Again he says: "I do gladly agree with all good schoolmasters in these points: to have children brought to good perfectness in learning; to all honesty in manners; to have all faults rightly amended; to have every vice severely corrected; but for the order and way that leadeth rightly to these points we somewhat differ. For commonly, many schoolmasters--some, as I have seen, more, as I have heard tell--be of so crooked a nature, as, when they meet with a hard-witted scholar, they rather break him than bow him, rather mar him than mend him. For when the schoolmaster is angry with some other matter, then will he soonest fall to beat his scholar; and though he himself should be punished for his folly, yet must he beat some scholar for his pleasure, though there be no cause for him to do so, nor yet fault in the scholar to deserve so. These, you will say, be fond [that is, foolish] schoolmasters, and few they be that be found to be such. They be fond, indeed, but surely over many such be found everywhere. But this will I say, that even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft punish nature as they do correct faults. Yea, many times the better nature is sorely punished; for, if one, by quickness of wit, take his lesson readily, another, by hardness of wit, taketh it not so speedily, the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished; when a wise schoolmaster should rather discreetly consider the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able to do now, as what either of them is likely to do hereafter. For this I know, not only by reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that those which be commonly the wisest, the best learned, and best men also, when they be old, were never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young." The result of ordinary school training, with the free use of the rod, as Ascham says, is that boys "carry commonly from the school with them a perpetual hatred of their master and a continual contempt for learning." He adds: "If ten gentlemen be asked why they forget so soon in court that which they were learning so long in school, eight of them, or let me be blamed, will lay the fault on their ill handling by their schoolmasters." The sum of the matter is that "learning should be taught rather by love than fear," and "the schoolhouse should be counted a sanctuary against fear." But Ascham, like Mulcaster and Brinsley, was far in advance of his age, and it is doubtful whether his wise counsel with regard to methods of discipline met with any greater favor among teachers than theirs concerning the importance of the study of English. WHEN WILLIAM LEFT SCHOOL. How long William remained in the Grammar School we do not know, but probably not more than six years, or until he was thirteen. In 1577 his father was beginning to have bad luck in his business, and the boy very likely had to be taken from school for work of some sort.