heir literary acquirements; and displayed in their
distribution the utmost liberality and discrimination. Asser, who
afterwards became his biographer, was during his life the companion and
associate of his studies, and it is from his pen we learn that, when an
interval occurred inoccupied by his princely duties, Alfred stole into
the quietude of his study to seek comfort and instruction from the pages
of those choice volumes, which comprised his library. But Alfred was not
a mere bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without
meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply
upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of
philanthropy, and those high resolves, which did such honor to the Saxon
monarch. He viewed with sorrow the degradation of his country, and the
intellectual barrenness of his time; the warmest aspiration of his soul
was to diffuse among his people a love for literature and science, to
raise them above their Saxon sloth, and lead them to think of loftier
matters than war and carnage. To effect this noble aim, the highest to
which the talents of a monarch can be applied, he for a length of time
devoted his mind to the translation of Latin authors into the vernacular
tongue. In his preface to the Pastoral of Gregory which he translated, he
laments the destruction of the old monastic libraries by the Danes. "I
saw," he writes, "before alle were spoiled and burnt, how the churches
throughout Britain were filled with treasures and books,"[240] which must
have presented a striking contrast to the illiterate darkness which he
tells us afterwards spread over his dominions, for there were then very
few _paucissimi_ who could translate a Latin epistle into the Saxon
language.

When Alfred had completed the translation of Gregory's Pastoral, he sent
a copy to each of his bishops accompanied with a golden stylus or
pen,[241] thus conveying to them the hint that it was their duty to use
it in the service of piety and learning. Encouraged by the favorable
impression which this work immediately caused, he spared no pains to
follow up the good design, but patiently applied himself to the
translation of other valuable books which he rendered into as pleasing
and expressive a version as the language of those rude times permitted.
Besides these literary labors he also wrote many original volumes, and
became a powerful orator, a learned grammarian, an acute philosopher, a