BOOKS.

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.*

THE greatest of Roman critics, when referring to Ennius, the " father " of Latin poetry and the author of the Annales,

compares the feeling he excites to that with which we con- template "some holy and venerable grove whose massy and ancient trunks stir a sense not so much of beauty as of awe

(religio)," and it is in some such way, we think, that English- men must regard The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. "It is," says

J. R. Green, " the first vernacular history of any Teutonic people, the earliest and most venerable monument of Teutonic prose," and it has, as it were, a consecration and sanotity of its own. More than eleven centuries have passed since the earlier half, some of it written perhaps in the very words of Alfred, was set up fastened by a chain at Winchester and other places, so that " good clerks," as a chronicler of the twelfth century relates, might there read in an " English book'

"Des aventures, a des leis, , E des bat:9.111es de la: terra E de reis ,ki firent la gmerre Bald and meagre, no doubt, these annals of the first eight centuries are, with their scraps of Christian history or legend, their lists of combats and eclipses, their record of the deaths of Al4ormen, Bishops, and Kings, with here and there a quaint genealogy that traces the ancestry of some Saxon Prince to Woden, or, with more pious care, to " Hathra who was born in • Th. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Translated by E. E. C. Gomme. London : George Bell and Sons. [6e. net.] the ark of Noe." And yet, somehow, they make a strong appeal to us,—not merely to our heart, as when we take up in age a book that was dear to us in infancy, but also to the intellect and the imagination. Look, for instance, at this entry for the year 729 A.D.: " Here appeared two comets ; and the same year died Osric, and the holy Egbert in Iona "; or this for 596 A.D., which may best be given in the original : " Her Gregorius papa seude to Brytene Augustinum • mid wel manegum munucum • ]'e Godes word Engles }eoda god- spellodon." The simple words go straight home by a certain native force. They set us thinking, and the single sentence has in it the matter for an essay, while when we reach the reign of Alfred the Chronicle broadens out into a history of almost unique interest. For it is a history written, in the main, by men to whom what they relate was a part of their own lives. They had not merely heard with their ears, but had seen with their own eyes, and they write effectively because they write from knowledge and direct experience. There is a total absence of art, and the plain directness is more telling than any skill. The long contest, for example, of Alfred with the Danes is related with a simplicity that is

all but rude. Year after year the record begins with the same words : " Here the host [i.e., the Danes] fared to " or " from " such a place, and " the King rode thither with the fyrd," and there is harrying, fighting, and slaying. The tale is dreary in its monotony; but the facts tell, and seem driven into the mind as by repeated hammer-strokes. And so it is elsewhere.

" This was a very toilsome year" is a phrase that runs through all the reign of Henry I. "Murrain of cattle," "ruin of fruits," "famine," "plundering," and the like are on every page; but above all the word " geld " recurs with insistent emphasis. Our Saxon forefathers knew what taxes were even better than their sons have ever learned to do. It was not for nothing that the Conqueror " did so narrowly cause a survey to be made that there was not a single hide or rood of land, nor even—it is a shame to relate, but it seemed to him no shame to do—was an ox or a cow or a pig left, that was not set down in writing." " Manifold gelds," " oppressive gelds," " gelds that never failed nor ceased,"—these are the entries that almost fill our English annals, and as we read them the burden seems almost to press on our own backs. " A full heavy year it was," says the Chronicler in 1124 A.D. ; " the man who had any goods was bereft of them those who had none died of hunger." " You might well go a day's journey and you would never find a man occupying a village or land being tilled " is the description of England in the evil days of Stephen; " and they said openly," adds the writer, "that Christ and his saints were asleep." The narrative, in fact, has that strength and force which belong only to reality. You are in the presence of real facts, real feelings, and real men. "Here died King Hardaknut as he

stood at his drink (act his drince stod) " is a record which stamps itself instantly on the mind. To read how " Earl Morcar went to Ely in a ship," and King William "built a

bridge" to attack him, is to see the old fenland almost with our eyes, while a dozen essays could not give a clearer insight

into Anglo-Saxon thought than the story of how Abbot /Elfsige, having bought from the monks of Bonneval "St. Florentinus' body, all save the head, for five hundred pounds," brought it home from France and " offered it to Christ " at Peterborough. Or consider this account of William I. written by one "who has looked on him and once on a time

dwelt in his court "

" Also he was very worshipful; thrice he wore his royal crown every year—as oft as he was in England. At Easter he wore it in Whichester; at Pentecost in Westminster; at midwinter in Gloucester ; and then were with him all the powerful men over all England, archbishops and suffragan bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights. So also was he a very stark man and terrible so that none dared do anything against his will. He had earls in his bonds, who did against his will ; bishops ho deposed from their bishoprics and abbots from their abbacies and thegns he put in prison."

Surely this is a model of historical style. The writer says what he wishes to say plainly, directly, and with that sureness of effect which comes only from personal knowledge. An artist might reproduce the scene from the description, and the features of the King as he sits wearing his Royal crown" very worshipful," but also "very stark and terrible," seem almost to force themselves on the imagination.

We should like to give more extracts, but even a few fragments may show sufficiently how full of interest the

Chronicle is for all who wish to study English history at its source, and it is necessary to leave space for one further quotation. The annal for 937 A.D. contains a poetical account of the famous battle of Brunanburh, in which 2Ethelstan over- threw Constantine, the aged King of the Scots, and Anlaf, the leader of the Northmen ; nor, we think, does even the song of Deborah and Barak wholly surpass this noble English war-song. Tennyson felt its power, and paid it what was with him the rarest of all tributes by rendering it into verse ; but its rugged grandeur stands out perhaps not less well in such a prose version as this :— " No need to exult

had the gray-haired warrior, old and crafty,

in that bill-clashing, —nor Anlaf the more ;

with the remnants of their host they had no need to laugh because they were the better on the battle-stead,

in deeds of war, in the rush of standards, in the flight of spears, in the strife of men, in the clash of weapons, when they played on the field of slaughter with Edward's sons."

For the rest, we can only thank Mr. Gomme for making this work accessible to ordinary students at a modest price. His volume is furnished with excellent notes and index, and his translation, though a critic ignorant of Anglo-Saxon cannot judge of its scholarship, is eminently readable. But why does he say that " Harold's mass-priest had his moustaches until he became a bishop " ? Mr. Thorpe in the Rolls edition gives "wore his ‘lienepas,' " and suggests that the word is the Scotch knapscap or " headpiece."