7. Of its immediate and striking success
there can be no doubt. A second edition of the first Tome appeared in
1569, the year after Ascham's death, and a second edition of the whole
work in 1575, the first Tome thus going through three editions in nine
years. It is therefore practically certain that Ascham had Painter's
book in his mind[9] in the above passage, which may be taken as a
contemporary criticism of Painter, from the point of view of an adherent
of the New-Old Learning, who conveniently forgot that scarcely a single
one of the Latin classics is free from somewhat similar blemishes to
those he found in Painter and his fellow-translators from the Italian.

[Footnote 9: Ascham was shrewd enough not to advertise the book he
was denouncing by referring to it by name. I have failed to find
in the Stationer's Register of 1566-8 any similar book to which
his remarks could apply, except Fenton's _Tragicall Discourses_,
and that was from the French.]

But it is time to turn to the book which roused Ascham's ire so greatly,
and to learn something of it and its author.[10] William Painter was
probably a Kentishman, born somewhere about 1525.[11] He seems to have
taken his degree at one of the Universities, as we find him head master
of Sevenoaks' school about 1560, and the head master had to be a
Bachelor of Arts. In the next year, however, he left the paedagogic toga
for some connection with arms, for on 9 Feb. 1561, he was appointed
Clerk of the Ordnance, with a stipend of eightpence per diem, and it is
in that character that he figures on his title page. He soon after
married Dorothy Bonham of Dowling (born about 1537, died 1617), and had
a family of at least five children. He acquired two important manors in
Gillingham, co. Kent, East Court and Twidall. Haslewood is somewhat at a
loss to account for these possessions. From documents I have discovered
and printed in an Appendix, it becomes only too clear, I fear, that
Painter's fortune had the same origin as too many private fortunes, in
peculation of public funds.

[Footnote 10: See Haslewood's account, reprinted _infra_,
p. xxxvii., to which I have been able to add a few documents in
the Appendix.]

[Footnote 11: His son, in a document of 1591, speaks of him as his
aged father (Appendix _infra_, p. lvii.).]

So far as we can judge from the materials at our disposal, it would seem
that Painter obtained his money by a very