For this reason England, like every other great and historic nation, has sought its typical hero in remote and ill-recorded times.  The personal and moral greatness of Alfred is, indeed, beyond question.  It does not depend any more than the greatness of any other human hero upon the accuracy of any or all of the stories that are told about him.  Alfred may not have done one of the things which are reported of him, but it is immeasurably easier to do every one of those things than to be the man of whom such things are reported falsely.  Fable is, generally speaking, far more accurate than fact, for fable describes a man as he was to his own age, fact describes him as he is to a handful of inconsiderable antiquarians many centuries after.  Whether Alfred watched the cakes for the neat-herd’s wife, whether he sang songs in the Danish camp, is of no interest to anyone except those who set out to prove under considerable disadvantages that they are genealogically descended from him.  But the man is better pictured in these stories than in any number of modern realistic trivialities about his favourite breakfast and his favourite musical composer.  Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.  If we read of a man who could make green grass red and turn the sun into the moon, we may not believe these particular details about him, but we learn something infinitely more important than such trivialities, the fact that men could look into his face and believe it possible.  The glory and greatness of Alfred, therefore, is like that of all the heroes of the morning of the world, set far beyond the chance of that strange and sudden dethronement which may arise from the unsealing of a manuscript or the turning over of a stone.  Men may have told lies when they said that he first entrapped the Danes with his song and then overcame them with his armies, but we know very well that it is not of us that such lies are told.  There may be myths clustering about each of our personalities; local saga-men and chroniclers have very likely circulated the story that we are addicted to drink, or that we ferociously ill-use our wives.  But they do not commonly lie to the effect that we have shed our blood to save all the inhabitants of the street.  A story grows easily, but a heroic story is not a very easy thing to evoke.  Wherever that exists we may be pretty certain that we are in the presence of a dark but powerful historic personality.  We are in the presence of a thousand lies all pointing with their fantastic fingers to one undiscovered truth.

Upon this ground alone every encouragement is due to the cult of Alfred.  Every nation requires to have behind it some historic personality, the validity of which is proved, as the validity of a gun is proved, by its long range.  It is wonderful and splendid that we treasure, not the truth, but the very gossip about a man who died a thousand years ago.  We may say to him, as M. Rostand says to the Austrian Prince: