took up the subject; the chief difference consisted in the increase of their magnitude and number.

Roger Ascham, the preceptor of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his "Scholemaster" as early as the year 1566. At that period the defects of school discipline were so great as to attract the attention of many persons of chief consideration in the kingdom. After a conversation on the subject at Sir William Cecil's, (then principal secretary of state, afterwards Lord Burleigh,) Sir Richard Sackville, treasurer of the exchequer, requested Ascham, who was one of the party, to commit to writing the opinion he had expressed in conversation. This gave rise to his work. The immediate cause of that conversation was the severity exercised towards the boys at Eton, some of whom had run away for fear of being beaten. The cruelty of schoolmasters was generally condemned by the company present, and it is particularly reprobated by Ascham in his Treatise. "I do agree," says he, "with all good scholemasters in these points: to "have children brought to good perfectness in

learning, to all honesty in manners; to have all "faults rightly amended, and every vice severely "corrected: but for the order and way that leadeth "rightly to these points, we somewhat differ."

He then advances many arguments, and his own experience, to prove that " love is better than fear,

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gentleness better than beating, to bring up a "child rightly in learning." As this is a part of our subject, on which every one will decide for himself, without reasons or authorities, and as the practice of excessive punishment is, we trust, diminishing, we shall not notice it further, than to plead in the words of our author for that class of youths who are too frequently the unfortunate objects of a master's wrath. "This will I say, that " even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft punish nature, as they do correct faults. Yea, many times the better nature is the sorer pu"nished. For if one by quickness of wit take his "lesson readily, another by hardness of wit taketh "it not so speedily; the first is always com"mended, the other is commonly punished: when

a wise scholemaster should rather discreetly con"sider the right disposition of both their natures, “and not so much weigh what either of them is " able to do now, as what either of them is likely "to do hereafter. For this I know, not only by

reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that those "which be commonly the wisest, the best learned,

"and best men also, when they be old, were never "commonly the quickest of wit when they were

At the time Ascham wrote, schoolboys were usually practised in Latin conversation and written composition, but sufficient care was not taken in the correction of their style. From the want of competent knowledge or good taste in their masters, these exercises were attended with little profit, according to the following account: "The "scholar is commonly beat for the making, when "the master were more worthy to be beat for the

mending or rather marring of the same; the "master many times being as ignorant as the "child, what to say properly and fitly to the "matter." To provide for the right speaking of Latin, our author recommends their abstaining from it altogether, until by the method he points out they have attained to some skill in writing. "In very deed," he says, "if children were "brought up in such a house, or such a schole, "where the Latin tongue were properly and per

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fectly spoken, as Tiberius and Caius Gracchi

were brought up in their mother Cornelia's "house; surely then the daily use of speaking "were the best and readiest way to learn the

"Latin tongue. But now, commonly in the best "scholes in England, for words, right choice is

''

smally regarded, true property wholly neglected, "confusion brought in, barbarousness is bred up "so in young wits, as afterwards they be not only marred for speaking, but also so corrupted "in judgment as with much ado, or never at all, "they be brought to the right frame again. Yet "all men covet to have their children speak Latin, and so do I very earnestly too. We have "both one purpose, we agree in desire, we wish "one end; but we differ somewhat in the order, " and way, that leadeth rightly to that end. Others "would have them speak at all adventures: and "so they be speaking, to speak, the master careth not, the scholar knoweth not, what. This is to

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seem, and not to be; except it be, to be bold "without shame, rash without skill, full of words "without wit. I wish to have them speak, Sir, as "it may well appear, that the brain doth govern "the tongue, and that reason leadeth forth the "talk. Socrates' doctrine is true in Plato, and "well marked, and truly uttered by Horace in de "Arte Poëticâ,* That, wheresoever knowledge

* Scribendi recte sapere est et principium, et fons. Rem tibi Socraticæ poterunt ostendere chartæ, Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur.

"doth accompany the wit, there best utterance "doth always await upon the tongue :' for good

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understanding must first be bred in the children, "which being nourished with skill, and use of writing, (as I will teach more largely hereafter) "is the only way to bring him to judgment and "readiness in speaking; and that in far shorter "time (if he will follow constantly the grade of this "little lesson) than he shall do by common teach"ing of the common scholes in England."

The method which Ascham proposed as "a plain and perfect way of teaching the learned languages," was that of Double Translation; a method which he learnt from his tutor Sir John Cheke, the most eminent teacher of that age. Sir John Cheke pursued it in his education of King Edward the Sixth, as Ascham did in that of Queen Elizabeth. It was also warmly patronized by Lord Burleigh, who thus recommends it in a letter to his son at Cambridge.

"I know nothing I would have you more use "than writing. And now that I have made men"tion thereof, I will therein likewise tell you my "mind. In writing, to seek variety of invention, "to make choice of words and phrases, to use apt examples, and good imitation, I know to be very

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