for interest than affection.  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.  It may be easily discovered, from his Schoolmaster, that he felt his wants, though he might neglect to supply them; and we are left to suspect, that he showed his contempt of money only by losing at play.  If this was his practice, we may excuse Elizabeth, who knew the domestick character of her servants, if she did not give much to him who was lavish of a little.

However he might fail in his economy, it were indecent to treat with wanton levity the memory of a man who shared his frailties with all, but whose learning or virtues few can attain, and by whose excellencies many may be improved, while himself only suffered by his faults.

In the reign of Elizabeth, nothing remarkable is known to have befallen him, except that, in 1563, he was invited, by sir Edward Sackville, to write the Schoolmaster, a treatise on education, upon an occasion which he relates in the beginning of the book.

This work, though begun with alacrity, in hopes of a considerable reward, was interrupted by the death of the patron, and afterwards sorrowfully and slowly finished, in the gloom of disappointment, under the pressure of distress.  But of the author’s disinclination or dejection there can be found no tokens in the work, which is conceived with great vigour, and finished with great accuracy; and, perhaps, contains the best advice that was ever given for the study of languages.

This treatise he completed, but did not publish; for that poverty which, in our days, drives authors so hastily in such numbers to the press, in the time of Ascham, I believe, debarred them from it.  The printers gave little for a copy, and, if we may believe the tale of Raleigh’s history, were not forward to print what was offered them for nothing.  Ascham’s book, therefore, lay unseen in his study, and was, at last, dedicated to lord Cecil by his widow.

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.  In the latter part of his life he found it necessary to forbear any intense application of the mind from dinner to bedtime, and rose to read and write early in the morning.  He was, for some years, hectically feverish; and, though he found some alleviation of his distemper, never obtained a perfect recovery of his health.  The immediate cause of his last sickness was too close application to the composition of a