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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ARN-AUD |
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ASCHAM, ROGER (c. 1515-1568) , English scholar and writer, was born at Kirby Wiske, a village
Ascham was educated not at school, but in the house of Sir Humphry Wingfield, a barrister, and in 1533 speaker of the House of Commons, as Ascham himself tells us, in the Toxophilxs, p. 120 (not, as by a mistake which originated with Grant and has been repeated ever since, Sir Anthony Wingfield, who was nephew of the speaker). Sir Humphry " ever loved and used to have many children brought up in his house," where they were under a tutor named R. Bond. Their sport was archery, and Sir Humphry " himself would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to the field and see them shoot." Hence Ascham's earliest English work, the Toxophilus, the importance which he attributed to archery in educational establishments, and probably the pro-vision for archery in the statutes of St Albans, Harrow and other Elizabethan schools. From this private tuition Ascham was sent "about 1J30," at the age, it is said, of fifteen, to St John's College, Cambridge , then the largest and most learned college in either university. Here he fell under the influence of John Cheke, who was admitted a fellow in Ascham's first year, and Sir Thomas Smith. His guide and friend was Robert Pember, " a man of- the greatest learning and with an admirable facility in the Greek tongue." On his advice he practised seriously the precept embodied in the saying, " I know nothing about the subject, I have not even lectured on it," and " to learn Greek more quickly, while still a boy, taught Greek to boys." In Latin he specially studied Cicero and Caesar. He became B.A. on the 18th of February 1534/5. Dr Nicholas Metcalfe was then master of the college, " a papist, indeed, and yet if any young man given to the new learning as they termed it, went beyond his fellows," he " lacked neither open praise, nor private exhibition." He procured Ascham's election to a fellowship, " though being a new bachelor of arts, I chanced among my companions to speak against the Pope . . . after grievous rebuke and some punishment, open warning was given to all the fellows, none to be so hardy
Cambridge taking pupils, among whom was William Grindal, who in 1544 became tutor to Princess Elizabeth. Ascham himself cultivated music, acquired fame for a beautiful handwriting, and lectured on mathematics. Before 1J40, when the Regius professorship of Greek was established, Ascham " was paid a handsome salary to profess the Greek tongue in public," and held also lectures in St John's College. He obtained from Edward Lee, then archbishop of York
chief
interest
From 1541, or earlier, Ascham acted as letter-writer to the university and also to his college. Perhaps the best specimen of his skill was the letter written to the protector Somerset in 1548 on behalf of Sedbergh school, which was attached to St John's College by the founder, Dr Lupton, in 1525, and the endowment of which had been confiscated under the Chantries Act. In 1546 Ascham was elected public orator by the university on Sir John Cheke's retiremept. Shortly after the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., Ascham made public profession of Protestant opinions in a disputation on the doctrine of the Mass, begun in his own college and then removed for greater publicity to the public schools of the university, where it was stopped by the vice-chancellor. Thereon Ascham wrote a letter of complaint to Sir William Cecil. This stood him in good stead. In January 1548, Grindal, the princess Elizabeth's tutor, died. Ascham had already corresponded with the princess, and in one of his letters says that he returns her pen which he has mended. Through Cecil and at the princess's own wish he was selected as her tutor against another candidate pressed by Admiral Seymour and Queen Katherine. Ascham taught Elizabeththen sixteen years oldfor two years, chiefly at Cheshunt. In a letter to Sturm, the Strassburg schoolmaster, he praises her " beauty, stature, wisdom and industry. She talks French and Italian as well as English: she has often talked to me readily and well in Latin and moderately so in Greek. When she writes Greek and Latin nothing is more beautiful than her handwriting . . . she read with me almost all Cicero and great part of Titus Livius: for she drew all her knowledge of Latin from those two authors. She used to give the morning to the Greek Testament and afterwards read select orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles. To these I added St Cyprian and Melanchthon's Commonplaces." In 1550 Ascham quarrelled with Elizabeth's steward and returned to Cambridge. Cheke then procured him the secretaryship to Sir Richard Morrison (Moryson), appointed ambassador to Charles V. Ito was on his way to join Morrison that he paid his celebrated morning call on Lady Jane Grey at Bradgate, where he found her reading Plato's Phaedo, while every one else was out hunting. The embassy went to Louvain, where he found the university very inferior to Cambridge, then to Innsbruck
York
Ascham's orders, and invited Ascham to write a treatise on " the right order of teaching." The Scholemaster was the result. It is not, as might be supposed, a general treatise on educational method, but " a plaine and perfite way of teachyng children to understand, write and speake in Latin tong "; and it was not intended for schools, but " specially prepared for the private brynging up of youth in gentlemen and noblemens houses." The perfect way simply consisted in " the double translation of a model book "; the book recommended by this professional letter-writer being " Sturmius' Select Letters of Cicero." As a method of learning a language by a single pupil, this method might be useful; as a method of education in school nothing more deadening could be conceived. The method itself seems to have been taken from Cicero. Nor was the famous plea for the substitution of gentleness and persuasion for coercion and flogging in schools, which has been one of the main attractions of the book, novel. It was being practised and preached at that very time by Christopher Jonson (c. 15361597) at Winchester; it had been enforced at length by Wolsey in his statutes for his Ipswich College in 1528, following Robert Sherborne, bishop of Chichester, in founding Rolleston school; and had been repeatedly urged by Erasmus and others, to say nothing of William of Wykeham himself in the statutes of Winchester College in 1400. But Ascham's was the first definite demonstration in favour of humanity in the vulgar tongue and in an easy style by a well-known " educationist," though not one who had any actual experience as a schoolmaster. What largely contributed to its fame was its picture of Lady Jane Grey, whose love of learning was due to her finding her tutor a refuge
His letters were collected and published in 1576, and went through several editions, the latest at Nuremberg in 1611; they were re-edited by William Elstob in 1703. His English works were edited by James Bennett with a life by Dr Johnson in 1771, reprinted in 8vo in 1815. Dr Giles in 18641865 published in 4 vols. select letters with the Toxophilus and Scholemaster and the life by Edward Grant. The .Scholemaster was reprinted in 1571 and 1589. It was edited by the Rev. J. Upton in 1711 and in 1743, by Prof. J. E. B. Mayor in 1863, and by Prof. Edward Arber in 1870. The Toxophilus was republished in 1571, 1589 and 1788, and by Prof. Edward Arber in 1868 and 1902. (A. F. L.) End of Article: ASCHAM, ROGER (c. 1515-1568) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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