authority of the statutes easily supplied that of the
teacher; all power that was lawful was reverenced. Besides, young
tutors had still younger pupils.

Ascham is said to have courted his scholars to study by every
incitement, to have treated them with great kindness, and to have
taken care, at once, to instil learning and piety, to enlighten their
minds, and to form their manners. Many of his scholars rose to great
eminence; and among them William Grindal was so much distinguished,
that, by Cheke's recommendation, he was called to court, as a proper
master of languages for the lady Elizabeth.

There was yet no established lecturer of Greek; the university,
therefore, appointed Ascham to read in the open schools, and paid him
out of the publick purse an honorary stipend, such as was then
reckoned sufficiently liberal. A lecture was afterwards founded by
king Henry, and he then quitted the schools, but continued to explain
Greek authors in his own college.

He was at first an opponent of the new pronunciation introduced, or
rather of the ancient restored, about this time, by Cheke and Smith,
and made some cautious struggles for the common practice, which the
credit and dignity of his antagonists did not permit him to defend
very publickly, or with much vehemence: nor were they long his
antagonists; for either his affection for their merit, or his
conviction of the cogency of their arguments, soon changed his opinion
and his practice, and he adhered ever after to their method of
utterance.

Of this controversy it is not necessary to give a circumstantial
account; something of it may be found in Strype's Life of Smith, and
something in Baker's Reflections upon Learning; it is sufficient to
remark here, that Cheke's pronunciation was that which now prevails in
the schools of England. Disquisitions not only verbal, but merely
literal, are too minute for popular narration.

He was not less eminent, as a writer of Latin, than as a teacher of
Greek. All the publick letters of the university were of his
composition; and, as little qualifications must often bring great
abilities into notice, he was recommended to this honourable
employment, not less by the neatness of his hand, than the elegance of
his style.

However great was his learning, he was not always immured in his
chamber; but, being valetudinary, and weak of body, thought it
necessary to spend many hours in such exercises as might best relieve
him after the f