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.

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.

Ascham entered Cambridge at a time when the last great revolution of the intellectual world was filling every academical mind with ardour or anxiety.

Ascham soon resolved to unite himself to those who were enlarging the bounds of knowledge, and, immediately upon his admission into the college, applied himself to the study of Greek.

He was one of the great encouragers of Greek learning, and particularly applauded Ascham's lectures, assuring him in a letter, of which Graunt has preserved an extract, that he would gain more knowledge by explaining one of Æsop's fables to a boy, than by hearing one of Homer's poems explained by another.

Ascham took his bachelor's degree in 1534, February 18, in the eighteenth year of his age; a time of life at which it is more common now to enter the universities, than to take degrees, but which, according to the modes of education then in use, had nothing of remarkable prematurity.

Of this forgetfulness, Ascham cannot be accused; for he is recorded to have preserved the most grateful and affectionate reverence for Wingfield, and to have never grown weary of recounting his benefits.

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.

The purse of Ascham was not equal to the expense of peregrination; and, therefore, he hoped to have it augmented by a pension.

A pension of ten pounds granted by a king of England to a man of letters, appears, to modern readers, so contemptible a benefaction, that it is not unworthy of inquiry what might be its value at that time, and how much Ascham might be enriched by it.

This doubt, however, is in favour of Ascham; for if we raise the worth of wheat, we raise that of his pension.

In the age of Ascham, most of the elegancies and expenses of our present fashions were unknown: commerce had not yet distributed superfluity through the lower classes of the people, and the character of a student implied frugality, and required no splendour to support it.

Henry the eighth died two years after, and a reformation of religion being now openly prosecuted by king Edward and his council, Ascham, who was known to favour it, had a new grant of his pension, and continued at Cambridge, where he lived in great familiarity with Bucer, who had been called from Germany to the professorship of divinity.

But his retirement was soon at an end; for, in 1548, his pupil Grindal, the master of the princess Elizabeth, died, and the princess, who had already some acquaintance with Ascham, called him from his college to direct her studies.

During the course of this embassy, Ascham undertook to improve Morisine in Greek, and, for four days in the week, explained some passages in Herodotus every morning, and more than two hundred verses of Sophocles, or Euripides, every afternoon.

The truth is, that Ascham still had, in his fellowship, all that in the early part of his life had given him plenty, and might have lived like the other inhabitants of the college, with the advantage of more knowledge and higher reputation.

Graunt, at a time when the transactions of queen Mary's reign must have been well enough remembered, declares, that Ascham always made open profession of the reformed religion, and that Englesfield and others often endeavoured to incite Gardiner against him, but found their accusations rejected with contempt: yet he allows, that suspicions and charges of temporization and compliance, had somewhat sullied his reputation.

But the truth is, that morality was never suffered, in the days of persecution, to protect heresy: nor are we sure that Ascham was more clear from common failings than those who suffered more; and, whatever might be his abilities, they were not so necessary, but Gardiner could have easily filled his place with another secretary.

At that time, if some were punished, many were forborne; and of many why should not Ascham happen to be one?

He was distinguished in this reign by the notice of cardinal Pole, a man of great candour, learning, and gentleness of manners, and particularly eminent for his skill in Latin, who thought highly of Ascham's style; of which it is no inconsiderable proof, that when Pole was desirous of communicating a speech made by himself as legate, in parliament, to the pope, he employed Ascham to translate it.

Graunt exerts his rhetorical powers in praise of Ascham's disinterestedness and contempt of money; and declares, that, though he was often reproached by his friends with neglect of his own interest, he never would ask any thing, and inflexibly refused all presents which his office or imagined interest induced any to offer him.

Camden, however, imputes the narrowness of his condition to his love of dice and cockfights: and Graunt, forgetting himself, allows that Ascham was sometimes thrown into agonies by disappointed expectations.

Ascham never had a robust or vigorous body, and his excuse for so many hours of diversion was his inability to endure a long continuance of sedentary thought.