His most enduring literary work, however, was the
inspiration and possibly partial authorship of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,'
a series of annals beginning with the Christian era, kept at various
monasteries, and recording year by year (down to two centuries and a half
after Alfred's own death), the most important events of history, chiefly
that of England. Most of the entries in the 'Chronicle' are bare and brief,
but sometimes, especially in the accounts of Alfred's own splendid
exploits, a writer is roused to spirited narrative, occasionally in verse;
and in the tenth century two great battles against invading Northmen, at
Brunanburh and Maldon, produced the only important extant pieces of
Anglo-Saxon poetry which certainly belong to the West Saxon period.
For literature, indeed, the West-Saxon period has very little permanent
significance. Plenty of its other writing remains in the shape of religious
prose--sermons, lives and legends of saints, biblical paraphrases, and
similar work in which the monastic and priestly spirit took delight, but
which is generally dull with the dulness of medieval commonplace
didacticism and fantastic symbolism. The country, too, was still distracted
with wars. Within fifty years after Alfred's death, to be sure, his
descendants had won back the whole of England from 'Danish' rule (though
the 'Danes,' then constituting half the population of the north and east,
have remained to the present day a large element in the English race).
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