But to return to Ascham.--The qualifications of this learned man as a writer of classical Latin recommended him to queen Mary, notwithstanding his known attachment to the protestant faith, in the capacity of Latin secretary; and it was in the year 1555, while holding this station, that he resumed his lessons to his illustrious pupil.
"The lady Elizabeth and I," writes he to Sturmius, "are reading together in Greek the Orations of Æschines and Demosthenes. She reads before me, and at first sight she so learnedly comprehends not only the idiom of the language and the meaning of the orator, but the whole grounds of contention, the decrees of the people, and the customs and manners of the Athenians, as you would greatly wonder to hear."
Under the reign of Elizabeth, Ascham retained his post of Latin secretary, and was admitted to considerable intimacy by his royal mistress. Addressing Sturmius he says, "I received your last letters on the 15th of January 1560. Two passages in them, one relative to the Scotch affairs, the other on the marriage of the queen, induced me to give them to herself to read. She remarked and graciously acknowledged in both of them your respectful observance of her. Your judgement in the affairs of Scotland, as they then stood, she highly approved, and she loves you for your solicitude respecting us and our concerns. The part respecting her marriage she read over thrice, as I well remember, and with somewhat of a gentle smile; but still preserving a modest and bashful silence.
"Concerning that point indeed, my Sturmius, I have nothing certain to write to you, nor does any one truly know what to judge. I told you rightly, in one of my former letters, that in the whole ordinance of her life she resembled not Phædra but Hippolyta; for by nature, and not by the counsels of others, she is thus averse and abstinent from marriage. When I know any thing for certain, I will write it to you as soon as possible; in the mean time I have no hopes to give you respecting the king of Sweden."
In the same letter, after enlarging, somewhat too rhetorically perhaps, on the praises of the queen and her government, Ascham recurs to his favorite theme,--her learning; and roundly asserts, that there were not four men in England, distinguished either in the church or the state, who understood more Greek than her majesty: and as an instance of her proficiency in other tongues, he mentions that he was once present at court when she gave answers at the same time to three ambassadors, the Imperial, the French, and the Swedish, in Italian, in French, and in Latin; and all this, fluently, without confusion, and to the purpose.