=89. Alfred’s Handbook.=[226]--When that first quotation had been copied, he was eager at once to read, and to translate into Saxon, and then to teach many others--even as we are assured concerning that happy thief who recognized the Lord Jesus Christ, his Lord, aye, the Lord of all men, as he was hanging on the venerable gallows of the holy cross, and, with trustful petition, casting down of his body no more than his eyes, since he was so entirely fastened with nails that he could do nothing else, cried with humble voice, ‘O Christ, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom!‘[227]--since it was only on the cross that he began to learn the elements of the Christian faith.[228] Inspired by God, he began the rudiments of Holy Scripture on the sacred feast of St. Martin.[229] Then he went on, as far as he was able, to learn the flowers[230] collected from various quarters by any and all of his teachers, and to reduce them into the form of one book, although jumbled together, until it became almost as large as a psalter. This book he called his Enchiridion[231] or Handbook,[232] because he carefully kept it at hand day and night, and found, as he then used to say, no small consolation therein. =90. Illustration from the Penitent Thief.=[233]--But, as it was written by a wise man,[234] Of watchful minds are they whose pious care It is to govern well, I see that I must be especially watchful, in that I just now drew a kind of comparison, though in dissimilar manner,[235] between the happy thief and the king; for the cross is hateful to every one in distress.[236] But what can he do, if he cannot dislodge himself or escape thence? or in what way can he improve his condition by remaining there? He must, therefore, whether he will or no, endure with pain and sorrow that which he is suffering. =91. Alfred’s Troubles.=[237]--Now the king was pierced with many nails of tribulation, though established in the royal sway; for from the twentieth year of his age to the present year, which is his forty-fifth,[238] he has been constantly afflicted with most severe attacks of an unknown disease, so that there is not a single hour in which he is not either suffering from that malady, or nigh to despair by reason of the gloom which is occasioned by his fear of it. Moreover the constant invasions of foreign nations, by which he was continually harassed by land and sea, without any interval of quiet, constituted a sufficient cause of disturbance.