" And in the same book he
tells how, calling once on Lady Jane Grey, at Brodegate, in
Leicestershire, he "found her in her chamber reading _Phaedon Platonis_
in Greek, and that with as much delite as some gentlemen would read a
merry tale in _Bocase_," and when he asked her why she had not gone
hunting with the rest, she answered, "I wisse,[18] all their sport in
the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato."
Ascham's _Schoolmaster_, as well as his earlier book, _Toxophilus_, a
Platonic dialogue on archery, bristles with quotations from the Greek
and Latin classics, and with that perpetual reference to the authority
of antiquity on every topic that he touches, which remained the fashion
in all serious prose down to the time of Dryden.
One speedy result of the new learning was fresh translations of the
Scriptures into English out of the original tongues. In 1525 William
Tyndal printed at Cologne and Worms his version of the New Testament
from the Greek.
[Footnote 18: Surely; a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon _gewis_.]
Ten years later Miles Coverdale made, at Zurich, a translation of the
whole Bible from the German and Latin. These were the basis of numerous
later translations, and the strong beautiful English of Tyndal's
Testament is preserved for the most part in our Authorized Version
(1611).
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