To encourage this good and noble work by his example he became himself an author. And he thus describes, in the preface which he wrote to the book he translated, the steps he took to start what I may call the first public reading in England:—‘When I reflected,’ he says, ‘how the knowledge of the Latin tongue had fallen away throughout England, though many still knew how to read English writing, I began in the midst of divers and manifold affairs of this kingdom to turn into English this book (of St. Gregory the Great) which in Latin is named _Pastoralis_, and in English, _The Herdsman’s Book_; sometimes word for word, and sometimes sense for sense, even as I had been taught by Plegmund my Archbishop, and Asser my Bishop, and Grimbald my Mass-Priest, and John my Mass-Priest. After I had learned of them how I might best understand it, I turned it into English. And I will send a copy to every bishop’s see in my kingdom, and in each book there is an aestel (i.e. a staff) of (the value of) 50 mancusses; and I command, in God’s name, that no man take the staff from the book, nor the book from the minster, seeing that we know not how long there shall be such learned bishops, as now, thank God, there be. Therefore I command that these remain always in their places, unless the bishop have them with him either to lend somewhere, or to have other copies made from them.’ Here, then, we have the explanation of Alfred’s gem. It is the handle of a book-staff or pointer which, like those at Canterbury, and elsewhere, was made of horn (which has perished), the handle itself being of precious and durable materials. The inscription on it bears witness that it was made by Alfred’s order, ‘Aelfred had me worked;’ and this circumstance, taken in conjunction with the costliness of its material and the beauty of its execution, makes it in the highest degree probable that it is one of those aestels which Alfred says were worked by his order, and inserted in the presentation copies of his translation of _The Herdsman’s Book_, and which were valued at 50 mancusses, or (taking the value of the mancus at 7_s._ 6_d._) £18 15_s._, a large sum for those days.