In the first passage below, taken from Asser's life of Alfred, the anxiety of the king for the promotion of his own education and that of his children is clearly and strongly stated. We find him following Charlemagne's plan of bringing scholars from foreign countries. He brought them, too, from parts of Britain not under his direct control, and used them at the court, or in bishoprics, to perform the work of instruction. Curiously enough, whereas Charlemagne had found the chief of his Palace School, Alcuin, in England, Alfred was glad to secure the services of two men (Grimbald and John) who had made their reputations in monasteries situated within the bounds of the old Frankish empire. Aside from some native songs and epic poems, all the literature known to the Saxon people was in Latin, and but few persons in the kingdom knew Latin well enough to read it. The king himself did not, until about 887. It was supposed, of course, that the clergy were able to use the Latin Bible and the Latin ritual of the Church, but when Alfred came to investigate he found that even these men were often pretty nearly as ignorant as the people they were charged to instruct. What the king did, then, was to urge more study on the part of the clergy, under the direction of such men as Plegmund, Asser, Grimbald, John, and Werfrith. The people in general could not be expected to master a foreign language; hence, in order that they might not be shut off entirely from the first-hand use of books, Alfred undertook the translation of certain standard works from the Latin into the Saxon. Those thus translated were Boethius's _Consolations of Philosophy_, Orosius's _Universal History of the World_, Bede's _Ecclesiastical History of England_, and Pope Gregory the Great's _Pastoral Rule_. The second passage given below is Alfred's preface to his Saxon edition of the last-named book, taking the form of a letter to the scholarly Bishop Werfrith of Worcester. The _Pastoral Rule_ [see p. 90] was written by Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) as a body of instructions in doctrine and conduct for the clergy. Alfred's preface, as a picture of the ruin wrought by the long series of Danish wars, is of the utmost importance in the study of ninth and tenth century England, as well as a most interesting revelation of the character of the great king. Sources--(a) Asser, _De rebus gestis Aelfredi Magni_, Chaps. 75-78. Adapted from translation by J. A. Giles in _Six Old English Chronicles_ (London, 1866), pp. 68-70. (b) King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Pope Gregory's _Pastoral Rule_. Edited by Henry Sweet in the Publications of the Early English Text Society (London, 1871), p. 2. [Sidenote: The education of Alfred's children] (a)