John Lyly

UfiftARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA

SAN DIEGO

JOHN LYLY

Cambridge:

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

JOHN LYLY

BY

JOHN DOVER WILSON,

B.A., Late Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Members' Prizeman, 1902. Harness Prizeman, 1904.

Honours in Historical Tripos.

Macmillan and Bowes

Cambridge

1905

A

MIA
DONNA.

PREFACE.

r I AHE following treatise was awarded the Harness
-*- Prise at Cambridge in 1904. I have, however,
revised it since then, and in some matters considerably
enlarged it.

A list of the chief authorities to whom I am indebted
will be found at the end of the book, but it is fitting

o

that I should here make particular mention of my
obligations to the exhaustive work of Mr Bond1. Not
only have his labours of research and collation lightened
the task for me, and for any future student of Lyly, to an
incalculable extent, but the various introductory essays
scattered up and down his volumes are full of invaluable
suggestions.

This book was unfortunately nearing its completion
before I was able to avail myself of Mr Martin Hume's
Spanish Influence on Englisli Literature. But, though
I might have added more had his book been accessible
earlier, I was glad to find that his conclusions left the
main theory of my chapter on Euphuism untouched.

Much as has been written upon John Lyly, no
previous critic has attempted to cover the whole ground,

1 The Complete Works of John Lyly. R. W. Bond, 3 Vols. Clarendon
Press.

vi PREFACE

and to sum up in a brief and convenient form the three
main literary problems which centre round his name.
My solution of these problems may be faulty in detail,
but it will I hope be of service to Elizabethan students
to have them presented in a single volume and from
a single point of view. Furthermore, when I undertook
this study, I found several points which seemed -to
demand closer attention than they had hitherto received.
It appeared to me that the last word had not been said
even upon the subject of Euphuism, although that topic
has usurped the lion's share of critical treatment. And
again, while Lyly's claims as a novelist are acknowledged
on all hands, I felt that a clear statement of his exact
position in the history of our novel was still needed.
Finally, inasmuch as the personality of an author is
always more fascinating to me than his writings,
I determined to attempt to throw some light, however
fitful and uncertain, upon the man Lyly himself. The
attempt was not entirely fruitless, for it led to the
interesting discovery that the fully-developed euphuism
was not the creation of Lyly, or Pettie, or indeed of
any one individual, but of a circle of young Oxford men
which included Gosson, Watson, Hakluyt, and possibly
many others.

I have to thank Mr J. R. Collins and Mr J. N. Frazer,
the one for help in revision, and the other for assistance
in Spanish. But my chief debt of gratitude is due to
Dr Ward, the Master of Peterhouse, who has twice read
through this book at different stages of its construction.
The readiness with which he has put his great learning

PREFACE Vll

at my disposal, his kindly interest, and frequent en-
couragement have been of the very greatest help in a
task which was undertaken and completed under pressure
of other work.

As the full titles of authorities used are to be found
in the list at the end, I have referred to works in the
footnotes simply by the name of their author, while in
quoting from EupJiues I have throughout employed
Prof. Arber's reprint. Should errors be discovered in
the text I must plead in excuse that, owing to circum-
stances, the book had to be passed very quickly through
the press.

JOHN DOVER WILSON.

HOLMLEIGH, SHELFORD, August, 1905.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

PAGE

The problem stated— Sketch of Lyly's life .... i

CHAPTER I.

EUPHUISM 10

Section I. The Anatomy of Euphuism ... 13
Section II. The Origin of Euphuism ... 21
Section III. Lyly's legatees and the relation be-
tween Euphuism and the Renaissance ... 43
Section IV. The position of Euphuism in the his-
tory of English Prose 52

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 64

The rise of the Novel — the characteristics of The
Anatomy of IVit and Euphnes and his England —
the Elizabethan Novel.

CHAPTER III.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 85

Section I. English Comedy before 1580 ... 89

Section II. The Eight Plays 98

Section III. Lyly's advance and subsequent in-
fluence 119

CHAPTER IV.

CONCLUSION 132

Lyly's Character — Summary.

INDEX . i/n

INTRODUCTION.

SINCE the day when Taine established a scientific
basis for the historical study of Art, criticism has tended
gradually but naturally to fall into two divisions, as dis-
tinct from each other as the functions they respectively
perform are distinct. The one, which we may call
aesthetic criticism, deals with the artist and his works
solely for the purpose of interpretation and appreciation,
judging them according to some artistic standard, which,
as often as not, derives its only sanction from the pre-
judices of the critic himself. It is of course obvious that,
until all critics are agreed upon some common principles
of artistic valuation, aesthetic criticism can lay no claim
to scientific precision, but must be classed as a depart-
ment of Art itself. The other, an application of the
Darwinian hypothesis to literature, which owes its exist-
ence almost entirely to the great French critic before
mentioned, but which has since rejected as unscientific
many of the laws he formulated, may be called historical
or sociological criticism. It judges a work of art, an
artist, or an artistic period, on its dynamic and not its
intrinsic merits. Its standard is influence, not power or
beauty. It is concerned with the artistic qualities of a
given artist only in so far as he exerts influence over his
successors by those qualities. It is essentially scientific,
for it treats the artist as science treats any other natural
phenomenon, that is, as the effect of previous causes and
w. i

2 JOHN LYLY

the cause of subsequent effects. Its function is one of
classification, and with interpretation or appreciation it
has nothing to do.

Before undertaking the study of an artist, the critic
should carefully distinguish between these two critical
methods. A complete study must of course comprehend
both ; and in the case of Shakespeare, shall we say, each
should be exhaustive. On the other hand, there are
artists whose dynamical value is far greater than their
intrinsic value, and vice versa ; and in such instances the
critic must be guided in his action by the relative im-
portance of these values in any particular example. This
is so in the case of John Lyly. In the course of the
following treatise we shall have occasion to pass many
aesthetic judgments upon his work ; but it will be from
the historical side that we shall view him in the main,
because his importance for the readers of the twentieth
century is almost entirely dynamical. His work is by
no means devoid of aesthetic merit. He was, like so
many of the Elizabethans, a writer of beautiful lyrics
which are well known to this day ; but, though the rest
of his work is undoubtedly that of an artist of no mean
ability, the beauty it possesses is the beauty of a fossil in
which few but students would profess any interest. More-
over, even could we claim more for John Lyly than this,
any aesthetic criticism would of necessity become a
secondary matter in comparison with his importance in
other directions, for to the scientific critic he is or should
be one of the most significant figures in English literature.
This claim I hope to justify in the following pages ; but
it will be well, by way of obtaining a broad general view
of our subject, to call attention to a few points upon
which our justification must ultimately rest.

In the first place John Lyly, inasmuch as he was one

INTRODUCTION 3

of the earliest writers who considered prose as an artistic
end in itself, and not simply as a medium of expression,
may be justly described as a founder, if not the founder,
of English prose style.

In the second place he was the author of the first
novel of manners in the language.

And in the third place, and from the point of view of
Elizabethan literature most important of all, he was one
of our very earliest dramatists, and without doubt merits
the title of Father of English Comedy.

