OUR LITERARY CORNER.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15453, 4 December 1915, Page 9

OUR LITERARY CORNER.

ROGER ASCHAM. « SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN. (gpJCIiXLT -VTEITTEX FOB. "THE FRESS.") (Br W. DtJTTGL.UiS ANDREWS.) "Pr.Bcipibus viiit earns, jucundiw "I Ipve been a looker on in the ook pit of i&iniing thiea many yeares.'' _r>^

It is much to have won a page "to Yourself in Fuller's "Worthies of England," and lo have had your life re-told to a later generation bv a man so eminent as Samuel Johnson. Hut it is more to bo tho author of a book which, after tho lapse of four centuries, may still be read with profit and pleasure, though it bears the unengaginjr title of "The Scholemastor," and deals mainly with the eternal, and seemingly insoluble, riddle of education. Yet Roger Aseham was fortunate, enough to achieve all three distinctions. Born sometime in tho year 1515. at Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton, in Yorkshire, Aseham was tho son of tho house-steward in the family of Lord Scroop. His people wore of good yeoman class, and bcasted among their ancestors one who had a share in tho murder of Piers Gaveston, one who became Master of Balliol College, and one vrho in the reign of Henry V. was Sheriff of London when "Dick" Whit tington was Mayor. It is worth noting, too, that tho family derived its name from the villages of East and West Askham, and that Roger himself, thoagh ho frequently spelt his name witH tho "ch" familiar to us all, in his English letters usually signed "Askham," or "Askam." As a mere child; ho went to tho house of "Sir Humfrey Wingfeldc"—so he says himself in ''Toxophilus," though learned commentators assert that ho meant Anthony—a "wornchipfuJl man who ever loved and used fe haro many children brought up in learning in his house," and there, with his patron's sons, received from Robert Bond, the family tutor, the rudiments of a sound education, and no doubt acquired' tho polished manners which stood him in good stead through life. Ho learnt, too, tho caro of his body which befits a gentleman, and became, as-he reminds Sturm 'many years later, a good archer ("audivisti me esse aliquem arcu ct sagittis"). This he owed to his patron, for Wingfield, when he came'down from London, used to bring •'both bowe and shaftes. And when playe he would go with thorn himselfe into tho fylde, and so them ehoote, and ho tjiat shot fayrest sbulde have the best bowe and shaftes, arid ho that shot ilfavourdlyo shuldo be mocked of -his felowes til ho shot better." Aseham, who-never forgot a debt to a friend, boars generous testimony to the excellence of a training that brought him up "in tho Booke and the Bowe: by which two thynges the hole common wclth, both in peace and warro, is chiefelye ruled arid defended wythaU." Nor should it be forgotten that ho re£td : every English book ho cbuliTTay hands" on, and so unconsciously prepared himself for the yeoman's part ho played in-later years as a pipneer in English Jotters, .

