The _Blooms_ are a translation or adaptation of Augustine’s Soliloquies and his Epistle to Paulina on the Vision of God, intermingled with extracts from the _City of God_ and from Gregory, and from Jerome, and withal many passages that appear to be original. The English of the book is a debased Saxon of the twelfth century. The title _Blooms_ is a translation of “blostman,” which is repeatedly used of the work in the Anglo-Saxon text. There is a preface, in which the work is spoken of under another figure—that of collecting material to build a house. At the close we read, “Here end the sayings which King Alfred collected.” Lappenberg classed the book (then unprinted) among the apocryphal works of the king, and Pauli thought that some compiler of the twelfth century had used the name of the king whose memory was still dear to the people. But in 1877 Professor Wülker took it up, and he soon changed the aspect of the case. He showed, in a highly convincing manner, that this book has an intimate relation with Alfred’s _Boethius_, that it carries on an argument which was broached there, and that the two books must be from the same hand. His inference is that it was done after the _Boethius_, and that it was (apparently) the latest work upon which the king was engaged. In 1894 the affinity between the two books was further confirmed by Mr. Frank G. Hubbard in _Modern Language Notes_. Specially convincing are two brief touches in chapter xvii., which echo the argument of the similarly numbered chapter in Alfred’s _Boethius_ which I have called an apology. The book is in an imperfect state. [Illustration: THE SEASONS—OCTOBER TO DECEMBER (_Cottonian Library_)] The _Book of Martyrs_ is also imperfect, beginning at December 31 with St. Columba, and ending with St. Thomas, December 21. The first day of January is called “the eighth Yule day” (se eahteða geohhel dæg). There are four manuscripts of this book, and one of them, a fragment of two leaves, appears to be of Alfred’s time. Moreover, of the saints which are recorded none are later than the ninth century. Another argument is that under November 15 is given a Life of St. Milus, which must (says Cockayne) have been brought direct from Syria to England, and probably from Helias, the patriarch of Jerusalem, with whom Alfred had a correspondence, according to the nearly contemporary _Leech Book_. These evidences appear to Wülker to justify the conclusion of Cockayne, “that the Martyr Book here presented was at least in use in Ælfred’s time, and was probably then composed.”