It is almost impossible to over-estimate his historical
importance in these three departments, and this not
because he was a great genius or possessed of any
magnificent artistic gifts, but for the simple reason that
he happened to stand upon the threshold of modern
English literature and at the very entrance to its
splendid Elizabethan ante-room, and therefore all who
came after felt something of his influence. These are
the three chief points of interest about Lyly, but they do
not exhaust the problems he presents. We shall have to
notice also that as a pamphleteer he becomes entangled
in the famous Marprelate controversy, and that he was
one of the first, being perhaps even earlier than Marlowe,
to perceive the value of blank verse for dramatic purposes.
Finally, as we have seen, he was the reputed author of
some delightful lyrics.

The man of whom one can say such things, the man
who showed such versatility and range of expression, the
man who took the world by storm and made euphuism
the fashion at court before he was well out of his nonage,
who for years provided the great Queen with food for
laughter, and who was connected with the first ominous
outburst of the Puritan spirit, surely possesses personal
attractions apart from any literary considerations. We

4 JOHN LYLY

shall presently see reason to believe that his personality
was a brilliant and fascinating one. But such a recon-
struction of the artist1 is only possible after a thorough
analysis of his works. It would be as well here, however,
by way of obtaining an historical framework for our study,
to give a brief account of his life as it is known to us.

" Eloquent and witty " John Lyly first saw light in
the year 1553 or 1554". Anthony a Wood, the i/th
century author of Atlienae Oxonienses, tells us that he
was, like his contemporary Stephen Gosson, a Kentish
man born3; and with this clue to help them both
Mr Bond and Mr Baker are inclined to accept much
of the story of Fidus as autobiographical4. If their
inference be correct, our author would seem to have
been the son of middle-class, but well-to-do, parents.
But it is with his residence at Oxford that any authentic
account of his life must begin, and even then our informa-
tion is very meagre. Wood tells us that he " became a
student in Magdalen College in the beginning of 1 569,
aged 16 or thereabouts." "And since," adds Mr Bond,
"in 1574 he describes himself as Burleigh's alumnus, and
owns obligations to him, it is possible that he owed his
university career to Burleigh's assistance5." And yet,
limited as our knowledge is, it is possible, I think, to
form a fairly accurate conception of Lyly's manner of
life at Oxford, if we are bold enough to read between
the lines of the scraps of contemporary evidence that
have come down to us. Lyly himself tells us that he
left Oxford for three years not long after his arrival.
"Oxford," he says, "seemed to weane me before she
brought me forth, and to give me boanes to gnawe,

1 Cf. Hennequin. 2 Bond, I. p. 2 ; Baker, p. v.

3 Ath. Ox. (ed. Bliss), I. p. 676. * Euphues, p. 268.

5 Bond, I. p. 6. But Baker, pp. vii, viii, would seem to disagree with this.

INTRODUCTION 5

before I could get the teate to suck. Wherein she played
the nice mother in sending me into the countrie to nurse,
where I tyred at a drie breast for three years and was at
last inforced to weane myself." Mr Bond, influenced by
the high moral tone of EupJmes, which, as we shall see,
was merely a traditional literary prose borrowed from the
moral court treatise, is anxious to vindicate Lyly from
all charges of lawlessness, and refuses to admit that the
foregoing words refer to rustication1. Lyly's enforced
absence he holds was due to the plague which broke out
at Oxford at this time. Such an interpretation seems
to me to be sufficiently disposed of by the fact that the
plague in question did not break out until I5/I2, while
Lyly's words must refer to a departure (at the very
latest) in 1570. Everything, in fact, goes to show that
he was out of favour with the University authorities.
In the first place he seems to have paid small attention
to his regular studies. To quote Wood again, he was
" always averse to the crabbed studies of Logic and
Philosophy. For so it was that his genie, being naturally
bent to the pleasant paths of poetry (as if Apollo had
given to him a wreath of his own Bays without snatching
or struggling), did in a manner neglect academical studies,
yet not so much but that he took the Degree in Arts,
that of Master being completed in I5753."

Neglect of the recognised studies, however, was not
the only blot upon Lyly's Oxford life. From the hints
thrown out by his contemporaries, and from some
allusions, doubtless personal, in the Euphues, we learn
that, as an undergraduate, he was an irresponsible mad-
cap. " Esteemed in the University a noted wit," he
would very naturally become the centre of a pleasure-

1 Bond, I. p. n. 2 Baker, p. xii.

3 Athenae Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), I. p. 676.

6 JOHN LYLY

seeking circle of friends, despising the persons and ideas
of their elders, eager to adopt the latest fashion whether
in dress or in thought, and intolerant alike of regulations
and of duty. Gabriel Harvey, who nursed a grudge
against Lyly, even speaks of " horning, gaming, fooling
and knaving," words which convey a distinct sense of
something discreditable, whatever may be their exact
significance. It is necessary to lay stress upon this
period of Lyly's life, because, as I hope to show, his
residence at Oxford, and the friends he made there, had
a profound influence upon his later development, and in
particular determined his literary bent. For our present
purpose, however, which is merely to give a brief sketch
of his life, it is sufficient to notice that our author's
conduct during his residence was not so exemplary as
it might have been. It must, therefore, have called
forth a sigh of relief from the authorities of Magdalen,
when they saw the last of John Lyly, M.A., in 1575.
He however, quite naturally, saw matters otherwise. It
would seem to him that the College was suffering wrong
in losing so excellent a wit, and accordingly he heroically
took steps to prevent such a catastrophe, for in 1576 we
find him writing to his patron Burleigh, requesting him
to procure mandatory letters from the Queen "that so
under your auspices I may be quietly admitted a Fellow
there." The petition was refused, Burleigh's sense of
propriety overcoming his sense of humour, and the
petitioner quitted Oxford, leaving his College the legacy
of an unpaid bill for battels, and probably already pre-
paring in his brain the revenge, which subsequently took
the form of an attack upon his University in Enphues,
which he published in 1578.

It is interesting to learn that in 1579. according to
the common practice of that day, he proceeded to his

INTRODUCTION 7

degree of M.A. at Cambridge, though there is no
evidence of any residence there1. Indeed we know
from other sources that in 1578, or perhaps earlier, Lyly
had taken up his position at the Savoy Hospital. It
seems probable that he became again indebted to Bur-
leigh's generosity for the rooms he occupied here —
unless they were hired for him by Burleigh's son-in-law
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. This person, though
few of his writings are now extant, is nevertheless an
interesting figure in Elizabethan literature. The second
part of Eupliues published in 1580, and the Hekatompathia
of Thomas Watson, are both dedicated to him, and he
seems to have acted as patron to most of Lyly's literary
associates when they left Oxford for London. Lyly
became his private secretary; and as the Earl was
himself a dramatist, though his comedies are now lost,
his 'influence must have confirmed in our author those
dramatic aspirations, which were probably acquired at
Oxford; and we have every reason for believing that
Lyly was still his secretary when he was publishing his
two first plays, Cawpaspe and Sapho, in 1584. But this
point will require a fuller treatment at a later stage of
our study.

Somewhere about 1585 Fate settled once and for all
the lines on which Lyly's genius was to develop, for at
that time he became an assistant master at the St Paul's
Choir School. Schools, and especially those for choristers,
at this time offered excellent opportunities for dramatic
production. Lyly in his new position made good use of
his chance, and wrote plays for his young scholars to act,
drilling them himself, and perhaps frequently appearing
personally on the stage. These chorister-actors were
connected in a very special way with royal entertain-

1 Mr Baker however seems to think that his reference to Cambridge
(Enphues, p. 436) implies a term of residence there. Baker, p. xxii.

