302
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. i. APRIL
Chronicle' makes no mention whatever of the
rebellion, and Malmesbury gives no reason.
The whole affair was confused and disgraceful,
and appears to have been passed over as
lightly as possible hushed up, in fact.
Ethelwulf lived only two years longer, and
his shameless girl-wife went through the form
of marriage with her stepson Ethelbald,
showing, as I contend, that her first marriage
was looked upon as null and void.
Yet this Judith is supposed to be the vir- tuous stepmother who filled her young stepson Alfred with a desire for learning, and in a deservedly popular history of the English Church is a fancy picture of the young matron with her stepsons around her, encouraging them to study !
Asser, in his life of Alfred, expressly says that it was his mother who did so, and, as I believe, in her retirement in the West she gathered her younger sons around her, and recognizing in Alfred a nature that was too noble to be wasted merely on fighting and hunting, she encouraged him in tastes for higher things.
Once more Osburga appears in Alfred's legendary but, as I well believe, truthful- history. When, after his succeeding to the throne, he was chased from his kingdom and had to take refuge in the marshes of Somerset at Athelriey, we hear of the double dream dreamed by his mother and himself at the same time that Alfred would be shortly restored to his throne. Oh ! say the improvers of history, it cannot be his mother; she was dead, though her death is nowhere recorded. But his mother it was, as I believe. If Alfred were then married, he had probably placed his wife and children in some more distant and secure place, and had been joined by his mother in this retreat.
Of course it is said, and truly, that Ethel- wulf was a religious man, and therefore he could not have married again in his wife's lifetime; but marriages, especially in the French Court, were woefully lax, and Popes of Rome would grant divorce for very insuffi- cient reasons, and as Ethelwulf himself had been released from his ecclesiastical vows, he probably thought that as Osburga had chosen the religious life he was released from his matrimonial bonds.
There is one more noticeable feature in Alfred's history, and that is how sternly he was rebuked by Neotus, said to be his kins- man, for his harshness towards his subjects, and the disgust he showed in the early days of his reign at their rough, uncultured ways and coarse tastes. Neot is said to have warned him that the result would be that he
would be detested by them and chased from
his throne, which actually happened. Now
it is scarcely probable that Neot would have
rebuked Alfred so severely had he not in some
way a sense of superiority over him, and if
he were in truth the same as the brave sub-
regulus Athelstan, this would account for the
authority with which he spoke to his youngest
brother.
Of course it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to prove my theory to be correct ; but I submit that it clears away the diffi- culties that surround Alfred's early history, and accounts as nothing else can for the mysterious rebellion of Ethelbald against his father, supported as it was by his father's most faithful friends ; that it accounts in some degree for Judith's shameless second marriage; and that the identity of Prince Athelstan and St. Neot makes Osburga's retirement and Alfred's retreat into the West, with the legends attached, to be probable events in his history.
CHARLOTTE G. BOGEE,
Chart Sutton.
FITZGERALD'S 'EUPHRANOR.'
THE 'Literary Gossip' of the Athenceum
for 5 March notes that a copy of Edward
FitzGerald's * Euphranor' was recently sold at
Sotheby's for thirty-eight shillings. Although
this little work was not published till 1851,
it had been begun several years before. At
the end of 1846 FitzGerald wrote to Prof.
Cowell that he had been " doing some of the
dialogue, which seems the easiest thing in the
world to do, but is not." Though it was
evidently a favourite production, to be known
as the writer was a "real horror" to Fitz-
Gerald, but he hoped it would be read for
what little benefit it might do. It seems to
have had a rapid sale, for a second edition
was issued, of which I should be glad to have
some particulars, as I have never met with a
copy. I conclude that it was published by
the late Mr. John W. Parker, of West Strand,
for on 28 May, 1868, FitzGerald wrote to Prof.
Cowell that he "had a Lot" of 'Euphranors'
"returned from Parker's when they were going to
dissolve their House : I would not be at the Bother
of any further negociation with any other Book-
seller, about half-a-dozen little Books which so few
wanted ; so had them all sent here."
I should have concluded that these were re- mainder copies taken by Parker off Pickering, but a little further on FitzGerald writes :
" I had supposed that you didn't like the second Edition as well as the First: and had a suspicion: myself that, though I improved it in some respects, I had done more harm than good Perhaps Tenn>otm
