CHARACTER OF ALFRED THE GREAT.
"Hear him but reason on divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish,
You would desire the king were made a prelate;
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say--it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music."
SHAKSPERE.
We have seen the shadow of this great king pass, through the clouds of
sorrow and suffering, into the glory and immortality which still shed
their lustre around his memory, after the darkness of nearly a thousand
winters has gathered and passed over his grave. Even the gloomy gates
of death could not extinguish, in the volumed blackness they enclose,
the trailing splendour which accompanied his setting, without leaving
behind a summer twilight, over a land where before there was nothing
but darkness to mark the departing day. Upon a sky dim, and unsprinkled
with the golden letters of light, Alfred first rose, the evening star
of English history. From his first appearance a brightness marked his
course; even in the morning of life, he "flamed upon the forehead of
the sky." Instead of the dull, cold, leaden grey, which announced the
appearance of other kings, his crowned head broke the stormy rack, in
a true splendour that befitted such majesty, and though dimmed for
awhile, every observant eye could see that it was the sun which hung
behind the clouds.
In childhood, long before his step-mother, Judith, had taught him to
read, his chief delight was in committing to memory the poems which
the Saxon bards chaunted in his father's court; and who can doubt
but that many a wandering minstrel descended from the ancient Cymry,
struck his harp within the Saxon halls, and made the boyish heart of
Alfred thrill again, as he heard the praises of those early British
heroes sung, whose bare breasts and sharp swords were the bold bulwarks
that so long withstood the mailed legions which the haughty emperor
of Rome had sent, swarming over our own island shores. In this rude
school was Alfred first taught that the names of the good, the great,
and the brave can never die; that valour and virtue were immortal;
and he resolved to emulate the deeds of those whose memories time can
never obliterate; by whose names we number the footsteps of eternity,
when marble and monumental brass have crumbled into dust. It was at
the Castaly of the Muses, which then but trickled from a rude, grey
Saxon font, where Alfred first drank in the draught that gave him
immortality. Eager for knowledge, he looked around in vain for any one
to instruct him; he had not a clergyman about him who could translate
the prayers he read in Latin, into Saxon; until poor old Asser came
from Wales, he could not find in his whole court a scholar equal to
himself. His nobles could hunt and fight; his brothers could do no
more: they lived and died, and their names would never have been
remembered had they not chanced to have been kings. The mind of Alfred
was fashioned in another mould; accident had made him a king, and he
resolved to become a man, to think and act worthy of a being who bore
on his brow God's image--to be something more than the mere heir to
a hollow crown and the lands of Wessex; so he threw aside his sword,
which he knew a thousand arms could wield as well as his own, and took
up his pen. He was the first Saxon king who attempted to conquer his
enemies without killing them--who offered them bread instead of the
sword. He was much wiser than many legislators in our own enlightened
times. He gave Godwin and his Danes land and seed, bade them work,
and live honestly and peacefully; they had felt the weight of his arm
before-time, and, for a long period after, they disturbed not his
study again. What benefit was it to Alfred to whiten with human bones
a land which he knew it would be better to cultivate?--there was room
enough for them all, so he sat down again to enrich his own mind. We
can readily imagine that he never took up his sword without a feeling
of reluctance--that he thought a man could not be worse employed than
in slaying his fellow men. Alfred was England's earliest reformer. When
his nobles found that he had determined to find them no more fighting,
they took to reading and writing, for time hung heavily upon their
hands. He then allowed them to share in his councils, and they began
to make laws for the living, instead of slaying, and then fixing a
price to be paid to the kindred of the dead for the murder they had
committed.
