He wanted all his people to get
the good of it. And so, as most good books were written in
Latin, which only a few could read, he began to translate some of
them into English.
In the beginning of one of them Alfred says, "There are only a
few on this side of the Humber who can understand the Divine
Service, or even explain a Latin epistle in English, and I
believe not many on the other side of the Humber either. But
they are so few that indeed I cannot remember one south of the
Thames when I began to reign."
By "this side of the Humber" Alfred means the south side, for now
the center of learning was no longer Northumbria, but Wessex.
Alfred translated many books. He translated books of geography,
history and religion, and it is from Alfred that our English
prose dates, just as English poetry dates from Caedmon. For you
must remember that although we call Bede the Father of English
History, he wrote in Latin for the most part, and what he wrote
in English has been lost.
Besides writing himself, Alfred encouraged his people to write.
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