books to translate, and insisted on their being finished; so also he urged the judges to learn their duties and the laws of England.

His difficulties with the clergy were great; they were greater with the nobles. The English warriors and courtiers were sorely troubled when compelled to read and write; or, if they could not learn, to hire a freeman or slave to recite before them the books needful for their duties. When, at last, he despaired of the elder men, he sent all the young nobility, and many others not noble, into the schools where his own children were taught, so that they might learn to read both English and Latin books, and to translate one language into the other. But this was afterwards. His first business was his own education, and Ethelstan and Werwulf, his daily tutors, were not enough for him. So he asked Asser, of St. David's, in the farthest border of Wales, to live and study with him. Asser saw the King at Dene, near Chichester, early in 884, and he stayed three days with him. "Stay with me always," said the King, and when Asser pleaded his love for Wales and his duties there, the King replied, "Stay with me at least six months in the year." Asser suffered of a fever for more than a year, but in July, 886, he came to Leonaford, and stayed eight months at court. He probably then went slowly back to Wales, and returned to Elfred in the middle of 887. From that time he seems to have spent six months every year with the King. Then Elfred's close study began. "I translated and read to him," writes Asser, "whatever books he wished, for it was his custom, day and night, amid the afflictions of mind and body, to read books or have them read to him." Thus he learned Latin, and the first result of this association with Asser was Elfred's Handbook. This Handbook was his first work, and he was 45 years old when he began it. It

consisted of Bible extracts, excerpts from the Fathers, and of scattered illustrations. "Collected knowledge of Divine testimonies," "flowerets of many kinds from the Holy Scriptures," is afterwards said of this manual. This Handbook began in 887, and is fully set forth in English in 888 for the use of the people; unfortunately it is lost. His next effort was the Law-book. He compiled it out of the existing codes of Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, i.e., out of the laws of Ethelbert, Ine, and Offa.

It had an introduction and three parts:-(1) Elfred's Laws; (2) Ine's Laws; (3) Elfred's and Guthrun's Peace; and it was composed, said William of Malmesbury, "inter fremitus armorum et stridores lituorum "-amongst the clash of arms and the blaring of trumpets. This suggests the collection was being made in 885 or 886. By this time he had made a tolerable acquaintance with Latin, and as the most necessary class to benefit were the clergy the teachers of the people - he chose first to translate the Cura Pastoralis-the Herdsman's Book-of Gregory the Great, a kind of manual of the clergy's duties. It was probably finished in 889, and sent to the bishops in 890. "It is," says Stopford Brooke, "the book of a beginner. In it, however, English literary prose may be said to have made its first step; the fountain of that great stream of England's incomparable prose literature quietly burst forth in these hours of patient, yet more than royal labour." The preface is the first piece of any import we possess of English prose. It is redolent of Elfred's character and spirit. It marks the state of English literature at the time it was written. It makes us realise how great was the work Elfred did for literature, and the difficulties with which he had to contend.

The second book Elfred translated (890-91) was Bada's Ecclesiastical History of the English, and this was

addressed not only to the clergy but also to the laity, "who ought to know the history of their own land." He takes pains, as if it were of national interest, to give in full the story of the origin of English poetry. In 891 he began to work the Chronicle up into a national history. The new book Elfred now took in hand, probably in 891-3, was The History of the World, by Orosius, a book originally written in 418 at the suggestion of Augustine, to prove that the wars of the world and decay of the Roman Empire were not due, as the heathen declared, to Christianity.

This was the work of about five years, 888 to 893, years of "stillness" that Elfred loved, years when he nourished the arts of peace and literature, as he had done in wars and government; that "desire I have to leave to men who should live after me a memory of good deeds." He collected poetry - Northumbrian poetry - Boeda's account of Cædmon would have set him to it. "I should," says Stopford Brooke, "like to have seen Elfred reading Beowulf for the first time, or Asser and Ælfred reading together the Christ of Cynewulf." This was not all; he sang and listened to English song, but cared also for men and things beyond England. He kept open house for all who brought outlandish tales; he received pagan Danes, Britons from Wales, Scots, Armoricans, voyagers from Gaul, Germany, Rome, and messengers from Jerusalem and the far East, and we learn that he sent messengers to visit the Christian churches of India! Christian churches of India! Does not this seem like the foreshadowing of a great and then far-distant future? A foreshadowing of the reunion and commingling of the earliest and latest branches of the Aryan or noble races of humanity? The great Ælfred, full of earnest endeavour for the good of his fellow-men, often wearied out with mental and bodily

suffering, yet spares no pains in the strife with brutality and ignorance; and, in his sorrow, is full of sympathy and love that reach out to the ends of the earth. This seed of love which he sowed in the long-distant past, has it not now grown into a mighty union of nations? India, under her sufferings. loyal to her younger sister-younger at least in civilization and culture-but in her thousand years of vigorous life still old enough to be the little mother of many nations. These children of the East and children of the West, long before the dawn of dated history, had one common origin. Their language still contains words of similar sounds and meaning, showing they are of one family; and many hundreds of years before Elfred, had not India a cultured literature, with poetry and science, aye, even long before the glorious outburst of Greek art, literature, and philosophy?

Pardon this digression.

Elfred neglected not the arts, he developed the art of shipbuilding. He had architects from the continent, was himself an architect. He re-built fortresses; re-built London. He made and repaired roads; built with fair stone royal country-houses. In his reign, enamel work, gold-weaving, and gold-smithery flourished; and certain mechanical inventions were his amusement. Through all this lighter work he pursued the heavier of ruling his kingdom and preparing for wars.

These were his happiest days, but he lived, as he said, "with a naked sword always hanging over his head by a single thread," and his quiet was destroyed when the sword fell in 893. "Hardship and sorrow a king would wish to be without, but it is not a king's doom," the sorrow came with the pirates from Boulogne, with 250 vessels ; they seized on the forest of Andred; and Hastings, with 80 vessels, passed up the Thames. In 894, Hastings got into

Hampshire, and the whole of the Danelaw soon rose and joined the invaders. It was their dying effort. Ælfred was well prepared, and the war, though carried to Chester and the North, and to Exeter and the South, was victoriously finished by the capture of the Danish fleet in 897. From that date till his death Elfred had peace.

The book he now undertook was Boëthius' De Consola

tione Philosophia. He had now become an expert in translation, and boldly entered into the soul of the author. Boëthius wrote it in prison where Theodoric, king of the East Goths, had thrown him on a charge of conspiracy. Composed as a comfort in his trouble, it is a dialogue between himself and philosophy, who consoles him for his evil fortune by showing that the only lasting happiness is in the soul. Inward virtue is all, everything else is indifferent. The book is the last effort of heathen philosophy, and so near to a part of Christianity that it may be called the bridge between dying paganism and living Christianity. Many in the middle ages believed Boëthius to be a Christian, and his work was translated into most of the European languages.

We will give a few excerpts from Wise's translation of Ælfred's works in connection with his version by Boëthius.

On Wisdom.-Wisdom is the highest virtue, and he hath in him four other virtues. One is prudence; another moderation; the third is courage; the fourth is righteousness. Wisdom maketh those that love it wise, and worthy, and constant, and patient, and righteous, and with every good habit fitteth him that loveth it. They cannot do this who have the power of this world; nor can they give any virtue from their wealth to those who love them, if they have it not in their nature. From this it is very evident that the powerful in this world's wealth have no appropriate virtue in it; but their wealth comes to them from without, and they can have nothing from without which is their own.

On Glory.-Oh glory of the world! Why do foolish men, with a

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