Before him, England possessed in her own tongue one great poem and a train of ballads and battle-songs.

Prose she had none.

The mighty roll of the prose books that fill her libraries begins with the translations of AElfred, and above all with the chronicle of his reign.

It seems likely that the King's rendering of Baeda's history gave the first impulse towards the compilation of what is known as the English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was certainly thrown into its present form during his reign.

The meagre lists of the kings of Wessex and the bishops of Winchester, which had been preserved from older times, were roughly expanded into a national history by insertions from Baeda: but it is when it reaches the reign of AElfred that the chronicle suddenly widens into the vigorous narrative, full of life and originality, that marks the gift of a new power to the English tongue.