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 favourite 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 Demosthenes. 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 apologise 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
[honourable] for my name; yet I can think my labour well bestowed, if,
with a little hindrance 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, everything is so excellently done in
them that none can do better; _in the English tongue_, contrary,
_everything 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 apologise for at
all adopting the national idiom. Since that day neologisms have
fertilised 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 observation, 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' 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 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, apologised 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 favour. 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 incurred other disappointments; he has consigned all his
variable emotions to his volume. The accidental interview with Lady Jane
Grey; his readings with Queen Elizabeth in their daily intercourse with
the fine writers of antiquity, and their recreations at the regal game
of chess--for such was the seduction of Attic learning, that the queen
on the throne felt a happiness in again becoming the pupil of her old
master; these, and similar incidents, present those individual touches
of the writer, which give such a reality to an author's feelings.[1]
It is to be regretted that Ascham held but an indolent pen. Yet it were
hard to censure the man for a cold neglect of his fame, who seems
equally to have neglected his fortune. Ascham has written little; and
all he left his family was "this little book" (The Schoolmaster), and
which he bequeathed to them, as the right way to good learning, "which,
if they follow, they shall very well come to sufficiency of living."
This was an age when the ingenious clung to a patron; the widow and the
son of Ascham found the benefits of this testamentary recommendation. It
must, however, be confessed to have been but a capricious legacy, for no
administrator might have been found to "the will." The age of patronage
was never that of independence to an author.
Johnson, in his admirable "Life of Ascham," observed, that "his
disposition was kind and social; he delighted in the pleasure of
conversation, and was probably not much inclined to business." It is
certain that he preferred old books to pounds sterling, for once he
requested to commute a part of his pension for a copy of the "Decem
Rhetores Graeci," which he could not purchase at Cambridge. His frequent
allusions in his letters when abroad to "Mine Hostess Barnes," who kept
a tavern at Cambridge in the reign of Edward the Sixth, with tender
reminiscences of her "fat capons," and the "good-fellowship" there; and
further, his sympathy at the deep potation, when standing hard by the
emperor at his table, he tells us, "the emperor drank the best I ever
saw,--he had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and
never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine," and his
determination of providing "every year a little vessel of Rhenish" for
his cronies: and still further, his haunting the cockpit, and sometimes
trusting fortune by her dice, notwithstanding that he describes "dicing"
as "the green pathway of Hell;" all these _traits_ mark the boon
companion loving his leisure and his lounge.
When engaged in public life, a collegiate fellowship appeared to him to
offer supreme felicity. He writes thus,--"Ascham to his friends: who is
able to maintain his life at Cambridge, knows not what a felicity he
hath." Such was the conviction of one who had long lived in courts.
But when we consider that Ascham was Latin secretary to Edward the
Sixth, to Mary, and to Elizabeth, and intimately acquainted with the
transactions of these cabinets, with the sovereigns, and the ministers;
and during three years held a personal intercourse with the highest
foreign court;--we must regret, if we no not censure, the man who,
possessing these rare advantages, with a vigorous intellect, and a
felicitous genius, has left the world in silence. Assuredly, in Ascham,
we have lost an English Comines, who would have rivalled our few
memoir-writers, who, though with pens more industrious, had not eyes
more observant, nor heads more penetrating, than this secretary of three
sovereigns.
There is, however, reason to conclude, that he himself was not
insensible to these higher claims which his station might have urged on
his genius and his diligence. Every night during his residence abroad,
which was of no short period, he was occupied by filling his Diary,
which has not, in any shape, come down to us. He has also himself told,
that he had written a book on "The Cockpit," one of the recreations of
"a courtly gentleman." We cannot imagine that such writings, by the hand
of Ascham, would be destroyed by his family, who knew how to value them.
A modern critic, indeed, considers it fortunate for Ascham's credit,
that this work on "The Cockpit" has escaped from publication. The
criticism is fallacious, for if an apology for cock-fighting be odious,
the author's reputation is equally hurt by the announcement as by the
performance. But the truth is, that such barbarous sports, like the
bear-baiting of England and the bull-fights of Spain, have had their
advocates. Queen Elizabeth had appointed Ascham her bear-keeper; and he
was writing in his character when disclosing the mysteries of the
cockpit. But the genius of our author was always superior to his
subject; and this was a treatise wherein he designed to describe "all
kinds of pastimes joined with labour used in open place, and in the
day-light." The curious antiquary, at least, must regret the loss of
Ascham's "Cockpit."
