Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/21

Rh learning lay nearest his heart. He himself had always loved it, its books and its bookmen, and he wanted his people to share his love. He quite understood that before a nation can begin to advance along the road of enlightenment and civilization it must be taught the elements of education; and we know from his own account into what a lamentable ignorance, not only the common people, but even the clergy had fallen. The words of the King on this subject are most instructive, and for the history of his times of prime authority. 'The sacred orders,' he says, 'were once zealous in teaching and study.... Men used to come to England from other lands in search of wisdom and instruction, but now we should be obliged to get them from abroad if we wanted them. So entirely was learning fallen away in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their church services in English, or even turn a Latin letter into English; and I think there were not many beyond the Humber. There were so few of them that I cannot call to mind a single one south of the Thames, when I succeeded to the throne.... Thinking over all this, I remembered also how I had seen, before the country was all ravaged and burnt, the churches throughout England standing full of treasures and books. There was also a great number of God's ministers, but they had very little profit of their books, of which, not being written in their own tongue, they could make nothing.'

One of Alfred's first acts in furtherance of his educational schemes was, if we may believe the story in Asser's Life, the foundation of a court school, wherein he followed, consciously or not, the example of the great