the year. 1530, theyear in which -ueJanchthon presented to' the Emperor - « ° a", mOQS of Augsburg, and ° mas 3loro succeeded the fallen Wofsey as Chancellor,, of England, Ascham was entered at St. John's,* Uinbridgo, and found himself among , . *? cour/nay aJI iamous •in their «»y, , acd some still' unforgotten. " *■ here to enter into "l 4 -T^ 18 °f. thoso Cambridge years. '' oa which Ascham dwe lis tondly ?- J" s Jater writings. Suffico it C> ~ say that during thein he -Wcame . 6 o consummate a scholar "K/ i . found it easier to «Tite in Latin and Greek his own language, and vet re- »£?♦ S °. V a ,.judgment that he i??, .P ls on 'y hooks in good, vigorous ImS hSif! 18 )' .V consideri °e tlie pleasure 'ft p 5? ht °* t " e general reader rather inan «»■ own convenience." A sound ' tilo doctrine of tlle en- - V ras , alwa >' 8 in his mind, u 6 content ' historical, r? w ' hat , not > the incom- '" " v terat L uro he found so stimulah» ~r,c r ' . human ist as ho was, did sttidr u e s °lely to language - ?® a *£°f? enon S h mathe- - a Co,,e S° lectureship, TW?i 1U a remarkable. letter to "orirhn v> Leicester (for whom overfaanl" your "Kenilworth" ) he rethatha r% u- t0 ° I " ttrac . tlvo nobleman unt he did himself an injury "in exY 11 -^'' 9 >, wisd , om for Euclid's Pncks and lines," and hrs opinion of ' y - <matll eniatical heades" was He w «s a great enwa« m° r m penmanship Music was a favourite h *~ l,n a»d. unlike David a .£ unn,n S Player on more instraments than one. On elocution .Jl,j' a 4J em fS k f to offer well worth Pondenng, and he distinctly barred the ' P rl not even .vet, unhappily, ' ' K,^rV' alwaye on ono tune ft, ' a humble bee, or else nowo up in no mnn°L ehurche, now downe. that Vor m "" . k °°* eth wbcro to have him. ' tIL „ h L® V - er y, th ? r Stoick in doc--ihieliifA -Anaoaptis m Kelicion, to W»hut'hS 10 ' p , h ? a6 ? n . t -. plniful na'wffli ln joinin- learning cxerc, sos, and far from IS £ i 5° rmg , 0n a ho °ke." both lik"? <££SSZmgZi b ° ««• * '" ca£L^^ d accomplishments, training " t early advantages of fnt" a f iP 1 Pecn'iarlv fitted to ' Sst hA .^ l ? tho Ladv Elizabeth, n wliinn?«i ,!i d l° r t wo years, and onlv the • I , nrs - an<l jealousies ill •We ,na lt , no l° n J?er ten- : *har« tJk 5 - ncco " nt ed. too, for the ."•"eating Edward, the ■'S^'.?c- I,d T , u ni^ nt . ed Chek °. the hk'*lßr+- ot Mil ton ' s sonnet, in V "rtwnth year into the mysteries of ' .s tcs Ethics before he was al,n j to r el»x on the more triflinc study ot Livy, ; ttanv' \ and Thuoydides! "I . came up ' toM*iln, ™ICm1 C m « ro ? Cambridge by com- ' 'tW u, 60 , Ascham writes in a letter .the M™ w *' in J nto ' os , ti .ng Sidelight on - f teach linn, when each - • n,an ant l torsos woald J " - note the phrase!— I "four I %todont^ r n ß '» a - ° ro - at cl,ar «?° for a poor m3 ?|- . 8,, t m time l>oth college life ' 1x43315 Pall. There were - eum "] tJ ?° academic fount of pleaB ? l t O,dgl<>al . Contr . orersi es not unar B bickerings such as -- I I.a^- Wn , amon K learned men in i earl - v a<; 1543 his •VeS?m * Yorkshire father had ' )to nnmlki j W, r' Cambridge as soon %BA «f rr fo,,ow honest "iP&f * rnt f 1,0 Wan to long L e waters and a 3® ary 2ici jm-waaj *oa ai y'^y

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

stage. Thanks mainly to the good offices of Cheke, the chanco came in 1550, when he was appointed secretary to Sir Richard Morysine, who was going as English Ambassador to the Court of Charles V. And it was on his way to London to take up his new duties that Aseham turned aside to Brodegate in Leicester, and had that charming interview with the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, whom ho found reading his favourite "Pha?don Platonis in Greeke," and reading it for pure pleasure. "The last talk that ever I had, and the last time that ever I saw tha>t noble and worthy lady," he notes as he describes the scene in an often-quoted passage of "The Scholeruaster." In these days of universal education, when education itself has become an abstract science, and pedagogics a subject for degrees, there is, of course, no one who floes not know "The Schoolmaster" and realise that in that quaint medley of scholarship, common sense, and reminiscence, Aseham lays dow n a method of language study still regarded as possibly the most efficient, puts in an ardent pica for patient and pains-

taking instead of harsh and conventional teaching, and warns schoolmasters to distinguish between ignoranco which is legitimate and idleness which requires correction. "Toxophilus," also, is a book you can find described in any manual of literature, though it is not always mentioned that in it Aschani takes' occasion to si>eak of Chaucer as :, our Englvshe Homer," and rej marks, "I ever thought hys sayinges to have as much authoritie as either Sophoclcs or Euripides, in Greke." a remark which goes to show that a first-hand knowledge of tho classics! does not necessarilv imply a prejudiced mind. Nor is it alwavs roted that tho pleasant discursiveness of the writei nnd the charming naivete of the dia-l logue still make the book an amusing companion for a leisure hour. ■ But, if everyone knows Aseham's books.it is just possible that hero and there a man may still be found who has never dipped into his letters, and his letters are well worth dipping into. He was an indefatigable correspondent and one with tho rarest gift of putting himself in his friend's place, and saying in tho happiest phrase, and often with a pleasant- spice of fun exactly the kind of thing tho friend would wish to hear. Of course this does not to all the letters in that surprisingly largo collection. Many of them are purely official. For Aseham was secretary to Mary and Elizabeth, it is to be remembered, and on one famous occasion, as Fuller carefully notes, wrote "within three days letters to forty-seven several princes, -wheieof the meanest was a •caiilinaj!" Manv of them are on private business. Many are on questions of scholarship to fellow-scholars, especially John Sturm, of Strasburg, who. some may be surprised to know, laiJ down the lines on which English public school training was carried on till very recent years. Many are in Latin. But the most delightful of all aro ,the group he wrote for the most part .in English, to Ireland, Raven, and other friends and Fellows of S. John's, to be read out at "the problem fire." For in them i 3 to bo found a minute* and detailed account of his journey to Augsburg, and many intorosting comments on what befell beforo the death of Edward recalled the Ambassador.^ It was on September 21st, 1550, that Ascliam embarked at Bil-

