the Mercian Plegmund Archbishop of Canterbury; Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester, helped him in his own literary efforts, and two Mercian priests Æthelstan and Werwulf became his chaplains and tutors. But it was by example as well as precept that the king called England again to the studies it had abandoned. "What of all his troubles troubled him the most," he used to say, "was that, when he had the age and ability to learn, he could find no masters." But now that masters could be had, he worked day and night. He stirred nowhere without having some scholar by him. He remained true, indeed, to his own tongue and his own literature. His memory was full of English songs, as he had caught them from singers' lips; and he was not only fond of repeating them, but taught them carefully to his children. But he knew that the actual knowledge of the world must be sought elsewhere. Before many years were over he had taught himself Latin, and was soon skilled enough in it to render Latin books into the English tongue. His wide sympathy sought for aid in this work from other lands than his own. "In old time," the king wrote sadly, "men came hither from foreign lands to seek for instruction; and now, if we are to have it, we can only get it from abroad." He sought it among the West Franks and the East Franks; Grimbald came from St. Omer to preside over the new abbey he founded at Winchester, while John, the Old Saxon, was fetchedit may be from the Westphalian abbey of Corbey to rule the monastery he set up at Athelney.

83. Asser in Royal Service

A Welsh bishop was drawn with the same end to Wessex; and the account he has left of his visit and doings at the court brings us face to face with the king. "In those days," says Bishop Asser, "I was called by the king from the western and farthest border of Britain, and came to Saxon-land; and when, in a long journey, I set about approaching him, I arrived, in company with guides of that people, as far as the region of the Saxons, who lie on the right hand of one's road, which in the Saxon tongue is called Sussex. There for the first time I saw the king in the king's house, which is named Dene. And when I had been received by him with all kindness, he began to pray me earnestly to devote myself to his service, and be of his household, and to leave for his sake all that I possessed on the western side of Severn, promising to recompense me with greater possessions."

Asser, however, refused to forsake his home, and Ælfred was forced to be content with a promise of his return six months after. "And when he seemed satisfied with this reply, I gave him my pledge to return in a given time, and after four days took horse again and set out on my return to my country. But after I had left him and reached the city of Winchester, a dangerous fever laid hold of me, and for twelve months and a week I lay with little hope of life. And when at the set time I did not return to him as I had promised, he sent messengers to me to hasten my riding to him, and seek for the cause of my delay. But, as I could not take horse, I sent another messenger back to him to show him the cause of my tarrying, and to declare that if I recovered from my infirmity I would fulfil the promise I had made. When my sickness then had departed I devoted myself to the king's service on these terms, that I should stay with him for six months in every year, if I could, or, if not, I should stay three months in Britain and three months in Saxon-land. So it came about that I made my way to him in the king's house, which is called Leonaford, and was greeted by him with all honor. And that time I stayed with him in his court through eight months, during which I read to him whatever books he would that we had at hand; for it is his constant wont, whatever be the hindrances either in mind or body, by day and by night, either himself to read books aloud or to listen to others reading them."

84. Development of English Prose

The work, however, which most told upon English culture was done, not by these scholars, but by Elfred himself. The king's aim was simple and practical. He desired that "every youth now in England, that is freeborn and has wealth enough, be set to learn, as long as he is not fit for any other occupation, till they well know how to read English writing; and let those afterwards be taught in the Latin tongue who are to continue learning, and be promoted to a higher rank." For this purpose he set up, like Charles the Great, a school for the young nobles at his own court. Books were needed for them as well as for the priests, to the bulk of whom Latin was a strange tongue, and the king set himself to provide English books for these readers. It was in carrying out this simple purpose that Ælfred changed the whole front of English literature. In the paraphrase of Cadmon, in the epic of Beowulf, in the verses of Northumbrian singers, in

D

battle-songs and ballads, English poetry had already risen to a grand and vigorous life.

But English prose hardly existed. Since Theodore's time, theology had been the favorite study of English scholars, and theology naturally took a Latin shape. Historical literature followed Bæda's lead in finding a Latin vehicle of expression. Saints' lives, which had now become numerous, were as yet always written in Latin. It was from Ælfred's day that this tide of literary fashion suddenly turned. English prose started vigorously into life. Theology stooped to an English dress. History became almost wholly vernacular. The translation of Latin saint-lives into English became one of the most popular literary trades of the day. Even medicine found English interpreters. A national literature, in fact, sprang suddenly into existence which was without parallel in the Western world.

