ASCHAM, ROGER, an eminent philologist, was born in the year 1515 at Kirby-Wirkc, a small village in the county of York. He was descended from parents, who, though in moderate circumstances, were distinguished for their worth, and conspicuous in their station from the purity and harmony of their lives, having lived toge ther 67 years, examples of conjugal fidelity and attach ment, and died almost on the same hour of the same day. Roger, the youngest of three sons, gave early in dications of future greatness. His promising talents at tracted the attention of Sir Anthony Wingfield, a man of considerable property, who received him into his fa mily, and gave him an education suited to his abilities. His assiduity and early proficiency soon gained him the friendship of his patron, who, pleased with his docility, and the rapid progress which he had made in classical literature, determined to afford him every opportunity of perfecting himself in those studies, which he had so successfully begun. He was accordingly sent, in 1530, to St John's College at Cambridge, where, raised above the fear and the feeling of want, by the liberality of his friend, he was enabled to devote his whole time to the acquisition of knowledge. The bent of his genius seems to have been directed chiefly to the classics, which at that period were the objects of particular attention. • In the time of Ascham, the republic of letters had undergone a complete revolution. Literature and sci ence were.no longer confined to the south of the Hel lespont. Driven from their asylum in Constantinople by the irruption of the Tartars, they had taken refuge in the cities of Italy, and from thence were disseminat ed over the nations of Europe. The writings of the ancients, and the sacred scriptures, were now studied with the greatest avidity, and men began to perceive the errors by which they had been misled, and to won der at the ignorance in which they had been so long immersed. Charmed with the divine wisdom of Plato, and the nervous eloquence of Demosthenes, they could not but be disgusted with the dry disquisitions of the schools ; and having once tasted at the pure fountain of religious truth, they could not return to the muddy and polluted streams of superstition. Ascham soon caught
the spirit of the age. He entered upon his studieswith the warmest enthusiasm, and prosecuted them withiic• severing exertion. Cambridge could then boast of some of the most distinguished scholars which any university had ever produced, and it opened a wide field for the display of those talents with which Ascham was so li berally endowed. A critical knowledge of the languages of Greece and Rome constituted the principal range in academical education ; and however some may attempt to depreciate it in modern times, it is to the exertions of our fathers in this particular department, that we are indebted for our present state of improvement in many other departments of literature. They laid the founda tion, and succeeding ages have reared the superstruc ture. Their labours have rendered the paths of litera ture more easy and agreeable, and have enabled us to reach to higher objects of knowledge. Having, there fore, arrived at a considerable height in the scale of im provement, shall we ungenerously spurn at the steps by which we have ascended ? Greek was the favourite study of Ascham, and his di ligence and zeal were rewarded with complete success, and the approbation of Ms masters. He confined his attention to the most celebrated models, not vitiating his taste by the perusal of obscure and unprofitable authors, and following the maxim qui docet discit, he gave lec tures on the Greek language, while yet a boy, to such of the younger students as were desirous of instruction. This plan was greatly applauded by Pember, a man of great eminence and learning, who assured him, (in a letter of which Grain has preserved an extract,) that by explaining one of lEsop's fables to a boy, he would gain more knowledge of the language, than by hearing the Iliad of Homer explained by another.