There is, indeed, he observes, one kind of paraphrasis which may be used both without hurt and to much profit; but it only suits the Greek language. This is the turning of a passage written in one dialect into another, as, for instance, from Ionic or Doric into Attic. It is hardly necessary to remark, that this exercise, so far from being paraphrasis, can hardly be called even translation. In some cases it would not amount to more than a change in orthography.

An instance is also given of a paraphrasis in Latin, which may be studied with profit, in two passages from Cicero, the one in the second book "De Finibus," the other in the first book "De Officiis," in which that writer appears to translate the same Greek original in different words. "The conference of these two places," says our author, "containing so excellent a piece of learning as this is, expressed by so worthy a wit as Tully's was, must needs bring great pleasure and profit to him that maketh true account of learning and honesty. But if we had the Greek author, the first pattern of all, and thereby to see how Tully's wit did work at divers times; how, out of one excellent image might be framed two other, one in face and favour, but somewhat differing in form, figure, and colour, surely such a piece of workmanship, compared with the pattern itself, would better please the eyes of honest, wise, and learned minds, than two of the fairest Venuses that ever Apelles made."

III. Metaphrasis. "This kind of exercise," says Ascham, "is all one with paraphrasis, save it is out of verse either into prose, or into some other kind of metre ; or else out of prose into verse, which was Socrates's exercise and pastime, as Plato reporteth, when he was in prison, to translate Esop's fables into verse. Quin

tilian doth greatly praise also this exercise; but because Tully doth disallow it in young men, by mine opinion it were not well to use it in grammar schools, even for the self-same causes that he recited against paraphrasis.”

As an example, however, if a schoolmaster, for his own instruction, should be desirous of seeing a perfect paraphrasis, there is given the prose version by Socrates of the passage respecting the coming of Chryses to the camp of the Greeks, in the first book of the Iliad, as it is recorded by Plato in the third book of his Republic. Ascham would have his Schoolmaster weigh well together Homer and Plato here, and mark diligently these four points-What is kept-What is added-What is left out-What is changed, either in choice of words or form of sentences. "Which four points," he adds, “be the right tools to handle like a workman this kind of work, as our scholar shall better understand when he hath been a good while in the University; to which time and place I chiefly remit this kind of exercise."

To this he subjoins a passage out of Hesiod, which has been imitated by Sophocles, St. Basil, Cicero, and Livy, and one from the beginning of the Eunuchus of Terence, which Horace has imitated in one of his satires. Commending the comparison of such passages as these, he remarks:

"This exercise may bring much profit to ripe heads and staid judgments; because, in travelling in it, the mind must needs be very attentive and busily occupied in turning and tossing itself many ways, and conferring with great pleasure the variety of worthy wits and judgments together. But this harm may soon come thereby, and namely to young scholars, lest in seeking other words and new form of sentences, they chance upon the

worse; for the which only cause, Cicero thinketh this exercise not to be fit for young men."

IV. Of Epitome our author observes: "This is a way of study belonging rather to matter than to words; to memory than to utterance; to those that be learned already, and hath small place at all among young scholars in grammar sehools. It may profit privately some learned men, but it hath hurt generally learning itself very much. For by it we have lost whole Trogus, the best part of T. Livius, the goodly dictionary of Pompeius Festus, a great deal of the civil law, and other many notable books, for the which cause I do the more mislike this exercise both in old and young." It may be remarked, however, that such facts as these make really no argument at all against epitome as a school exercise. Ascham proceeds :

"Epitome is good privately for himself that doth work it, but ill commonly for all others that use other men's labour therein. A silly poor kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those poor folk which neither till, nor sow, nor reap themselves, but glean by stealth upon other men's ground. Such have empty barns for dear

years."

"I do wish," he afterwards remarks, in reference to the common books of exercises used at schools, "that all rules for young scholars were shorter than they be. For without doubt, Grammatica itself is sooner and surer learned by examples of good authors than by the naked rules of grammarians. Epitome hurteth more in the universities and study of philosophy, but most of all in divinity itself."

He acknowledges, however, that " books of common places be very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to refer orderly all that he read

eth ad certa rerum capita (to certain heads), and not wander in study.”

We give the remainder of what is said under this head, with the omission only of a few sentences here and there, which does not break the sense.

"Nevertheless, some kind of epitome may be used by men of skilful judgment, to the great profit also of others. As if a wise man would take Hall's Chronicle, where much good matter is quite marred with indenture English, and, first, change strange and inkhorn terms into proper and commonly used words; next, specially to weed out that that is superfluous and idle, not only where words be vainly heaped one upon another, but also where many sentences of one meaning be so clouted up together, as though Mr. Hall had been not writing the story of England, but varying a sentence in Hitching school. Surely a wise, learned man, by this way of epitome, in cutting away words and sentences, and diminishing nothing at all of the matter, should leave to men's use a story half as much as it was in quantity, but twice as good as it was both for pleasure and also commodity.

"Another kind of epitome may be used likewise very well to much profit. Some man either by lustiness of nature, brought by ill teaching to a wrong judgment, is over full of words and sentences, and matter; and yet all his words be proper, apt, and well chosen, all his sentences be round and trimly framed, his whole matter grounded upon good reason, and stuffed with full arguments for his intent and purpose; yet when his talk shall be heard, or his writing be read of such one as is either of my two dear friends, Mr. Haddon at home, or Johannes Sturmius in Germany, that nimium in him

which fools and unlearned will most commend, shall either of these two bite his lip or shake his head at it.

"This fulness, as it is not to be misliked in a young man, so in farther age, in greater skill, and weightier affairs, is to be temperated, or else discretion and judg ment shall seem to be wanting in him. But if his style be still over rank and lusty, as some men being never so old and spent by years will still be full of youthful conditions (as was Sir Francis Brian,* and evermore would have been), such a rank and full writer must use, if he will do wisely, the exercise of a very good kind of epitome, and do, as certain wise men do that be over fat and fleshy, who, leaving their own full and plentiful table, go to sojourn abroad from home for a while at the temperate diet of some sober man, and so by little and little cut away the grossness that is in them.

"As for example, if Osoriust would leave off his lusti ness in striving against St. Austin, and his over rank railing against poor Luther and the truth of God's doctrine, and give his whole study, not to write anything of his own for a while, but to translate Demosthenes with so strait, fast, and temperate a style in Latin as he is in Greek, he would become so perfect and pure a writer, I believe, as have been few or none since Cicero's days. And so, by doing himself and all learned men much good, do others less harm, and Christ's doctrine less injury than he doth, and withal win unto himself many worthy friends, who agreeing with him gladly in the love and liking of excellent learning, are sorry to see so worthy a wit, so rare eloquence, wholly spent and consumed in striving with God and good men.

* Ambassador at the court of Rome for King Henry VIII. + Jerome Osorio, a learned Portuguese bishop of the sixteenth