nicle. His helpers. Some of his sayings.
Missionary spirit. "Alfred commanded to make me."

We cannot forget the impression that must have been made upon Alfred by
his stay in Rome, young as he was at the time, he being in the centre of
royal state while there, and also being himself a royal child to whom
much would be told and under whose notice much would be brought; and
who, from his position, would be expected to mark and remember much.
Long afterwards, he would recall the magnificence he had seen, and
associate it with the glories of the double history of Rome; Rome pagan
and Rome Christian: Rome, the great conqueror and law-giver, spiritual
as well as temporal. Very often, after Alfred was king, he sent over
embassies and gifts to Rome, loving her, and reverencing her as it was
meet he should. The Holy Father granted him certain privileges for the
English school at Rome, and sent him a piece of the wood of the Holy
Cross.

There is a pretty story told of Alfred's early learning to read English
verse. Even if it is not true, it points to his love of English, as well
as learning; a love which never left him. He wanted English to be taught
in schools, and he loved the old poems. We owe to him the translation of
the account of the first English poet, Caedmon, from which I have quoted
in my first chapter. But rightly, he felt the very great importance of
learning Latin, and so he learned it himself, and made others learn it
too.

When Alfred came to the throne, he tells us, learning had fallen away so
utterly in England that there were very few of the clergy, on the south
side of the Humber, who could understand the Latin of their Mass-books,
and he thinks not many beyond the Humber. This state of things was very
different from that of old times when the clergy were "so keen about
both teaching and learning and all the services they owed to God": very
different from St Bede's time, and the days when Northumbria was a
centre of learning and culture. Alfred was to create a new centre, not
in the North but in Wessex. Later on, the centre of learning and
cultivation was shifted to the East Midlands, whose dialect became the
language of England, and whose great poet, Chaucer, was the greatest
English poet before Spenser and Shakespere.

In his studies Alfred was helped by various friends, the chief of whom
was a Welsh Bishop, named Asser. So greatly did Alfred value Asser that
he wanted him to live altogether at C