ASCHAM.*

IT often happens to writers, that they are known only by their works; the incidents of a literary life are seldom observed, and therefore seldom recounted; but Ascham has escaped the common fate by the friendship of Edward Graunt, the learned master of Westminster school, who devoted an oration to his memory, and has marked the various vicissitudes of his fortune. Graunt either avoided the labour of minute inquiry, or thought domestic occurrences unworthy of his notice; or, preferring the character of an orator to that of an historian, selected only such particulars as he could best express or most happily embellish. His narrative is therefore scanty, and I know not by what materials it can now be amplified.

ROGER ASCHAM was born in the year 1515, at Kirby Wiske, (or Kirby Wicke), a village near Northallerton, in Yorkshire, of a family above the vulgar. His father, John Ascham, was housesteward in the family of Scroop; and in that age, when the different orders of men were at a greater distance from each other, and the manners of gentlemen were regularly formed by menial services in great houses, lived with a very conspicuous reputation. Margaret Ascham, his wife, is said to

*First printed before his Works 4to. published by Bennet 1763. H.

have been allied to many considerable families, but her maiden name is not recorded. She had three sons, of whom Roger was the youngest, and some daughters; but who can hope, that of any progeny more than one shall deserve to be mentioned? They lived married sixty-seven years, and at last died together almost on the same hour of the same day.

Roger, having passed his first years under the care of his parents, was adopted into the family of Antony Wingfield, who maintained him, and committed his education, with that of his own sons, to the care of one Bond, a domestic tutor. He very early discovered an unusual fondness for literature by an eager perusal of English books; and having passed happily through the scholastic rudiments, was put, in 1530, by his patron Wingfield, to St John's college in Cambridge.

Ascham entered Cambridge at a time when the last great revolution of the intellectual world was filling every academical mind with ardour or anxiety. The destruction of the Constantinopolitan empire had driven the Greeks with their language into the interior parts of Europe, the art of printing had made the books easily attainable, and Greek now began to be taught in England. The doctrines of Luther had already filled all the nations of the Romish communion with controversy and dissension. New studies of literature, and new tenets of religion, found employment for all who were desirous of truth, or ambitious of fame. Learning was at that time prosecuted with that eagerness and perseverance, which in this age of indifference and

dissipation it is not easy to conceive. To teach or to learn, was at once the business and the pleasure of the academical life; and an emulation of study was raised by Cheke and Smith, to which even the present age perhaps owes many advantages, without remembering or knowing its benefactors.

Ascham soon resolved to unite himself to those who were enlarging the bounds of knowledge, and, immediately upon his admission into the college, applied himself to the study of Greek. Those who were zealous for the new learning, were often no great friends to the old religion; and Ascham, as he became a Grecian, became a Protestant. The Reformation was not yet begun, disaffection to Popery was considered as a crime justly punished by exclusion from favour and preferment, and was not yet openly professed, though superstition was gradually losing its hold upon the public. The study of Greek was reputable enough, and Ascham pursued it with diligence and success equally conspicuous. He thought a language might be most easily learned by teaching it; and when he had obtained some proficiency in Greek, read lectures, while he was yet a boy, to other boys, who were desirous of instruction. His industry was much encouraged by Pember, a man of great eminence at that time, though I know not that he has left any monuments behind him, but what the gratitude of his friends and scholars has bestowed. He was one of the great encouragers of Greek learning, and particularly applauded Ascham's lectures, assuring him in a letter, of which Graunt has preserved an extract, that he would gain more knowledge by ex,

plaining one of Æsop's fables to a boy, than by hearing one of Homer's poems explained by another.

Ascham took his bachelor's degree in 1534, February 18. in the eighteenth year of his age: a time of life at which it is more common now to enter the universities than to take degrees, but which, according to the modes of education then in use, had nothing of remarkable prematurity. On the 23d of March following, he was chosen fellow of the college, which election he considered as a second birth. Dr Metcalf, the master of the college, a man, as Ascham tells 66 us, meanly learned himself, but no mean encourager of learning in others," clandestinely promoted his election, though he openly seemed first to oppose it, and afterwards to censure it, because Ascham was known to favour the new opinions; and the master himself was accused of giving an unjust preference to the Northern men, one of the factions into which this nation was divided, before we could find any more important reason of dissension, than that some were born on the Northern and some on the Southern side of Trent. Any cause is sufficient for a quarrel; and the zealots of the North and South lived long in such animosity, that it was thought necessary at Oxford to keep them quiet by chusing one proctor every year from each.

He seems to have been hitherto supported by the bounty of Wingfield, which his attainment of a fellowship now freed him from the necessity of receiving. Dependance, though in those days it was more common, and less irksome, than in the present state of things, can never have been free from dis

content; and therefore he that was released from it must always have rejoiced. The danger is, lest the joy of escaping from the patron may not leave sufficient memory of the benefactor. Of this forgetfulness Ascham cannot be accused; for he is recorded to have preserved the most grateful and affectionate reverence for Wingfield, and to have never grown weary of recounting his benefits.

His reputation still increased, and many resorted to his chamber to hear the Greek writers explained. He was likewise eminent for other accomplishments. By the advice of Pember, he had learned to play on musical instruments, and he was one of the few who excelled in the mechanical art of writing, which then began to be cultivated among us, and in which we now surpass all other nations. He not only wrote his pages with neatness, but embellished them with elegant draughts and illuminations; an art at that time so highly valued, that it contributed much both to his fame and his fortune.

He became master of arts in March 1537, in his twenty-first year, and then, if not before, commenced tutor, and publicly undertook the education of young men. A tutor of one-and-twenty, however accomplished with learning, however exalted by genius, would now gain little reverence or obedience; but in those days of discipline and regularity, the authority of the statutes easily supplied that of the teacher; all power that was lawful was reverenced. Besides, young tutors had still younger pupils.

Ascham is said to have courted his scholars to study by every incitement, to have treated them with great kindness, and to have taken care at once