8 JOHN LYLY

merits ; and therefore they and their instructor would be
constantly brought into touch with the Revels' Office.
As we know from his letters to Elizabeth and to Cecil,
the mastership of the Revels was the post Lyly coveted,
and coveted without success, as far as we can tell, until
the end of his life. But these letters also show us that
he was already connected with this office by his position
in the subordinate office of Tents and Toils. The latter,
originally instituted for the purpose of furnishing the
necessaries of royal hunting and campaigning1, had ap-
parently become amalgamated under a female sovereign
with the Revels' Office, possibly owing to the fact that its
costumes and weapons provided useful material for enter-
tainments and interludes. Another position which, as
Mr Bond shows, was held at one time by Lyly, was that
of reader of new books to the Bishop of London. This
connexion with the censorship of the day is interesting,
as showing how Lyly was drawn into the whirlpool of
the Marprelate controversy. Finally we know that he
was elected a member of Parliament on four separate
occasions2.

These varied occupations are proof of the energy
and versatility of our author, but not one of them can
be described as lucrative. Nor can his publications have
brought him much profit ; for, though both Etiphues and
its sequel passed through ten editions before his death,
an author in those days received very little of the pro-
ceeds of his work. Moreover the publication of his plays
is rather an indication of financial distress than a sign of
prosperity. The two dramas already mentioned were
printed before Lyly's connexion with the Choir School ;
and, when in 1585 he became "vice-master of Poules

1 Bond, I. p. 38.

2 I have to thank Dr Ward for pointing out to me the interesting fact
that a large proportion of Elizabeth's M.P.'s were royal officials.

INTRODUCTION 9

and Foolmaster of the Theater," he would be careful to
keep his plays out of the publisher's hands, in order to
preserve the acting monopoly. It is probable that the
tenure of this Actor-manager-schoolmastership marks
the height of Lyly's prosperity, and the inhibition of the
boys' acting rights in 1591 must have meant a severe
financial loss to him. Thus it is only after this date that
he is forced to make what he can by the publication of
his other plays. The fear of poverty was the more
urgent, because he had a wife and family on his hands.
And though Mr Bond believes that he found an occupa- .
tion after 1591 in writing royal entertainments, and
though the inhibition on the choristers' acting was re-
moved as early as 1 599, yet the last years of Lyly's life
were probably full of disappointment. This indeed is
confirmed by the bitter tone of his letter to Elizabeth in
1598 in reference to the mastership of the Revels' Office,
which he had at last despaired of. The letter in question
is sad reading. Beginning with a euphuism and ending
in a jest, it tells of a man who still retains, despite all
adversity, a courtly mask and a merry tongue, but
beneath this brave surface there is visible a despair —
almost amounting to anguish — which the forced merri-
ment only renders more pitiable. And the gloom which
surrounded his last years was not only due to the distress
of poverty. Before his death in 1606 he had seen his
novel eclipsed by the new Arcadian fashion, and had
watched the rise of a host of rival dramatists, thrusting
him aside while they took advantage of his methods.
Greatest of them all, as he must have realised, was
Shakespeare, the sun of our drama before whom the
silver light of his little moon, which had first illumined
our darkness, waned and faded away and was to be for
centuries forgotten.

CHAPTER I.

EUPHUISM.

IT was as a novelist that Lyly first came before the
world of English letters. In 1578 he published a volume,
bearing the inscription, Euphues: the anatomy of wyt,
to which was subjoined the attractive advertisement,
very pleasant for all gentlemen to reade, and most necessary
to remember. This book, which was to work a revolution
in our literature, was completed in 1580 by a sequel,
entitled Euphues and his England. Euphues, to combine
the two parts under one name, the fruit of Lyly's nonage,
seems to have determined the form of his reputation
for the Elizabethans; and even to-day it attracts more
attention than any other of his works. This probably
implies a false estimate of Lyly's comparative merits as
a novelist and as a dramatist. But it is not surprising
that critics, living in the century of the novel, and
with their eyes towards the country pre-eminent in its
production, should think and write of Lyly chiefly as
the first of English novelists. The bias of the age is as
natural and as dangerous an element in criticism as the
bias of the individual. But it is not with the modern
appraisement of Euphues that we are here concerned.
Nor need we proceed immediately to a consideration
of its position in the history of the English novel.

EUPHUISM II

We have first to deal with its Elizabethan reputation.
Had Euphnes been a still-born child of Lyly's genius,
had it produced no effect upon the literature of the age,
it would possess nothing but a purely archaeological
interest for us to-day. It would still be the first of
English novels: but this claim would lose half its
significance, did it not carry with it the implication that
the book was also the origin of English novel writing.
The importance, therefore, of Euphues is not so much
that it was primary, as that it was primordial; and, to
be such, it must have laid its spell in some way or other
upon succeeding writers. Our first task is therefore to
enquire what this spell was, and to discover whether the
attraction of Eiiphues must be ascribed to Lyly's own
invention or to artifices which he borrows from others.

While, as I have said, Lyly's name is associated with
the novel by most modern critics, it has earned a more
widespread reputation among the laity for affectation
and mannerisms of style. Indeed, until fifty years ago,
Lyly spelt nothing but euphuism, and euphuism meant
simply nonsense, clothed in bombast. It was a blind
acceptance of these loose ideas which led Sir Walter
Scott to create (as a caricature of Lyly) his Sir Piercie
Shafton in The Monastery — an historical faux pas for
which he has been since sufficiently called to account.
Nevertheless Lyly's reputation had a certain basis of
fact, and we may trace the tradition back to Elizabethan
days. It is perhaps worth pointing out that, had we
no other evidence upon the subject, the survival of this
tradition would lead us to suppose that it was Lyly's
style more than anything else which appealed to the
men of his day. A contemporary confirmation of this
may be found in the words of William Webbe. Writing
in 1586 of the "great good grace and sweet vogue which

12 JOHN LYLY

Eloquence hath attained in our Speeche," he declares
that the English language has thus progressed, "because
it hath had the helpe of such rare and singular wits, as
from time to time myght still adde some amendment to
the same. Among whom I think there is none that will
gainsay, but Master John Lyly hath deservedly moste
high commendations, as he hath stept one steppe further
therein than any either before or since he first began the
wyttie discourse of his Euphues, whose works, surely in
respect of his singular eloquence and brave composition
of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and
make tryall thereof, through all the parts of Rethoricke,
in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in galant tropes, in
flowing speeche, in plaine sense, and surely in my
judgment, I think he wyll yeelde him that verdict which
Quintillian giveth of both the best orators Demosthenes
and Tully, that from the one, nothing may be taken
away, to the other nothing may be added1." After such
eulogy, the description of Lyly by another writer as
"alter Tullius anglorum" will not seem strange. These
praises were not the extravagances of a few uncritical
admirers; they echo the verdict of the age. Lyly's
enthronement was of short duration — a matter of some
ten years — but, while it lasted, he reigned supreme.
Such literary idolatries are by no means uncommon,
and often hold their ground for a considerable period.
Beside the vogue of Waller, for example, the duration
of Lyly's reputation was comparatively brief. More
than a century after the publication of his poems,
Waller was hailed by the Sidney Lee of the day in the
Biographia Britannica of 1766, as "the most celebrated
Lyric Poet that England ever produced." Whence
comes this striking contrast between past glory and
1 A discourse of English Poetrie, Arber's reprint.

