[75] It is to be feared that "My Lord's" action was rather piratical. The "Spanish Fleet" was of merchantmen ("convoyed" perhaps) on their way to the North with iron etc. for fish, silk, etc., and we were not definitely at war with Spain. But Henry the IV. of Castile was an ally of France. Warwick had just been appointed "Captain of Calais," and it was a general English idea that anything not English in the Channel was fair prize. Warwick's conduct was warmly welcomed in London.
[76] This use of "abord" and that just before are slightly different derivatives of the French aborder, which means to "approach," "accost," "come together with" as well as to "board" in the naval sense. The first use here is evidently of the more general, the second of the particular kind.
[77] This may be a mere mis-spelling of "God," or a sort of euphemism like the modern "thank goodness!" to avoid the more sacred name.
[78] "I would" or "take care" or something similar to be supplied to make a somewhat softened imperative.
[79] One who prays for you.
ROGER ASCHAM (1515-1568)
Although the old phrase about "the schoolmaster being abroad" has never before had anything like the amount of applicableness which it now possesses, there is perhaps still a certain prejudice against schoolmasters. Indeed even some who have more than served time in that capacity will admit that it is a dangerous employment, profession, or vocation. But if all of us had been ever, or ever would try to be, like Roger Ascham, our class would never have deserved, or would victoriously wiped off, any obloquy. It was extraordinary good quality, or more extraordinary good fortune, that made the same man write Toxophilus and The Schoolmaster. And there need hardly be any admission of possible good luck as causing, though some certainly helped, his performance as a letter-writer. Something was said before as to the importance of his "getting to English" in this matter. But it may be permissible to remind, or perhaps even inform, some readers of the curious combination which made this importance. As a Renaissance scholar; as a College tutor before the middle of the sixteenth century; as a Secretary of Embassy on the Continent; and as Latin Secretary at Court, he was positively unlikely to favour the vernacular. Nor could anyone be a warmer or wiser lover of the classics than he was. But what he, being all these things, did for English was all the more influential, while the manner of his doing it could hardly be bettered.
Ascham's letters being partly in English and partly in Latin, there is a certain temptation to translate one of the latter and put it side by side with one of the former. But the process might not be fair: and to give the fairer chance of comparison between originals in the two tongues would be out of the scheme of this book. I therefore choose a part of one of his long letters of travel to Cambridge friends—one of the earliest of the many "Up the Rhines" in English literature—and another part of his letters to Cecil. He has been reproached with the "begging" character of these, but it was the way of the time with Renaissance scholars. In the first "ioney" (Giles's text) must be wrong and towards the end "vile" is an amusing blunder for "oile." "Peter Ailand" a Cambridge friend's child. "Brant" = "steep." In the second "Denny" is Sir Anthony D., a great favourite of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. who was now dead. "Cheke" the still better known "Sir John" had "taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek," and so raised the "goodly crop" but had taken to politics, which were to bring him into trouble.[80]