ever drive me to seek, but only because
in choosing aptly for myself I might bring some profit to many others.
And in this mine opinion I stand the more gladly, because it is grounded
upon the judgment of worthy Mr. Denny. For the summer twelvemonth before
he departed, dinner and supper he had me commonly with him, whose
excellent wisdom, mingled with so pleasant mirth, I can never forget:
emonges many other talks he would say oft unto me, if two duties did not
command him to serve, the one his prince, the other his wife, he would
surely become a student in St. John's, saying, "The Court, Mr. Ascham,
is a place so slippery, that duty never so well done, is not a staff
stiff enough to stand by always very surely, where ye shall many times
reap most unkindness where ye have sown greatest pleasures, and those
also ready to do you most hurt to whom you never intended to think any
harm." Which sentences I heard very gladly then, and felt them soon
after myself to be true. Thus I, first ready by mine own nature, then
moved by good counsel, after driven by ill fortune, lastly called by
quietness, thought it good to couch myself in Cambridge again. And in
very deed, too many be pluckt from thence before they be ripe, though I
myself am withered before I be gathered, and yet not so for that I have
stood too long, but rather because the fruit which I bear is so very
small. Yet seeing the goodly crop of Mr. Cheke is almost clean carried
from thence, and I in a manner alone of that time left a standing
straggler, peradventure though my fruit be very small, yet because the
ground from whence it sprung was so good, I may yet be thought somewhat
fit for seed, when all you the rest are taken up for better store,
wherewith the king and his realm is now so nobly served. And in such a
scarcity both of those, that were worthily called away when they were
fit, and of such as unwisely part from thence, before they be ready, I
dare now bolden myself, when the best be gone, to do some good among the
mean that do tarry, trusting that my diligence shall deal with my
disability, and the rather because the desire of shooting is so well
shot away in me, either ended by time or left off for better purpose.
Yet I do amiss to mislike shooting too much, which hath been hitherto my
best friend, and even now looking back to the pleasure which I found in
it, and perceiving small repentence to follow after it, by Plato's
judgment I may think well of it. No,