sheets hung up napkins and clouts, and watched them till they were wet through, then wringing and sucking out the water. And that water which fell down and washed away the filth and soiling of the ship, trod underfoot, as runneth down the kennel many times, when it raineth, was not lost, but watched and attended carefully, yea sometimes with strife and contention, at every scupperhole and other place where it ran down, with dishes, pots, cans, and jars, whereof some drank hearty draughts as it was, without tarrying to cleanse it. Some indeed tarried the cleansing, but not often, as loathe to lose such excellent stuff. Some licked with their tongues, like dogs, the boards under feet, the sides, rails, and masts of the ship; others, naturally more ingenious, fastened girdles or ropes about the masts, daubing tallow betwixt them and the mast, that the rain might not run down between, in such sort that those ropes or girdles hanging lower down on one side than the other, a spout of leather was fastened to the lower part, that all the rain-drops that came running down the mast might meet together at this place and there be received. Some also put bullets of lead into their mouths to slake their thirst." * * All except Juan, who throughout abstain'd, CANTO II. 80. 66 ROGER ASCHAM. Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."-CHAUcer. THERE was a primitive honesty, a kindly innocence, about this good old scholar, which give a personal interest to the homeliest details of his life. He had the rare felicity of passing through the worst of times without persecution and without dishonour. He lived with princes and princesses, prelates and diplomatists, without offence and without ambition. Though he enjoyed the smiles of royalty, his heart was none the worse, and his fortune little the better. He had that disposition which, above all things, qualifies the conscientious and successful teacher; for he delighted rather to discover and call forth the talents of others, than to make a display of his own. Roger Ascham, the friend of Jane Grey, and the tutor of Queen Elizabeth, was born at Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton, A.D. 1515. His father discharged with diligence and fidelity the office of steward in the family of Scrope. His mother Margaret was more highly connected. He had two brothers and several sisters. His parents, having lived forty-seven years together as man and wife should live, expired in one day, and almost at the same hour. It was the fashion of that time, that youth of respectable connexions and small fortune were received into the houses of the great, and educated along with the scions of nobility. Roger, before his father's death, was taken into the family of Sir Anthony Wingfield, and brought up with the two sons of his patron, under the care of their tutor, Mr. Robert Bond.* For an humble, dutiful, steady, and studious temper, no situation could be more advantageous. Such was Roger's. By living in a wealthy mansion he obtained access to more books than his father could have purchased for him, and became an ardent reader almost as soon as he knew his letters: there, too, we may suppose he acquired that simple courtesy, that reverend kindliness of manner, which enabled him to win and retain the good graces of three royal females so dissimilar as Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps by secretly assisting his fellow-students, the young Wingfields, he first opened in his own mind that extraordinary aptitude for tuition which he afterwards displayed, and observed some of the facts which led him to think so deeply and so rightly on the culture of the human intellect. In the year 1530, when he had attained his fifteenth year, he was sent, at the charges of his good patron, Sir Anthony, to St. John's College, Cambridge, where his studies neither went astray for lack of guidance, nor loitered for want of emulation. St. John's was then replete with all such learning as the time esteemed. The hard-headed dialectics and divinity of the schoolman was interchanged with the newly *To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make schoolmasters careful in their place,-that the eminences of their scholars have commended their schoolmasters to posterity, which otherwise in obscurity had been altogether forgotten. Who had ever heard of R. Bond, in Lancashire, but for the breeding of learned Roger Ascham, his scholar?" -Fuller's Holy and Profane States. recovered literature of Greece and Rome. The mind of Europe, divided between the rigidity of the old scholastic discipline and the inquisitive imaginations of the Italian Platonism, which brought poetry and philology in its train, might be likened to an old hawthorn stock, white with the blossoms of the spring; and if credit be given to Ascham's panegyrist, St. John's was a brief abstract, containing fair samples of every kind of excellence.* Ascham's tutor was Hugh Fitzherbert, Fellow of St. John's, a man of learning and merit, and if we may judge by his surname, of high descent on one side at least. Whether related to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert we cannot tell. Among his contemporaries or immediate seniors are enumerated some whose names are immediately recognised, and others, per "Yea, surely, in that one college, which at that season, for number of most learned doctors, for multitude of erudite philosophers, for abundance of eloquent orators, all in their kind superlative, might rival or outvie all mansions of literature on earth, were exceeding many men, most excellent in all politer letters, and in knowledge of languages." But English is not the speech of compliment or panegyric. No translation can come up to the issimuses and errimorums of old Rome. Here is the original, from Grant's "Oratio de vita et obitu Rogeri Ascham:' Imo certe in hoc uno collegio, quod eâ ætate singula totius orbis literarum domicilia et doctissimorum Theologorum numero, eruditissimorum Philosophorum turbâ, eloquentissimorum oratorum multitudine, vel juste, adaequare, vel longe superare posset, erant complurimi homines omni politiori literatura linguarumque cognitione præstantissimorum. Quorum ille provocatur exemplis, et literarum imbibendarum ardore incensus, brevi propter admirabilem ingenii vim et indefessam in studiis industriam, tantos in Græcis Latinisque literis progressus fecit, ut omnes aequales si non superaret, certe unus singulus adæquaret. haps, deemed equal or superior in their own day, whose existence is only discovered by antiquaries, and whose works derive their value from their scarcity. In the list are George Day, John Redman,* Robert * "John Redman, or Redmayne, descended from those of his name in Yorkshire, was near allied to Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, by whose advice he from childhood became conversant with the study of learning. At the first foundation of Corpus Christi College, (Oxford,) he was a student there for some time, under the care and government of Mr. J. Clayton, the first president: then he went to Paris, where he improved his studies till he was twenty-one years of age. Afterwards returning to his native country of England, he settled in St. John's College, in Cambridge, where by his and John Cheke's example of excellency in learning, of godliness in living, of diligence in studying, of counsel in exhorting, of good order in all things, were bred up so many learned men in that one college, as it was thought by one," i. e. Roger Ascham, "that the whole University of Louvain, in many years, was never able to afford. In 1537, he commenced Doctor of Divinity, and about that time was made public orator of that University, and afterwards the first Master, or Head, of Trinity College, and a dignitary in the church. But that which is most observable is, that when he first came to that University, being then very well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues, and adorned with knowledge by the reading of Cicero, it so fell out, that John Cheke and Thomas Smith, (being at that time young men, but afterwards knights,) were stirred up with a kind of emulation of his parts, and the honour that was daily done unto him. Whereupon, being very desirous to follow that which he had gained, and then did possess and teach, they threw aside their sordid barbarisms, and applied themselves to the eloquence of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. The truth is, that by Redman's profound knowledge in the Tongues, Humanity, and Divinity, he obtained many admirers, and thereby gained proselytes, to the great advantage and refinement of the Greek and Latin Tongues |