Flanders, Scotland, and other countries, was executed by the king's command, and was published in 1523. Froissart, the original author, resided in England as secretary to the queen of Edward the Third, from 1361, till 1366, and again visited that country in 1395. The translation is an excellent sample of the English language of that period, being remarkable for the purity and nervousness of its style. style. Besides the translation from Froissart, Lord Berners wrote The History of the Most Noble and Valiant Knight, Arthur of Little Britain, and The Duties of the Inhabitants of Calais. From his translation of Froissart, we extract the following passage :

THE BATTLE OF CRESSY.

When the French king saw the Englishmen, his blood changed, and (he) said to his marshalls, 'Make the Genoese go on before, and begin the battle in the name of God and St. Denis.' There were of the Genoese cross-bows about a fifteen thousand, but they were so weary of going a-foot that day, a six leagues, armed with their cross-bows, that they said to their constables, 'We be not well ordered to fight this day, for we be not in the case to do any great deed of arms; we have more need of rest.' These words came to the Earl of Alençon, who said, 'A man is well at ease to be charged with such a sort of rascals, to be faint and fail now at most need.' Also, the same season, there fell a great rain and an eclipse, with a terrible thunder; and before the rain, there came flying over the battles a great number of crows for fear of the tempest coming. Then anon the air began to wax clear, and the sun to shine fair and bright, the which was right in the Frenchmen's eyen, and on the Englishmen's back. When the Genoese were assembled together, and began to approach, they made a great leap and cry, to abash the Englishmen; but they stood still, and stirred not for all that. Then the Genoese again the second time made another leap and a fell cry, and stepped forward a little; and the Englishmen removed not one foot. Thirdly again, they leaped and cried, and went forth till they came within shot; then they shot fiercely with their cross-bows. Then the English archers stepped forth one pace, and let fly their arrows so wholly and thick that it seemed snow. When the Genoese felt the arrows piercing through heads and arms and breasts, many of them cast down their cross-bows, and did cut their strings, and returned discomfited. When the French king saw them flee away, he said, 'Slay these rascals, for they shall let and trouble us without reason.' Then ye should have seen the men-at-arms dash in among them, and killed a great number of them, and ever still the Englishmen shot whereas they saw the thickest press; the sharp arrows ran into the men-at-arms and into their horses; and many fell horse and men among the Genoese; and when they were down, they could not relieve again; the press was so thick that one overthrew another. And also, among the Englishmen, there wer! certain rascals that went on foot with great knives, and they went in among the menat-arms, and murdered many as they lay on the ground, both earls, barons, knights, and squires, whereof the King of England was after displeased, for he had rather they had been taken prisoners.

Contemporary with Lord Berners was JOHN BELLENDEN, archdeacon of Moray, a favorite of James the Fifth of Scotland, and one of the lords of session in the reign of queen Mary. Besides writing a topography of Scotland, epistles to James the Fifth, and some poems, Bellenden translated, by order of the king, Hector Boece's History of Scotland, and also the first five books of Livy. The translation of Boece was published in 1536, and constitutes the earliest existing specimen of Scottish literary prose. It is, how

ever, rather a free translation, and additions to the original are sometimes made by the translator. Another translation of Boece's History was published some years after in England by Holinshed, an English chronicler in the reign of Elizabeth, and was the source whence Shakspeare derived the historical materials of his tragedy of Macbeth. As the language of Bellenden's translation is now nearly obsolete, and as Holinshed's is easily accessible, we do not consider it necessary to introduce any extract from the former work.

Among the distinguished men of this age SIR JOHN CHEKE holds a very conspicuous place. He was descended from an ancient family in the Isle of Wight, and was born at Cambridge on the sixteenth of June 1514. At the age of seventeen he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and such was his proficiency in the Greek language and literature that immediately after he had taken his degrees he was chosen Greek lecturer of the university. In 1540, when Henry the Eighth founded the Greek professorship at Cambridge, Cheke was chosen the first professor, and at the same time made university orator. In 1544, he was appointed tutor to prince Edward, and upon the accession of that prince to the crown, he obtained an annuity of one hundred marks, and by virtue of the king's mandamus, was elevated provost of King's College. In 1550, he was raised to the position of chief gentleman of the king's privy chamber, and in the following year his majesty conferred upon him the honor of knighthood. With a celerity almost unparalleled he passed from gentleman of the king's privy chamber, to the office of chancellor of the exchequer, and thence to the clerkship of the council, immediately after which he became one of the secretaries of state, and privy-counsellor.

