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 recreationone 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. Once I communed with a man which reasoned the English tongue to be enriched and increased thereby, saying, 'Who will not praise that feast where a man shall drink at a dinner both wine, ale, and beer?' 'Truly,' quod I, 'they be all good, every one taken by himself alone, but if you put malmsey and sack, red wine and white, ale and beer, and all in one pot, you shall make a drink neither easy to be known, nor yet wholesome for the body."" 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 "Toxophilus" he succeeded Cheke as Public Orator, and wrote the official letters of the University. TO A.D. 1553.] REIGN OF EDWARD VI. 309 Ascham was famous also for his penmanship, and taught writing to the prince whose reign we now pass into, Edward VI. (1547-1553), at the date of his accession, between nine and ten years old. The Earl of Hertford was made Protector, as Duke of Somerset. Under Edward VI., Ascham had his pension confirmed and augmented. In 1548 he became tutor to the Princess Elizabeth, at Cheston, but he was annoyed by her steward, and had therefore returned to the University when, in 1550, he was through Cheke's good offices appointed secretary to Sir Richard Morison, then going as Ambassador to Charles V. He reached Augsburg in October, was away more than a year, and published in 1553 a Report and Discourse written by Roger Ascham, of the Affairs and State of Germany ✔ and the Emperor Charles his Court, during certain years while the said Roger was there. 56. John Cheke (§ 51), who had assisted for the last three years in Edward's education, was a great scholar himself, and a cause of scholarship in others who earned reputation and looked back to him with gratitude. He was knighted by King Edward, and had grants of land. He became also in this reign a privy councillor and secretary of state. Sir John Cheke drew force for the real work of life out of his studies. He was especially familiar with Demosthenes, and said that the study of him taught Englishmen how to speak their minds. Thomas Smith (§ 51), who had been travelling among the Universities of France and Italy towards the close of Henry VIII.'s reign, and took the doctor's degree at Padua, was, after the accession of Edward VI., made Provost of Eton; in 1548 he was knighted. Sir Thomas Smith became, like his friend Sir John Cheke, a secretary of state under Edward, and he was employed as an ambassador. 57. In the first year of the new rule the Protector Somerset endeavoured to compel the union of North and South by enforcing Henry VIII.'s policy of a marriage between Edward of England and Mary Queen of Scots. "If we two," he wrote, of the two countries, "being made one by amity, be most able to defend us against all nations, and having the sea for wall, the mutual love for garrison, and God for defence, should make so noble and well-agreeing a monarchy that neither in peace we may be ashamed nor in war afraid of any worldly or foreign power, why should not you be as desirous of the same and have as much cause to rejoice at it as we?" John Knox was in the French galleys; the old hierarchy ruled in Scotland. There Reformation was under foot; in England its friends were supreme. Accord was impossible. There was one more shock of arms, and a defeat of Scots at the Battle of Pinkie. Of Sir David Lindsay there is little more to tell. He had written, probably before the accession of Edward VI., his Historie of Squire William Meldrum, umquhile laird of Cleische and Bynnis, a whimsical burlesque romance that is not all burlesque, of a valiant Scottish squire of Lindsay's own time, with a taste in it of Chaucer's Sir Thopas, or rather of the Italian half-mocking treatment of heroic song, and an after relish of strong national self-satisfaction. This is the best of Lindsay's lighter strains. His last work was his longest, and supremely grave-The Monarchie: a Dialogue betwixt Experience and a Courtier, of the Miserable Estate of the World -finished in 1553. The first line of its Epistle to the Reader called it a "lytil quair of mater miserabyll." There was, alas, no king to dedicate it to, but it was submitted to the rulers and priests, praying them to Christianise the laws, and remember that Scotland suffered war, famine, and pestilence for sin. The Word of God must be taught, and the people repent of sin, before their enemies could have no might against the Christian banner. He divided his poem into a Prologue and Four Books. The Prologue, in Chaucer's stanza, told how the poet went into a park on a May morning, and, delighted with the beauty of Nature, dwelt upon the miseries of man. He invoked no pagan muse, for he had never slept upon Parnassus, or drunk with Hesiod of Helicon, the source of Eloquence. If any Muse were invoked it might be Rhamnusia, Goddess of Dispute; but, he said: "I mon go seik ane muse more confortabyll The mount to which he betook himself was not Parnassus but And grant me grace to wrytt nor dyte no thing Bot tyll his heych honoùr and loude louyng; But" (ie., without) "whose support thare may na gud be wrocht A.D. 1553.] LINDSAY'S "MONARCHIE." 