The poems were legends, ballads, and tales, which described the exploits of heroes, and the adventures of pilgrims and wanderers of all kinds.

These poems were to Alfred what Homer's poems were to Alexander.

He loved to listen to them, to hear them recited, and to commit them to memory.

In committing them to memory, he was obliged to depend upon hearing the poems repeated by others, for he himself could not read.
And yet he was now twelve years old.

It may surprise the reader, perhaps, to be thus told, after all that has been said of the attention paid to Alfred's education, and of the progress which he had made, that he could not even read.