interest or other circumstances, might seem desirable to those whose province it was to supervise the literary department of the brotherhood.
As contributors to the composition of the Saxon Chronicle, the names of king Ælfred and of archbishops Plegemund and Dunstan have been mentioned. This, too, is pure conjecture; though, with respect at least to Ælfred and Plegemund, a conjecture by no means void of probability; nor shall we perhaps greatly err in assigning to their influence and authority the earlier or original portion of the earliest manuscript,[1] ending with the year 891, and which, from a comparison of the form of its letters with those of other manuscripts of the same period, may be safely assigned to the end of the ninth century, and, with a semblance of probability, as the prototype of the other copies. In favour, too, of Ælfred's participation in the composition of the Chronicle, may be noticed the greater fullness of narrative that prevails, from the year 853, or soon after Ælfred's birth; also that (with the exception of MS. Cott. Domit. A. VIII.), the account of the acts of that prince, is, in all the manuscripts, so strikingly similar; while, in other
- ↑ The Corpus Christi manuscript.—It is the opinion of Dr. Lappenberg (England under the A. S. Kings, Introd. p. xxxix.), and, after him, of the author of the Preface to the 'Monumenta Historica Britannica' (p. 75), that this manuscript is in the dialect of Mercia; an opinion which, if well founded, would prove that the belief in Ælfred's participation in the work is wholly groundless. But the examples cited by the authority last mentioned, in support of the dialect being Mercian, seem to me more than questionable: as cuom for com, Walas for Wealas, slog for sloh, hiera for heora, Miercna for Mercna (or rather for hyra, Myrcna) ; since in Ælfred's Boethius we find hiera and hiere, with numerous other instances of ie for y, as ieldran for yldran, etc.; also ofslog for ofsloh, and genog for genoh; Wealas, too, occurs in this very Corpus manuscript. Cuom for com, may, with every probability, be regarded as an Anglian form; though even that may be only an archaism, Goth. cwam. The two dialects have, I believe, been never satisfactorily distinguished; at the same time, we may, I think, without risk of error, pronounce the Corpus manuscript of West Saxon origin.
