tions, which occupied the leisure of his long and useful life.

These include, on his own showing in a letter to Hugo II., bishop of Sitten, Cato's 'De Moribus,' Virgil's Bucolics,' the Andrias' of Terence, Marcianus Capella, Aristotle's Categories' and 'De Interpretatione,' treatises on rhetoric and arithmetic, a psalter, part of the book of Job, Boethius's tract on the Trinity, and the Consolation of Philosophy.'

It is probable that all of these books were not written by Notker himself; it is almost certain that he only completed two books of the Consolation.' But if he did not actually do all the work, he at least inspired the workers, who carried out his intention so completely as to render it often impossible to distinguish the master's hand from that of the apprentice.

The translation which here concerns us opens with a short and fairly accurate sketch in German of the state of things at Rome in the days of Boethius

:

"St Paul promised those who in his time were awaiting the Last Day that it would not come before the Roman empire had fallen, and Antichrist begun his reign." The author then touches lightly on the rules of Otacher and Thioterih, and

on the wresting of the latter's kingdom from him by Alderich, which marks the overthrow of Roman liberty. "When the Goths were driven out under Justinus Minor, there came the Langobards from the north and ruled Italy for over two hundred years. After them the Franks, whom we call Carlings, and after them the Saxons. So now is the Roman empire destroyed, according to the words of the holy apostle Paul."

With this prelude Notker proceeds at once to the Conquestio Boetii de instabilitate fortunæ."

His method of translation is to give a sentence or group of words of the original (which he arranges for the sake of his pupils in as simple and straightforward a form as possible), followed by the German equivalent. This last is expanded, as the occasion seems to require it, by passages of explanation and paraphrase of varying length. One of the most remarkable features of his style is the way in which he has recourse to Latin to help him out of a difficulty with a turn of expression or a technical term which cannot be supplied from the German. For instance

1. "Ecce laceræ camenæ dictant mihi scribenda' (the real order of the Latin being, "Ecce mihi laceræ dictant scribenda camenæ") he renders by, "Tîe "

N

(ie., the Muses) "míh êr lêrton1 ioconda carmina, tîe lêrent mîh nû flebilia."

دو

3

sirenes sínt

2. "Sed abite potius sirenes . . . méretier, fóne déro sánge intslâfent tie uérigen,* et patiuntur naufragium."

Each section of prose or verse (I am here speaking of the original divisions of the book--Notker, of course, makes no attempt at a metrical version) has its appropriate Latin heading (vide supra).

One can hardly resist the temptation of comparing Notker's Boethius' with Alfred's; but it is obvious that, apart from their common characteristic of vernacular translation, there is no analogy between them. Alfred's primary aim was to place in the hands of his subjects a volume of philosophy from which he had himself derived help and comfort, and the result is a work of high artistic merit. Notker's object was to teach his scholars Latin through the medium of a book which, besides its intrinsic philosophical value, would readily lend itself to commentary and exegesis, and which was especially useful as an example of close logical argument: the result is a work of unsurpassed philological interest to modern scholars. This is not, indeed, what its

2 Sea creatures (animal maris).

1 Lernten. 3 Fall asleep (entschlafen). 4 Mariners ferrymen (Fährmann).

author intended, but quite what we might have expected; for, as Piper says, Notker's method would only enlarge the learner's Latin vocabulary, and not at all impart to him the sound grammatical knowledge which is the basis of all education through language.1 But while the German translation ranks far below the Anglo-Saxon as literature, it is not without a charm of its own, and is an admirable specimen of medieval annotation, with all its fine careless display of curious knowledge, and its delightful naïveté of illustration. Let me give a single example. When Boethius is describing the appearance of Philosophy as she stands by his bedside, he says: "Staturæ discretionis ambiguæ (fuit). Nam nunc quidem ad communem sese hominum mensuram cohibebat, nunc vero pulsare cœlum summi verticis cacumine videbatur."

The translation runs as follows: "She was in her height of doubtful size; I could not rightly tell how tall she was. For now she came down to our measure (in that she sometimes considers human affairs), and anon she seemed to touch the sky with her uplifted head (in that she understands astronomy).”

I have said that Notker's main object was to teach his pupils Latin. He had, however, when 1 Op. cit., p. 353.

he undertook this and kindred translations, another end in view beyond the mere editing of classical reading-books for his monastery's school, and one that touches us far more closely. He was fully aware of the virtue of the vernacular as a medium of education, and determined to carry to completion the scheme of which the outline had been drawn by Charles the Great two hundred years before ("inchoavit et grammaticam patrii sermonis," writes Einhart, the biographer of the Frankish emperor); in other words, he resolved to reduce to order and fix on a scientific footing the laws of accent and pronunciation which his countrymen unconsciously obeyed in speaking their own language. Hrabanus Maurus (776-856) had already been at work in the same direction, and had authorised the use of the circumflex and acute accents to designate long and short syllables. But it is to Notker, and especially to his 'Boethius,' that we must turn for our knowledge of Old High-German phonetics, of the exact quantity of its terminations and the value of its vowels.

In his letter to the bishop of Sitten he says: "Oportet enim scire quia verba theutonica sine accentu scribenda non sunt præter articulos, ipsi soli sine accentu pronuntiantur acuto vel circumflexo." And his practice in no way falls behind