[920] p. 175; cf. p. 179; of this too there is an anticipation in the Boethius, x. ad fin. (p. 23); cf. also the metaphor of the ship in Asser, 492 D [59].
[921] p. 200.
[922] p. 179.
[923] p. 204.
[924] Above, § 88.
[925] I do not, however, regard with some critics the occurrence of military operations in any year as necessarily excluding all literary activity in that year. Considering Alfred’s energy, and the fact that military operations were to a large extent suspended in the winter, the assumption seems to me rather rash; Asser distinctly says that Alfred carried on his studies ‘inter omnia alia mentis et corporis impedimenta,’ 488 D [50]; and Alfred tells how he began the Cura Pastoralis ‘ongemang oðrum mislicum ⁊ manifealdum bisgum ðisses kynerices’; cf. also Boethius, Prose Preface.
[926] W. M. II. lx. ff.
[927] ibid. i. 145; so in 838: ‘Imperator [Louis the Pious] filium suum Karolum armis uirilibus, i.e. ense cinxit, corona regali caput insigniuit,’ Theganus, Vita Hludouici, Pertz, ii. 643.
[928] See Chronicle, ii. 112-4; and add to the references there given, Ramsay, Foundations of England, i. 267; and an interesting little monograph on Alfred’s Boyhood and Death, by W. B. Wildman, Sherborne, 1898.
[929] Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 13. 67.