EUPHUISM 13

present neglect? How is it that a writer once known
as the greatest master of English prose, and a poet once
named the most conspicuous of English lyrists, are now
but names? They have not faded from memory owing
to a mere caprice of fashion. Great artists are subject
to an ebb and flow of popularity, for which as yet no
tidal theory has been offered as an explanation; but
like the sea they are ever permanent. The case of our
two writers is different. The wheel of time will never
bring EupJiues and Sacharissa "to their own again."
They are as dead as the Jacobite cause. And for that
very reason they are all the more interesting for the
literary historian. All writers are conditioned by their
environment, but some concern themselves with the
essentials, others with the accidents, of that internally
constant, but externally unstable, phenomenon, known
as humanity. Waller and Lyly were of the latter class.
Like jewels suitable to one costume only, they remained
in favour just as long as the fashion that created them
lasted. Waller was probably inferior to Lyly as an
artist, but he happened to strike a vein which was not
exhausted until the end of the i8th century; while the
vogue of EupJiues, though at first far-reaching, was soon
crossed by new artificialities such as arcadianism. The
secret of Waller's influence was that he stereotyped a
new poetic form, a form which, in its restraint and
precision, was exactly suited to the intellect of the
ancien regime with its craving for form and its contempt
for ideas. The mainspring of Lyly's popularity was
that he did in prose what Waller did in poetry.

SECTION I. The Anatomy of Euphuism.

The books which have been written upon the charac-
teristics of Lyly's prose are numberless, and far outweigh

14 JOHN LYLY

the attention given to his power as a novelist, to say
nothing of his dramas1. Indeed the absorption of the
critics in the analysis of euphuism seems to have been,
up to a few years ago, definitely injurious to a true
appreciation of our author's position, by blocking the
path to a recognition of his importance in other direc-
tions. And yet, in spite of all this, it cannot be said
that any adequate examination of the structure of Lyly's
style appeared until Mr Child took the matter in hand
in i8942. And Mr Child has performed his task so
scientifically and so exhaustively that he has killed the
topic by making any further treatment of it superfluous.
This being the case, a description of the euphuistic style
need not detain us for long. I shall content myself with
the briefest summary of its characteristics, drawing upon
Mr Child for my matter, and referring those who are
desirous of further details to Mr Child's work itself.
We shall then be in a position to proceed to the more
interesting, and as yet unsettled problem, of the origins
of euphuism. The great value of Mr Child's work lies
in the fact that he has at once simplified and amplified
the conclusions of previous investigators. Dr Weymouth3
was the first to discover that, beneath the " curtizan-like
painted affectation " of euphuism, there lay a definite
theory of style and a consistent method of procedure.
Dr Landmann carried the analysis still further in his
now famous paper published in the New Shakespeare
Society s Transactions (1880-82). But these two, and
those who have followed them, have erred, on the one
hand in implying that euphuism was much more complex

1 Child, pp. 6-20, for an account of chief writers who have dealt with
euphuism.

2 John Lyly and Euphuism. C. G. Child.

3 On Euphuism, Phil. Soc. Trans., 1870-2.

EUPHUISM 15

than it is in reality, and on the other by confining their
attention to single sentences, and so failing to perceive
that the euphuistic method was applicable to the para-
graph, as a whole, no less than to the sentence. And it
is upon these two points that Mr Child's essay is so
specially illuminating. We shall obtain a correct notion
of the " essential character " of the " euphuistic rhetoric,"
he writes, " if we observe that it employs but one simple
principle in practice, and that it applies this, not only to
the ordering of the single sentence, but in every structural
relation1": and this simple principle is "the inducement
of artificial emphasis through Antithesis and Repetition —
Antithesis to give pointed expression to the thought,
Repetition to enforce it2." When Lyly set out to write
his novel, it seemed that his intention was to produce
a most elaborate essay in antithesis. The book as a
whole, " very pleasant for all gentlemen to read and
most necessary to remember," was itself an antithesis ;
the discourses it contains were framed upon the same
plan : the sentences are grouped antithetically ; while
the antithesis is pointed by an equally elaborate repeti-
tion of ideas, of vowel sounds and of consonant sounds.
Letters, syllables, words, sentences, sentence groups,
paragraphs, all are employed for the purpose of pro-
ducing the antithetical style now known as euphuism.
An example will serve to make the matter clearer.
Philautus, upbraiding his treacherous friend Euphues
for robbing him of his lady's love, delivers himself of
the following speech : " Although hitherto Euphues
I have shrined thee in my heart for a trusty friend,
I will shunne thee hereafter as a trothless foe, and
although I cannot see in thee less wit than I was wont,
yet do I find less honesty. I perceive at the last

1 Child, p. 43. 2 id,, p. 44.

1 6 JOHN LYLY

(although being deceived it be too late) that musk
though it be sweet in the smell is sour in the smack,
that the leaf of the cedar tree though it be fair to be
seen, yet the syrup depriveth sight — that friendship
though it be plighted by the shaking of the hand, yet
it is shaken by the fraud of the heart. But thou hast
not much to boast of, for as thou hast won a fickle lady,
so hast thou lost a faithful friend1." It is impossible to
give an adequate idea of the euphuistic style save in
a lengthy quotation, such as the discourse of Eubulus
selected by Mr Child for that purpose2 ; but, within the
narrow limits of the passage I have chosen, the main
characteristics of euphuism are sufficiently obvious. It
should be noticed how one part of a sentence is balanced
by another part, and how this balance or " parallelism "
is made more pointed by means of alliteration, e.g.
" shrined thee for a trusty friend," " shun thee as a troth-
less foe " ; musk " sweet in the smell," " sour in the
smack," and so on. The former of these antitheses is
an example of transverse alliteration, of which so much
is made by Dr Landmann, but which, as Mr Child shows,
plays a subordinate, and an entirely mechanical, part in
Lyly's style3. Lyly's most natural and most usual
method of emphasizing is by means of simple allitera-
tion. On the other hand it must be noticed that he
employs alliteration for the sake of euphony alone
much more frequently than he uses it for the purpose
of emphasis. So that we may conclude by saying that
simple alliteration forms the basis of the euphuistic
diction, just as we have seen antithesis forms the basis
of the euphuistic construction. This brief survey of the
framework of euphuism is far from being an exhaustive
analysis. All that is here attempted is an enumeration

1 EufAues, p. 90. 2 Child, p. 39. 3 id. , p. 46.

EUPHUISM I/

of the most obvious marks of euphuism, as a necessary
step to an investigation of its origin, and to a determina-
tion of its place in the history of our literature.

Before, however, leaving the subject entirely, we must
mention two more characteristics of Lyly's prose which
are very noticeable, but which come under the head
of ornamental, rather than constructional, devices. The
first of these is a peculiar use of the rhetorical interro-
gation. Lyly makes use of it when he wishes to portray
his characters in distress or excitement, and it most fre-
quently occurs in soliloquies. Sometimes we find a string
of these interrogations, at others they are answered by
sentences beginning " ay but," and occasionally we have
the " ay but " sentence with the preceding interrogation
missing. I make a special mention of this point, as we
shall find it has a certain connexion with the subject of
the origins of euphuism.