A lingering and painful disease, which had for years baffled the skill
of all his physicians--the constant inroads of the northmen, who were
ever keeping the country in a state of alarm--a dearth of kindred
spirits to cheer him in his intellectual labours--prevented not the
persevering king from struggling onward, in his toilsome journey, in
search of knowledge and truth. Bede, with the exception of a single
poem, had composed all his works in Latin; and, with scarcely an
exception, there was no production of any merit that Alfred could
obtain, at that period, but what was written in the same language; and
when he looked round amongst all the thousands he ruled over, not one
could be found, until Asser appeared, who was capable of instructing
him, or who could translate into the Saxon tongue the knowledge for
which he thirsted. He sent in quest of literary men to Rome, to France,
to Ireland; wherever they could be found, he despatched messengers
with presents to intreat and tempt them to visit his court. When
they arrived, he made them equals and friends--he promoted them to
the highest offices in his government--he valued them higher than
all his treasures of gold and silver--by day and night they were his
inseparable companions. He listened to the passages they translated,
stopped them from time to time, and made notes of the most striking
thoughts, and, in an after day, in numerous instances, he extended the
crude ideas of the ancient writers, and threw in a thousand beautiful
illustrations of his own, and such as were never dreamed of by the
original authors; they reflect his own thoughts and feelings; and while
we peruse them we know that we are drinking in the wisdom of Alfred.
In his translation of Orosius he made a great portion of the geography
and history of the world, as it was then understood, familiar to his
countrymen; by his translation of Bede he gave them an insight into
the records of their own land, and showed his nobles how indifferently
their predecessors had conducted the government. By his Boethius he
instilled into their minds many moral axioms, imparted to them his own
thoughts and feelings, and slowly raised them to that high intellectual
station to which he had, by his own exertions, attained; for though he
still ever soared high above them, yet there were eminences up which
they never could have climbed unless by his aid. He found his nobles
but little better than the northern barbarians, and he left them wise
and thinking men. He made a green and flowery place of what had been
before but a wide and weedy wilderness. He divided his attendants into
three bodies, and when one party had served him a month, they returned
home, and were succeeded by another; for it was not in the nature of
Alfred to compel any of his attendants to neglect their own private
affairs while serving him. By this means he but claimed their services
during four months in the year, the remainder of the time they were
allowed to dedicate to their own domestic matters. He divided his
income into separate portions, appropriating each part to a particular
purpose--first, he allotted a portion to his warriors and attendants;
the next allotment was expended in building, in the improvement of
which he collected many eminent architects from different nations; the
third he expended in the relief of foreigners; no matter from what
country they came, they left not the court of Alfred empty-handed: the
remainder of his revenue was dedicated to religious purposes, to the
support of the monasteries he had built, the schools he had erected,
and of the various churches throughout the whole of the dominions. Out
of this division the larger portion was religiously dedicated to the
relief of the poor. Not only his treasures, but his time, was also
equally divided; he but allowed one-third for rest and retirement, and
within it scrupulously included the whole that he thought necessary
to be consumed in partaking of his meals. The second eight hours he
devoted wholly to the affairs of his kingdom, to the meeting of his
council, to the assembling of his witena-gemot, audiences, plans of
protection for the repelling of invasions, and for the better working
of the great machinery which he had set in motion to better the
condition of his subjects and weaken the power of his enemies. The
remaining third of his time he appropriated to study and his religious
duties. It was in this division, doubtless the happiest of all, that
Asser and Grimbald read and translated while he listened, and in the
little note-book which Asser had made him, he put down such thoughts
as made the greatest impression on his mind. Alfred had neither clock
nor chronometer with which to measure out the hours, only the sun and
moving shadow by which he could mete out time, and they could neither
guide him on the dull, cloudy day, nor the dark night. To overcome this
difficulty, and mark the divisions of the twenty-four hours, he had
wax candles made, twelve inches in length, each of which was marked
at equal distances, and although the time taken up in replacing and
re-lighting them would scarcely serve to mark accurately the lapse of
minutes, yet they were so equally made, that six of them, with but
little variation, used in succession, lasted out the twenty-four hours.
To guard against the casualties of winds and draughts, he inclosed his
candles in thin, white, transparent horn, and this result led to the
invention of lanterns; and thus he measured time, which to him was the
most valuable of all earthly treasures, for he considered his life as
a trust held for the benefit of his people; and the knowledge which
he himself accumulated he felt it a sacred duty to impart to others.