lingsgate en route for Canterbury .by | way of Gravesend. From Canterbury t<> Dover lie and his Ambassador had -the-escort oftho Archbishop, the eloquent iind ill-fated Cranmer, who rode with them nearly the whole way. At Dover, Ascham was in his element, ino E luce was full of varied, interest, and e had laid down for himself lines of methodical observation, which suggest that Bacon's essay, "OfTravell," is in part "convej'ed." He is a good example of tho soundness of his own contention that learning teaches more in one year than experience in twenty, "for good precepts ol learning be tha eyes of the minde, to looke -wisely before a man which -waie to go right, and which riot." From Dover they crossed to Calais,,so soon to phis from English hands, and all the company were reduced to dire straits by the way except Lady Morysihe, wnose sufferings were mercifully slight ("param passa est), a Lancashire youth amazingly named •'liiymlibaeus," and Ascham himself, i whose eager interest in tho novelties I around him left him, we may believe, no "leisure to be sick." Thence to Gravelines, Dunkirk, a lordly city, Newport, Bruges. Antwerp, "the richest market of all the'world," Ghent, Malines, Brussels, and Louvain. "Here, as we entered into our inn the ViceChaneellor, with his bedels, camo out of pur inn, the Vice-Chancellor being more like in apparel and port to- our priest of Hornyngsley than to tho comeliness of Mr Dr. Parker, and tho bedels more like Harry Barber and All- - thai*Mr Adams and Mr Meyres." He heard a Greek lecture, -where the students, about eighty in nutabcr, surprised him by tho noise they made. "If Louvain, as far as I cduld mark," ndds, "be compared with (Cambridge, Trilingue with S. John's or Trinity College, Theod. Laudius with Mr Car, ours do far excel." But devout lover of England as lie was—"England need fear no outward enemies. Tho lusty lads be surely in England. I have seen on a Sunday more likely men walking m Paul's' Church than ever I yet saw in Augusta (Augsburg), whero lietli an Emperor with a garrison, three kings, a queen, three princes, a number of dukes, etc.," he tells his friend Raven—he was rot given to decrying places and things, simply *b£ cause they wore foreign. The number and splendour of tiio cities in the Low Counties amazed him, and he particularly noted the frugal style of living and the close cultivation which, by making the most of every patch of soil, rendered so dense a population possible. " "If only London," he comments, "would us e about the void places of the citv. thoso garlens full of herbs, and if it were but to serve the strangers that would live with these herbs, besido a multitude which either need, covetousncss or temperance would in few yenrs bring to th" same, all England should have .victuals letter cheap. Tt is pi*y th°t Tkuk'oh hath not one good man to begin this husbandry and temperance."

Up the Rhine', a river that 'now 3 do not marvail that the poets make rivers gods," they were drawn by horses, "in a fair barge with goodly glass windows with seats of fir, as close as any houSe" —ambiguous praise! All the way they had good entertainment except in a village "where they slept in their boots, and at Bonn, where, arriving after the town gates were . shut, "we were fain, lord and lady, to lie in our barge all idit, where I sat in my lady's sidesaddle, leaning inv head to a malle, '• "tier lodged than a dozen of my fellows." It was at Cologne that they td taken the barge, and at Cologne that he heard of one Reynold who. When S. Peter's Church, where, the three kings lie, "wrought more for a penny than other seven eould; and so, for envy, was slain sleping, and cast into Tthine" by his fellow-workmen, who disapproved of such unprincipled energy! By October 2oth they were at Ulm, "anil upon a hill on this side the city, wo saw the Alps of Italy," notes the scholar. Straight down to the "noblo