The other ornamental device is one which has
attracted a considerable quantity of attention from
critics, and has frequently been taken by itself as the
distinguishing mark of euphuism. In point of fact, how-
ever, the euphuists shared it with many other writers of
their age, though it is doubtful whether anyone carried
it to such extravagant lengths as Lyly. It took the
form of illustrations and analogies, so excessive and over-
whelming that it is difficult to see how even the idlest
lady of Elizabeth's court found time or patience to wade
through them. They consist first of anecdotes and allu-
sions relating to historical or mythological persons of the
ancient world ; some being drawn from Plutarch, Pliny,
Ovid, Virgil, and other sources, but many springing simply
from Lyly's exuberant fancy. In the second place Eu-
phues is a collection of similes borrowed from "a fantastical
natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones,

w. 2

1 8 JOHN LYLY

to which the most extraordinary virtues are attributed1."
" I have heard," says Camilla, bashfully excusing herself
for taking up the cudgels of argument with the learned
Surius, "that the Tortoise in India when the sunne
shineth, swimmeth above the water wyth hyr back, and
being delighted with the fine weather, forgetteth her
selfe until the heate of the sunne so harden her shell,
that she cannot sink when she woulde, whereby she is
caught. And so it may fare with me that in this good
companye displaying my minde, having more regard to
my delight in talking, than to the ears of the hearers, I
forget what I speake, and so be taken in something
I would not utter, which happilye the itchyng ears of
young gentlemen would so canvas that when I would
call it in, I cannot, and so be caught with the Tortoise,
when I would not2." And, when she had finished her
discourse, Surius again employs the simile for the purpose
of turning a neat compliment, saying, " Lady, if the Tor-
toise you spoke of in India were as cunning in swimming,
as you are in speaking, she would neither fear the heate
of the sunne nor the ginne of the Fisher." This is but a
mild example of the "unnatural natural philosophy"
which Euphues has made famous. An unending pro-
cession of such similes, often of the most extravagant
nature, runs throughout the book, and sometimes the
development of the plot is made dependent on them.
Thus Lucilla hesitates to forsake Philautus for Euphues,
because she feels that her new lover will remember "that
the glasse once chased will with the least clappe be
cracked, that the cloth which stayneth with milke will
soon loose his coulour with Vinegar ; that the eagle's
wing will waste the feather as well as of the Phoenix, as
of the Pheasant : and that she that hath become faith-

1 Jusserand, p. 107. 2 Euphues, p. 402.

EUPHUISM 19

lesse to one, will never be faithfull to any1." What proof
could be more exact, what better example could be given
of the methods of concomitant variations ? It is pre-
cisely the same logical process which induces the savage
to wreak his vengeance by melting a waxen image of his
enemy, and the farmer to predict a change of weather at
the new moon.

Lyly, however, was not concerned with making
philosophical generalizations, or scientific laws, about
the world in general. His natural, or unnatural, phe-
nomena were simply saturated with moral significance :
not that he saw any connexion between the ethical pro-
cess and the cosmic process, but, like every one of his
contemporaries, he employed the facts of animal and
vegetable life to point a moral or to help out a sermon.
The arguments he used appear to us puerile in their old-
world dress, and yet similar ones are to be heard to-day
in every pulpit where a smattering of science is used to
eke out a poverty of theology. And, to be fair, such
reasoning is not confined to pulpits. Even so eminent
a writer as Mr Edward Carpenter has been known to
moralise on the habits of the wild mustard, irresistibly
reminding us of the " Camomill which the more it is
trodden and pressed down the more it speedeth2." More-
over the soi-disant founder of the inductive method, the
great Bacon himself, is, as Liebig3 shows in his amusing
and interesting study of the renowned " scientist's "
scientific methods, tarred with the same mediaeval
brush, and should be ranked with Lyly and the other
Elizabethan " scholastics " rather than with men like
Harvey and Newton.

1 Euphues, p. 58. 2 id., p. 46.

3 Lord Bacon et les sciences cf observation en moyen dge, par Liebig,
traduit par de Tchihatchef.

20 JOHN LYLY

Lyly's natural history was at any rate the result of
learning; many of his "facts" were drawn from Pliny,
while others were to be found in the plentiful crop of
mediaeval bestiaries, which, as Professor Raleigh remarks,
"preceded the biological hand-books." Perhaps also we
must again allow something for Lyly's invention ; for
lists of authorities, and footnotes indicative of sources,
were not demanded of the scientist of those days, and
one can thoroughly sympathise with an author who
found an added zest in inventing the facts upon which
his theories rested. Have not ethical philosophers of all
ages been guilty of it ? Certainly Gabriel Harvey seems
to be hinting at Lyly when he slyly remarks : " I could
name a party, that in comparison of his own inventions,
termed Pliny a barren wombe1."

The affectations we have just enumerated are much
less conspicuous in the second part of EupJmes than in
the first, and, though they find a place in his earlier
plays, Lyly gradually frees himself from their influence,
owing perhaps to the decline of the euphuistic fashion,
but more probably to the growth of his dramatic instinct,
which saw that such forms were a drag upon the action
of a play. And yet at times Lyly could use his clumsy
weapon with great precision and effect. How admirably,
for example, does he express in his antithetical fashion
the essence of coquetry. Iffida, speaking to Fidus of one
she loved but wished to test, is made to say, " I seem
straight-laced as one neither accustomed to such suites,
nor willing to entertain such a servant, yet so warily, as
putting him from me with my little finger, I drewe him
to me with my whole hand2." Other little delicate turns
of phrase may be found in the mine of Euphnes — for the
digging. Our author was no genius, but he had a full

1 Bond, I. p. 131 note. 2 Euphues, p. 299.

EUPHUISM 21

measure of that indefinable quality known as wit ; and,
though the stylist's mask he wears is uncouth and rigid,
it cannot always conceal the twinkle of his eyes More-
over a certain weariness of this sermonizing on the stilts
of antithesis is often visible ; and we may suspect that
he half sympathises with the petulant exclamation of
the sea-sick Philautus to his interminable friend :

" In fayth, Euphues, thou hast told a long tale, the
beginning I have forgotten, ye middle I understand not,
and the end hangeth not well together1 " ; and with this
piece of self-criticism we may leave Lyly for the present
and turn to his predecessors.

SECTION II. The Origins of Euphuism.

When we pass from an analytical to an historical
consideration of the style which Lyly made his own and
stamped for ever with the name of his hero, we come
upon a problem which is at once the most difficult and
the most fascinating with which we have to deal. The
search for a solution will lead us far afield ; but, inas-
much as the publication and success of Euplmes have
given euphuism its importance in the history of our
literature, the digression, which an attempt to trace the
origin of euphuism will necessitate, can hardly be con-
sidered outside the scope of this book. Critics have long
since decided that the peculiar style, which we have just
dissolved into its elements, was not the invention of
Lyly's genius ; but on the other hand, no critic, in my
opinion, has as yet solved the problem of origins with
any claim to finality. Perhaps a tentative solution is all
that is possible in the present stage of our knowledge.
It is, of course, easy to point to the book or books from

