military skill, which was successful if not
brilliant, and by his never-wavering devotion and English persistency,
he at last freed the southern part of the island from his merciless and
treacherous enemies, and laid the firm foundation of West Saxon
supremacy. If Alfred had failed in any respect to be the great king that
he was, English history would have been changed for all time.

Although Alfred had saved his kingdom, yet it was a kingdom almost in
ruins. The hopeful advance of culture had been entirely arrested. The
great centres of learning had been utterly destroyed in the north, and
little remained intact in the south. And even worse than this was the
demoralization of all classes, and an indisposition to renewed effort.
There was, moreover, a great scarcity of books.

Alfred showed himself as great in peace as in war, and at once set to
work to meet all those difficulties. To supply the books that were so
urgently needed, he found time in the midst of his perplexing cares to
translate from the Latin into the native speech such works as he
thought would supply the most pressing want. This was the more necessary
from the prevailing ignorance of Latin. It is likely that portions of
the works that go under his name were produced under his supervision by
carefully selected co-workers. But it is certain that in a large part of
them we may see the work of the great Alfred's own hand.

He has used his own judgment in these translations, omitting whatever he
did not think would be immediately helpful to his people, and making
such additions as he thought might be of advantage. Just these additions
have the greatest interest for us. He translated, for instance,
Orosius's 'History'; a work in itself of inferior worth, but as an
attempt at a universal history from the Christian point of view, he
thought it best suited to the needs of his people. The Anglo-Saxon
version contains most interesting additions of original matter by
Alfred. They consist of accounts of the voyages of Ohtere, a Norwegian,
who was the first, so far as we know, to sail around the North Cape and
into the White Sea, and of Wulfstan, who explored parts of the coast of
the Baltic. These narratives give us our first definite information
about the lands and people of these regions, and appear to have been
taken down by the king directly as related by the explorers. Alfred
added to this 'History' also a description of Central Europe, which
Morley calls "t