river Danubius" hied Aseham, "and believe me, there was nothing yet which I so gladly see as that river." He -wished ail his college friends were with him to share his enthusiasms (tor he found the young men of the Ambassador's suite, more eotum generis", amiable but blase;, and he writes: "I wished to have a journey down I>anubius, through filmost all Europe, and I am aim id 1 shall have my wish at the beginning of this spring, for it is thought here in a manner without doubt, that hc nuist all go here against the great lurk." That wish was not granted, and Aseham never came nearer to Constantinople than Northern Italy, whero ho piously thanks God, in "The S?holemaster," "his abode was but ix. days," nn t l quotes in support of hi; outspoken denunciation of that evil, if too fascinating, country their own proverb, Knglose, Italianato e ini diabolo incarnato, '"that is to say, you reinainc men in shape and facion. but beeum devils in life and condition.'' Dut we liave wandered far from Ulm i .and Ulm was full of marvels. There it was that he saw sixteenth century sky-scrapers, ' ix. house and eleven house high, that it would do a man good to look vp at them.' w There, too, were immense stores of arms and munitions of war, and a long house with '"18,000 quarters of wheat against all need." Lead was in as great demand as copper wire to-day, and Aseham notes "they have mills liere that do nothing but bore fir trees for cunducts (conduits), for lead is scarce." At last on the -tith, they arrived at their goal. Augsburg, where the Emperor's Court vcas at the time'. Here were numbers of houses, "which set in Cheapside would overlook and overbrag the whole street," and. merchants, among them the famous. Fuggersi, "thought able to disburse as much ready-money as the five greatest kings in Christendom. Such merchants is not read upon neither in Greke or Latin." The Protestant churches were thronged with worshippers, and Aseham v>';is impressed with the reality of their religion. "The godliness, and constancy, and .discipline of this town is incredible. l'hree or four thousand singing at one church at a time, is but a trifle." But within a year the Emperor | changed all this, and "the good preachcrs were banished from this town. ' He was not an impressive Emperor |to look at. "Ho looked somewhat like the parson at Epurstone," writes Aschani, who loved to bo particular. "He nad on a gown of black tafl'ety, and Anly a furred night-cap on his head, Dutch-like, having a seam over the drown, like a great ood-piecc." Aseham saw him dine. "He fed well of a capon; I have had a better from mine hostess Barnes many times in my chambers." And mark this delightful touch : "The Emperor drank the best that ever I 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 one© of Rhenish wine" —a Gargantuan Emperor! Aseham liked that Rhenish wine himself , "so gentle a drink," lie calls it. "I was afraid when 1 came out of England to miss beeH but 1 am more afraid when I shall come into England that I cannot Jack this wine."

But it wasn't all sight-seeing and curiosity-hunting. The business of the Embassy was engrossing. Private letters had to be written bv piece-meal at odd moments. And Morysine, like the Cromers, and Harts, and Curzotis of our time, for the good tradition happily still lives, had a taste for the classics. "Five days in the week my lord and 1 continually do study the Greke tongue, that I am always either looking for my lord's lectures, or else with my lord. ' They read at Augsburg the whole of Herodotus, fivo tragedies, three orations of Isocratcs, and seventeen of Demosthenes! "Two days I write my lord's letters into England, so. that. A never so much as go into the town, but only on Tuesdays, to deliver our letters to the post."—So much, for a sample. But in these engaging letters there .are notes on books and libraries, and coins, the price of which was alraised by wealthy collectors, merchants and bishops for the ( most part, on old buildings, and old legends, on passing events, great ] Personages, and in fine, on any and every topic you oould imagine would interest a man with a'full mind and an eager thirst for knowledge. And there is constantly the most touching evidence of the man's kindness of hea/t and genius for friendship. There wero good days in Ascham's life, both before and after lie went to Germany, but none, we may well believe, better than those he spent with the Morysines, -when youth and hojfe wero still strong wTthin him, and, as Christopher Mount, himself a man of note, reminds him fifteen years later, he could still lind delight in roasted chestnuts!

Nearly three hundred and fifty years have gone since Roger Ascham died, but the genial spirit of the kindly little scholar —non marmse statural homo"—

remains vividly alive in these enthusiastic letters, ready as in the days of Edward and Elizabeth, to greet with store of quaint anecdote, good comradeship, wise counsel, and unfailing graciousness, the man or woman who shall Tead them with leisure and a quiet mind.