race of kings, the popular mind still associated them with the old popular divinities, and traced back the descent of the house of Cerdic through Ina, the famous king of the West Saxons, who "went to Rome, and there ending his life, honourably entered the heavenly kingdom to reign there for ever with Christ," to Woden, "who was the son of Frithawald, who was the son of Frealaf, who was the son of Frithuwulf, who was the son of Finn, who was the son of Godwulf, who was the son of Geat, which Geat the pagans long worshipped as a God." And then, as if to make the popular genealogy orthodox, without challenging either the popular or the Biblical record, the Christian historian carries the line a little further back to Sceaf, "the son of Noah, who was born in the ark." With the ancestry of a royal race behind him as a background, we may think of the children of Ethelwulf and Osburh as a fair and kingly group; and the fairest, brightest, best-beloved of them all was the boy Alfred.

1 English Chronicle, yr. 855.

Chapter II

Education and the Origin of Ideas

"No doubt a careful training in gymnastics, as well as in music, ought to begin with childhood and go on through all their life.". Socrates.1

THE question as to what is the best education for a "lad who is born to be king" is one which the generations have bequeathed to us unsettled, and it may still be held to be debatable. Experience seems to show that it is an advantage that the future king should at least appear to stand a somewhat remote chance of succession, and that his future destiny should not be too obviously in the foreground. To have the throne, at least, hidden from immediate view avoids premature developments, which are perilous.

This advantage Alfred, as the fifth son of Æthelwulf, certainly had. He was only ten years old when his second brother, Æthelbald, married Judith. The position in which he grew up was thus the somewhat trying one of a junior cadet of the royal house.

1 Davis and Vaughan's "Republic.”

A royal education should at least include the main elements which enter into every balanced educational discipline. There should be be some training of the body to secure a sufficient physical basis for the tasks of an onerous life-work, and to fit eye and hand and limb for swift and accurate service. There should be enough stimulus for the mind thoroughly to awaken the intelligence, and set it to work "to see life steadily and see it whole." There should be a discipline of the moral faculties, and recognition of an authority both commanding and illuminating conscience; and there should be something to feed the imagination, to rouse it to realise things beyond the range of immediate vision, and to train it to conceive the possibilities of a great calling and a great destiny in life. There are few gifts which those who shape the destinies of a nation more require than a disciplined imagination, and there are few defects from which the destinies shaped by rulers and legislators suffer more disastrously than the want of it.

It was Alfred's good fortune to fall short in no one of these elements of a sound education, though they came to him in a form which would hardly have been recognised by an educational theorist.

As a king's son, and a favourite one, he moved

1 Matthew Arnold.

with the court from one royal estate to another. As all rents were paid in kind, the king was obliged to move from one domain to another to eat up his rents," as well as to dispense justice. Wherever the king went, the sluggish tide of life was quickened. There were hunts in the deep forests, and over wild moors and marshes, sometimes dangerous, always calling for a quick eye and steady nerve. There were the ancient games and sports which seem to have found root in England with the Saxons themselves: wrestling and leaping, cudgel play and foot-racing,

"the cool silver shock in the pool's running water,"

and, in their season, May games, bonfires, and "guizings." 1

We can readily accept Asser's picture of the growing lad, with its quaint mingling of piety and pride in the boy's prowess. "Alfred was a zealous practiser of hunting in all its branches, and hunted with great assiduity and success; for skill and good fortune in this art, as in all others, are among the gifts of God, as we also have witnessed." After the long days in the forest would come the evenings 1 "There be backsword play, and climming the powl, And a race for a peg and a cheese,

And us thenks as hisn's a dummell zowl

As dwont care for zich spwoorts as theze."

-Berkshire ballad, sung at the scouring of the White Horse, and possibly very ancient. "Dummell zowl" is "dull soul."

B

in the hall, when the harp went round from hand to hand to accompany the songs and stories of brave deeds, and longer hunts of other days. Among the most eager listeners was Alfred. He "listened with serious attention to the Saxon poems, which he often heard recited, and easily retained them in his docile memory."

To know the songs of his people was in itself already a liberal education; for England was rich in popular poetry. This is in itself a real kind of wealth, and is even more important as an indication of abundant vitality and spirit, the fount of thought and feeling out of which poetry springs. To know the songs of a people is to know the people who sing them. Alfred's sympathetic leadership of his people in later times may be, at least in part, set down to the fact that the feelings and ideals and virtues, described and praised in the national poetry, had become common both to him and to them.

There were religious poems, of which the best illustration is the Creation song of England's inspired herd Cædmon, who received his summons to the poetic calling in an ox-stable.

1 "Now shall we glorify the guardian of heaven's kingdom, The Creator's might and the thought of his mind,

This and the following quotations are from vol. i. of ten Brink's "History of English Literature."