editor for his people. Here he omitted, there he
expanded. He enriched "Orosius" by a sketch of the new geographical
discoveries in the North. He gave a West-Saxon form to his selections
from Baeda. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his
wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as
consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, and the churl. The
mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak on the abuses of power. The cold
Providence of Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgement of
the goodness of God. As he writes, his large-hearted nature flings off
its royal mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me," he
prays with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better than I, for
every man must say what he says and do what he does according to his
ability." But simple as was his aim, AElfred changed the whole front of
our literature. Before him, England possessed in her own tongue one great
poem and a train of ballads and battle-songs. Prose she had none. The
mighty roll of the prose books that fill her libraries begins with the
translations of AElfred, and above all with the chronicle of his reign. It
seems likely that the King's rendering of Baeda's history gave the first
impulse towards the compilation of what is known as the English or
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was certainly thrown into its present form
during his reign. The meagre lists of the kings of Wessex and the bishops
of Winchester, which had been preserved from older times, were roughly
expanded into a national history by insertions from Baeda: but it is when
it reaches the reign of AElfred that the chronicle suddenly widens into
the vigorous narrative, full of life and originality, that marks the gift
of a new power to the English tongue. Varying as it does from age to age
in historic value, it remains the first vernacular history of any
Teutonic people, and save for the work of Ulfilas who found no successors
among his Gothic people, the earliest and most venerable monument of
Teutonic prose.

But all this literary activity was only a part of that general upbuilding
of Wessex by which AElfred was preparing for a fresh contest with the
stranger. He knew that the actual winning back of the Danelaw must be a
work of the sword, and through these long years of peace he was busy with
the creation of such a force as might match that of the northmen. A fleet
grew out of the little squadron