At the period of King Edward's death, Sir John Cheke's cup of prosperity was full, but having acted as secretary to Lady Jane Grey, and her council, he was, on the accession of Mary, committed to the Tower. In 1554, however, he obtained his liberty, and soon after left England for the continent. He travelled through France and Italy, but on his arrival at Strasburgh, in Germany, he was reduced to the necessity of teaching Greek for a subsistence. In 1556, he was insidiously drawn to Brussels, and by order of King Philip, Mary's consort, apprehended, sent to England, and again committed to the Tower. The dreadful alternative was now presented to him by Cardinal Pole, 'either to comply or burn; and in a moment of weakness he renounced Protestantism, and was received into the bosom of the Romish church. The grief, remorse, and shame, however, which immediately followed, hastened his end, and he, accordingly, died soon after, on the thirteenth of September, 1557, in his forty-fourth year.

Sir John Cheke was chiefly distinguished for the exertions he made to introduce the study of the Greek language and literaturo into England. Having dictated to his pupils an improved method for pronouncing Greek words, he was violently assailed by Bishop Gardiner, then Chancellor of

Cambridge university; but notwithstanding the fulminations of that severe prelate, the system of Cheke prevailed, and prevails even to the present day. At his death he left several works in manuscript, among which was a Translation of the Gospel by St. Matthew, the design of which was to exemplify a plan that he had conceived of reforming the English language by eradicating all words except those derived from Saxon roots.

Cheke's only original work in English is a pamphlet under the title of The Hurt of Sedition, how grievous it is to a Commonwealth, the design of the writer being to admonish the people who had risen under Ket the tanner. From this pamphlet we select the following specimen :-

REMONSTRANCE WITH LEVELLERS.

Ye pretend to a commonwealth. How amend ye it by killing of gentlemen, by spoiling of gentlemen, by imprisoning of gentlemen? A marvellous tanned 1 commonwealth. Why should ye hate them for their riches, or for their rule? Rule, they never took so much in hand as ye do now. They never resisted the king, never withstood his council, be faithful at this day, when ye be faithless, not only to the king, whose subjects ye be, but also to your lords, whose tenants ye be. Is this your true duty-in some of homage, in most of fealty, in all of allegiance-to leave your duties, go back from your promises, fall from your faith, and contrary to law and truth, to make unlawful assemblies, ungodly companies, wicked and detestable camps, to disobey your betters, and to obey your tanners, to change your obedience from a king to a Ket, to submit yourselves to traitors, and break your faith to your true king and lords?

*

*

If riches offend you, because ye would have the like, then think that to be no commonwealth, but envy to the commonwealth. Envy it is to appair2 another man's estate, without the amendment of your own; and to have no gentlemen, because ye be none yourselves, is to bring down an estate, and to mend none. Would ye have all alike rich? That is the overthrow of all labour, and utter decay of work in this realm. For, who will labour more, if, when he hath gotten more the idle shall by lust, without right, take what him list from him, under pretence of equality with him? This is the bringing in of idleness, which destroyeth the commonwealth, and not the amendment of labour, which maintaineth the commonwealth. If there should be such equality, then ye take all hope away from yours, to come to any better estate than you now leave them. And as many mean men's children come honestly up, and are great succour to all their stock, so should none be hereafter holpen by you. But because you seek equality, whereby all cannot be rich, ye would that be like, whereby every man should be poor. And think, beside, that riches and inheritance be God's providence, and given to whom of his wisdom he thinketh good.

Of the period at present under consideration, we have still to notice Thomas Wilson and Roger Ascham.

Of the time of WILSON's birth, of his birth-place, of his family, and of his early education, we are entirely ignorant. That his scholarship must have been respectable is evident; for he not only became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, but soon after rose to the Deanery of Durham, and to various state employments under Elizabeth. He died in 1581, well advanced in years.

Alluding to the profession of the ringleader.

2 Impair.

Wilson, according to Burnet, may be regarded as the earliest writer on the English language. He published, in 1553, a System of Rhetoric and Logic, in which the principles of eloquence and composition are laid down with considerable ability. He strenuously advocates, in this treatise, simplicity of language, and condemns those writers who disturb the natural arrangement of their words, and reject familiar and appropriate phrases for the sake of others more refined and curious. The effect which the publication of this work produced was very remarkable; for his doctrines were considered by the Church so great and dangerous an innovation, that, upon a visit to Rome, he was cast into prison as a heretic. Among other false styles censured by Wilson, is that of alliteration, in illustration of which he gives the following caricatured example:-'Pitiful poverty prayeth for a penny, but puffed presumption passeth not a point, pampering his paunch with pestilent pleasure, procuring his passport to post it to hell-pit, there to be punished with pains perpetual.' The following passages from his Art of Rhetoric contain much good sense:

SIMPLICITY OF STYLE RECOMMENDED.

