starched ruffs, even so lately as the 27th of May, 1582. She was dressing to attend a wedding, and, falling in a passion with the starching of her ruffs, said what caused a handsome gentleman to come into the room, who set them up for her to perfection, charmed her, and strangled her. When she was being taken out for burial, the coffin was so heavy that four strong men could not lift it. It was opened. The body was gone; but a lean and deformed black cat was sitting in the coffin, "setting of great ruffs and frizzling of hair, to the great fear and wonder of all the beholders." 12. The literature of the Church of England was represented in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by Richard Hooker, who was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, about 1553. He was to have been apprenticed to a trade, but his aptness for study caused him to be kept at school by his teacher, who persuaded young Richard Hooker's well-to-do uncle, John, then Chamberlain of Exeter, to put him to college for a year. John Hooker, a friend of Bishop Jewel's, introduced his nephew to that bishop, who, finding the boy able and his parents poor, sent him at the age of fifteen to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Edwin Sandys, Bishop of London, heard from Jewel the praises of young Richard Hooker, and, though himself a Cambridge man, sent his son to Oxford that he might have Hooker, whose age then was nineteen, for tutor and friend. Other pupils came, and Hooker was on the most pleasant relations with them. 1577 he became M.A. and Fellow of his college. In 1579, he was appointed to read the Hebrew lecture in his university, and did so for the next three years. He took holy orders, quitted Oxford, and married a scolding wife. He was shy and shortsighted, and had allowed her to be chosen for him. Of himself it is said that he never was seen to be angry. In 1584 Hooker was presented to the parsonage of Drayton-Beauchamp, near Aylesbury; and there he was found by his old pupil, Edwin Sandys, with Horace in his hand, relieving guard over his few sheep out of doors, and indoors called from his guests to rock the cradle. Sandy's reported Hooker's condition to his father, who had become Archbishop of York. In 1585 the office of Master of the Temple became vacant, and Hooker, then thirty. In two years old, was, through the archbishop's influence, called from his poor country parsonage to take it. There he became involved in a public discussion with an associate, Walter Travers, respecting the authority of the Established Church, Hooker's antagonist taking ground against it. This led Hooker's pure and quiet mind to the resolve that he would argue out in detail his own sense of right and justice in the Established Church system of his country, in "Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." That he might do this he asked for removal to some office in which he might be at peace. He wrote to the archbishop: "My lord, when I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage: but I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place; and indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. My lord, my particular contests with Mr. Travers here have proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man; and that belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions." Study had not only satisfied him, but he had "begun a treatise, in which I intend a justification of the laws of our ecclesiastical polity; in which design God and his holy angels shall at the last great day bear me that witness which my conscience now does, that my meaning is not to provoke any, but rather to satisfy all tender consciences; and I shall never be able to do this but where I may study, and pray for God's blessing upon my endeavors, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessings spring out of my mother-earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions; and, therefore, if your Grace can judge me worthy of such a favor, let me beg it, that I may perfect what I have begun." Hooker accordingly was made, in 1591, Rector of Boscombe, in Wiltshire, a parish with few people in it, four miles from Amesbury, and was instituted also, as a step to better preferment, to a minor prebend of small value in Salisbury. At Boscombe, Hooker finished the "Four Books of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie," published in 1594, with "A Preface to them that Seeke (as they tearme it) the Reformation of the Lawes and Orders Ecclesiasticall in the Church of England,” These four books treated, 1. Of laws in general; 2. Of the use of divine law contained in Scripture, whether that be the only law which ought to serve for our direction in all things without exception; 3. Of laws concerning Ecclesiastical Polity, whether the form thereof be in Scripture so set down that no addition or change is lawful; and, 4. Of general exceptions taken against the Laws of the English Church Polity as being Popish, and