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As the Earls exchanged compliments on the occasion, the Queen said to her High Treasurer, "Methinks, my lord, the countenances of these our two noble peers resemble those of the two famed classic streams, the one so dark and sad, the other so fair and noble. My old Master Ascham would have chid me for forgetting the author. It is Caesar, as I think.
The dress, the speech, the manners of Italy became objects of almost passionate imitation, and of an imitation not always of the wisest or noblest kind. To Ascham it seemed like "the enchantment of Circe brought out of Italy to mar men's manners in England." "An Italianate Englishman," ran the harder proverb of Italy itself, "is an incarnate devil."
The truth is, that Ascham still had, in his fellowship, all that in the early part of his life had given him plenty, and might have lived like the other inhabitants of the college, with the advantage of more knowledge and higher reputation.
To his correspondent, Sturmius, he paid a visit, but Sturmius was not at home, and those two illustrious friends never saw each other. During the course of this embassy, Ascham undertook to improve Morisine in Greek, and, for four days in the week, explained some passages in Herodotus every morning, and more than two hundred verses of Sophocles, or Euripides, every afternoon.
What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a conceivable motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most adequate; and, as he said, once one could find a convincing motive, the difficulties of the case became so many incentives to effort.
The royalists who murdered Lisle in Switzerland were Irishmen; the royalists who murdered Ascham at Madrid were Irishmen; the royalists who murdered Dorislaus at the Hague were Scotchmen. In England, as soon as such a design ceases to be a secret hidden in the recesses of one gloomy and ulcerated heart, the risk of detection and failure becomes extreme.
These successors of Roger Ascham and Thomas Elyot and Philip Sidney were Puritanic, moralistic, practical; and with their "faith in God, faith in man and faith in work" they built an empire. Lowell's own mind, like Franklin's, like Lincoln's, had a shrewd sense of what concerns the common interests of all.
As has often been remarked, Ascham, Milton, Locke, Fénelon, busy themselves about the instruction of young gentlemen and gentlewomen. The rest of the world are supposed to be sufficiently provided for by the education of circumstance.
Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his listener; but Denver's face remained inscrutable. At length he said: "Why did you want to tell me this?" The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight with Denver.
Inglese Italianato è un diavolo incarnato passed into a proverb: we find it on the lips of Parker, of Howell, of Sidney, of Greene, and of Ascham; while Italy itself was styled by severe moralists the court of Circe.
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