ABSTRACT
Sir Thomas Smith was an extraordinary man. Nowadays he is best known as a 'commonweal humanist' by virtue of his works on economics and politics. This chapter explores the works of Roger Ascham, especially his seminal treatise The Schoolmaster. Sir Thomas Smith is best known as a 'commonweal humanist' by virtue of two works on economics and politics: A Discourse of the Commonweal of This Realm of England and De republica Anglorum. Sir Thomas Smith is still a relatively unfamiliar figure to most students of Elizabethan literature; but with Roger Ascham we come to the only Elizabethan humanist who has achieved any kind of lasting posterity in literary history. Ascham's Latin correspondence is full of praise for this Gabriel Harvey kind of humanitas. Ascham liked the paradox that humanitaswas really a token of divinity.
