six political comedies and the Memoirs of his Life--a work
which will always be read with interest, in spite of the cold
and languid gravity with which he delineates the most interesting
adventures and the strongest passions of his agitated life.
See Mem. di Vit. Alfieri; Sismondi, De la lit. du midi de
l'Europe; Walker's Memoir on Italian Tragedy; Giorn. de Pisa,
tom. lviii.; Life of Alfieri, by Centofanti (Florence, 1842);
Vita, Giornuli, Lettere di Alfieri, by Teza (Florence, 1861);
Vittorio Alfieri, by Antonini and Cognetti (Turin, 1898).
ALFORD, HENRY (1810-1871), English divine and scholar,
was born in London on the 7th of October 1810. He came of
a Somersetshire family, which had given five consecutive
generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's
early years were passed with his widowed father, who was
curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was an extremely
precocious lad, and before he was ten had written several
Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic
outlines. After a peripatetic school course he went up to
Cambridge in 1827 as a scholar of Trinity. In 1832 he was
34th wrangler and 8th classic, and in 1834 was made fellow of
Trinity. He had already taken orders, and in 1835 began
his eighteen years' tenure of the vicarage of Wymeswold in
Leicestershire, from which seclusion the twice-repeated
offer of a colonial bishopric failed to draw him. He was
Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1841-1842, and steadily
built up a reputation as scholar and preacher, which would
have been enhanced but for his discursive ramblings in the
fields of minor poetry and magazine editing. In September
1853 Alford removed to Quebec Chapel, London, where he had
a large and cultured congregation. In March 1857 Viscount
Palmerston advanced him to the deanery of Canterbury, where,
till his death on the 12th of January 1871, he lived the same
strenuous and diversified life that had always characterized
him. The inscription on his tomb, chosen by himself, is
``Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis.''
Alford was a not inconsiderable artist, as his picture-book,
The Riviera (1870), shows, and he had abundant musical and
mechanical talent. Besides editing the works of John Donne,
he published several volumes of his own verse, The School of
the Heart (1835), The Abbot of Muchelnaye (1841), and a
number of hymns, the best-known of which are ``Forward! be our
watch-word,'' ``Come, ye thankful people, come,'' and ``Ten
thousand times ten thousand.'' He translated the Odyssey,
wrote a well-known manual of idiom, A Plea for the Queen's
English (1863), and was the first editor of the Contemporary
Review (1866--1870). His chief fame, however, rests upon his
monumental edition of the New Testament in Greek (4 vols.),
which occupied him from 1841 to 1861. In this work he first
brought before English students a careful collation of the
readings of the chief MSS. and the researches of the ripest
continental scholarship of his day. Philological rather
than theological in character, it marked an epochal change
from the old homiletic commentary, and though more recent
research, patristic and papyral, has largely changed the
method of New Testament exegesis, Alford's work is still a
quarry where the student can dig with a good deal of profit.
His Life, written by his widow, appeared in 1873 (Rivington). (A. J. G.)
ALFRED, or AELFRED, known as THE GREAT (848-? 900), king
of England, was born in 848 at Wantage, and was the fourth
son of King AEthelwulf and his first wife (Osburh). He seems
to have been a child of singular attractiveness and promise,
and stories of his boyhood were remembered. At the age of
five (853) he was sent to Rome, where he was confirmed by Leo
IV., who is also stated to have ``hallowed him as king.''
Later writers interpreted this as an anticipatory crowning
in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of
Wessex. That, however, could not have been foreseen in
853, as Alfred had three elder brothers living. It is
probably to be understood either of investiture with the
consular insignia, or possibly with some titular royalty
such as that of the under-kingdom of Kent. In 855 Alfred
again went to Rome with his father AEthelwulf, returning
towards the end of 856. About two years later his father
died. During the short reigns of his two eldest brothers,
AEthelbald and AEthelberht, nothing is heard of Alfred.
