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They were no splendid courtiers, nor daring and hardy adventurers, still less swashbucklers, exquisites, or literary dandies. Their names Sir John Cheke, Roger Ascham, Nicholas Udall, Thomas Wilson, Walter Haddon, belong rather to the universities and to the coteries of learning, than to the court.
Why is it harder, Sirs, than Gordon, Colkitto, or Macdonnell, or Galasp? Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek.
Of wycked wordes I, Wrath ... here wordes imade, Til 'thow lixte' and 'thow lixte' ... lopen oute at ones, And eyther hitte other ... vnder the cheke; Hadde thei had knyves, by Cryst ... her eyther had killed other.
Strype covers this period in his "Memorials" and in his lives of Cranmer, Cheke, and Smith; Hayward's "Life of Edward the Sixth" may be supplemented by the young king's own Journal; "Machyn's Diary" gives us the aspect of affairs as they presented themselves to a common Englishman; while Holinshed is near enough to serve as a contemporary authority.
Cheke, hath required me to write unto you, and to require you that the said Mr. Cheke may be sent unto him unto Lambeth, in the company and with the Dean of Paul's. Wherefore I pray you take order with the said Dean so as he may convey him thither accordingly.
To get the classics English scholars had as we have seen to go to Italy. Cheke went there and so did Wilson, and the path of travel across France and through Lombardy to Florence and Rome was worn hard by the feet of their followers for over a hundred years after.
Ascham, who succeeded Grindal and Cheke in the direction of her studies, tells us how keen and resolute was Elizabeth's love of learning, even in her girlhood. At sixteen she already showed "a man's power of application" to her books. She had read almost the whole of Cicero and a great part of Livy.
Cardan, living in daily intercourse with Cheke, might reasonably have taken up the point of view of his kind and genial friend; but no, he evidently rated Northumberland, from beginning to end, as a knave and a traitor, and a murderer at least in will. When he quitted England in the autumn of 1552 Cardan did not shake himself entirely free from English associations.
The chief service that Cheke and Ascham and their fellows rendered to English literature was their crusade against the exaggerated latinity that they had themselves helped to make possible, the crusade against what they called "inkhorn terms."
After death he travelled on in the path of the dead for three days, without meeting with any thing extraordinary. He kept the road in which souls go to the Cheke Checkecame, and over mountains, and through valleys, pursued his way steadily. Hunger at length visited him, and he began to suffer much from want of food.
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