1 Euphues, p. 248.

22 JOHN LYLY

which Lyly borrowed, and to dismiss the question thus.
But this simply evades the whole issue ; for, though it
explains Eup/utes, it by no means explains euphuism.
Equally unsatisfactory is the theory that euphuism was
of purely Spanish origin. Such a solution has all the
fascination, and all the dangers, which usually attend a
simple answer to a complex question. The idea that
euphuism was originally an article of foreign production
was first set on foot by Dr Landmann. The real father
of Lyly's style, he tells us, was Antonio de Guevara,
bishop of Guadix, who published in 1529 a book, the
title of which was as follows : The book of the emperor
Marcus Atirelius with a Diall for princes. This book
was translated into English in 1534 by Lord Berners,
and again in 1557 by Sir Thomas North ; in both cases
from a French version. The two translations are con-
veniently distinguished by their titles, that of Berners
being The Golden Boke, that of North being The Diall of
Princes. Dr Landmann is very positive with regard to
his theory, but the fact that both translations come from
the French and not from the Castilian, seems to me to
constitute a serious drawback to its acceptance. And
moreover this theory does not explain the really im-
portant crux of the whole matter, namely the reason
why a style of this kind, whatever its origin, found a
ready acceptance in England : for fourteen editions of
The Golden Boke are known between 1534 and 1588, a
number for those days quite exceptional and showing
the existence of an eager public. Two answers are
possible to the last question ; that there existed a large
body of men in the England of the Tudors who were
interested in Spanish literature of all kinds and in
Guevara among others ; and that the euphuistic style
was already forming in England, and that this was the

EUPHUISM 23

reason of Guevara's popularity. In both answers I think
there is truth ; and I hope to show that they give us,
when combined, a fairly adequate explanation of the
vogue of euphuism in our country. Let us deal with
external influences first.

The upholders of the Spanish theory have contented
themselves with stating that Lyly borrowed from
Guevara, and pointing out the parallels between the two
writers. But it is possible to give their case a greater
plausibility, by showing that Guevara was no isolated
instance of such Spanish influence, and by proving that
during the Tudor period there was a consistent and
far-reaching interest in Spanish literature among a
certain class of Englishmen. Intimacy with Spain dates
from Henry VIII.'s marriage with Katherine of Aragon,
though no Spanish book had actually been translated
into English before her divorce. But the period from
then onwards until the accession of James I., a period
when Spain looms as largely in English politics as does
France later, saw the publication in London of "some
hundred and seventy volumes written either by peninsular
authors, or in the peninsular tongues1." At such a time
this number represents a very considerable influence;
and it is, therefore, no wonder that critics have fallen
victims to the allurements of a theory which would
ascribe Spanish origins for all the various prose epidemics
of Elizabethan literature. To pair Lyly with Guevara,
Sidney with Montemayor2, and Nash with Mendoza, and
thus to point at Spain as the parent, not only of the
euphuistic,but also of the pastoral and picaresque romance,
is to furnish an explanation almost irresistible in its
symmetry. It must have been with the joy of a

1 Underbill, p. 339.

2 id., p. 268 note. Mr Underbill writes : " The attempt to connect the
style of Sidney with that of Montemayor has failed."

24 JOHN LYLY

mathematician, solving an intricate problem, that
Dr Landmann formulated this theory of literary equa-
tions. But without going to such lengths, without
pressing the connexion between particular writers, one
may admit that in general Spanish literature must
have exercised an influence upon the Elizabethans.
Mr Underhill, our latest authority on the subject, allows
this, while at the same time cautioning us against the
dangers of over-estimating it. Any contact on the side
of the lyric and the drama was, he declares, very slight1,
and the peninsular writings actually circulated in our
country at this time, in translations, he divides into three
classes; occasional literature, that is topical tracts and
pamphlets on contemporary Spanish affairs; didactic
literature, comprising scientific treatises, accounts of
voyages such as inspired Hakluyt, works on military
science, and, more important still, the religious writings
of mystics like Granada; and lastly artistic prose. The
last item, which alone concerns us, is by far the smallest
of the three, and by itself amounts to less than half the
translations from Italian literature; moreover most of
the Spanish translations under this head came into
England after 1580, and could not therefore have
influenced Lyly's novel. But of course the Libra Aureo
had been englished long before this, while the Lazarillo
de T6rmes, Mendoza's2 picaresque romance, was given
an English garb by Rowland in 1576, and, though
Montemayor's Diana was not translated until 1596,
Spanish and French editions of it had existed in England
long previous to that date. Perhaps most important
of all was the famous realistic novel Celestina, which was
well known, in a French translation, to Englishmen at

1 Underbill, p. 48, but see Martin Hume, ch. ix.

1 Some doubt has been thrown upon Mendoza's authorship. See
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, p. 158, and Martin Hume, p. 133.

EUPHUISM 25

the beginning of the i6th century, and was denounced
by Vives at Oxford. It was actually translated into
English as early as I53O1. There was on the whole,
therefore, quite an appreciable quantity of Spanish
artistic literature circulating in England before Euphues
saw the light.

This literary invasion will seem perfectly natural
if we bear in mind the political conditions of the day.
Under Mary, England had been all but a Spanish
dependency, and, though in the next reign, she threw
off the yoke, the antagonism which existed probably
acted as an even greater literary stimulus than the
former alliance. Throughout the whole of Elizabeth's
rule, the English were continually coming into contact
with the Spaniards, either in trade, in ecclesiastical
matters, in politics, or in actual warfare; and again the
magnificence of the great Spanish empire, and the
glamour which surrounded its connexion with the new
world, were very attractive to the Englishmen of
Elizabeth's day, especially as they were desirous of
emulating the achievements of Spain. And lastly
it may be noticed that English and Spanish conditions
of intellectual life, if we shut our eyes to the religious
differences, were very similar at this time. Both countries
had replaced a shattered feudal system by an absolute
and united monarchy. Both countries owed an immense
debt to Italy, and, in both, the Italian influence took
a similar form, modified on the one hand by humanism,
and on the other by feelings of patriotism, if not of
imperialism. Spain and England took the Renaissance
fever more coldly, and at the same time more seriously,
than did Italy. And in both the new movement even-
tually assumed the character of intellectual asceticism
1 Martin Hume, p. 126.

26 JOHN LYLY

moulded by the sombre hand of religious fanaticism;
for Spain was the cradle of the Counter-Reformation,
England of Puritanism.

Leaving the general issue, let us now try to establish
a partial connexion between our author, or at least his
surroundings, and Spanish influences. And here I think
a suggestive, if not a strong case, can be made out.
Ever since the beginning of the i6th century a Spanish
tradition had existed at Oxford. Vives, the Spanish
humanist, and the friend of Erasmus, was in 1517
admitted Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and in 1523
became reader in rhetoric ; and, though he was banished
in 1528, at the time of the divorce, it seems that he was
continually lecturing before the University during the
five years of his residence there. The circle of his friends,
though quite distinct from the contemporary Berners-
Guevara group, included many interesting men, and
among others the famous Sir John Cheke. Under Mary
we naturally find two Spanish professors at Oxford,
Pedro de Soto and Juan de Villa Garcia. But Elizabeth
maintained the tradition; and in 1559 she offered a
chair at Oxford to a Spanish Protestant, Guerrero.
The important name, however, in our connexion is
Antonio de Corro, who resided as a student at Christ
Church from 1575 to 1585, thus being a contemporary
of Lyly, though it is impossible to say whether they
were acquainted or not. Lyly had, however, another
Oxford contemporary who certainly took a keen interest
in Spanish literature, possessing a knowledge of Castilian,
though himself an Englishman. This was Hakluyt, who
must have been known to Lyly ; and for the following
reason. In 1597 Henry Lok1 published a volume of
religious poems to which Lyly contributed commenda-