It is thus that in the literatures of modern Europe that of England leads the way. The Romance tongues the tongues of Italy, Gaul, and Spain were only just emerging into definite existence when Alfred wrote. Ulfilas, the first Teutonic prosewriter, found no successors among his Gothic people; and none of the German folk across the sea were to possess a prose literature of their own for centuries to come. English, therefore, was not only the first Teutonic literature - it was the earliest prose literature of the modern world. And at the outset of English literature stands the figure of Ælfred. The mighty roll of books that fills our libraries opens with the translations of the king.

He took his books as he found them they were, in fact, the popular manuals of his day: the compilation of Orosius, which was then the one accessible hand-book of universal history, the works of Bæda, the Consolation of Bothius, the Pastoral Book of Pope Gregory. "I wondered greatly," he says, "that of those good men who were aforetime all over England, and who had learned perfectly these books, none would translate any part into their own language. But I soon answered myself, and said, "They never thought that men would be so reckless and learning so fallen.'

As it was, however, the books had to be rendered into English by the king himself, with the help of the scholars he had gathered round him. "When I remembered," he says, in his preface to the Pastoral Book, "how the knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of

this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, and in English Shepherd's Book, sometimes word by word, and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbald, my mass-priest, and John, my mass-priest. And when I had learned it as I could best understand it, and as I could most clearly interpret it, I translated it into English." Ælfred was too wise a man not to own the worth of such translations in themselves. The Bible, he urged, with his cool commonsense, had told on the nations through versions in their own tongues. The Greeks knew it in Greek. The Romans knew it in Latin. Englishmen might know it, as they might know the other great books of the world, in their own English. "I think it better, therefore, to render some books that are most needful for men to know into the language that we may all understand."

But Ælfred showed himself more than a translator. He became an editor for his people. Here he omitted, there he expanded. He enriched his first translation, the Orosius, by a sketch of new geographical discoveries in the north. He gave a WestSaxon form to his selections from Bæda. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, and the churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak against abuses of power. The cold acknowledgment of a Providence by Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgment of the goodness of God. As Ælfred writes, his large-hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me," he prays, with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better than I, for every man must say what he says and do what he does according to his ability."

5. The Old English Chronicle

Among his earliest undertakings was an English version of Bæda's history; and it was probably the making of this version which suggested the thought of a work which was to be memorable in our literature. Winchester, like most other Episcopal monasteries, seems to have had its own Bishop's Roll, a series of meagre and irregular annals in the Latin tongue, for the most part mere jottings of the dates when West-Saxon bishop and WestSaxon king mounted throne and bishop-stool. The story of this

Roll and its aftergrowth has been ingeniously traced by modern criticism, and the general conclusions at which it has arrived seem probable enough. The entries of the Roll were posted up at uncertain intervals and with more or less accuracy from the days of the first West-Saxon bishop, Birinus. Meagre as they were, these earlier annals were historical in character and free from any mythical intermixture; but save for a brief space in Ine's day they were purely West-Saxon, and with the troubles which followed Ine's death they came to an end altogether.

It was not until the revival of West-Saxon energy under Ecgberht that any effort was made to take up the record again and to fill up the gap that its closing had made. But Swithun was probably the first to begin the series of developments which transformed this Bishop's Roll into a national history; and the clerk to whom he intrusted its compilation continued the Roll by a series of military and political entries to which we owe our knowledge of the reign of Æthelwulf, while he enlarged and revised the work throughout, prefixing to its opening those broken traditions of the coming of our fathers which, touched as they are here and there by mythical intermixture, remain the one priceless record of the conquest of Britain.

It was this Latin chronicle of Swithun's clerk that Ælfred seems to have taken in hand about 887, and whose whole character he changed by giving it an English form. In its earlier portions he carried still further the process of expansion. An introduction dating from the birth of Christ, drawn from the work of Bæda, was added to its opening, and entries from the same source were worked into the after-annals. But it was where Swithun's work ended that Ælfred's own work really began, for it is from the death of Æthelwulf that the Roll widens into a continuous narrativea narrative full of life and originality, whose vigor and freshness mark the gift of a new power to the English tongue.

The appearance of such a work in their own mother-speech could not fail to produce a deep impression on the people whose story it told. With it English history became the heritage of the English people. Bæda had left it accessible merely to noble or priest; Ælfred was the first to give it to the people at large. Nor was this all. The tiny streams of historic record, which had been dispersed over the country at large, were from this time drawn into a single channel. The Chronicle - for from this time we may use the term by which the work has become famous — served even more than the presence of the Dane to put an end to