A Memoir of Roger Ascham

t is divided into two nearly equal parts. The first part is on "The bringing up of youth;" the second on "The ready way to the Latin tongue." The work is avowedly based upon a passage of Cicero (De Oratore, Book I. chap, xxxiv.), which has been thus translated: ? " But in my daily exercises, I used, when a youth, to adopt chiefly that method which I knew that Caius Carbo, my adversary, generally practised, which was, that having selected some nervous piece of poetry, or read over such a portion of a speech as I could retain in my memory, I used to declaim upon what I had been reading in other words, chosen with all the judgment that I possessed. . . . Afterwards I thought proper, and continued the practice at a rather more advanced age, to translate the orations of the best Greek orators; by fixing upon which, I gained this advantage, that while I rendered into Latin what I had read in Greek, I not only used the best words, and yet such as were of common occurrence, but also formed some words by imitation, which would be new to our countrymen, taking care, however, that they were unobjectionable." We propose to give a few extracts from the work, rather to show the author's style than to furnish an abstract of his views on the best methods of teaching the languages. Those wishing to leam these, will, of course, refer to the book. A good edition, in the original spelling, without notes, is published as one of a series of " English Reprints " ? price one shi...