwulf, and with the Pope's special patronage of him and his legitimate son, and the scandal and contention it must have excited would not have