1 Bond, I. p. 67.

EUPHUISM 27

tory verses. On the other hand Hakluyt's first book
was supplemented by a woodcut map executed by his
friend Michael Lok1, brother of Thomas Lok the Spanish
merchant, and uncle to the aforesaid Henry. It seems
highly improbable, therefore, that Lyly and Hakluyt
possessing these common friends could have remained
unknown to each other at Oxford. Indeed we may feel
justified in supposing that Hakluyt, Sidney, Carew, Lyly,
Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Rogers (the translator of
Estelld) were all personally acquainted, if not intimate,
at the University. Another and very important name
may be added to this list, that of Stephen Gosson, who,
" a Kentish man born " like our hero, and entering
Oxford a year after him (in 1572), must, I feel sure,
have been one of his friends. The fact that he was
at first interested in acting, and is said to have written
comedies, goes a long way to confirm this. We are also
led to suppose that he had devoted some attention to
Spanish literature, and that he was probably acquainted
with Hakluyt and the Loks, from certain verses of his,
printed at the end of Thomas Nicholas' Pleasant History
of the Conquest of West India, a translation of Cortes'
book published in I5782. Taking all this into conside-
ration, it is extremely interesting to find Gosson publish-
ing in 1579 his famous Schoole of Abuse, which bears
most of the distinguishing marks of euphuism already
noted, but which can scarcely have been modelled upon
Lyly's work ; for as Professor Saintsbury writes : " the
very short interval between the appearance of Euphues
and the Schoole of Abuse, shows that he must rather
have mastered the Lylian style in the same circumstances

1 Underbill, p. 178,10 whom I am indebted for nearly all the preceding
remarks in connexion with the Spanish atmosphere at Oxford.

2 Arber's reprint, School of Abuse, p. 97.

28 JOHN LYLY

and situations as Lyly than have directly borrowed it
from his fellow at Oxford1." And moreover Gosson's
style does not read like an imitation of Lyly. The
same tricks and affectations are employed, but they are
employed differently and perhaps more effectively.

Lyly is again found in contact with the Spanish atmo-
sphere, as one of the dependents of the Earl of Oxford,
who patronized Robert Baker, George Baker, and
Anthony Munday, who were all under the " spell of the
peninsula2." But we cannot be certain when his relations
with de Vere commenced, and unless we can feel sure
that they had begun before the writing of Euphues, the
point is not of importance for our present argument.

These facts are of course little more than hints, but
I think they are sufficient to establish a fairly strong
probability that Lyly was one of a literary set at Oxford
(as I have already suggested in dealing with his life) the
members of which were especially interested in Spanish
literature, perhaps through the influence of Corro. It
seems extremely improbable that Lyly himself possessed
any knowledge of Castilian, and it is by no means neces-
sary to show that he did, for it is quite sufficient to point
out that he must have been continually in the presence
of those who were discussing peninsular writings, and
that in this way he would have come to a knowledge of
the most famous Spanish book which had yet received
translation, the Libra Aiireo of Guevara.

But we are still left with the question on our hands ;
why was this book the most famous peninsular pro-
duction of Lyly's day ? It is a question which no critic,
as far as I am aware, has ever formulated, and yet it
seems endowed with the greatest importance. We have
seen how and why Spanish literature in general found

1 Craik, vol. i. 2 Underbill, ch. vm. § 2.

EUPHUISM 29

a reception in England. But the special question as to
the ascendancy of Guevara obviously requires a special
answer. Guevara was of course well known all over the
continent, and it might seem that this was a sufficient
explanation of his popularity in England. In reality,
however, such an explanation is no solution at all, it
merely widens the issue ; for we are still left asking for
a reason of his continental fame. The problem requires
a closer investigation than it has at present received.
It was undoubtedly Guevara's alto estilo which gave his
writings their chief attraction ; and a style so elaborate
would only find a reception in a favourable atmosphere,
that is among those who had already gone some way
towards the creation of a similar style themselves.
A priori therefore the answer to our question would be
that Guevara was no isolated stylist, but only the most
famous example of a literary phase, which had its
independent representatives all over Europe. A con-
sideration of English prose under the Tudors will,
I think, fully confirm this conclusion as far as our own
country is concerned, and it will also offer us an expla-
nation, in terms of internal development, of the origin
and sources of euphuism.

We have noticed with suspicion that our two trans-
lators took their Guevara from the French. And it is
therefore quite legitimate to suppose that Berners and
North, separated as they were from the original, were as
much creators as translators of the euphuistic style. But
there are other circumstances connected with Berners,
which are much more fatal to Dr Landmann's theory
than this. In the first place it appears that the part
played by Berners in the history of euphuism has been
considerably under-estimated. Mr Sidney Lee was the
first to combat the generally accepted view in a criticism

30 JOHN LYLY

of Mrs Humphry Ward's article on Euphuism in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which she follows Dr Land-
mann. His criticism, which appeared in the Athen&um,
was afterwards enlarged in an appendix to his edition
of Berners' translation of Huon of Bordeaux. " Lord
Berners' sentences," Mr Lee writes, " are euphuistic
beyond all question; they are characterized by the
forced antitheses, alliteration, and the far-fetched illus-
trations from natural phenomena, peculiar to Lyly and
his successors1." He denies, moreover, that Berners
was any less euphuistic than North, and gives parallel
extracts from their translations to prove this. A com-
parison of the two passages in question can leave no
doubt that Mr Lee's deduction is correct. Mr Bond
therefore is in grave error when he writes, " North
endeavoured what Berners had not aimed at, to repro-
duce in his Diall the characteristics of Guevara's style,
with the notable addition of an alliteration natural to
English but not to Spanish ; and it is he who must be
regarded as the real founder of our euphuistic literary
fashion2." Lyly may indeed have borrowed from North
rather than from Berners; but, if Berners' English was
as euphuistic as North's, and if Berners could show
fourteen editions to North's two before 1580, it is
Berners and not North who must be described as " the
real founder of our euphuistic literary fashion." And
as Mr Lee shows, his nephew Sir Francis Bryan must
share the title with him, for the colophon of the Golden
Boke states that the translation was undertaken " at the
instaunt desire of his nevewe Sir Francis Bryan Knyghte."
It was Bryan also who wrote the passage at the
conclusion of the Boke applauding the "swete style3."

1 Huon of Bordeaux, appendix I., Lord Berners and Euphuism, p. 786.

2 Bond, I. p. 158. 3 See Athenaum, July 14, 1883.

EUPHUISM . 31

This Sir Francis Bryan was a favourite of Henry VIII.,
a friend of Surrey and Wyatt, possibly of Ascham and
of his master Cheke, in fact a very well-known figure at
court and in the literary circles of his day1. Euphuism
must, therefore, have had a considerable vogue even in
the days of Henry VIII. If it could be shown that
Bryan could read Castilian, the Guevara theory might
still possess some plausibility, for it would be argued
that Berners learnt his style from his nephew. But,
though we know Bryan to have entertained a peculiar
affection for Guevara's writings, there is no evidence to
prove that he could read them in the original. Indeed
when he set himself to translate Guevara's Dispraise of
the life of a courtier, he, like his uncle, had to go to a
French translation2. Wherever we turn, in fact, we are
met by this French barrier between Guevara and his
English translators, which seems to preclude the possi-
bility of his style having exercised the influence ascribed
to it by Dr Landmann and those who follow him.

