The Alfred Jewel. Earle John

the richness and costliness of the work, with the thoughtful ingenuity of its device and composition, and with the symbolic meanings which must be assigned to certain parts of the structure;—such evidences as these, again combined with certain external evidences, namely, the locality in which the Jewel was found, and any affinities apparent in the above data with the career or exploits of the king, or with his character and tastes—when the ownership is questioned, we find ourselves face to face with an accumulation of evidence varying in quality and requiring to be judged by the delicate and sensitive standard of probability. In presence of such a problem we should not neglect the impressions and expressed opinions of persons whose instincts have been cultivated in the sphere of such probabilities.

George Hickes, in 1705, mentions some doubting critics, whose difficulty lay in the beauty and perfection of the work. They could not understand how such artistic work could proceed from Anglo-Saxon artists in the ninth century. But for himself, he added, the mere sight of the Jewel had been enough, and that from his first view of it he had never doubted that it was a personal possession of the great king Alfred[3].

      When an elaborate piece of workmanship like the Alfred Jewel is presented to the experienced mind and practised eye of a man like Hickes, the evidence is rapidly, almost unconsciously, sifted, and the probabilities converge to a focus, so as to produce a conviction which seems like a simple apprehension of the senses. I welcome Hickes’s expression of confidence as a confirmation of that which I have experienced myself. But while I am entirely free from uncertainty I quite recognize the reasonableness of the doubt, and I know that (logically speaking) the uncertainty is there. And I know also that many of my readers will entertain it and will look more or less dubiously upon the assumption of certainty in this matter. And, indeed, there is a certain advantage in having to reckon with this sceptical attitude of mind, insomuch as the presence of doubt has a stimulating effect in furnishing the discourse with a determinate aim and direction. It will set me on the alert, that I may not miss any incidental chance of a reflection tending to assure those who would be gratified to think that we do indeed possess a relic intimately associated with the person, and with the mind, of Alfred, king of Wessex.

[1] This remarkable document begins thus:—

In nomine domini nostri Ihesu Christi. Ic Ælfred aldormon and Werburg min gefera begetan ðas béc æt hæðnum herge mid uncre clæne feó ðæt ðoune wæs mid clæne golde, and ðæt wit deodan for Godes lufan and for uncre saule ðearf ond forðon ðe wit noldan ðæt ðas halgan beoc lencg in ðære hæðenesse wunaden. ‘

In the name of our Lord Jesu Christ. I Alfred alderman and Werburg my consort purchased these books at a heathen host with our clean money, that is to say with clean gold; and that we two did for God’s love and for the benefit of our souls, and for that we would not that these holy books should longer lie in hethenesse.’ Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, No. 634.

[2] Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus, No. 317; Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, No. 558; Earle, Land Charters, p. 152.

[3] ‘Quoad opificium autem, tam elegans quidem id est et perfectum, ut eius antiquitatem in dubium vocandi doctis nonnullis occasionem dederit, etsi Ælfredi regis hoc olim fuisse peculium, ex quo primum vidi, nunquam dubitavi.’ Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus, vol. i, p. 144.

CHAPTER II

       THE EPIGRAPH OR LEGEND

       Table of Contents

We must now consider and see what we can learn from the Epigraph. This was the cue whereby Hickes introduced the Jewel into the argument of his Dissertatio Epistolaris, and there gave us the cream of the discussions which had been developed in the space of twelve years from the discovery. Observing that in a Saxon inscription which Dr. Hans Sloane had communicated to the Philosophical Transactions (No. 247) only two letters of Anglo-Saxon form occurred, the C and the G, he proceeded to describe and discuss the Jewel in all the points of view which up to that time had occupied the attention of the curious. The forms to which he adverted were the angular C and G, which however are rather Epigraphic than Saxonic forms. These square letters occur (as Mr. Falconer Madan informs me) in the inscriptions of the sixth and seventh centuries in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Hickes added that all the other letters of the Epigraph were in ordinary Roman characters[4]:

      In fact there was only one place where a distinctly Saxon character might have come in, namely in the place of the W, which instead of the Runic Wên (ƿ) is composed of two Roman V’s. There is no place for the Runic Thorn (þ).

      He had been pursuing an argument, of which the aim was to show that from the time of Alfred the characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon writing were less used, being superseded by Gallic or Italic forms. He attributes the change to the teachers which the king had drawn from Gaul. That such a change was taking place in Alfred’s time is quite manifest, but its beginnings were further back; the taste for Frankish fashions having been introduced by his grandfather Ecgberht, who had passed years of exile at the Court of Charlemagne. Doubtless the movement grew under the influence of Alfred, who not only had visited Rome, but in all probability had resided there for some years.

      If now passing from the alphabetic characters we consider the syntax of this sentence, we shall find that it varies so widely from our habits of speech at the present time as to furnish something like a measure of the intervening period, and as it were to render some account of the lapse of a thousand years. Let us begin by translating the sentence verbally with the minimum of change, retaining the selfsame words in their modern guise. On this plan the sentence will run thus: ‘Alfred me hight work;’ where the baldness of the diction exhibits roughly the gulf there is between this Epigraph and our present usage. Each word is English, but the sentence is far from being so. This great contrast is the result of a combination of causes, and it may be resolved into four chief movements which have slowly operated during the long interval.

      1 A change has taken place in the collocation of words in forming a sentence. The governed pronoun stands in a place where it is now inadmissible: the present habit of the language requires that the pronoun ‘me’ should come in after its governing verb. If we make this change, we shall see that the sentence will become a trifle more like English, thus: ‘Alfred hight work me.’

      2 Another movement is that which in process of time takes place in the usage of words. There is a fashion in the choice of words for the clothing of our ideas, and that fashion changes sometimes capriciously and fitfully, but for the most part so slowly and gradually that it takes an era of time to make the change conspicuous. Words are liable to this kind of alteration in various degrees, and this inequality of change is observable even in a sentence of four words. The verb heht, hight, has undergone so great a change of sense that to the general reader it is apt to be unintelligible[5]. But while this verb has altered greatly, the verb ‘work’ has altered little. Still, it has altered, and it is no longer the right word for its place.The remaining two words have in usage undergone no change at all. The pronoun mec has suffered alteration in form by dropping a consonant, but it is absolutely unchanged in its application. Indeed, it may be stated as a general law, that pronouns as a class are among the slowest of words to admit semantic change.Nevertheless there is a group of words which are still more unchangeable in signification, and these are the Proper Nouns. External changes of form they do admit, but not the internal change of sense. The name ælfred is the form prevalent on the