ROGER ASCHAM.
170 Tar BDITOR OP TEM ..SVICCTAT011.1
SIR,—As a faithful reader of the Spectator for a quarter of a century, and for many years a would-be follower of that genial pedagogue, Roger Ascham, I venture to suggest that his memory has suffered somewhat in your article on "The West- minster Play" (December 22nd, 1906), by your allusion to the "pinches, nips, and bobs" whereby he tried to teach Latin to Queen Elizabeth. By a momentary confusion of thought, surely, you have ascribed to Asa:am those shrewish, not to say feline, aids to instruction used by that severe matron the Duchess of Suffolk, whose daughter, Lady Jane Grey, con- trasts the "pinches, nips, and bobs" of her mother with the gentler methods of her tutor Aylmer. Ascham's methods, as de- scribed in "The Scholemaster," and Queen Elizabeth's acknow- ledged keen intelligence, must have led to a relation between master and pupil needing no such aids, a relation which was renewed on Elizabeth's accession, when he became the Queen's secretary and tutor, and remained so until his death.
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