ET us imagine ourselves for a moment or two in a monastery at Jarrow-on-Tyne, on a quiet evening in May, 735, A. D. There, surrounded by his loving students, we might see an old man quietly dying. This was the venerable and beloved Bede, the most famous scholar of his day.

      Bede undertook to translate the Gospel of St. John into the Anglo-Saxon, the language of the people of England at that time. Before his work was done, he fell sick and drew nigh unto death; but he would not relinquish his task. Calling his boy-pupil, Cuthbert, to his side, he bade him write while he dictated. It must have been a pathetic and touching sight to see him spending his last hours on earth in putting the writings of John into the common language of the people.

      "There remains but one sentence, master!" said his pupil.

      "Write quickly," said the dying man,

      Soon the writer said, "It is finished, master."

      "True, it is finished," said the dying saint. [86]

      He had been raised at his own request; and softly chanting, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," his spirit took its flight and passed to the celestial city.

      There were others before Bede who had done a little in translating some portions of the Bible.

      Toward the close of the seventh century, metrical paraphrases of parts of the Bible were written by Cædmon, a servant at one of the Yorkshire Abbeys; and a little later Aldhalm, Bishop of Sherborne, translated fifty of the Psalms. This interesting work (the oldest of the many attempts to give the Bible in the vernacular of the English people) is still extant in a manuscript in the National Library, Paris.

      We may now pass on to notice the work of King Alfred the Great.

      Of all the kings who ever bore the title of Great, the Saxon king perhaps deserved it most; for he was a most remarkable man--a Christian, a scholar, a soldier, a statesman, and a king all in one.

      Alfred was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, England, in the year 849, A. D. This was a little more than a century after the venerable Bede had passed away. Alfred had the advantage of a loving and pious mother, who not only trained him in the practice of virtue, but created in him a spirit of patriotism, and the love [87] of learning. When he was a child of six years, he was taken by his father to Rome, and though so young, received impressions which were permanent. Amid the studies of his youth he obeyed the call to arms, fought the battles of his country, and began to reign when he was about twenty-two years of age.

      Alfred was a man who practised strict discipline and great regularity in all things. His day of twenty-four hours was divided into three equal portions. He gave eight hours to business, eight hours to study and devotion, and eight hours to sleep and bodily exercise. In those days clocks and watches were not so common as now, so he invented a plan to measure his time accurately. He had candles of certain lengths and thicknesses made, which he consumed in lanterns, he knowing how long each would burn.

      He took part in no less than fifty-six battles, and is said to have founded the English monarchy. He built England's first fleet of ships; established a militia; rebuilt many ruined cities, among them London; saved his people in time of war; ruled them wisely and well in times of peace; gave them wise, just, and humane laws; greatly encouraged commerce and manufactures; devoted a seventh of his entire revenue to public works; and founded schools and seats of learning. He died in the year 901, when but fifty-two years of age, after having reigned for thirty years. He concerns us now as a translator of the [88] Scriptures. He intensely loved his Bible, and was anxious that his people should be able to read it in their own language. Accordingly, he worked upon a translation of the Psalms, a portion of the Bible specially popular in all ages, and also upon the Gospels. His work was cut short by his somewhat early death; and, although we have no actual manuscript from his hand, doubtless his influence was felt in the subsequent Saxon translations.

      After the death of Alfred there came a long pause in Bible translation. Here and there, it is true, a little was done. Passing from King Alfred's work in the ninth century, we learn that at the close of the tenth, or early in the eleventh, the first seven books of the Old Testament were partly translated by an Archbishop of Canterbury named Ælfric.

      In the early part of the fourteenth century there were two prose versions of the Psalms. But it does not appear that the whole Bible was ever known in the English language at an earlier date than the days of John Wycliffe, whose work, we will notice in our next chapter. [89]

[HWGI 86-89]