Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/23

Rh much leisure for keeping up or adding to his learning. Hence he could not fully understand unaided the more difficult books written in Latin, the sole language of the learned in Western Europe in his day. In the Life of Alfred ascribed to Asser, we are told that one of his learned men used daily to read aloud to the King passage from his favourite authors. William of Malmesbury, too, a later chronicler, who made use of early annals and other old sources,' mentions how Asser used to explain to Alfred the harder passages met with in reading the Latin text of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius. Being aware that the knowledge of Latin was wellnigh extinct among the clergy of his kingdom, and that to the common folk every avenue to learning was barred, Alfred conceived, and about the year 886 began to carry out, a plan of translating into English certain well-known standard works which he judged best fitted to give in moderate compass a good plain fund of knowledge to the Englishman of his day. These works, to use the King's words, were 'such books as are the most needful for all men to know.' The modern reader should remember that a man who had mastered ten Latin books in the ninth century in England would have been accounted well read, and a knowledge of the contents of fifty would have amounted to encyclopaedic learning. Alfred's choice fell upon the following works:-

1. The Universal History of Orosius, written early in the fifth century, being a compendium of the history of the world, written from a Christian point of view.

2. The History of the English Church by the Venerable Bede, containing the history of the English from