Asser, a monk of Celtic extraction, belonging to the monastery of St. David’s, who became bishop of Sherborne and died in the year 910, was the adviser and coadjutor of king Alfred in the latter’s efforts to revive learning throughout the country. He is generally believed to have been the author of an extant “Life” of Alfred, consisting of two parts: (1) a chronicle of events extending from 851 to 887; (2) personal events respecting Alfred himself, designed as a kind of Appendix.

  It appears, in the first place, strange that the life of Alfred should have been written in his life time, when he was in the vigour of his age (in his forty-fifth year), and particularly by a man in the position of Asser. It is not easy to conceive for what purpose it was written, or to point out any parallel case; but it is still more difficult to imagine why (if Asser the biographer and Asser bishop of Sherborne be the same) its author, who lived nine years after Alfred’s death, did not complete it. When we examine the book itself, we see at once that it does not support its own character; it has the appearance of an unskilful compilation of history and legend. Asser’s life of Alfred consists of two very distinct parts; first, a chronicle of events, strictly historical, from 851 to 887; and, secondly, a few personal anecdotes of Alfred, which are engrafted upon the chronicle at the years 866 and 884, without any particular reference to those years, and at the conclusion. No person can compare the first, or strictly historical part of the work, with the Saxon Chronicle, without being convinced that it is a mere translation from the corresponding part of that document, which was most probably not in existence till long after Alfred’s death…. If the suspicions of the authenticity of this biography be well founded, its historical value is considerably diminished, although it is not entirely destroyed. It contains interesting traditions relating to Alfred’s life and character, many of which were without doubt true in substance; while our opinion of Alfred will be rather elevated, than lowered, by the right which is thus given us to separate the legendary matter from the truth. There is nothing remarkable in the style of the book attributed to Asser.

  Though most of the public events recorded in this book are to be found in the Saxon Chronicle, yet for many interesting circumstances in the life of our great Saxon king we are indebted to this biography alone. But, as if no part of history is ever to be free from suspicion, or from difficulty, a doubt has been raised concerning the authenticity of this work…. As the work has been edited by Petrie, so has it been here translated, and the reader, taking it upon its own merits, will find therein much of interest about our glorious king, concerning whom he will lament with me that all we know is so little, so unsatisfying.

  Although Alfred lived at a time when our perception of his individuality is not obscured by the shadowy clouds of tradition, and in a country where the sober prose of reality had early taken the place of all the poetry of more southern lands, yet he was never fortunate enough to find a Cassiodorus or an Eginhard amongst those by whom he was surrounded. At the first glance, indeed, Asser might be compared with the latter; but, if the Gesta Alfredi is somewhat more closely observed, one doubt after another will arise, whether, in the form which is preserved to us, this can really be the work of that bishop who was so trusted by his king. Criticism has been frequently employed on this little book, but it has never decided the important question. For my own part, I shall not undertake to solve such a problem in its full extent; and I doubt much whether it is possible to determine the point with absolute certainty. I find, so far, that, with the single exception of Thomas Wright, in the “Biographia Literaria Britannica, I., 405–413,” no one has thought of denying the authenticity of the book; the best English and German authors rather maintain that it was really written by Asser, and is our best authority for the life of this great king.

  Matthew of Westminster; Ingulphus, the author of the “Life of St. Neots;” Simon Dunel; William of Malmesbury; Roger of Wendover; Roger de Hoveden; Henry of Huntingdon; John Harding, or Capgrave, who wrote in the 14th or 15th century; Grafton; Fabian, or Rastul, who wrote 1529; and indeed numbers of those upon whom we are bound to depend for our notions of history, all are equally silent as to Asser and his history. It has even been questioned seriously whether there ever was an Asser, Bishop of Sherborne; but that is going too far. If we can credit any fact of that period, we can believe in the bishop; and we know just enough about him to make it probable that any forger knowing as much would deem him a proper person upon whose reputation to pin the history.

  We pass over an interval of nearly two hundred years before we come to another historian of real graphic power. Nor have we even then a great historian, much less a man of anything like Bede’s comprehensiveness and universality of mind. He is, in fact, not an historian at all, but only a biographer; his work is little more than a fragment, of which a very small portion is original, and the interest of it is mainly due to the genuine greatness of the man whom he describes to us. Nevertheless, Asser’s “Life of Alfred” is by no means contemptible, even as a literary composition; and if it is seldom studied in the original, some part of its contents is known to all and related in other language to children in the nursery at this day.

  In 1574 appeared Parker’s edition of Asser’s Life of Alfred, and we read in Strype that “of this edition of Asserius there had been great expectation among the learned.” We can add, that of this edition the interest is not yet extinct…. I venture to think that the internal evidence corresponds to the author’s name, that it was written at the time of, and by such a person as, Alfred’s Welsh bishop. The evident acquaintance with people and with localities, the bits of Welsh, the calling of the English uniformly “Saxons,” all mark the Welshman who was at home in England. In the course of this biography, which seems to have been left in an unfinished state, there is a considerable extract from the Winchester Chronicles translated into Latin.

  We have little reason to doubt that the bulk of the book is by the man whose name it bears. Additions have probably been made to it, legends inserted, events coloured and heightened to glorify the King, but on the whole its record is historical, and contemporary with Ælfred.