ALFRED'S PREFACE TO HIS TRANSLATION OF GREGORY'S "PASTORAL CARE"
[Text: Bright's _Anglo-Saxon Reader_, pp. 26 ff.]
King Alfred sends greetings to Wærferth in loving and friendly words. I let thee know that it has often come to my mind what wise men there were formerly throughout England among both the clergy and the _5_ laity, and what happy times there were then throughout England, and how the kings who held sway over the people in those days obeyed God and his ministers; and how they preserved not only their peace but their morality also and good order at home and extended _10_ their possessions abroad; and how prosperous they were both with war and with wisdom; and how zealous the clergy were both in teaching and in learning, and in all the services they owed to God; and how foreigners came to the land in search of wisdom and learning, and _15_ how we should now have to secure them from abroad if we were to have them. So complete was this decay in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English or translate a Latin letter into English; and I feel sure _20_ that there were not many beyond Humber. So few there were that I can not remember a single one south of the Thames when I began to reign. Almighty God be thanked that we have any teachers among us now....
Then I considered all this, and brought to mind _25_ also how, before it had all been laid waste and burned, the churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books; and there was a great multitude of God's servants, but they knew very little about the books, for they could not understand anything in them, _30_ since they were not written in their own language--as if they spoke thus: "Our fathers who held these places of old loved wisdom and through it acquired wealth and bequeathed it to us. Here we may still see their tracks, but we can not follow them, and hence we have _35_ now lost both the wealth and the wisdom, since we would not incline our hearts after their example."
When I called all this to mind, I wondered very much, considering all the good and wise men who were formerly throughout England and all the books that they _40_ had perfectly learned, that they had translated no part of them into their own language. But soon I answered myself and said: "They did not expect that men should ever become as careless and that learning should decay as it has; they neglected it through the desire that the _45_ greater increase of wisdom there should be in the land the more should men learn of foreign languages."