writers about variety of expression, he observes: "The old and best authors that ever wrote were content, if occasion required to speak twice of one matter, not to change the words, but pnrus, that is, word for word, to express it again. For they thought that a matter, well expressed with fit words and apt composition, was not to be altered; but liking it well themselves, they thought it would also be well allowed of others."

It requires, he contends, greater learning and deeper judgment than are to be hoped for at any schoolmaster's hand rightly to distinguish all the nice and delicate points of style, and to undertake the correction of such faults as tumidity, poverty, luxuriance of diction, without running the risk of misleading where he attempts to instruct. Even the greatest scholars have frequently wanted this critical faculty. Thus, " some loving Melancthon well, as he was well worthy; but yet not considering well, nor wisely, how he of nature, and all his life and study by judgment, was wholly spent in genere disciplinabili, that is, in teaching, reading, and expounding plainly and aptly school matters; and, therefore, employed thereunto a fit, sensible, and calm kind of speaking and writing;-some, I say, with very well liking, but not with very well weighing Melancthon's doings, do frame themselves a style cold, lean, and weak, though the matter be never so warm and earnest; not much unlike unto one, that had a pleasure in a rough, rainy, winter-day, to clothe himself with nothing else but a demi-buckram cassock, plain without plaits, and single without lining, which will neither bear off wind nor weather, nor yet keep out the sun in any hot day.

"Some suppose, and that by good reason, that Me

lancthon himself came to this low kind of writing by using over much paraphrasis in reading. For studying thereby to make everything straight and easy, in smoothing and planing all things too much, never leaveth, while the sense itself be left both loose and leasy. And some of those paraphrases of Melancthon be set out in print, as Pro Archia Poëta,' and M. Marcello.' But a scholar, by mine opinion, is better occupied in playing or sleeping than by spending time, not only vainly, but also harmfully, in such a kind of exercise.

"Therefore," he concludes, "in place of Latins for young scholars, and of paraphrasis for the masters, I would have double translation specially used. For in double translating a perfect piece of Tully or Cæsar, neither the scholar in learning, nor the master in teaching, can err. A true touchstone, a sure mete-wand lieth before both their eyes. For all right congruity, propriety of words, order in sentences, the right imitation to invent good matter, to dispose it in good order, to confirm it with good reason, to express any purpose fitly and orderly, is learned thus both easily and perfectly. Yea, to miss sometime in this kind of translation bringeth more profit than to hit right either in paraphrasis or making of Latins. For though ye say well in a Latin making, or in a paraphrasis, yet you being but in doubt, and uncertain whether ye say well or no, ye gather and lay up in memory no sure fruit of learning thereby; but if ye fault in translation, ye are easily taught how perfectly to amend it, and so well warned how after to eschew all such faults again.

"Paraphrasis, therefore, by mine opinion, is not meet for grammar schools, nor yet very fit for young men in the University, until study and time have bred in them perfect learning and steadfast judgment."

There is, indeed, he observes, one kind of paraphrasis which may be used both without hurt and to much profit; but it only suits the Greek language. This is the turning of a passage written in one dialect into another, as, for instance, from Ionic or Doric into Attic. It is hardly necessary to remark, that this exercise, so far from being paraphrasis, can hardly be called even translation. In some cases it would not amount to more than a change in orthography.

An instance is also given of a paraphrasis in Latin, which may be studied with profit, in two passages from Cicero, the one in the second book "De Finibus," the other in the first book "De Officiis," in which that writer appears to translate the same Greek original in different words. "The conference of these two places," says our author, "containing so excellent a piece of learning as this is, expressed by so worthy a wit as Tully's was, must needs bring great pleasure and profit to him that maketh true account of learning and honesty. But if we had the Greek author, the first pattern of all, and thereby to see how Tully's wit did work at divers times; how, out of one excellent image might be framed two other, one in face and favour, but somewhat differing in form, figure, and colour, surely such a piece of workmanship, compared with the pattern itself, would better please the eyes of honest, wise, and learned minds, than two of the fairest Venuses that ever Apelles made."

III. Metaphrasis. "This kind of exercise," says Ascham, "is all one with paraphrasis, save it is out of verse either into prose, or into some other kind of metre ; or else out of prose into verse, which was Socrates's exercise and pastime, as Plato reporteth, when he was in prison, to translate Æsop's fables into verse. Quin

tilian doth greatly praise also this exercise; but because Tully doth disallow it in young men, by mine opinion it were not well to use it in grammar schools, even for the self-same causes that he recited against paraphrasis."

As an example, however, if a schoolmaster, for his own instruction, should be desirous of seeing a perfect paraphrasis, there is given the prose version by Socrates of the passage respecting the coming of Chryses to the camp of the Greeks, in the first book of the Iliad, as it is recorded by Plato in the third book of his Republic. Ascham would have his Schoolmaster weigh well together Homer and Plato here, and mark diligently these four points-What is kept-What is added-What is left out-What is changed, either in choice of words or form of sentences. "Which four points," he adds, "be the right tools to handle like a workman this kind of work, as our scholar shall better understand when he hath been a good while in the University; to which time and place I chiefly remit this kind of exercise."

To this he subjoins a passage out of Hesiod, which has been imitated by Sophocles, St. Basil, Cicero, and Livy, and one from the beginning of the Eunuchus of Terence, which Horace has imitated in one of his satires. Commending the comparison of such passages as these, he remarks:

"This exercise may bring much profit to ripe heads and staid judgments; because, in travelling in it, the mind must needs be very attentive and busily occupied in turning and tossing itself many ways, and conferring with great pleasure the variety of worthy wits and judgments together. But this harm may soon come thereby, and namely to young scholars, lest in seeking other words and new form of sentences, they chance upon the

worse; for the which only cause, Cicero thinketh this exercise not to be fit for young men."

IV. Of Epitome our author observes: "This is a way of study belonging rather to matter than to words; to memory than to utterance; to those that be learned already, and hath small place at all among young scholars in grammar sehools. It may profit privately some learned men, but it hath hurt generally learning itself very much. For by it we have lost whole Trogus, the best part of T. Livius, the goodly dictionary of Pompeius Festus, a great deal of the civil law, and other many notable books, for the which cause I do the more mislike this exercise both in old and young." It may be remarked, however, that such facts as these make really no argument at all against epitome as a school exercise. Ascham proceeds:

"Epitome is good privately for himself that doth work it, but ill commonly for all others that use other men's labour therein. A silly poor kind of study, not unlike to the doing of those poor folk which neither till, nor sow, nor reap themselves, but glean by stealth upon other men's ground. Such have empty barns for dear years."

"I do wish," he afterwards remarks, in reference to the common books of exercises used at schools, "that all rules for young scholars were shorter than they be.' For without doubt, Grammatica itself is sooner and surer learned by examples of good authors than by the naked rules of grammarians. Epitome hurteth more in the universities and study of philosophy, but most of all in divinity itself."

He acknowledges, however, that " books of common places be very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general knowledge, how to refer orderly all that he read