Page "Alfred the Great" Paragraph 63

Boethius ' Consolation of Philosophy was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages.

Unlike his translation of the Pastoral Care, Alfred here deals very freely with his original and though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to Alfred himself, but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is solely Alfred's and highly characteristic of his style.

It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: " My will was to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works.

" The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only.

In one of these the writing is prose, in the other a combination of prose and alliterating verse.

The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the authorship of the verse has been much disputed ; but likely it also is by Alfred.

In fact, he writes in the prelude that he first created a prose work and then used it as the basis for his poem Metres of Boethius, his crowning literary achievement.

He spent a great deal of time working on these books, which he tells us he gradually wrote through the many stressful times of his reign to refresh his mind.

Of the authenticity of the work as a whole there has never been any doubt.