who made their home in Britain. These were dear to the people and dear,
as we shall see, to the greatest among their kings, Alfred, who was, we
may say, the founder of English prose. It was not English prose as we
know English prose, because the language was then more like German than
anything else; but it was prose in the native tongue, and this was a
good and great thing to begin.

In our gratitude to Alfred, we must not forget our gratitude to the
English scholars of older days, none of whom had put us under so great a
debt as our dear old Benedictine of Jarrow.

A later writer than St Bede, though not so great as he, was Alcuin of
York, who was invited by no less a man than Charlemagne to teach his
children, and who became, as it has been phrased, a sort of Minister of
Public Education in his empire.

Alcuin was good as well as great, and I will give you a little instance
of the rightness of his thought. In a Dialogue which he wrote, in his
teaching days, he supposes Prince Pepin to ask the question, "What is
the liberty of man?" and the answer is, "Innocence."

But the evil days of invasion and war and trouble had swept learning
from its northern home; and Alfred's work was to bring it back to
another part of England.




CHAPTER VI