Alfred's wars were not to greaten himself, but to
set his country free. Then, as later on, if I may quote what I have
elsewhere said, the English

Had fought for their God-given birthright, their country to have and to hold,
And not for the lust of conquest, and not for the hunger of gold.

There is another aspect in which we may look at this great King; we
think of him not only as a doer but as a sufferer; and not only as an
endurer of disappointment, a bearer of toil, difficulty, trouble, but as
one who bore in his body a "white martyrdom" of great pain, perhaps even
anguish; and this for some twenty years.

Alfred was always a loyal son of the Church. His father, AEthelwulf, sent
him to Rome when he was quite a little boy, and Pope Leo IV was
godfather to him at his Confirmation, and, on hearing the report of
AEthelwulf's death, consecrated him as king, as he had been asked to do.
But AEthelwulf did not die for a little time after, and took Alfred for
a second visit to Rome. Each of Alfred's three brothers reigned a short
time before he became King of Wessex in 871. In that same year he fought
no fewer than nine battles against the Danes, besides making sundry
raids upon them. It is well to be a good fighting man where need is, and
it is well to use the qualities that go to the making up of the good
fighting man to meet the difficulties that beset the path of duty and
the way of progress. Courage, strength, generosity, perseverance, these
are needed for all work alike in peace and war.

Alfred was familiar in his youth with English songs, and most probably
knew the old Norse sagas; but he had to learn Latin in his later life.
We must remember that most of the literature which Alfred could get at
was locked up in Latin; even the invaluable Church History of St Bede
needed a translator's key; and it was Alfred who first applied this key
to it.

When we think of the prose written in England in early days, we are
thinking of the work of scholars, in a grand language that had done
growing; a language that was to be in Western Christendom the language
of religion, the language of the altar, for how long a time who can
know? the language that gave birth to other languages, as its
literature so powerfully influenced both theirs and that of others not
descended from it. Not yet was the time for a great prose literature in
England, such as grew up many a year ago, and is going on in our own
days.

The earliest lit