1568. On the 4th of January Roger Ascham died, and was buried at St. Sepulchre’s church, London. He was born in Yorkshire about 1515, and is celebrated for his learning, for having been tutor and Latin secretary to queen Elizabeth, and for having written “the Scholemaster.” This work originated from mention having been made at dinner that some Eton scholars “had run away from school for fear of beating.” Ascham expressed his opinion that “young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning.” He then retired up stairs “to read with the queen’s majesty: we read then together that noble oration of Demosthenes against Æschines, for his false dealing in his embassy to king Philip of Macedon; sir Richard Sackville came up soon after.” Sackville took Ascham aside, “A fond (silly) schoolmaster,” said sir Richard, “before I was fully fourteen years old, drove me so, with fear of beating, from all love of learning, as now, when I know what difference it is to have learning, and to have little, or none at all, I feel it my greatest grief, and find it my greatest hurt, that ever came to me, that it was so my ill chance, to light upon so lewd (ignorant) a schoolmaster.” The whole conversation was very interesting, and so impressed Ascham with its importance, that he says, he “thought to prepare some little treatise for a new-year’s gift that Christmas,” but it grew beneath his hands and became his “Scholemaster, showing a plain and perfect way of teaching the learned languages.” The best edition of this work, which Ascham did not live to publish, is that edited by the Rev. James Upton, 1743, octavo. The book was first printed by Ascham’s widow, whom with her children he left in distress. It was eminently serviceable to the advancement of teachers and pupils, at a period when it was the fashion to flog. Its most remarkable feature is the frowning down of this brutal practice, which, to the disgrace of our own times, is still heard of in certain seminaries, both public and private. The good old man says, “Beat a child if he dance not well, and cherish him though he learn not well, ye shall have him unwilling to go to dance, and glad to go to his book: knock him always when he draweth his shaft ill, and favour him again though he fault at his book, ye shall have him very loth to be in the field, and very willing to go to school.” He observes, “If ever the nature of man be given at any time, more than another, to receive goodness, it is in innocency of young years before that experience of evil have taken root in him. For the pure, clean wit of a sweet young babe, is like the newest wax, most able to receive the best and fairest printing; and like a new bright silver dish never occupied, to receive and keep clean any good thing that is put into it. Therefore, to love or to hate, to like or contemn, to ply this way or that way, to good or to bad, ye shall have as ye use a child