But with the accession of the third brother AEthelred (866)
the public life of Alfred begins, and he enters on his
great work of delivering England from the Danes. It is in
this reign that Asser applies to Alfred the unique title of
secundarius, which seems to indicate a position analogous to
that of the Celtic tanist, a recognized successor, closely
associated with the reigning prince. It is probable that
this arrangement was definitely sanctioned by the witenagemot,
to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should
AEthelred fall in battle. In 868 Alfred married Ealhswith,
daughter of AEthelred Mucill, who is called ealdorman of the
Gaini, an unidentified district. The same year the two
brothers made an unsuccessful attempt to relieve Mercia from
the pressure of the Danes. For nearly two years Wessex had a
respite. But at the end of 870 the storm burst; and the year
which followed has been rightly called ``Alfred's year of
battles.'' Nine general engagements were fought with varying
fortunes, though the place and date of two of them have not
been recorded. A successful skirmish at Englefield, Berks
(December 31, 870), was followed by a severe defeat at Reading
(January 4, 871), and this, four days later, by the brilliant
victory of Ashdown, near Compton Beauchamp in Shrivenham
Hundred. On the 22nd of January the English were again
defeated at Basing, and on the 22nd of March at Marton, Wilts,
the two unidentified battles having perhaps occurred in the
interval. In April AEthelred died, and Alfred succeeded to
the whole burden of the contest. While he was busied with
his brother's exequies, the Danes defeated the English in
his absence at an unnamed spot, and once more in his presence
at Wilton in May. After this peace was made, and for the
next five years the Danes were occupied in other parts of
England, Alfred merely keeping a force of observation on the
frontier. But in 876 part of the Danes managed to slip past
him and occupied Wareham; whence, early in 877, under cover of
treacherous negotiations, they made a dash westwards and seized
Exeter. Here Alfred blockaded them, and a relieving fleet
having been scattered by a storm, the Danes had to submit
and withdrew to Mercia. But in January 878 they made a
sudden swoop on Chippenham, a royal vill in which Alfred had
been keeping his Christmas, ``and most of the people they
reduced, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band
made his way . . . by wood and swamp, and after Easter he . .
. made a fort at Athelney, and from that fort kept fighting
against the foe'' (Chron..) The idea that Alfred, during
his retreat at Athelney, was a helpless fugitive rests upon
the foolish legend of the cakes. In reality he was organizing
victory. By the middle of May his preparations were complete
and he moved out of Athelney, being joined on the way by the
levies of Somerset, Wilts and Hants. The Danes on their side
moved out of Chippenham, and the two armies met at Edington in
Wiltshire. The result was a decisive victory for Alfred. The
Danes submitted. Guthrum, the Danish king, and twenty-nine of
his chief men accepted baptism. By the next year (879) not only
Wessex, but Mercia, west of Watling Street, was cleared of the
invader. This is the arrangement known as the peace of Wedmore
(878), though no document embodying its provisions is in
existence. And though for the present the north-eastern half
of England, including London, remained in the hands of the
Danes, in reality the tide had turned, and western Europe
was saved from the danger of becoming a heathen Scandinavian
power. For the next few years there was peace, the Danes
being kept busy on the continent. A landing in Kent in 884
or 885,1 though successfully repelled, encouraged the East
Anglian Danes to revolt. The measures taken by Alfred to
repress this revolt culminated in the capture of London in 885
or 886, and the treaty known as Alfred and Guthrum's peace,
whereby the boundaries of the treaty of Wedmore (with which
this is often confused) were materially modified in Alfred's
favour. Once more for a time there was a lull; but in
the autumn of 892 (893) the final storm burst. The Danes,
finding their position on the continent becoming more and more
precarious, crossed to England in two divisions, amounting in
the aggregate to 330 sail, and entrenched themselves, the larger
body at Appledore and the lesser under Haesten at Milton in
Kent. The fact that the new invaders brought their wives and
children with them shows that this was no mere raid, but a
deliberate attempt, in concert with the Northumbrian and East
Anglian Danes, to conquer England. Alfred, 893 (894), took up
a position whence he could observe both forces. While he was
negotiating with Haesten the Danes at Appledore broke out and
struck north-westwards, but were overtaken by Alfred's eldest
son, Edward, and defeated in a general engagement at Farnham,
and driven to take refuge in Thorney Island in the Hertfordshire
Colne, where they were blockaded and ultimately compelled to
submit. They then fell back on Essex, and after suffering
another defeat at Benfleet coalesced with Haesten's force at
Shoebury. Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at
Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian
Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed fort on the coast
of North Devon. Alfred at once hurried westwards and raised
the siege of Exeter; the fate of the other place is not
recorded. Meanwhile the force under Haesten set out to march
up the Thames valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their
friends in the west. But they were met by a large force under
the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wilts and Somerset, and
forced to head off to the north-west, being finally overtaken
and blockaded at Buttington, which some identify with Buttington
Tump at the mouth of the Wye, others with Buttington near
Welshpool. An attempt to break through the English lines
was defeated with loss; those who escaped retreated to
Shoebury. Then after collecting reinforcements they made a
sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of
Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade, but
contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the
neighbourhood. And early in 894 (895) want of food obliged
the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of this
year and early in 895 (896) the Danes drew their ships up the
Thames and Lea and fortified themselves twenty miles above
London. A direct attack on the Danish lines failed, but
later in the year Alfred saw a means of obstructing the
river so as to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The
Danes realized that they were out-manoeuvred. They struck
off north-westwards and wintered at Bridgenorth. The next
year, 896 (897), they abandoned the struggle. Some retired to
Northumbria, some to East Anglia; those who had no connexions
in England withdrew to the continent. The long campaign was
over. The result testifies to the confidence inspired by
Alfred's character and generalship, and to the efficacy of the