Ascham lived in the ferment of the Reformation: zealously attached to
the new faith under Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth, how did he preserve
himself during the intermediate reign, when he partook of the favours of
the papistical sovereign? His master and friend, the learned Sir John
Cheke, had only left for himself the choice of a recantation, or a
warrant for execution; but of Ascham's good fortune, nothing is known
but its mystery. The novel religion had, however, early heated the
passions, and narrowed the judgment, of Ascham. He wrote at a period
when the Romanist and the Protestant reciprocally blackened each other.
Ascham not only abhorred all Italians as papists, but all Italian books
as papistical. He invokes the interposition of the civil magistrate
against Petrarch and Boccaccio, whose volumes were then selling in every
shop. Baretti strikes at his manes with his stiletto-pen, in an animated
passage;[2] and Warton is indignant at his denunciation of our ancient
romances, of which the historian of our poetry says, "he has written in
the spirit of an early Calvinistic preacher, rather than as a sensible
critic and a polite scholar"--he who, in his sober senses, was eminently
both.
We may lament that the first steps in every revolution are taken in
darkness, and that the reaction of opinions and prejudices is itself
accompanied by errors and prejudices of its own. The bigotry of the new
faith was not inferior to the old. The reforming Archbishop Grindal
substituted the dull and barbarous Palingenius, Sedulius, and
Prudentius, for the great classical authors of antiquity. The
Reformation opened with fanaticism; and men were reformers before they
were philosophers. Had Ascham, a learned scholar, and a man of fine
genius, been blessed with the prescient eye of philosophy, he had
perceived that there was not more papistry in the solemn "Trionfi" of
Petrarch, and not less "honest pastime" in a "merrie tale" of Boccaccio,
than in cock-fighting and dicing; and that with these works the
imagination of the public was gradually stepping out of a supernatural
world of folio legends, into a world of true nature, which led to that
unrivalled era which immortalised the closing century.
We must recollect that the bigotry of the Reformation, or that which
afterwards assumed the form of puritanism, in their absurd notion of the
nature of idolatry attached to every picture and every statue on sacred
subjects, eventually banished the fine arts from England for a long
century, and retarded their progress even to our own days. A curious
dialogue has been preserved by Strype, whose interlocutors are Queen
Elizabeth and a Dean. The Dean having obtained some of those fine German
paintings, those book-miniatures which are of the most exquisite finish,
placed them in her majesty's prayer-book. For this the queen proscribed
the dean, as she did those beautiful illuminations, as "Romish and
idolatrous;" and with a Gothic barbarism, strange in a person with her
Attic taste, commanded the clergy "to wash all pictures out of their
walls." To this circumstance the painter Barry ascribes the backward
state of the fine arts, which so long made us a by-word among the
nations of Europe, and even induced the critical historian of the arts,
Winkelman, to imagine that the climate of England presented an internal
obstruction to the progress of art itself; it was too long supposed that
no Englishman could ever aspire to be an artist of genius. The same
principle which urged Ascham to denounce all Italian books, instigated
his royal pupil "to wash out all pictures;" and even so late as the
reign of George the Third, when the artists of England made a noble
offer, gratuitously to decorate our churches with productions of their
own composition, the Bishop of London forbade the glorious attempt to
redeem English art from the anathema of foreign critics.
Ascham, whose constitutional delicacy often impeded his studies, died
prematurely. The parsimonious queen emphatically rated his value by
declaring, that she would rather have lost ten thousand pounds--no part
of which, during his life, the careless yet not the neglected Ascham
ever shared.
Roger Ascham was truly what Pope has described Gay to have been, "in wit
a man, simplicity a child;" and he has developed his own character in
his letters. Latin and English, they are among the earliest specimens of
that domestic and literary correspondence in which the writer paints
himself without reserve, with all the warm touches of a free pencil, gay
sallies of the moment, or sorrows of the hour, confiding to the bosom of
a friend the secrets of his heart and his condition; such as we have
found in the letters of Gray and of Shenstone.
The works of Ascham, which are collected in a single volume, remain for
the gratification of those who preserve a pure taste for the pristine
simplicity of our ancient writers. His native English, that English
which we have lost, but which we are ever delighted to recover, after
near three centuries, is still critical without pedantry, and beautiful
without ornament: and, which cannot be said of the writings of Sir
THOMAS ELYOT and Sir THOMAS MORE, the volume of ASCHAM is indispensable
in every English library, whose possessor in any way aspires to connect
together the progress of taste and of opinion in the history of our
country.