309 After such Prologue, Lindsay told in his first book—this and the rest of the poem being in octosyllabic rhyme-how there came to him, the Courtier, walking in the park, an old man named Experience, of whom he asked comforting counsel. Experience taught that the love of God and of Christ, who died for men, gave comfort among the troubles that have come by sin. After an exclamation to the reader, on his writing in his mother tongue, which led to a requirement that the clergy should teach, and that the books necessary to the spiritual life of men should be translated into the language of the people, Lindsay made Experience tell the Courtier in the rest of Book I. how Adam fell, and the Flood came, through sin; in Book II., how in the great monarchy of Nineveh the first war was begun "by cruel, prideful, covetous kings" seeking wrongfully to plunder one another. There were four great monarchies--the Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Ninus also invented imageworship; and thus Lindsay passed to long lament for the idolatry in Scotland of his time. Of Ninus and his burial, and of the miserable ends of Semiramis and Sardanapalus, Lindsay told in his second book. In his third book he told of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain, and shortly of the second, third, and fourth monarchies, with the miserable destruction of Jerusalem; and lastly, of the spiritual and papal monarchy. Under this head appeared again the grief of the poor man whose three cows would be taken by the Church if he, his wife, and their eldest child should die, so that the little children would be left orphan and destitute. Lindsay's third book of the Monarchy ended with a description of the court of Rome. The fourth book, after dialogue on duty and on death, described Antichrist, the day of judgment, bliss of heaven, and the final monarchy of Christ. David Lindsay was a poet of the same national type as John Gower. He had not the artistic genius of Dénbar, as Gower had not the artistic genius of Chaucer; but Gower and Lindsay had a like sense of God and duty, a depth of eartnestness that was itself a power, a practical aim, and a directness in pursuit of it, that caused each in didactic poetry to "write the ills he saw." The points of difference are manifest; especially there was in Lindsay a vein of humour, which also belongs to the people whom he represented, but of which Gower seems to have had less than his share. Sir David Lindsay, as Lion King of Arms, held a chapter of heralds in January 1555, and that is the last record of his life. It is not known when he died, or where he was buried; but it may be added that in that year 1555 his "Satire of the Three Estates" was acted again before Queen, Court, and Commons. 58. The general pardon usual at a coronation ended at the coronation of Edward VI. the persecution under the Six Articles. A Book of Homilies, which had been suggested in the preceding reign to secure uniformity of preaching, was now executed by Archbishop Cranmer and his colleagues. Twelve Homilies were produced and "appointed by the king's majesty to be declared and read by all parsons, vicars, or curates, every Sunday, in their churches where they have cure." There was an English visitation during the Scotch war to ascertain how far in each parish images were removed; pilgrimages, offerings, and superstitious holidays abolished; the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and the Articles of Faith taught to the young; and the great Bible, in English, made accessible in some convenient part of every church. Some associated the two facts that ten thousand Scots fell at Pinkie, and that there was a great destruction of images in London upon the same day. Cranmer had chosen Erasmus's Paraphrase of the New Testament for translation. It had been for some time in hand, and was now to form two folio volumes produced at the public expense, and set up in churches for an aid in the instruction of the people. Upon this work we left Nicholas Udall busy (§ 48). The first volume, containing the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, appeared in January, 1548. Udall, who had translated the Paraphrase of St. Luke's Gospel, placed the texts throughout that Gospel, and the others (except Mark), to show how they corresponded with the Paraphrase. He wrote also an Introduction to the Gospels, in three letters, one to King Edward, one to the Reader, and one to Queen Catherine Parr. The other volume appeared in August, 1549, with a preface by Miles Coverdale (§ 26, 29) and John Olde. Coverdale was now Almoner to Queen Catherine, and in 1551 was made Bishop of Exeter. 66 The first measure of the Parliament of 1549 was an Act for Uniformity of Service, which established the use of an English Book of Common Prayer (known as The First Service Book") in English Churches. Richard Grafton (§ 50) was one of its two authorised printers, and the issue began in March, 1549. With some variations made in an edition of 1552, called "The Second |