Roger Ascham, Virtuoso

When I first encountered Ascham, famed author of The Scholemaster, I found him dull. My relationship to his writing has changed over the years, moving through admiration to, having just completed his archery treatise Toxophilvs, envy.

Ascham's writing is unobtrusive, simple, direct. It never announces its brilliance; rather than searching for verbal fireworks, it pieces together just the right anglo-saxon blocks and simple Latinisms laying ready to hand:

Running, leaping, and coyting be to vile for scholers, and so not fit by Aristotle his iudgement: walking alone into the felde, hath no token of courage in it, a pastyme lyke a simple man which is neither flesh not fisshe. Therefore if a man woulde haue a pastyme holesome and equall for euerye parte of the bodye, pleasaunt and full of courage for the mynde, not vile and vnhoneste to gyue ill example to the laye men, not kepte in gardynes and corners, not lurkynge on the night and in holes, but euermore in the face of men, either to rebuke it when it doeth ill, or els to testifye on it when it doth well: let him seke chefelye for shotynge.

One can imagine a sentence as long as that last one in contemporary critical writing, but not with so little hypotaxis. Rarely does the word “holes” convey so much as here, and I think it does because of the unusual preprosional phrase “on the night” to which “in holes” is parallel. Ascham's long sentences are rarely difficult to follow in part because the parallels and subordination are aligned so clearly, and in part because he knows when to punctuate with a simple figure, even a borrowed one:

I maruell howe it chaunceth than, that no man hitherto, hath written any thinge of it: wherin you must graunte me, that eyther the matter is noughte, vnworthye, and barren to be written vppon, or els some men are to blame, whiche both loue and vse it, and yet could neuer finde in theyr heart, to saye one good woorde of it, seing that very triflinge matters hath not lacked great learned men to sette them out, as gnattes and nuttes, & many other mo like thinges, wherfore eyther you maye honestlie laye verie great faut vpon men bycasue they neuer yet praysed it, or els I may iustlie take awaye no litle thinge form shooting, bycasue it neuer yet deserued it.

Ascham did not invent the paradoxical encomium of gnats and nuts, but his effortless integration of the example and use of the running “n” assonance makes the line skip at this point and introduces a kind hitch step right when the sentence threatens to grow too long and repetitive.

Reading his description of the swirling snow, to which Thomas Greene pointed years ago, I couldn't help recalling the end of Joyce's “The Dead,” (though the passages have quite different resonances, clearly.) Joyce is softer and sadder, to be sure, but his alliterations in that stunning paragraph sound strained in comparison:

That morning the sun shone bright and clere, the wind was whistelinge a lofte, and sharpe accordynge to the tyme of the yeare. The snowe in the hye waye laye lowse and troden wyth horse feete: so as the wynde blewe, it toke the lowse snow with it, and made it so slide upon the snowe in the felde whyche was harde and crusted by reason of the frost over nyght, that therby I myght se verye wel, the hole nature of the wynde as it blewe that daye. . . .Sometyme the wynd would be not past two yeardes brode, and so it would carie the snowe as far as I could se. An other tyme the snow woulde blow ouer half the felde at ones. Sometyme the snow woulde tomble softly, by and by it would flye wonderfull fast. And thys I perceyved also that the wind goeth by streames & not hole togither. For I should se one streame wyth in a Score on me, than the space of two score no snow would stirre, but after so much quantitie of grounde, an other streame of snow at the same very tyme should be caryed lykewyse, but not equally. For the one would stande styll when the other flew a pace, and so contynewe somtyme swiftlyer, sometime slowlyer, sometyme broder, sometime narrower, as far as I coulde se. Nor it flewe not streight, but sometyme it crooked thys waye sometyme that waye, and somtyme it ran round aboute in a compase. And somtymee the snowe would be lyft clene from the ground vp in to the ayre, and by & by it would be al clapt to the grounde as though there had bene no winde at all, streightway it woulde rise and flye agayne.

And that whych was the moost mervayle of al, at one tyme two driftes of snowe flewe, the one out of the West into the East, the other out of the North into the East: And I saw two windes by reason of the snow the one crosse over the other, as it had bene two hye wayes. And agayne I shoulde here the wynd blow in the ayre, when nothing was stirred at the ground. And when all was still where I rode, not verye far from me the snow should be lifted wonderfully.

You can see an entire nation's schoolmaster in this passage, showing his countrymen: this is how to write a description.

Ascham crafted academic prose in the interstices between scholasticism and science. It's probably impossible, even for those who agree with his marriage of verba and res, to mirror his project now. And considering how high he set the bar, I wouldn't want to try. There are scholarly writers who today have moments of plain-style brilliance, but I've yet to read anyone who can square a cabinet like Ascham.