Roger Ascham, a celebrated English scholar and teacher, who flourished during the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, was born in 1515, and died in 1568. He graduated at St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1537, became a college tutor, and was appointed to read Greek in the public schools. In 1545, he published “Toxophilus,” or the “School of Shooting,” in which, as Dr. Johnson says, “he designed not only to teach the art of shooting, but to give an example of diction more natural and more truly English than was used by the common writers of that age.” In 1548, he was appointed teacher of the learned languages to the lady Elizabeth, afterwards Queen, and continued to perform that service for two years. In 1553, he was appointed Latin secretary to Queen Mary, and was continued in the same office by Elizabeth, besides acting as her tutor in Latin and Greek. His most noted work is “The Scholemaster, or a Plain and Perfite Way of teaching Children to understand, read, and write the Latin Tonge,” published by his widow in 1571.

Personal

  I had rather have thrown ten thousand pounds into the sea than have lost my Ascham.

  Ascham never had a robust or vigorous body, and his excuse for so many hours of diversion was his inability to endure a long continuance of sedentary thought. In the latter part of his life he found it necessary to forbear any intense application of the mind from dinner to bedtime, and rose to read and write early in the morning. He was for some years hectically feverish; and, though he found some alleviation of his distemper, never obtained a perfect recovery of his health. The immediate cause of his last sickness was too close application to the composition of a poem, which he purposed to present to the Queen on the day of her accession. To finish this, he forbore to sleep at his accustomed hours, till in December 1568 he fell sick of a kind of lingering disease, which Graunt has not named, nor accurately described. The most afflictive symptom was want of sleep, which he endeavoured to obtain by the motion of a cradle. Growing every day weaker, he found it vain to contend with his distemper, and prepared to die with the resignation and piety of a true Christian.

  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.

  There are too many complaints of poverty in Ascham’s letters to allow of our looking upon him as a man of exalted mind. Great men either bear privations bravely, or, engrossed in their own elevated pursuits, are not aware of their existence. It is much to be feared that the real truth of Ascham’s character has still to be discovered. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in most men that it is not easy to reconcile or to account for.

  He must have studied the art of keeping silence as well as the arts of speech…. He was full of American pluck, aptness, and industry; was known specially for his large gifts in language; a superb penman too, which was no little accomplishment in that day; withal, he excelled in athletics, and showed a skill with the long-bow which made credible the traditions about Robin Hood. They said he wasted time at this exercise; whereupon he wrote a defense of Archery, which under the name of “Toxophilus” has come down to our day—a model even now of good, homely, vigorous English.

Toxophilus, 1545

  He designed not only to teach the art of shooting, but to give an example of diction more natural and more truly English than was used by the common writers of that age, whom he censures for mingling exotic terms with their native language, and of whom he complains that they were made authors, not by skill or education, but by arrogance and temerity. He has not failed in either of his purposes.

  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.

Scholemaster, 1570

  The Scholemaster, or plaine and perfite way of teachyng children, to understand, write, and speake, the Latin tong, but specially purposed for the private brynging up of youth in Jentlemen and Noble mens houses, and commodious also for all such as have forgot the Latin tonge, and would, by themselves, without a Scholemaster, in short tyme, and with small paines, recover a sufficient habilitie to understand, write, and speake Latin. At London, printed by John Daye, dwelling over Aldersgate.

  But although there was a great stir in education throughout this century, and several English books were published about it, we come to 1570 before we find anything that has lived till now. We then have Roger Ascham’s “Scholemaster,” a posthumous work brought out by Ascham’s widow, and republished in 1571 and 1589. The book was then lost sight of, but reappeared, with James Upton as editor, in 1711, and has been regarded as an educational classic ever since.

  After the lapse of more than three centuries his views are mainly in accordance with those of the best scholars of our day.

  Ascham’s rhythm in the sentence and the paragraph is monotonous. He has plenty of balanced Euphuistic sentences, that help his coherence, but the balance is monotonous. And where else in the language but in the “Scholemaster” can be found an author who will write you seven consecutive paragraphs of exactly twenty-five sentences each, the group being followed by three paragraphs of just fifty sentences each? I half suspect that Ascham (or the printer) told those groups off on his fingers.

  Although his method failed to gain currency, Ascham’s “Scholemaster” at once took its permanent place as an English classic. The whole work abounds with choice anecdotes, admirable reflexions, pregnant sentiments from pagan authors, scholarly criticisms; and exhibits throughout, moreover, a deep yet kindly estimate of the boy nature, which makes it one of the most suggestive and fascinating books in the English language, and justly entitles the author to the praise bestowed upon him by Gabriel Harvey, of being “a flowing spring of humanity.”

General

  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…. In a word, his “Toxophilus” is accounted a good Book for young men, his “Schoolmaster” for old men, his “Epistles” for all men.

  A man born and bred for that Age, which was to refine the Greek and Latin to a Politeness, and raise them to an Eloquence.

  It must be owned that Ascham contributed very much to refine and improve the language, and, as he was an eminent scholar, to bring the practice of writing in it into repute.

  One of those men of genius born to create a new era in the history of their nation. The first English author who may be regarded as the founder of our prose style was Roger Ascham, the venerable parent of our native literature. His pristine English is still forcible without pedantry, and still beautiful without ornament.

  Ascham is a thorough bred philologist, and of the purest water…. I have unhesitatingly ranked Ascham among my more illustrious Bibliomaniacs.

  Old Ascham is one of the freshest, truest spirits I have met with; a scholar and writer, yet a genuine man.

  Ascham is plain and strong in his style, but without grace or warmth: his sentences have no harmony of structure. He stands, however, as far as I have seen, above all other writers in the first half of the Queen’s reign.

  The writings of the learned and judicious Ascham possess, both in style and in matter, a value which must not be measured by their inconsiderable bulk. Their language is pure, idiomatic, vigorous English: they exhibit great variety of knowledge, remarkable sagacity, and sound common-sense.

  A scholar possessed of a far greater familiarity with the classics than with either his own or with other modern literatures. Moreover, Ascham, although unusually liberal for his age, was not without his prejudices, and one of the strongest was his prejudice against Italy, which extended, in some degree, to her authors.

  It is impossible to call Ascham an agreeable writer, and pure pedantry to insist upon his mastery of English. His efforts were all in an academic direction, and his suspicion of ornament was in diametric opposition to the instinct of the nation, as to be presently and in the great age abundantly revealed.

  Ascham’s is, in short, the first accomplished plain style in English—the first, that is to say, that, while deliberately aiming at a certain amount of rhetorical effect, rigidly eschews the production of that effect by any such means as elaborate, highly coloured, or quaint vocabulary, by unusual and invented tricks of arrangement, or by anything that can come under the phrases (often loosely used, but intelligible) of ornate, poetical, or impassioned prose.

  As a result of his humanistic training, became not only the first English man of letters, but also the first English classicist.