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CHAPTER VII.

ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST';

b. 1515, d. 1568.

THE leading topic of Ascham's Scholemaster is the classical languages and literatures as instruments of the education of youth. Mulcaster and Brinsley were the first to advocate the teaching of English".

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"Roger Ascham," says Thomas Fuller, was born at Kirkby-weik in this County (Yorkshire); and bred in Saint John's Colledge in Cambridge, under Doctor Medcalfe, that good Governour, who, whet-stone-like, though dull in himself, by his encouragement, set an edge on most excellent wits in that foundation. Indeed Ascham came to Cambridge just at the dawning of Learning, and staid therein till the bright-day thereof, his own endeavours contributing much light thereunto. He was Oratour and Greek Professour in the University (places of some sympathy, which have often met in the same person); and in the beginning of the Raign of Queen Mary, within three days, wrote letters to fourty-seven severall Princes, whereof the meanest was Cardinal. He travailed into Germany, and there contract tamiliarity with John Sturmius and other learned men; an

1 The quotations which follow are from Bennet's quarto edition, 1761. 2 There is a great deal of interesting information on the pre-Reformation schools in Furnivall's Education in Early England.

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after his return, was a kind of teacher to the Lady Elizabeth, to whom (after she was Queen) he became her Secretary for her Latine letters.

"In a word, he was an honest man and a good shooter; Archery (whereof he wrote a Book called 'Tocópiλos') being his onely exercise in his youth, which in his old age he exchanged for a worse pastime, neither so healthfull for his body, nor profitable for his purse, I mean Cock-fighting, and thereby (being neither greedy to get, nor carefull to keep money) he much impaired his estate.

"He had a facile and fluent Latine-style (not like those who, counting obscurity to be elegancy, weed out all the hard words they meet in Authors): witness his 'Epistles,' which some say are the only Latine-ones extant of any Englishman, and if so, the more the pity. What loads have we of Letters from Forraign Pens, as if no Author were compleat without those necessary appurtenances! whilst surely our English-men write (though not so many) as good as any other Nation. In a word, his Tocópios' is accounted a good Book for young men, his School-master' for old men, his 'Epistles' for all men, set out after his death, which happened Anno Domini 1568," in the 53rd year of his age. He was buried in St Sepulchre's, London.

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To the above nervous and concise statement I may add that Ascham was privately educated in the family of Mr Anthony Wingfield, entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1530, and took his bachelor's degree in 1534.

At the University he took with ardour to the new learning and while yet a boy himself instructed others in Greek with a view to his own perfect mastery of the language. Mr Pember, a man of some contemporary eminence, had assured him in a letter that he would gain more knowledge by explaining one of Aesop's Fables to a boy than by hearing one of Homer's poems explained by another.

Being elected to a Fellowship he began to take pupils and

was soon highly esteemed as a teacher of Greek and became by appointment University Lecturer in that language.

As a writer of Latin he was eminent. All the University letters were written by him in his official capacity of Public Orator. He excelled also in the art of penmanship. He was appointed to succeed Sir J. Cheke, who probably more than any other one man had promoted the study of Greek literature in Cambridge. He did so not by talking about it, but by reading Greek authors with select pupils, going over a large amount of ground. Being of a delicate constitution and unable to sustain prolonged exertion of mind Ascham took to archery as a recreation; and partly as a defence of his practice he published a book on Archery called "Toxophilus or the School and Partitions of shooting contained in two books written by Roger Ascham 1544. Pleasant for all gentlemen and yeomen of England, for their pastime to read, and profitable for their use to follow both in war and peace."

In writing from Brussels in 1553 to Cecil he defends his practice of archery at the same time that he indicates that he has given it up. "Yet," he says, "I do amiss to dislike shooting too much which hath hitherto been my best friend; and even now looking back to the pleasure which I found in it and perceiving small repentance to follow after it, by Plato's judgment I may think well of it. No, it never called me to go from my book, but it made both wit the lustier and will the readier to run to it again. And perchance going back sometime from learning may serve even as well as it doth at leaping to pass some of those which keep always thus standing at their books; besides that seeking company and experience of men's manners abroad is a fit remedy for the sore wherewith learned men (many say) be much infected withal which is 'the best learned not always the wisest.""

In 1548 Ascham was called to Court to superintend the studies of the Princess Elizabeth.

Being appointed secretary to an English Embassy to

Germany, he spent nearly three years in various parts of the continent of Europe and wrote his Report and discourse of the affairs in Germany. When at Strassburg he visited the celebrated Rector of the Gymnasium there, John Sturmius, with whom he had maintained a correspondence, but much to his regret found him from home.

It was on his return to England that he served as Latin Secretary at Court under Edward, Philip and Mary, and Queen Elizabeth successively.

The most important of his writings, The Scholemaster, was not published till after his death.

Notwithstanding somewhat straitened circumstances Ascham married on the 1st June, 1554. He seems to have been happy in his marriage. In a quaintly expressed letter to Mr W. Pawlett, he says, "God, I thank him, hath given me such an one as the less she seeth I do for her the more loving in all causes she is to me, when I again have rather wished her well than done her good: and therefore the more glad she is to bear my fortune with me the more sorry am I that hitherto she hath found rather a loving than a lucky husband unto her. I did choose her to live withal, not hers to live upon, and if my choice were to choose again I would even do as I did."

Also in a letter to Sturm he says:

"I have such a wife as John Sturm would willingly desire for his Roger Ascham. Her name is Margaret, and I was married on the 1st of June, whatever of joyful omen may be in that name and that day."

Ascham, we may see, was not merely a man of great learning but also a man of the world and of affairs, and this adds to the weight of his opinions.

The men who in England were not only most conspicuous, but also most eminent, as representatives of the revival in all strictly educational matters, were Dean Colet, Cheke, and Ascham. The first-named founded St Paul's School, and,

with the help of Lilly, made it a kind of normal school, as it were, for all England. They both shared the Humanism of their friend Erasmus, but they possessed more definite Christian conviction and religious purpose than he did. On the other hand, they were not dominated by the theological (as distinct from the Christian) spirit so prevalent among many of the Reformers on the continent of Europe, especially those who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century. They exhibited, in truth, that example of moderation in opinion and action which, until very recent times at least, has always characterized the reformed Church of England. Ascham lays very little stress on theology; indeed, he seems to me rather to evade the subject. I regard him as a pure Humanist. Colet and his friends belong to the school of Melanchthon; Ascham more to the school of Erasmus, but with a genuine clear, sound and specifically English vein in him.

What is Humanism in education? It is, when largely interpreted, the formation of the mind of youth omnibus artibus quae ad humanitatem pertinent. In its more restricted meaning, as understood in the first revival of letters, it is the formation of the human mind by literature, as opposed to the study of barren words, abstract rules, grammar, rhetorical technicalities, logical sophisticalities, and bald epitomes, all expressed, by master and pupil alike, in barbarous Latinity. It is also the study of style or the beautiful in expression, and this by the perusal of the great writers who express themselves beautifully. At the time of the revival there were (with the single exception of Italian) only two languages known to Europe which, to any large extent at least, exhibited perfection of style, whether in prose or poetry, Greek and Latin. But Latin being the indispensable and universal language of the time, it was Latin literature that had to be chiefly cultivated. Terence, Ovid, Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, constituted the substance of education in the eyes of the Humanists, because they were the best available models of the artistic expression of human thought on human things. Observe that

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