1899.] on King Alfred. 91 



liked mc well ; and many of those which, misliked me I put away with 

 my Witan's advice, and bade men observe them in other manner. For 

 I dared not put much of my own in writing, for it was unknown 

 to me how much of that would be to the liking of those who came 

 after us." 



Later stories which ascribe the invention of modern legal institu- 

 tions to Alfred — including trial by jury, which is distinctly of 

 Anglo-Norman and not Anglo-Saxon origin — are merely fictitious. 



Alfred's love of learning and encouragement of letters and re- 

 search have been more fully and more often described than any other 

 part of his work. We see his court at Winchester frequented by 

 clerks, nobles, and travellers of all nations, including those very Danes 

 who had been fighting him a few years before. So in our own time the 

 chiefs of wild frontier tribes throng to the durbar of a strong and 

 popular political officer on the north-west marches of India. We can 

 almost hear Ohthere, who dwelt northmost of all the Northmen, telling 

 his adventures in pursuit of the horse- whales (walruses), who have 

 right goodly bones in their teeth fit to bring to a king — yes, such as 

 this which he offers his lord Alfred for a token— and Alfred bidding 

 Plegmund the Mercian, or John the Monk of Old Saxony, set down 

 the tale and work it into the English translation of Orosius' uni- 

 versal history. We may note Alfred economising time, measuring his 

 hours by four-hour candles of standard weight, and guarding them in 

 horn lanterns from the draughts that ranged as they listed in the 

 ninth-century palace. We see him investing his grandson, .ZEthelstan, 

 the future victor in the great fight at Brunanburh, with the weapons 

 and garb of a man of war. We catch him walking with Asser, the 

 Welshman invited from the uttermost west of Britain to bo his 

 secretary, learning what Latin he can from him, and delighting his 

 teacher with a proposal to keep a note-book — (what would we give 

 now for that note-book?).* And with all this the king is still a 

 sportsman, and looks with a master's eye to his hawks and his kennel. 

 Strangest of all, this man of boundless and yet ordered activities has 

 borne up from his youth against a mysterious and harassing sickness 

 — according to modern conjecture, some form of epilepsy — from which 

 Asser tries to extract edifying reflections. But these things, as I 

 said, are familiar. 



Alfred enjoyed some years of peace before the end of his reign. 

 He died, according to the common reckoning, in the autumn of 901, 

 but it seems really in 900 f or 899 $ ; by no means an old man as we 

 think of statesmen nowadays, but having done enough to fill a long 

 life. Is this all? No, not even for the immediate future. The 



* Asser makes a far-fetched and not over-courtly comparison of the king to 

 the penitent thief, as a late enterer into the kingdom by good will rather than 

 works, and apologises for it in the next paragraph. 



t Rainsay, ' Foundations of England,' i. 267. 



% \V. H. Stevenson in ' Athenaeum,' July and August, 1898. The choice turns 

 on points too minute to discuss here, but 001 is wrong in any case. 



