Ascham's _Schoolmaster_, 1570, is a volume, as its title perhaps may import, for the teacher indeed rather than for the learner. It is a manual of valuable suggestions and counsels for the guidance and use of those under whose direction the course of school-work was carried out, although immediately it was designed for the benefit of Mr. Robert Sackville, the deceased Treasurer's grandson. The writer confesses his indebtedness to Sir John Cheke and to Sturmius, among the moderns, and to his old masters, as he calls them, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Sir Richard Sackville, who was happily instrumental in persuading Ascham to undertake the task, told him that he had found the disadvantage in his own case of an imperfect education; "for a fond scholemaster," quoth he, "before I was fullie fourtene yeare olde, draue me so, with feare of beating, from all loue of learninge, as nowe, when I know what difference it is to haue learninge, and to haue little or none at all, I feele it my greatest greife, and finde it my greatest hurte, that euer came to me; that it was my so ill chance to light vpon so lewde a schoolmaster." Ascham was of his friend's opinion in regard to greater clemency and patience on the part of teachers, and he also preferred such text-books as _Cicero de Officiis_ to the Manuals compiled by Horman, Whittinton, and the rest of the old school of English grammarians. The passage in the _Schoolmaster_ where the author narrates his interview, before he went on his travels into Germany, with Lady Jane Grey at her father's house in Leicestershire, is familiar enough; it exhibits a converse case, so far as the severities of school-teachers are concerned; for that amiable and unfortunate woman found her only compensation for the harshness and rigour of her parents in a gentle and beloved tutor, "who," she told Ascham, "teacheth me so ientlie, so pleasantlie, with such faire allurements to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing whiles I am with him." One sees that Ascham, while loth to say too much on such a topic, did not cordially relish the old translations into English verse of some of the classics, even when the translator was such a man as Surrey or Chaucer; and there I agree with him, and indeed I think that many more are inclined so to do.