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He was likewise noted for his skill in penmanship, music, and archery, the last of which is the subject of his first work, Toxophilus, pub. in 1545, and which, dedicated to Henry VIII., gained him the favour of the King, who bestowed a pension upon him.
Ascham in the Toxophilus , when discussing the relaxations open to the scholar who has been 'sore at his book', urges that 'walking alone into the field hath no token of courage in it'. But though this may have been true by that time in the immediate neighbourhood of English towns, it was not yet true abroad; for Thomas Starkey in his Dialogue , almost as valuable a source as the Utopia, praises foreign cities with their resident nobles by comparison with English, which are neglected and dirty 'because gentlemen fly into the country to live, and let cities, castles and towns fall into ruin and decay'.
But if all of us had been ever, or ever would try to be, like Roger Ascham, our class would never have deserved, or would victoriously wiped off, any obloquy. It was extraordinary good quality, or more extraordinary good fortune, that made the same man write Toxophilus and The Schoolmaster.
He wrote several dramas, most of which are on classical and mythological subjects, including Campaspe and Sapho and Phao , Endymion , and Midas . His chief fame, however, rests on his two didactic romances, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit , and Euphues and his England . These works, which were largely inspired by Ascham's Toxophilus, and had the same objects in view, viz., the reform of education and manners, exercised a powerful, though temporary, influence on the language, both written and spoken, commemorated in our words "euphuism" and "euphuistic."
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