4. Alfred, in his zeal for the improvement of his country, did not overlook the importance of vernacular Scripture. At the head of his laws he set in Anglo-Saxon the ten commandments, with such of the Mosaic injunctions in the three following chapters of Exodus, as were most to his purpose. What other parts of the Bible he translated, it is difficult to determine. A remarkable passage in his preface to the Pastoral of Pope Gregory, leaves no room for doubt, that if the more necessary portions of holy writ were not made accessible to his subjects in their own tongue, it was only because this wise and pious prince failed of the opportunity to accomplish his wishes.
5. Whatever might be the extent of Alfred's biblical labours, it is beyond question that soon after his days the Anglo-Saxon church had her own interpretations of those parts of Scripture which were in most frequent use. The Psalter ascribed to Aldhelm, if it be not the work of that prelate, certainly cannot be later than the ninth century. To the same period may be safely attributed the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospels. Several MSS. of it are preserved; but none of them appear to give the version in its original purity. Successive transcribers adapted the language to the idioms and inflexions of their own times and provinces. Some however of the copies are earlier and less degenerate than others. The latest seem to be considerably subsequent to the conquest, the most ancient may have been written more than a hundred years before it.
6. But it was not solely to this version that the unlettered Anglo-Saxon was indebted for a knowledge of what the Evangelists record. Access was also afforded to their narratives by means of verbal glosses made in copies of the Latin Gospels. These glosses were written between the lines of the text, rendering it in the same order word by word. Of the two glosses which are now exstant, one is found in the famous book of Durham, and was made by the priest Aldred, probably in the tenth century; the other of the same age is contained in a Ms. of the Bodleian Library, and had for its authors Owun and Farmen, the latter a priest at Harewood.
7. Similar glosses had been made on the Psalter. A gloss of this kind, probably of the ninth century, was published in 1640 from a Ms. belonging to sir Henry Spelman, by his son, afterwards sir John. Another gloss of the same period was published by the Surtees Society in 1843. Variations from these glosses are found in several other MSS. Glosses also occur on the canticles of the church, and the Lord's prayer; on portions of Scripture in the ritual of Durham, and on the more difficult words of the book of Proverbs.