From what was then considered the remotest corners of the earth, he
despatched emissaries to gather information; he sent an embassy to
India, and had messengers continually passing to and from Rome. The
Danes, whom he had permitted to settle down peaceably in his dominions,
he placed upon the same footing as the Saxons, giving to them equal
laws, and punishing the criminals of both nations with the same
impartial rigour, which many historians have considered to be somewhat
too severe. Justice was then but little understood; and when the
judges came to such decisions as Alfred considered unfair to the party
injured, he occupied the tribunal, and had the matter brought before
him, and according to his own judgment decided the case. He caused one
of his own judges, named Cadwine, to be hanged, for having condemned a
man to death without the consent of the whole jury. Freberne he also
ordered to be executed, for sentencing one Harpin to suffer death, when
the jury were undecided in their verdict; for when there was a doubt,
Alfred concluded it was but just to save the accused. He would neither
permit the jury to return an unjust verdict, nor the judge to influence
their decision; but where there was doubt and difficulty to contend
against, he brought the whole weight of his own clear, unbiassed
intellect to bear upon the subject.
Without breaking down the warlike spirit of the people, he by a
salutary law checked the thirst of personal revenge, permitting no man
to slay his enemy in secret, not even if he knew that that enemy was
seated at home beside his own hearth, he was not allowed to fight with
him until he had publicly demanded redress. If the body of a murdered
man was found, the penalty, which, considering the value of money in
those times, was heavy, fell upon the whole hundred or tything in
which the dead body was discovered. By this means, the innocent had
the powerful motive of self-interest to induce them to give up the
murderer. Rude and primitive as such a system may at first appear,
these laws were well adapted to the spirit of the barbarous age in
which he lived, when a pagan Dane considered it a meritorious work
to slay a Saxon Christian, and the latter thought that he was doing
Heaven service when he sent the spoiler of its monasteries, and the
slayer of its priests, to revel in the halls of the blood-stained
gods he worshipped. Elders were appointed over each hundred, and were
answerable for the conduct of all who belonged to them. If a crime
was committed, the roll was called over, and suspicion naturally fell
upon the missing man who had fled. No other hundred could register his
name until he had dwelt a given time amongst them; and through this
strict system of espionage, pardonable only in such turbulent times,
the land, as it were, was engirded with a continuous chain, not a link
of which could be broken without the gap becoming visible. Alfred not
only introduced the decalogue into his laws, but so adapted the Mosaic
code to the habits of the age in which he lived, as to render it as
effective amongst the Anglo-Saxons as it had been with the Israelites
of old. His witena-gemot, or assembly of nobles, or parliament, or
by whatever name we choose to designate the council of the land, was
called upon to give its consent to these enactments, before they
were put into operation, and such clauses as it objected to, Alfred
blotted out from his Dom-boc. He first drew the bold outline of our
present mode of government; and limned with his hand, though rudely,
the grand form of our glorious constitution. He was proverbially known
amongst his subjects by the title of the "Truth-teller;" and it was a
saying during his reign, that golden bracelets might be hung upon the
landmarks beside the common highways without a fear of their removal,
such a vigorous watch did the law keep.
In the character of Alfred was embodied all the elements which the
poet, the dramatist, and the novelist attempt to throw around their
most perfect ideas of a hero. He was a warrior, a statesman, and a
scholar, and as perfect in each of these capacities as if he had spent
his whole life in the battle-field, had dedicated his days and nights
to law and politics, or been only a fond dreamer amongst books in the
flowery fields of literature. He would have taken the lead in any age
as the commander of an army; have either risen to the dignity of a
chancellor or a premier in civil government, or have stood first in
the high and ambitious rank of authorship. In him were beautifully
blended courage and tenderness, perseverance and patience; justice
which would have been stern, but for the softening quality of mercy,
high-mindedness, and humbleness, and, above all, a universal love for
his fellow men, not disfigured by the weak partiality of unworthy
favouritism. He found England in a state of despondency, raised and
cheered her, and then elevated her to a much higher station than that
from which she had fallen. But for Alfred the Great, England would have
been a desert, and never have recovered from the destructive fires and
desolating ravages of the Danes. His name will be revered until time
shall be no more.