ed in confidence of his mercy.

ASCHAM [89].

It often happens to writers, that they are known only by their works;
the incidents of a literary life are seldom observed, and, therefore,
seldom recounted: but Ascham has escaped the common fate by the
friendship of Edward Grauut, the learned master of Westminster school,
who devoted an oration to his memory, and has marked the various
vicissitudes of his fortune. Graunt either avoided the labour of
minute inquiry, or thought domestick occurrences unworthy of his
notice; or, preferring the character of an orator to that of an
historian, selected only such particulars as he could best express or
most happily embellish. His narrative is, therefore, scanty, and I
know not by what materials it can now be amplified.

Roger Ascham was born in the year 1515, at Kirby Wiske, (or Kirby
Wicke,) a village near Northallerton, in Yorkshire, of a family above
the vulgar. His father, John Ascham, was house-steward in the family
of Scroop; and, in that age, when the different orders of men were at
a greater distance from each other, and the manners of gentlemen were
regularly formed by menial services in great houses, lived with a very
conspicuous reputation. Margaret Ascham, his wife, is said to have
been allied to many considerable families, but her maiden name is not
recorded. She had three sons, of whom Roger was the youngest, and some
daughters; but who can hope, that of any progeny more than one shall
deserve to be mentioned? They lived married sixty-seven years, and, at
last, died together almost on the same hour of the same day.

Roger, having passed his first years under the care of his parents,
was adopted into the family of Antony Wingfield, who maintained him,
and committed his education, with that of his own sons, to the care of
one Bond, a domestick tutor. He very early discovered an unusual
fondness for literature by an eager perusal of English books; and,
having passed happily through the scholastick rudiments, was put, in
1530, by his patron Wingfield, to St. John's college in Cambridge.

Ascham entered Cambridge at a time when the last great revolution of
the intellectual world was filling every academical mind with ardour
or anxiety. The destruction of the Constantinopolitan empire had
driven the Greeks, with their language, into the interiour parts of
Europe, the art of printing had made the books easily attainable, and
Greek now began to be taught in Engl