partiality, that it is said Ælfred caused even his judges to be hung as malefactors who had condemned poor men to death unjustly or against the verdict of their jurors!

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Asser, the pious bishop and faithful friend, says, "the Lord suffered him to be very often wearied by his enemies, afflicted by adversity, and to be depressed by the contempt of his people." Wherefore," he adds, "he fell often into such misery, and despondently withdrew himself so that none of his subjects knew where he was or what had befallen him."

Asser had already declared that on the invasion of Gorm or Godrun many had fled into exile, and that "for the greatest part, all the inhabitants of that region submitted to his dominion." Some say Elfred had offended his people, some say their flight or disaffection produced his. "Elfred, however, was greatest when all seemed lost," says Stopford Brooke.

He refuged himself at Athelney (the Ethlings or nobles' isle), a hill defended by the Parret and the Tone, with morass and forest between, among the deep-watered marshes of Somersetshire. It is here that legend places the scene of the cowherd's hut, and Ælfred's watching and forgetting the burning loaves; and it is here that the famous jewel of gold and enamel was found, with the inscription," Ælfred bade me to be wrought." There he sat for three, perhaps seven months, gathering host, and broke forth from his solitude in the spring of 878, attacked the Danish army at Ethadun, drove them to their camp, forced their surrender in a fortnight, and dragged from them the peace of Wedmore. That peace, in spite of the later struggle and that with Hastings between 886 and 896, settled England. It broke the advance of the Danes, and weakened their power in England and abroad. It left Wessex and Kent in Elfred's hands; it secured him that

part of Mercia west of Watling Street-from the Ribble to the Severn Valley-and to the upper valley of the Thames. The rest of England, from the Tees to the Thames, including London (which Alfred, however, got in 886), was in the hands of the Danes.

Over the Danelaw-as it was called-Danish customs, religion and commerce prevailed; the Danish sagas were sung, and the Danish spirit grew. One would think that these folk, especially when they became Christians, would have left some traces of their keen individuality on the poetry or prose of the Danelaw. The stories of Horn and Havelok, rooted in Danish and Keltic traditions, a few legends in Layamon's poems, this is all, excepting placenames and folk-tales, to show us that more than half, and, in after years, the whole of England belonged to Danish. kings and to Danish folk. But the Danes who took England were scarcely a nation; when they settled down they became part of the English people and absorbed their ways; they were of the same race and tongue as the men they conquered. Christianity also knit them to the English, who made them Christians. With the loss of their wild gods, half their individuality fled away. When Elfred was forced to leave the Danelaw in Danish hands, he little thought that he was making Englishmen. The Danes and English then were two, not one, and Elfred had to keep the English elements uppermost. When Elfred had thus made peace for his people, he wished to educate them. But there were more needful things first; and he spent the six years of quiet, from 878 to 884, in repairing ruins made by the Danes; in reforming the army and in building a navy-he was the first to give us a navy—and in establishing just law and government.

The peace was broken in 885 by a fresh attack of the Northmen, but again secured the following year. Elfred

was now complete master, not only of his kingdom, but also of the national imagination. "In that year," says the Chronicle, "all Angle-kyn turned to Elfred except those in bondage to Danish men." In the following year he began with his mingled humility, good sense and selfconfidence, that revival of learning which he had long desired. The foundation for his great purpose had already been partly laid. He had collected around him a number of scholars who should be first his teachers, and afterwards enable him to teach the English people in the English language what they ought to know as citizens of a great country, and as pilgrims to a heavenly country. He called to this work, Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester, who himself presided over the school in that town; Denwulf, of Winchester, the husband of the wife who scolded Elfred for burning the cakes; he had capacity, and Elfred advised him to learn, promoted him, and at length made him bishop; and the Mercian Phlegmund he made Archbishop of Canterbury; two Mercian priests, Æthelstan and Werwulf, who were his chaplains and teachers (all. three children of Worcester College), and these exhausted all that England could do for him. He then turned to foreign lands for help. "Men once came," he said, "from out-land countries to seek instruction in England; now if we need it, we can only get it abroad." So he called Grimbold from Flanders, and put him over the new Abbey rising at Winchester; and John, the old Saxon from the monastery at Corvei, in Westphalia, to preside over the religious house his gratitude had dedicated to God at Athelney.

His incessant spirit kept these men to their work. He translated Gregory's Pastoral Care to teach the clergy their duties; he urged the bishops to give their leisure to literature, and urged it as a religious duty. He gave them

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

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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

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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 Boeda's Ecclesiastical History of the English, and this was