Anglo-Saxon prose owes its origins to two impulses, first, a national or patriotic, and second, a religious, educational or Latin im pulse. The earliest prose (consult Sweet, 'Old est English Texts,' 'Early English Text So ciety,' Vol. 83) dates from the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th centuries, and con sists chiefly of glosses on Latin texts, of wills and similar legal documents. Anglo-Saxon laws were early written in the vernacular, being recorded apparently in much the same form which they had assumed in oral tradition; and it is probable that by the middle or end of the 8th century a custom of preserving records of events of national or local interest in English had grown up at various seats of learning throughout the country. If so, however, these records have not been preserved, owing prob ably to the fact that after their content had been incorporated into other and later docu ments, the originals were lost or destroyed. The chief extant prose monuments of patriotic or national interest are the codes of laws, which were got together and revised at various periods, and under the direction of various kings, one of the most notable forms being that known as the Legal Code of Alfred, and the Anglo-Saxon 'Chronicle' (consult 'English Chronicles)), in its final form written under the direction of Alfred the Great and perhaps in part actually by him, but to some degree also based on pre-existing Anglo-Saxon and Latin documents. The prose of educational and religious interest may be considered in two groups, that centring about the name of Alfred (849-901) or Early West-Saxon prose, and that centring about the name of 2Elfric (955 1025?) or Late West-Saxon prose. Early West Saxon prose consists almost altogether of trans lations of Latin works. Those which there is reason to believe issued directly from the pen of King Alfred are translations of Pope Gregory s
The prose of the Late West-Saxon period consists in part of translations of Latin theo logical writings and of parts of the Bible, but owing to the renewed interest in preaching ris ing out of the Benedictine reform of the latter half of the 10th century, also of a considerable body of sermon literature reflective of contem porary conditions in England. The chief col
lections are the 'Blickling Homilies,' so called because the manuscript in which they are preserved is kept at Blickling Hall, Norfolk; the sermons of Wulfstan; and the (Homilm Catholics'' or
Bibliography.— The standard Anglo-Saxon grammars are Siever,
Gram matik) (3d ed., 1898, translated into English by A. S. Cook) ; Buelbring, (Altenglisches Elemen tarbuch' (unfinished, the first part appearing in 1902) ; and Kaluza, 'Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache' (Pt. 1, 2d ed., 1906). More elementary presentations of the grammar will be found in the beginners' books by Sweet,