Among other lessons, this should first be learned, that we never affect any strange inkhorn terms, but to speak as is commonly received; neither seeking to be over fine, nor yet living over careless; using our speech as most men do, and ordering our wits as the fewest have doen. Some seek so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mother's language. And I dare swear this, if some of their mothers were alive, they were not able to tell what they say, and yet these fine English clerks will say they speak in their mother tongue, if a man should charge them with counterfeiting the king's English. Some far journied gentlemen, at their return home, like as they love to go in foreign apparel, so they will ponder their talk with over-sea language. He that cometh lately out of France will talk French English, and never blush at the matter. Another chops in with English Italianated, and applieth the Italian phrase to one English, speaking; the which is, as if an oration that professeth to utter his mind in plain Latin would needs speak poetry, and farfetched colours of strange antiquity. The lawyer will store his stomach with the prating of pedlars. The auditor in making his account and reckoning, cometh in with sise sould, et cater denere, for 6s. and 4d. The fine courtier will talk nothing but Chaucer. The mystical wise men, and poetical clerks, will speak nothing but quaint proverbs and blind allegories; delighting much in their own darkness, especially when none can tell what they do say. The unlearned or foolish fantastical, that smells but of learning (such fellows as have seen learned men in their days), will so Latin their tongues, that the simple cannot but wonder at their talk, and think surely they speak by some revelation. I know them, that think rhetoric to stand wholly upon dark words; and he that can catch an inkhorn term by the tail, him they count to be a fine Englishman and a good rhetorician.

MORAL AIM OF POETRY.

The saying of poets, and all their fables, are not to be forgotten. For by them we may talk at large, and win men by persuasion, if we declare beforehand, that these tales were not feigned of such wise men without cause, neither yet continued until this time and kept in memory, without good consideration; and thereupon declare the true meaning of all such writing. For undoubtedly, there is no one tale among all the poets, but under the same is comprehended something that pertaineth

either to the amendment of manners, to the knowledge of truth, to the setting forth nature's work, or else to the understanding of some notable thing doen. For what other is the painful travail of Ulysses, described so largely by Homer, but a lively picture of man's misery in this life? And as Plutarch saith, and likewise Basilius Magnus, in the Iliads are described strength and valiantness of body: in Odessea is set forth a lively pattern of the mind. The poets are wise men, and wished in heart the redress of things; the which when for fear they durst not openly rebuke, they did in colours paint them out, and told men by shadows what they should do in good sothe: or else, because the wicked were unworthy to hear the truth, they spake so that none might understand but those unto whom they please to utter their m ing, and knew them to be of honest conversation.

As

ROGER ASCHAM was a still more distinguished and instructive writer thar Thomas Wilson. Ascham was born at Kirkby-Wiske, in Yorkshire, in 1515. As his parents were poor, and as he early discovered more than an ordinary share of genius, he was taken into the family of Sir Anthony Wingfield, and there educated in company with that noble knight's two sons. young Ascham evinced great taste for the learned languages, Sir Anthony sent him, in 1530, to St. John's College, Cambridge, where his assiduity and application eventually secured for him the intimate friendship of all the celebrated scholars of that college. He took the degree of bachelor of arts at the early age of eighteen, and such was then his scholarship that within a month after, he was elected one of the fellows of his college. These honors incited him to a still greater and more vigorous prosecution of his studies; and in the Greek language his attainments soon became such that he read it publicly, in his college, with universal applause. In the twentyfirst year of his age he was made master of arts, and soon after appointed, by the university, teacher of Greek, with a liberal salary. In order to relax his mind after so severe a course of study, he now composed Toxophilus, or a Treatise on Archery, which he dedicated to the king. His majesty being pleased with the performance, settled a pension upon the author, and employed him to teach the young prince Edward, and the princess Elizabeth writing-an art in which he particularly excelled.

In 1548, Ascham became the instructor of Elizabeth in the learned languages, and filled that situation for two years, at the expiration of which he returned to Cambridge and resumed his position of public orator, with a pension from the young king Edward. In 1550 he was appointed to attend Sir Richard Morysine in his embassy to the Emperor Charles the Fifth; and while in Germany, where he remained three years, he wrote his Discourse on the affairs of that country, which introduced him to all the men of letters of the German court. From Germany he was recalled to become Latin secretary to king Edward--a post which he held under queen Mary also, and to which he passed on the accession of Elizabeth. A discussion between several of the eminent members of Elizabeth's court, on the differ ent modes of education then practiced, gave rise to his treatise on that sub ject--a work still held in high esteem among the best judges of the art of instruction. Ascham died on the fourth of January, 1568, in the fifty-fourth