His reputation still increased, and many resorted to his chamber to hear the Greek writers explained.  He was, likewise, eminent for other accomplishments.  By the advice of Pember, he had learned to play on musical instruments, and he was one of the few who excelled in the mechanical art of writing, which then began to be cultivated among us, and in which we now surpass all other nations.  He not only wrote his pages with neatness, but embellished them with elegant draughts and illuminations; an art at that time so highly valued, that it contributed much both to his fame and his fortune.

He became master of arts in March, 1537, in his twenty-first year, and then, if not before, commenced tutor, and publickly undertook the education of young men.  A tutor of one-and-tweuty, however accomplished with learning, however exalted by genius, would now gain little reverence or obedience; but in those days of discipline and regularity, the authority of the statutes easily supplied that of the teacher; all power that was lawful was reverenced.  Besides, young tutors had still younger pupils.

Ascham is said to have courted his scholars to study by every incitement, to have treated them with great kindness, and to have taken care, at once, to instil learning and piety, to enlighten their minds, and to form their manners.  Many of his scholars rose to great eminence; and among them William Grindal was so much distinguished, that, by Cheke’s recommendation, he was called to court, as a proper master of languages for the lady Elizabeth.

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.  A lecture was afterwards founded by king Henry, and he then quitted the schools, but continued to explain Greek authors in his own college.

He was at first an opponent of the new pronunciation introduced, or rather of the ancient restored, about this time, by Cheke and Smith, and made some cautious struggles for the common practice, which the credit and dignity of his antagonists did not permit him to defend very publickly, or with much vehemence:  nor were they long his antagonists; for either his affection for their merit, or his conviction of the cogency of their arguments, soon changed his opinion and his practice, and he adhered ever after to their method of utterance.

Of this controversy it is not necessary to give a circumstantial account; something of it may be found in Strype’s Life of Smith, and something in Baker’s Reflections upon Learning; it is sufficient to remark here, that Cheke’s pronunciation was that which now prevails in the schools of England.  Disquisitions not only verbal, but merely literal, are too minute for popular narration.

He was not less eminent, as a writer of Latin, than as a teacher of Greek.  All the publick letters of the university were of his composition; and, as little qualifications must often bring great abilities into notice, he was recommended to this honourable employment, not less by the neatness of his hand, than the elegance of his style.