reported to have said of her, that she knew well how to discourse of all things, from predestination down to slea-silk. If she had sought fame rather than wisdom, possibly she might have been ranked amongst those wits and learned of that sex, of whom Pythagoras, or Plutarch, or any of the ancients, have made such honourable mention; but she affected rather to study with those noble Bereans, and those honourable women, who searched the scriptures daily; and, with Mary, she chose the better part, of learning the doctrine of Christ."

In our brief notice of George, Earl of Cumberland, we alluded to the narrative of his third voyage, drawn up by Wright, the mathematician, and included in Hakluyt's collection. From this account we shall select a passage, which Lord Byron must have read before he composed the Shipwreck in Don Juan. After relating their vain attempts to reach the coast of Ireland, and the rapid reduction of the crew's allowance from half a pint to a quarter pint of water daily, then to a few spoonfuls of vinegar, or squeezings of wine-leas, to each meal, he proceeds thus:

66

'With this hard fare, (for by reason of our great want of drink, we durst eat but very little,) we continued for the space of a fortnight, or thereabout, saving that now and then we feasted for it in the meantime, and that was when there fell any hail or rain, the hail-stones we gathered up and did eat them more pleasantly than if they had been the sweetest comfits in the world. The rain-drops were so carefully saved, that so near as we could, not one was lost in all the ship. Some hung up sheets tied with cords by the four corners, and a weight in the middle, that the water might run down thither, and so be received into some vessel; some that wanted

sheets hung up napkins and clouts, and watched them till they were wet through, then wringing and sucking out the water. And that water which fell down and washed away the filth and soiling of the ship, trod underfoot, as runneth down the kennel many times, when it raineth, was not lost, but watched and attended carefully, yea sometimes with strife and contention, at every scupperhole and other place where it ran down, with dishes, pots, cans, and jars, whereof some drank hearty draughts as it was, without tarrying to cleanse it. Some indeed tarried the cleansing, but not often, as loathe to lose such excellent stuff. Some licked with their tongues, like dogs, the boards under feet, the sides, rails, and masts of the ship; others, naturally more ingenious, fastened girdles or ropes about the masts, daubing tallow betwixt them and the mast, that the rain might not run down between, in such sort that those ropes or girdles hanging lower down on one side than the other, a spout of leather was fastened to the lower part, that all the rain-drops that came running down. the mast might meet together at this place and there be received. Some also put bullets of lead into their mouths to slake their thirst.” *

All except Juan, who throughout abstain'd,
Chewing a piece of Bamboo and some lead.

CANTO II. 80.

ROGER ASCHAM.

"Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."-CHAUCER.

THERE was a primitive honesty, a kindly innocence, about this good old scholar, which give a personal interest to the homeliest details of his life. He had the rare felicity of passing through the worst of times without persecution and without dishonour. He lived with princes and princesses, prelates and diplomatists, without offence and without ambition. Though he enjoyed the smiles of royalty, his heart was none the worse, and his fortune little the better. He had that disposition which, above all things, qualifies the conscientious and successful teacher; for he delighted rather to discover and call forth the talents of others, than to make a display of his own.

Roger Ascham, the friend of Jane Grey, and the tutor of Queen Elizabeth, was born at Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton, A.D. 1515. His father discharged with diligence and fidelity the office of steward in the family of Scrope. His mother Margaret was more highly connected. He had two brothers and several sisters. His parents, having lived forty-seven years together as man and wife should live, expired in one day, and almost at the same hour.

It was the fashion of that time, that youth of respectable connexions and small fortune were received into the houses of the great, and educated along with

the scions of nobility. Roger, before his father's death, was taken into the family of Sir Anthony Wingfield, and brought up with the two sons of his patron, under the care of their tutor, Mr. Robert Bond.* For an humble, dutiful, steady, and studious temper, no situation could be more advantageous. Such was Roger's. By living in a wealthy mansion he obtained access to more books than his father could have purchased for him, and became an ardent reader almost as soon as he knew his letters: there, too, we may suppose he acquired that simple courtesy, that reverend kindliness of manner, which enabled him to win and retain the good graces of three royal females so dissimilar as Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps by secretly assisting his fellow-students, the young Wingfields, he first opened in his own mind that extraordinary aptitude for tuition which he afterwards displayed, and observed some of the facts which led him to think so deeply and so rightly on the culture of the human intellect.

In the year 1530, when he had attained his fifteenth year, he was sent, at the charges of his good patron, Sir Anthony, to St. John's College, Cambridge, where his studies neither went astray for lack of guidance, nor loitered for want of emulation. St. John's was then replete with all such learning as the time esteemed. The hard-headed dialectics and divinity of the schoolman was interchanged with the newly

* "To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make schoolmasters careful in their place, that the eminences of their scholars have commended their schoolmasters to posterity, which otherwise in obscurity had been altogether forgotten. Who had ever heard of R. Bond, in Lancashire, but for the breeding of learned Roger Ascham, his scholar?" -Fuller's Holy and Profane States.

recovered literature of Greece and Rome. The mind of Europe, divided between the rigidity of the old scholastic discipline and the inquisitive imaginations of the Italian Platonism, which brought poetry and philology in its train, might be likened to an old hawthorn stock, white with the blossoms of the spring; and if credit be given to Ascham's panegyrist, St. John's was a brief abstract, containing fair samples of every kind of excellence.*

Ascham's tutor was Hugh Fitzherbert, Fellow of St. John's, a man of learning and merit, and if we may judge by his surname, of high descent on one side at least. Whether related to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert we cannot tell. Among his contemporaries or immediate seniors are enumerated some whose names are immediately recognised, and others, per

* " 'Yea, surely, in that one college, which at that season, for number of most learned doctors, for multitude of erudite philosophers, for abundance of eloquent orators, all in their kind superlative, might rival or outvie all mansions of literature on earth, were exceeding many men, most excellent in all politer letters, and in knowledge of languages." But English is not the speech of compliment or panegyric. No translation can come up to the issimuses and errimorums of old Rome. Here is the original, from Grant's "Oratio de vita et obitu Rogeri Ascham:"

Imo certe in hoc uno collegio, quod eâ ætate singula totius orbis literarum domicilia et doctissimorum Theologorum numero, eruditissimorum Philosophorum turbâ, eloquentissimorum oratorum multitudine, vel juste, adaequare, vel longe superare posset, erant complurimi homines omni politiori literatura linguarumque cognitione præstantissimorum. Quorum ille provocatur exemplis, et literarum imbibendarum ardore incensus, brevi propter admirabilem ingenii vim et indefessam in studiis industriam, tantos in Græcis Latinisque literis progressus fecit, ut omnes aequales si non superaret, certe unus singulus adæquaret.