his hole church to teche all necessary trouth; though it maye therfore be the better suffred
that no part of holy scripture wer kept out of honest ley mens handes, yet wold I that no part
therof shoulde come in theirs, which, to their own harme & happely their neybours to, would
handle it ouer homely, & be to bold & busy therwith. And also though holye scripture be, as ye
saide whyleere, a medicine for him that is sick, & fode for him that is hole; yet sith ther is many
a body sore soule-sicke that taketh himself for hole, & in holy scripture is an whole feast of so
much diuers vyand, that after the affection & state of sondry stomakes, one may take harme by
the selfsame that shall do another good; & sicke folke often haue such a corrupt tallage in their
tast, that they most like that mete
that is most unholesome for them;
it were not therfore, as me thinketh,
vnreasonable that the ordinary
whom god hath in the dyoces
appointed for the chief phisicion,
to discerne betwene the hole & the
sicke, & betwene disease & disease,
should after hys wisedom & dis-
crecion appoynt euery body their
part, as he shoulde perceiue to bee
good & holesome for them.

Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1499-1546).Sir Thomas Elyot, physician, ambassador, Greek scholar, and author of The Boke of the Gouernour (1531), was another enthusiastic advocate of education in the widest sense. The Gouernour expounds systematically and at great length the various branches of the education of a gentleman intended to take his due share in the government of his. country. Here is what he has to say about horsemanship:

But the moste honorable exercise, in myne opinion, and that besemeth the astate of euery noble persone, is to ryde suerly & clene on a great horse and a roughe, whiche undoubtedly nat onely importeth a meiestie & drede into inferiour persones, beholding him aboue the common course of other men, dauntyng a fierce and cruell beaste, but also is no litle socour, as well in pursuete of enemies & confoundyng them, as in escapyng imminent daunger, whan wisedome therto exhorteth. Also a stronge and hardy horse dothe some-tyme more domage vnder his maister than he with al his waipon: and also setteth forwarde the stroke, and causethe it to lighte with more violence.

Elyot's book was much more than a treatise on pedagogy. It might rather be compared with Xenophon's Cyropædia; and its discussions on the relative merits of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, in which the author pronounces in favour of the first, are another interesting example of the freedom from pedantry and the

spacious worldly wisdom of this group of scholars. The breadth of his reading is manifested by a wealth of anecdote and allusion from classical writers and modern humanists, reading illuminated by the realism and practicality of a man of affairs.

WRITERS ON EDUCATION

Elyot also wrote a book on medical science, The Castel of Helth, translated various

educational works, and compiled a Latin-English lexicon. These connect him with an important group of men who belong to the history of education rather than of literature, like the Spaniard Vivès and Richard Mulcaster, first head of Merchant Taylors' School, and one of Lily's successors at St. Paul's. Thomas Wilson is a link between these and the other group, of men like Elyot, Erasmus, and Colet, who were educators in a much wider sense. His practical and well-illustrated book on composition, The Arte of Rhetorique, would now be classified among educational works, though it is said to have been studied with profit by the chief of our poets.

ROGER ASCHAM (1515-68). The Yorkshireman Roger Ascham was the most eminent among these writers on practical education. We owe him a grudge, and perhaps he is best remembered by many readers, for his puritanical denunciation of Malory's Morte Darthur. Ascham was in fact something of a pedant, and did not carry his learning with the ease and grace of some contemporaries. Puritanism seems difficult to reconcile with his devotion to cock-fighting, not to mention his elaborate work on archery and his healthy interest in sports. It showed more respectably in his famous diatribes against the vices imported from the Continent by " Italianate Englishmen." Ascham was a fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, public orator to the university, Latin secretary to Queen Mary, and private tutor for a while to Elizabeth. Every one has read how delighted he was to find Lady Jane Grey reading

Plato's Phædo in the original Greek while the rest of the household were away hunting.

Works. His Toxophilus, a treatise on archery, appeared in 1545; his other large work, The Scholemaster, was posthumous. Ascham, in Toxophilus, dealt in the form of dialogue with the question of physical training in education, and illustrated the technical and historical side of his subject with inexhaustible quotations from ancient authors. Both books have a fine literary flavour; but they are most important as examples of the contemporary handling of prose. Ascham urged that English matters should be written "in the English tongue for Englishmen." He did indeed succeed in using a thoroughly English vocabulary, in spite of the weight of Latin and Greek learning that encumbered him. But in the structure of his sentences he is less happy, and cannot get away from the habits of Latin prose:

If any man woulde blame me, eyther for takynge such a matter in hande, or els for writing it in the Englyshe tongue, this answere I make hym, that when the beste of the realme thinke it honeste for them to vse, I, one of the meanest sorte, ought not to suppose it vile for me to write; and though to have written it in an other tonge, had bene bothe more profitable for my study, and also more honest for my name, yet I can thinke my labour wel bestowed, yf with a little hynderaunce of my profyt and name, maye come any fourtheraunce, to the pleasure or commoditie of the gentlemen and yeomen of Englande, for whose sake I tooke this matter in hande. And as for ye Latin or greke tonge, euery thing is so excellently done in them, that none can do better: In the Englysh tonge contrary, euery thinge in a manner so meanly, bothe for the matter and handelynge, that no man can do worse. For therein the least learned for the moste parte, haue ben alwayes moost redye to wryte. And they whiche had least hope in latin, haue bene moste boulde in englyshe: when surelye euery man that is moste ready to taulke, is not moost able to wryte.-Toxophilus.