banished out of certain reformed churches. What Hooker said of Travers, Travers had like reason to say of Hooker: for this was the work of a good man, in the eyes of thousands whom it may not have convinced on points of discipline; a work perfect in spirit, earnest, eloquent, closely reasoned, and in the best sense of the word religious. In 1595 Richard Hooker left Boscombe for the rectory of Bishopsbourne, three miles from Canterbury, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1597 appeared the fifth book of his "Ecclesiastical Polity," which was longer than all the other four together. He died in 1600, having, while his health failed, desired only to live till he had finished the remaining three books of the work, for which is life seemed to have been given him. His health suffered the more for his labor at them, but he did complete the remaining three books, though without the revision given to the preceding five; and they were published, two in 1648, and all in 1662. CHAPTER II. SECOND HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: ASCHAM, LYLY, SIDNEY, AND OTHER WRITERS OF SECULAR PROSE. - 1. Roger Ascham.—2. John Lyly.-3. Sir Philip Sidney.-4. Literary History and Criticism; John Bale; William Webbe; George Puttenham. 5. Literary Anthologies; John Bodenham; Francis Meres.-6. History and Biography; George Cavendish; Richard Grafton; John Stow; Ralph Holinshed.-7. Books of Travel; Sir Humphrey Gilbert; Thomas Hariot; Richard Hakluyt. 1. THERE were during this period three great men of letters, whose writings are the most characteristic specimens of English literature, particularly in prose, for the second half of the sixteenth century, - Roger Ascham, John Lyly, and Sir Philip Sidney. Roger Ascham was born about the year 1515, in Kirkby Wiske, in Yorkshire, his father being house-steward in the family of Lord Scrope. He was educated by Sir Humphrey Wingfield, of whom he said afterwards: "This worshipful man hath ever loved, and used to have many children brought up in learning in his house, among whom I myself was one, for whom at term-times he would bring down from London both bow and shafts. And when they should play he would go with them himself into the field, see them shoot; and he that shot fairest should have the best bow and shafts, and he that shot ill-favoredly should be mocked of his fellows till he shot better. Would to God all England had used or would use to lay the foundation of youth after the example of this worshipful man in bringing up children in the book and the bow; by which two things the whole commonwealth, both in peace and war, is chiefly valid and defended withal!" At fifteen Roger Ascham became a student at St. John's College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. in 1534; obtained a fellowship in his college; and in 1537 became a college lecturer on Greek. He was at home for a couple of years after 1540, during which time he obtained a pension of forty shillings from the Archbishop of York. It ceased at the archbishop's death, in 1544. In that year Ascham wrote "Toxophilus ;" and in 1545, being then about twenty-nine years old, he presented "Toxophilus " to the king, at Greenwich, and was rewarded with a pension of ten pounds. "Toxophilus" was a scholar's book, designed to encourage among all gentlemen and yeomen of England the practice of archery for defence of the realm. The treatise was divided into two books of dialogue between Philologus and Toxophilus; the first book containing general argument to commend shooting, the second a particular description of the art of shooting with the long-bow. Ascham argued for it as a worthy recreation one very fit for scholars that in peace excludes ignoble pastimes, and in war gives to a nation strength. Men should seek, he said, to excel in it, and make it a study. Then he proceeded in the second part of his work to treat it as a study. The book was published in 1545, with a dedication to Henry VIII., and a preface, in which Ascham justified his use of English. To have written in another tongue would, he said, have better advanced his studies and his credit; but he wished to be read by the gentlemen and yeomen of England. He could not surpass what others had done in Greek and Latin; while English had usually been written by ignorant men so meanly, both for the matter and handling, that no man could do worse. Ascham was, in his preface to "Toxophilus," the first to suggest that English prose might be written with the same scholarly care that would be required for choice and ordering of words if one wrote Latin. "He that will write well in any tongue," said Ascham," must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him. Many English writers have not done so, but using strange words, as Latin, French, and Italian, do make all things dark and hard." The manly simplicity of Ascham's own English is in good accord with his right doctrine. His Latin was so well esteemed that in the year after the appearance of "Toxophi |