CHAPTER II

EARLY DAYS

His early going to Oxford-Old Ascham on quick wit and education-Life at a University-The Queen at Oxford-To the wars in France-Henry Champernoun-Stories of the wars.

OF

F Ralegh's early education little is known: it is uncertain whether he was taught at home, or went to one of the Grammar Schools which Stowe records with pride existed in nearly every country town. When he was sixteen he went to Oriel College, Oxford, of which his kinsman, C. Champernoun, was already a commoner, and sixteen was an early age, even for an Elizabethan to go to the University.

His kinsman's presence accounts in a measure for this early going (he started most of his life's enterprises under their shelter, though in the end he grew to overtop them), but his quick wit was another and the chief reason. Old Ascham begs the fond schoolmaster to modify his propensity for caning, and to discriminate between "the harde witte and the quicke witte. But this I will say, that even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft punishe nature as they do correcte faultes. Yea, many times the better nature is sorer punished; for if one by quicknes of witte take his lesson readelie, another by hardnes of witte taketh it not speedilie: the first is alwaies commended, the other is commonlie punished, when a wise schoolmaster should . . . not so

much wey what either of them is able to do now, as what either of them is likelie to do hereafter." He will have none of the quick wit. Slow and sure is his adage. To him quick wits are "even like over-sharpe tooles whose edges be verie soone turned." And Ascham was the Queen's tutor, and was striking out a new line in his theme, in his treatment of it and in his language. For a scholar of his calibre to write of the education of little boys, and to write of it in English (fine English it is, too, with its balanced cadences), demanded profuse apologies, which he is not slow to offer, and to offer at full length in his preface. No apology would be necessary now, when Education Bills have been known to overturn Governments, or even a very few years later than Ascham himself; but in Ascham's actual day, Latin was regarded as the language of the learned, and dignity, which Ascham never lost, an attribute of learning. His remarks are always judicious, and his summing up of the temperament, which he calls the quick wit, is brilliant if not final. It is in the nature of generalization to be limited. For there are many wits where quickness and hardness, which he distinguishes so sharply, are as memorably, as in the case of young Ralegh, combined— "sharpe tooles" whose edges be never turned. Such incontestably was Ralegh. His mind and his character (the motive force) were on the same level of strength; neither preyed on the other, and he lived in a time when the world offered scope, as never perhaps in quite the same way before or since, to the resistless energy of united strength.

But to return to Ascham, whose little treatise throws an invaluable quiet light of its own upon the methods of the time, when he was old and Ralegh was young, and upon the making of great men and the great need of

them from its conception at the dinner party in the palace at Windsor, to its finish, years later, when the old man turned once more to the proper teaching of rudiments, doing his best for the younger generation whose best would outstrip all that he had ever dreamed of in his least scholastic moments. There is more than a touch of pathos in his warnings, for all their staid wisdom, and in his fears lest the young should be overcome by their "stout wilfulness"; blind as he could not but be to the goal to which stout wilfulness alone could lead them.

With a schoolmaster's conscious effort at broadmindedness he would not have the young one sit all day at his studies. "To joyne learnyng with cumlie exercises Conto Baldesoer Castiglione in his booke Cortegiane doth trimlie teache: which booke advisedlie read and diligentlie folowed, but one year at home in England would do a yong ientleman more good, I wisse, then three yeares travell abrode spent in Italie." And he passes by way of example "two noble Primeroses of nobilitie, the yong Duke of Suffolk and Lord H. Matrevers" (such a two as “our tyme may rather wishe than looke for agayne") on to his famous invective against the Italianating of Englishmen, with that constant note of sadness at the falling off of the present generation. His ears His ears were deaf to such names as Sidney, Gilbert, Champernoun, Ralegh, names which time has set at their proper value, and against which Ascham's noble primroses sink into their proper insignificance.

Ralegh was at Oxford only one year, and Anthony Wood writes: "His natural parts being strangely advanced by academical learning, under the care of an excellent tutor, he became the ornament of the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a proficient in Oratory and

Philosophy." He seasoned his primer years at Oxford in knowledge and learning, a good ground, as Hooker says, and a sure foundation to build thereupon good actions.

Only one incident is recorded of that year of his life, and that is recorded by the illustrious Bacon in his apothegms. " When Ralegh was a scholar at Oxford there was a cowardly fellow who happened to be a very good archer; but having been grossly abused by another, he bemoaned himself to Ralegh, and asked his advice what he should do to repair the wrong that had been offered him. Why, challenge him, answered Ralegh, to a match of shooting." It would be interesting to know how the repartee came to Lord Bacon's knowledge.

It is about in the proportion that Ralegh filled his life, compared with the ordinary way of living, that he took in one year out of Oxford what most men required seven years to take; for seven years was the usual time for a full course, and often, as in Germany to-day, men went from one University to another.

"Ein jeder lernt das was man lernen kann

Nur wer den Augenblick ergreifft das ist der rechte Mann."

Not that life at the University was restrained and dull, Far from it. Listen to Thomas Lever, who spoke of the work some twenty years before Ralegh's time. "From 5 to 6 a.m. there was common prayer with an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel, and from 6 to 10 either private study or common lectures. At 10 o'clock generally came dinner, most being content with a penny piece of beef amongst four. After this slender dinner the youths were either teaching or learning until 5 p.m., when they have a supper not much better than