BOOKS.
MR. T. HUGHES'S ALFRED THE GREAT.* READERS must not expect to find in this volume an historical study, properly so called, one of those calm clear pictures of the past which only those can draw who have the rare power of wholly abstracting themselves from the present. Mr. Hughes has indeed written a good book, bright and readable we need hardly say, and of a very considerable historical value. He has given careful study to his authorities, and has, it seems, the insight without which the more carefully a man studies original documents the more hope- lessly he gets astray. There are, we should imagine, but very few persons indeed who will not get from this volume a far more dis- tinct conception of Alfred's character and work than they had
before. But the purpose of the book, and the purpose is always prominent, is not so much historical as political,—political, we mean, in that sense of the word "politics," by which it signifies not the mere act of governing, but the highest social morals, the ,Tainzi, which is the master science of ethics.
Looking at the matter in a purely literary point of view, we might be inclined to regret that the subject has been so treated ; in respect of art, the book has certainly suffered. The style in particular is sometimes harsh and infected with rhetorical man- nerisms, especially with such as recall the style of Mr. Carlyle, a Pelias haste to which not even Mr. Hughes's muscles are equal. Once, and we are bound to say once only, it descends to a positive vulgarism. It is with a positive shudder that one reads such a phrase as "doing the hermit's business on bread and water." Nevertheless, if Mr. Hughes does take occasion, and an apt occasion it is, to preach a sermon to Englishmen on their duties as citizens upon the text of the great English King, he is most distinctly worth listening to ; his utterances are full of honesty and manliness, and of a spirit which is in the best sense of the word religious. They recall with vivid power the teachings of the great theologian whose disciple he is, we are sure, proud to acknowledge himself. The substance of that teaching has been, we take it, to proclaim a Divine King and Kingdom, not of this world, indeed, as not coming forth from it, but over it, ruling it, as the real power in it which all other powers must acknowledge, or be broken and ground to powder. And this is the essence of the story which Mr. Hughes tells. How a king could realize this dominion over him aud shape his ways by it ; how we, whether power is to be in the hands of kings or of parliaments, must follow his example, here is the history and its moral.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether any ruler was ever more conscious of a high ideal and held and acted more steadily by it than did Alfred. His biographers use but one voice about him. Almost alone among the great characters of history, his noble figure, the closer we are able to approach to it, the more searching the light that modern discoveries enable us to bring upon it, comes out more beautiful and perfect. We may say of him, as Mr. Tennyson says of the "Great Duke," not without a reference, it will be remembered, to the Great King,"—
" Whatever record leap to light, He never shall be shamed."
Of his successors on the English throne, one only, the first Edward, is worthy to be named with him. Both were great soldiers and statesmen, though Alfred must have the credit that belongs to fighting against greater odds and reducing to order a more disorganized society. Both were men of high personal character. But the scale sinks on the side of the Saxon king, when we remember how he added to his other achievements the almost incredible distinction of laborious literary industry. And all this was done at an age,—for he died in his fifty-fifth year,— at which, nowadays at least, statesmen have seldom reached the zenith of their power.
In Alfred's earlier career as a soldier the most prominent event is the battle of Ashdown, where, though he was not in chief command, most of the glory of the day fell to his share. Here Mr. Hughes is on familiar ground ; many of our readers will have heard him tell the story already. The great fight in which Guthrum was beaten, and which led to the peace of Wedmore in 878, might have been equally famous, as it was certainly more decisive, but for the utter meagreness of the surviving accounts of the battle. Even the exact site is not known, and we must be content with a tolerably clear conception of the results, which briefly were to make England again a Saxon kingdom, with a great Danish
• Alfred the Great. By Thomas Hughes, M.P., Author of "Tom Brown's School Dsys." London : Macmillan and Co. • We Wifie. By the Author of " Nellie's Memories: London: Tinsley Brothers
tributary state in East Anglia. In the later history stands out the series of campaigns (893-6) which the king fought with Heisting. Mr. Hughes deals with them in a chapter of moderate length which is an admirably effective piece of narrative. Chroniclers who wrote without having any such thing as a map before them je not easy guides to follow ; but the thread of the story is carried out with great industry and skill, and the result is to leave a very distinct and complete impression on the mind. Alfred's courage and skill as a commander in the field have always been appreciated ; Mr. Hughes reminds us of a faculty in him which has been less generally recog- nized, his engineering capacity, not a common gift now, and then exceedingly rare. It may be said of him, as Tacitus said of another great commander who won his reputation in nearly the same scenes, "Nullum ab Agricola positum castellum vi hostium expugnatum." In the war with Guthrum, "the chroniclers narrate monotonously how the Pagans seize some town or strong place, such as Nottingham, Reading, Exeter, Chippenham, apparently without difficulty, certainly without delay ;" in fifteen years things had been so changed that Heating "was never able to take an important town or stronghold."
But though Alfred did his work as a soldier thoroughly well, it is by other things that he is best and most deservedly remembered. It is difficult, when we try to estimate his merits as a legislator, a social reformer, and a scholar, to conceive how very low was the type of civilization in the midst of which he found himself. Au indication of the facts, trifling in itself, yet full of suggestion, is to be found in the well-known story of the contrivances, the candles protected with lanterns, by which the King measured his time. We see at once how much of old progress in art and social convenience had been lost. Had no one in England ever heard of, we wonder, or was no English artisan competent to execute, the contrivance of the clepsydra, by which for centuries before and after Christ Greek and Roman had been accustomed to mark the divisions of time ? In a series of chapters, headed "The King's Laws," ",The King's Justice," "The King's Exchequer," "The King's Church," Mr. Hughes gives us lively and vigo- rous sketches of the work of peace which Alfred achieved in matters civil and religious. In others he gives a picture of his private life, and of the personality of those who surrounded him ; and one specially valuable chapter summarizes his work as an author. These are all practical and solid, full of well-digested matter, without any attempt at fine writing, but simply aiming at and succeeding in giving a conception which ordinary readers may easily grasp of Alfred's work. In the same spirit the story is rounded off by a sketch of how this work was carried on by his
elleCeS80113.
One thought strikes us very forcibly when we consider who these successors were which we wish Mr. Hughes could have found time to deal with. Alfred's influence, and it is one of the most emphatic testimonies to the sterling worth of his character, did not die with him. It was not his lot, as it often is the lot of able monarchs, to be succeeded by unworthy men. Edward the Elder, Athelstan, and Edgar the Peaceable were rulers of unusual vigour. And yet how complete was the collapse of the Saxon kingdom within the next century ! It reminds us of nothing so much as the somewhat similar catastrophe which overtook the Roman Empire towards the end of the second century, after it had enjoyed the rule of a most remarkable suc- cession of vigorous princes. Something of the same causes had been, doubtless, at work in both. The heart of Saxon England was eaten out with slavery. The proportion of bond to free was such as no State could long endure without failure. The King had, it is evident, some sense of the evil, as, indeed, such a man could scarcely have failed to have. He freed by the provisions of his will the slaves on his own estates. The strength of the in- stitution, as part of the national polity, was probably too great for him to overcome,—though we may imagine that he might have effected something even here, had he not missed some fifteen of his three-score years and ten. Even as it was, the work which he did accomplish was not lost. It survived, not only in the sense in which all good work survives, but as a permanent influence moulding to this day the social and political life of England.
Previous page
