ROGER ASCHAM.

It would, perhaps, have surprised ROGER ASCHAM, the scholar of a learned age, and a Greek professor, that the history of English literature might open with his name; for in his English writings he had formed no premeditated work, designed for posterity as well as his own times. The subjects he has written on were solely suggested by the occasion, and incurred the slight of the cavillers of his day, who had not yet learned that humble titles may conceal performances which exceed their promise, and that trifles cease to be trivial in the workmanship of genius.

An apology for a favorite recreation, that of archery, for his indulgence in which his enemies, and sometimes his friends, reproached the truant of academic Greek; an account of the affairs of Germany, while employed as secretary to the English embassy; and the posthumous treatise of "the Schoolmaster," originating in an accidental conversation at table, constitute the whole of the claims of Ascham to the rank of an English classic; a degree much higher than was attained by the learning of Sir Thomas Elyot and the genius of Sir Thomas More.

The mind of Ascham was stored with all the wealth of

ancient literature the nation possessed. Ascham was proud, when alluding to his master, the learned Cheke, and to his royal pupil, Queen Elizabeth, of having been the pupil of the greatest scholar, and the preceptor to the greatest pupil, in England; but we have rather to admire the intrepidity of his genius, which induced him to avow the noble design

of setting an example of composing in our vernacular idiom He tells us in his "Toxophilus," "I write this English matter in the English language, for Englishmen." He introduced an easy and natural style in English prose, instead of the pedantry of the unformed taste of his day; and adopted, as he tells us, the counsel of Aristotle, " to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do."

The study of Greek was the reigning pursuit in the days of Ascham. At the dispersion of the Greeks on the loss of Constantinople, the learned emigrants brought with them into Europe their great originals; and the subsequent discovery of printing spread their editions. The study of Greek, on its first appearance in Europe, alarmed the Latin Church, and was long deemed a dangerous and heretical innovation. The cultivation of this language was, however, carried on with enthusiasm; and a controversy was kindled, even in this country, respecting the ancient pronunciation. A passion for Hellenistic lore pervaded the higher classes of society. There are fashions in the literary world as sudden and as capricious as those of another kind, and which, when they have rolled away, excite a smile, although possibly we have only adopted another of fresher novelty. The Greek mania raged. Ascham informs us, that his royal pupil, Elizabeth, understood Greek better than the canons of Windsor; and doubtless, while the queen was translating Isocrates, the ladies in waiting were parsing. Lady Jane Grey studying Plato was hardly an uncommon accident; but the touching detail which she gave to Ascham of her domestic persecution, on trivial forms of domestic life, which had induced her to fly for refuge to her Greek, has thrown a deep interest on that well-known incident. All educated persons then studied Greek. When Ascham was secretary to our ambassador at the court of Charles the Fifth, five days in the week were occupied by the ambassador reading with the secretary the Greek tragedians, commenting on Herodotus, and reciting the Orations of De

mosthenes. But this rage was too capricious to last, and too useless to be profitable; for neither the national taste nor the English language derived any permanent advantage from this exclusive devotion to Greek, and the fashion became lost in other studies.

It was a bold decision in a collegiate professor, who looked for his fame from his lectures on Greek, to venture on modelling his native idiom with a purity and simplicity to which it was yet strange. Ascham, indeed, was fain to apologize for having written in English, and offered the king, Henry the Eighth, to make a Greek or a Latin version of his "Toxophilus," if his grace chose. "To have written in another tongue had been both more profitable for my study, and also more honest [honorable] for my name; yet I can think my labor well bestowed, if, with a little hinderance of my profit and name, may come any furtherance to the pleasure or commodity of the gentlemen and yeomen of England. As for the Latin and Greek tongue, every thing is so excellently done in them, that none can do better; in the English tongue, contrary, every thing in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and handling, that no man can do worse."

Such were the first difficulties which the fathers of our native literature had to overcome. Sir Thomas Elyot endured the sneer of the cavillers for his attempt to inlay our unpolished English with Latin terms; and Roger Ascham, we see, found it necessary to apologize for at all adopting the national idiom. Since that day, neologisms have fertilized the barrenness of our Saxon, and the finest geniuses in Europe have abandoned the language of Cicero, to transfuse its grace into an idiom whose penury was deemed too rude for the pen of the scholar. Ascham followed his happier genius, and his name has created an epoch in the literature of England.

A residence of three years in Germany, in the station of confidential secretary of our ambassador to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, placed him in a more extensive field of ob

servation, and brought him in contact with some of the most remarkable men of his times. It is much to be regretted that the diary he kept has never been recovered. That Ascham was inquisitive, and, moreover, a profound observer at an interesting crisis in modern history, and that he held a constant intercourse with great characters, and obtained much secret history both of persons and of transactions, fully appears in his admirable "Report of the Affairs and State of Germany, and the Emperor Charles's Court." This "Report" was but a chance communication to a friend, though it is composed with great care. Ascham has developed with a firm and masterly hand the complicated intrigues of the various powers, when Charles the Fifth seemed to give laws to Germany and Italy. This emperor was in peace with all the world in 1550; and, in less than two years after, he was compelled to fly from Germany, surrounded by secret enemies. Ascham has traced the discontents of the minor courts of Italian dukes and German princes, who gradually deserted the haughty autocrat ; an event which finally led to the emperor's resignation. It is a moral tale of princes openly countenancing quietness, and "privily brewing debate,” — a -a deep catastrophe for the study of the political student. Ascham has explained the double game of the court of Rome, under the ambitious and restless Julius the Third, who, playing the emperor against the French monarch, and the French monarch against the emperor, worked himself into that intricate net of general misery, spun out of his own crafty ambidexterity. This precious fragment of secret history might have offered new views and many strokes of character to the modern historian, Robertson, who seems never to have discovered this authentic document; yet it lay at hand. So little even in Robertson's day did English literature, in its obscurer sources, enter into the pursuits of our greatest writers.

Ascham's first work was the "Toxophilus, the Schole, or Partitions of Shootinge." At this time, fire-arms were so little

known, that the term "shooting" was solely confined to the bow, then the redoubtable weapon of our hardy countrymen. In this well-known treatise on archery, he did what several literary characters have so well done, apologized for his amusement in a manner that evinced the scholar had not forgotten himself in the archer.

It affords some consolation to authors, who often suffer from neglect, to observe the triumph of an excellent book. Its first appearance procured him a pension from Henry the Eighth, which enabled him to set off on his travels. Subsequently, in the reign of Mary, when that eventful change happened in religion and in politics, adverse to Ascham, our author was cast into despair, and hastened to hide himself in safe obscurity. It was then that this excellent book (and a better at that time did not exist in the language) once more recommended its author: for Gardiner, the papal Bishop of Winchester, detected no heresy in the volume; and by his means, the Lords of the Council approving of it, the author was fully reinstated in royal favor. Thus Ascham twice owed his good fortune to his good book.

"The Schoolmaster," with its humble title, "to teach children to understand, write, and speak the Latin tongue," conveys an erroneous notion of the delight or the knowledge which may be drawn from this treatise, notwithstanding that the work remains incomplete; for there are references to parts which do not appear in the work itself. "The Scholemaster" is a classical production in English, which may be placed by the side of its great Latin rivals, the Orations of Cicero and the Institutes of Quintilian. It is enlivened by interesting details. The first idea of the work was started in a real conversation at table, among some eminent personages, on occasion of the flight of some scholars from Eton College, driven away by the iron rod of the master. "Was the schoolhouse to be a house of bondage and fear, or a house of play and pleasure?" During the progress of the work, the author lost his patron, and