§ 9. Later English Versions of the ‘Consolations.’

We will now place before the reader in chronological order specimens of the English versions of the Consolation of Philosophy that have been made since Alfred’s time. Taken together they give a fair idea of the course of English translation during the last five Edition: current; Page: [xxxiii]hundred years. The same passages, both from the prose and the verse, will be given where possible.

Not a single attempt was made, so far as is known, to follow the great King’s example, until nearly five centuries after he wrote his Boethius. The task would have been perhaps too heavy for the English language and for English learning. During these centuries our speech had been as it were in the melting-pot. The old standard West-Saxon, in the political and social ferment that had followed the Norman Conquest, had given place to various provincial dialects as literary media. These in their turn had begun to merge in another standard form, rivalling in vigour and adaptability the Norman stocks from which it took many a graft. This standard English, which at length emerged from the competition of dialects, to last with comparatively slight change to the present day, was largely indebted to the labours of our first great modern poet. Geoffrey Chaucer in the beginning of his literary career devoted much of his time to translation, and felt himself obliged, in the course of his work, to transplant hundreds of Norman-French words into his own tongue. By this means he made English a more complete instrument than he found it; and in his literal translation of the Consolation of Philosophy he laid the foundations of an English philosophical prose. This version, all in prose, swarming with new words, the greater number of which are still in use, is of uncommon interest, as it is the first prose work of the master, and the source of the many allusions to and quotations from Boethius which run through his original poems. A peculiarity of Chaucer’s Boèce lies in the inclusion of Edition: current; Page: [xxxiv]glosses or explanatory notes in the text. They are usually introduced by the words ‘That is to say,’ and most of them were derived from the Latin manuscript which Chaucer had before him.