Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/154

 102 STATESMEN AND SAGES which utterly disqualified him for the circumstances in which he was placed According to the historian Asser, young Alfred, being of a more comely person and sweeter disposition than his elder brothers, became the favorite of both his parents, and was sent by them to Rome, while yet a child, in order that he mi^ht be anointed king by the Pope himself. But though the feeble piety of Ethel- wulph showed this especial instance of regard for his son, he altogether neg lected his education, and the young prince in his twelfth year had not yet learned to read or write. Fortunately for himself, and still more so for the king- dom he was afterward to govern, he possessed a mind too active to be entirely subdued by the most unfavorable circumstances. If he could not read for him- self, he nevertheless loved to listen to the rude but inspiring strains of Saxon poetry when recited by others, and had he not been a hero and a statesman, he might probably have been a poet. At length, as the old chronicler tells us "on a certain day, his mother was shewing him and his brothers a Saxon book of poetry, which she held in her hand, and said, ' Whichever of you shall the soonest learn this volume, shall have it for his own.' ' Thus stimulated, Alfred bent himself to the task with all that steady ardor which so strongly character- ized him in after-life, and easily won the prize from his tardy competitors. This gave a fresh impulse to his natural appetite for learning ; even his passion for the chase could not divert him from earnest study ; nor was he to be deterred by what might have been a better excuse for indolence, the incessant tortures of the secret malady which had attacked him while yet a child, and which never left him but with life. What this secret disease was, the old chroniclers have forgot- ten, or for some reasons omitted, to explain. In 871, Alfred succeeded his brother in the sovereignty of Wessex, at a period when the whole country was suffering under the ravages of the Danes, who burnt, plundered, and destroyed without the least distinction of age, sex, or profession. Being still pagans, the convent was no more sacred to them than the palace or the cottage. They waged war upon all alike, and the general misery was yet far- ther increased by a raging pestilence, and the internal dissensions of the people. Alfred now for the first time took the field against these brave, but ruthless, invaders. He was defeated ; yet such was his skill and courage, that he was able to maintain the struggle till at length a peace, or rather a truce, was concluded between the combatants, for these intervals of calm seldom lasted beyond a year. Neither was this the worst of the evils that beset the Saxon prince. Any com- pact he might make with one party of the Danes was considered binding only upon that party, and had no influence whatever upon others of their countrymen, who had different leaders and different interests. Thus, upon the present occa- sion, Alfred had no sooner made terms with one piratical horde than he was in- vaded by a fresh body of them under Rollo ; and when he had compelled these to abandon Wessex, and seek for an easier conquest on the shores of Normandy, he was attacked by fresh bodies of Danes already settled in the other parts of England. So long, however, as they ventured to meet him in the open field, his skill secured him the victory ; till, taught by repeated defeats, they had re-