More 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.