ITS VALUE.—­The value of the Chronicle as a statistic record of English history cannot be over-estimated; it moves before the student of English literature like a diorama, picturing the events in succession, not without glimpses of their attendant philosophy.  We learn much of the nation’s thoughts, troubles, mental, moral, and physical conditions, social laws, and manners.  As illustrations we may refer to the romantic adventures of King Alfred; and to the conquest of Saxon England by William of Normandy—­“all as God granted them,” says the pious chronicler, “for the people’s sins.”  And he afterward adds, “Bishop Odo and William the Earl built castles wide throughout the nation, and poor people distressed; and ever after it greatly grew in evil:  may the end be good when God will.”  Although for the most part written in prose, the annals of several years are given in the alliterative Saxon verse.

A good English translation of Bede’s history, and one of the Chronicle, edited by Dr. Giles, have been issued together by Bohn in one volume of his Antiquarian library.  To the student of English history and of English literature, the careful perusal of both, in conjunction, is an imperative necessity.

ALFRED THE GREAT.—­Among the best specimens of Saxon prose are the translations and paraphrases of King Alfred, justly called the Great and the Truth-teller, the noblest monarch of the Saxon period.  The kingdoms of the heptarchy, or octarchy, had been united under the dominion of Egbert, the King of Wessex, in the year 827, and thus formed the kingdom of England.  But this union of the kingdoms was in many respects nominal rather than really complete; as Alfred frequently subscribes himself King of the West Saxons.  It was a confederation to gain strength against their enemies.  On the one hand, the inhabitants of North, South, and West Wales were constantly rising against Wessex and Mercia; and on the other, until the accession of Alfred upon the death of his brother Ethelred, in 871, every year of the Chronicle is marked by fierce battles with the troops and fleets of the Danes on the eastern and southern coasts.

It redounds greatly to the fame of Alfred that he could find time and inclination in his troubled and busy reign, so harassed with wars by land and sea, for the establishment of wise laws, the building or rebuilding of large cities, the pursuit of letters, and the interest of education.  To give his subjects, grown-up nobles as well as children, the benefits of historical examples, he translated the work of Orosius, a compendious history of the world, a work of great repute; and to enlighten the ecclesiastics, he made versions of parts of Bede; of the Pastorale of Gregory the First; of the Soliloquies of St. Augustine, and of the work of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae.  Beside these principal works are other minor efforts.  In all his writings, he says he “sometimes interprets word for word, and sometimes meaning for meaning.”  With Alfred went down the last gleams of Saxon literature.  Troubles were to accumulate steadily and irresistibly upon the soil of England, and the sword took the place of the pen.