than thirty localities in
our beautiful county Surrey are painted in the book; of other parts of
England twelve; of France and Italy twelve; there are more than twenty
historical characters honestly (as I judge) depicted; and some fifteen
ideal ones fairly enough invented as accessories: I preferred Stephan
to the commoner Stephen, for etymological and archaeological reasons: it
is clearly nearer the Greek, and is spelt so in ancient records."

King Alfred's own Poems.

One of the rarest of the books I have written (if any bibliomaniac of
some future age desires to collect them) must always be "King Alfred's
Poems, now first turned into English metres;" for the little volume was
privately printed by Dr. Allen Giles, the edition being only of 250
copies, which soon vanished, a few of them bearing Hall & Virtue's name
on a new title, and being dated 1850,--the majority hailing from the
private press aforesaid. I constructed it purposely for the "Jubilee
Edition of the Works of King Alfred," learning as well as I could (by
the help of Dr. Bosworth's Dictionary and a Grammar) in a few weeks a
little Anglo-Saxon,--and I confess considerably assisted by Mr. Fox's
prose translation of Boethius. There are thirty-one poems in all, some
being of Alfred's own, but the major part rendered by the wise king out
of Latin into the language of his own people to help their teaching. I
turned it into English verse in thirty-one different metres, each being
as nearly as I could manage in the rhythm of the original: there were no
rhymes in those days; alliteration was the only sort of jingle: in the
judgment of Mr. Fox and some other Anglo-Saxon critics my version was
fairly close, and for the poetical part of my own production at least
nothing is of the slipshod order of half rhymes or alternate prose and
verse--too common, especially in our hymnology--but honest double
rhyming throughout. Without transcribing the little volume I could not
give a true idea of it: but here shall come three or four samples:--

"Lo, I sang cheerily
In my bright days,--
But now all wearily
Chaunt I my lays,--
Sorrowing tearfully,
Saddest of men,
Can I sing cheerfully
As I could then?" &c. &c.

Here is a verse of another:--

"O Thou that art Maker of heaven and earth,
Who steerest the stars, and hast given them birth,
For ever thou reignest upon Thy high throne,
And turnest all swiftly the heave