LITERATURE OF THE REFORMATION

The two chief literary products of the Reformation in England were the translation of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Both were the composite work, not only of various hands, but of successive periods of labour. Parts of the Bible had been translated in Wyclif's time, some probably by the reformer himself, other portions at his instigation. To what extent the simple English of these Wyclifite versions was utilized by the Tudor translators it is easy to see; they also used each other's renderings freely, and in the Authorized Version of 1611, at any rate, the outcome of these centuries of pious endeavour, and the best results of many men's efforts, were finally incorporated. In the evolution of the Prayer Book Cranmer bore a leading part. There had been many Primers before Henry VIII. called on him to prepare translations of certain prayers for the King's Primer of 1545, which contained the noble Litany, probably the handiwork of Cranmer. In the following reign the diversity caused by various Primers was ended by the issue of the two Prayer Books of Edward VI. in 1549 and 1552. Many problems of doctrine and ritual would have to be considered in a study of the compilation of these two works; but on the literary side it is only necessary to observe that they were

the ultimate result of processes of growth and selection similar to those that gave us the English Bible, and that the dominating mind in the last stages was Cranmer's. We turn to the individual writers who took part in these great tasks and also produced many theological, devotional, and controversial works that have their place in the history of English prose.

The Gospell

And he fayde:Lorde, beleue,and wozhipped hym. Jefus Cayde:Jam come bnto iudgemente into this worlde: that they whiche le for,myght fe,and they whiche le, myghte be made blynde. And fome of the pharifeis whiche were with hym,hearde these wordes, and layd bnto hym :are we bling Toba xv. d. alfo Jefus fayde bnto them: if ye were blynde ye boulde hane no fynne. But now ye laye, we fe, therfore your spune remayneth.

The Bol pell on the

Temeldape

afier White

WILLIAM TYNDALE (?1484-
1536).-The three men of this
era to whom the greatest debt
stands due for the literary merits
of the English Bible in its ulti-
mate form are Tyndale, Cover-
dale, and Cranmer. William
Tyndale was born in Gloucester-
shire and educated at Oxford.
He was a disciple of the New
Learning, and strongly inclined
towards the reformed doctrines
then being preached in Germany.
His scheme for publishing an
English translation of the New
Testament met with so little
encouragement at home that he
went over to Hamburg in 1524,
with the intention of printing
the book and getting the copies
smuggled into this country.
Erely,berely faye bnto you: he that entreth But he found the authorities
not in by the boze into the tepefolde, but clymns abroad no less difficult.
meth bp fome other waye, the fame is a theefe
and a robber. But he that goeth in by the dose,
is the epehearde of the the pe: to hun the po

Cbrifters the true hepberde, and the dore of the fhepe.Some faye.
Cbrifte bath the deuell, and is madde Some faye: be fpeaketh not the
wordes of one that bath the denell, because be telletb the trueth, the
Lewes take up flones to cafte at bym,callbis preachynge blafphemy,
and go aboute to take bim.

Page from Tyndale's quarto Illustrated New Testament,
printed by R. Jugge, probably 1553.

(From the Eadie Library.)

ter

At

Cologne, after he had begun to print, his work was stopped, and he fled to Worms, carrying with him some parts already printed. He succeeded at length in com

pleting an octavo and a quarto edition, and sending them to England. But the book was condemned by the bishops, and copies were seized and destroyed, Tyndale himself escaping only by flight from the long arm of Wolsey. Later on he won the approval of Henry VIII. by his views on Church and State, but lost it by his denunciation of the divorce proceedings. His execution at Vilvorde in 1536 was due as much to the political enmity he had stirred up as to the ostensible charge of heresy.

Tyndale's English.-The rhythm of Tyndale's translations from Scripture may be judged by such a passage as this, from Deuteronomy:

The first boke of 30= 0.

Heare, Israel, let these wordes which I commaunde the this daye steke fast in thine herte / and whette them on thy childerne & talke of them as thou sittest in thine house / and as thou walkest by the way

& when thou liest doune & when thou risest vppe & bynde them for a token to thine hande & let them be a remembraunce betwene thine eyes / & write them on the postes & gates of thine house.

The style of his controversial writings is forcible and trenchant, but rarely attains the same beauty of expression. His vigorous plea for a rendering of the Bible into the vernacular has often been quoted, and should be compared with the views of his opponent, Sir Thomas More:

The sermons which thou readist in the Actes of the apostles & all that the apostles preached were no doute preached in the mother tonge. Why then mighte they not be written in the mother tonge? As yf one of vs preach a good sermon, why maye it not be written? Saynt hierom also translated the bible in-to his mother tonge. Why maye not

The Coverdale Bible, first edition, 1535.
(Opening verses of Genesis i.)

we also? They will say, "it can not be translated in-to our tonge, it is so rude." It is not so rude as they are false lyers. For the greke tonge agreeth moare with the english then with the latyne. And the propirties of the hebrue tonge agreth a thousande tymes moare with the english then with the latyne. The maner of speakynge is both one, so that in a thousande places thou neadest not but to translate it in-to the english worde for worde, when thou must seke a com