But there is more behind: and we cannot help feeling
convinced that the facts we are now about to bring
forward ought to dispose of the Landmann-Guevara
theory once and for all. In the article before mentioned
Mr Lee goes on to say : " The translator's prologue to
Lord Berners' Froissart written in 1524 and that to be
found in other of his works show him to have come
under Guevara's or a similar influence before he trans-
lated the Golden Bokez." Here is an extract from the
prologue in question. " The most profitable thing in this

1 Diet, of Nat. Biog., Bryan.

2 The 2nd edition of this book, which was published under another title,
is thus described in the B. M. Cat.: "A looking-glass for the court '.. .out of
Castilian drawne into French by A. Alaygre ; and out of the French into
English by Sir F. Briant."

3 Huon, p. 787.

32 JOHN LYLY

world for the institution of the human life is history.
Once the continual reading thereof maketh young men
equal in prudence to old men, and to old fathers striken
in age it ministereth experience of things. More it
yieldeth private persons worthy of dignity, rule and
governance : it compelleth the emperors, high rulers,
and governors to do noble deeds to the end they may
obtain immortal glory : it exciteth, moveth and stirreth
the strong, hardy warriors, for the great laud that they
have after they lie dead, promptly to go in hand with
great and hard perils in defence of their country : and it
prohibiteth reproveable persons to do mischievous deeds
for fear of infamy and shame. So thus through the
monuments of writing which is the testimony unto virtue
many men have been moved, some to build cities, some
to devise and establish laws right, profitable, necessary
and behoveful for the human life, some other to find new
arts, crafts and sciences, very requisite to the use of
mankind. But above all things, whereby man's wealth
riseth, special laud and praise ought to be given to
history : it is the keeper of such things as have been
virtuously done, and the witness of evil deeds, and by
the benefit of history all noble, high and virtuous acts be
immortal. What moved the strong and fierce Hercules
to enterprise in his life so many great incomparable
labours and perils ? Certainly nought else but that for
his great merit immortality might be given him of all
folk.... Why moved and stirred Phalerius the King
Ptolemy oft and diligently to read books ? Forsooth
for no other cause but that those things are found written
in books that the friends dare not show to the prince1."
This is of course far from being the full-blown euphuism
of Lyly or Pettie, yet we cannot but agree with Mr Lee,

1 Froissart, Globe edition, p. xxviii.

EUPHUISM 33

when he declares that "the parallelism of the sentences,
the repetition of the same thought differently expressed,
the rhetorical question, the accumulation of synonyms,
the classical references, are irrefutable witnesses to the
presence of euphuism1." But Mr Lee appeared to be
quite unconscious of the full significance of his discovery.
It means that Berners was writing euphuism in 1 5 24, five
years before Guevara publisfied his book in Spain. No
critic, as far as I have been able to discover, has shown
any consciousness of this significant fact2, which is of
course of the utmost importance in this connexion; as, if
it is to carry all the weight that is at first sight due to it,
the theory that euphuism was a mere borrowing from
the Spanish must be pronounced entirely exploded.
But it is as well not to be over-confident. Guevara's
Libra Aureo, his earliest work, was undoubtedly first
published by his authority in 1529, but there seems to be
a general feeling that the book had previously appeared
in pirated form. This feeling is based upon the title of
the 1529 edition3, which describes the book as " nueua-
mente reuisto por su sefwria," and upon certain remarks
of Hallam in his Literature of Europe. Though I can
find no confirmation for the statements he makes upon
the authority of a certain Dr West of Dublin, yet the
words of so well known a writer cannot be ignored. He
quotes Dr West in a footnote as follows : " There are

1 Huon, p. 788.

'2 After writing the above I have noticed that Mr G. C. Macaulay,
in the Introduction to the Globe Froissart, writes as follows (p. xvi) :
" If nothing else could be adduced to show that the tendency (i.e. euphuism)
existed already in English literature, the prefaces to Lord Berners' Frois-
sart written before he could possibly have read Guevara, would be enough
to prove it."

3 There are two extant editions of 1529, (i) published at Valladolid,
from which the words above are quoted, (ii) published at Enueres, which
appears to be an earlier edition. Copies of both in the British Museum,
w. 3

34 JOHN LYLY

some circumstances connected with the Relax (i.e. the
sub-title of the Libro Aureo) not generally known, which
satisfactorily account for various erroneous statements
that have been made on the subject by writers of high
authority. The fact is that Guevara, about the year 1518,
commenced a life and letters of M. Aurelius which pur-
ported to be a translation of a Greek work found in
Florence. Having sometime afterwards lent this MS. to
the emperor it was surreptitiously copied and printed, as
he informs us himself, first in Seville and afterwards in

Portugal Guevara himself subsequently published it

(i 529) with considerable additions1." From this it ap-
pears that previous unauthorised editions of Guevara's
book had been published before 1529. Might not
Berners therefore have come under Guevara's influence
as early as 1524? We must concede that it is possible,
but, on the other hand, the difficulties in the way of such
a contingency seem almost insuperable. In the first place,
if we are to believe Dr West, Guevara did not begin to
write his work before 1518, and it was not until "some
time afterwards " (whatever this may mean) that it was
" surreptitiously copied and printed." It would require
a bold man to assert that a book thus published could
be influencing the style of an English writer as early as
1524. But further it must be remembered that Berners
almost certainly could not read Castilian2. Now the
earliest known French translation of Guevara is one by
Rene Bertaut in 1531, which Berners himself is known
to have used3. Therefore, if Berners was already under
Guevara's influence in 1524, he must have known of an

1 Hallam, Lit, of Europe, ed. 1855, vol. I. p. 403 n. Brunei in his
Manuel de Libraire gives Hallam's view without comment, tome II.
*' Guevara."

2 Underhill, p. 69. 3 Bond, vol. I. p. 137.

EUPHUISM 35

earlier French pirated translation of an earlier pirated
edition of the Libra Aureo, To sum up; if the euphuistic
tendency in English prose is to be ascribed entirely, or
even mainly, to the influence of Guevara's Libra Aureo,
we must digest four improbabilities : (i) that there existed
a pirated edition of the book in Spain earlier than 1524:
(ii) that this had been translated into French, also before
1524, although the version of Bertaut in 1531 is the
earliest French translation we have any trace of: (iii) that
Berners himself had come across this hypothetical French
edition, again before 1524: and (iv) that the French
translation had so faithfully reproduced the style of the
original, that Berners was able to translate it from French
into English, for the purpose of his prologue to Froissart.
In face of these facts, the Guevara theory is no
longer tenable ; and in consequence the whole situation
is reversed, and we approach the problem from the
natural side, the side from which it should have been
approached from the first — that is from the English and
not the Spanish side. I say the natural side, because it
seems to me obvious that the popularity of a foreign
author in any country implies the existence in that
country, previous to the introduction of the author, of
an atmosphere (or more concretely a public) favourable
to the distinguishing characteristics of the author intro-
duced. And so it now appears that Guevara found
favour in England because his style, or something very
like it, was already known there ; and it was the most
natural thing in the world that Berners, who shows that
style most prominently, should have been the channel by
which Guevara became known to English readers. The
whole problem of this i6th century prose is analogous to
that of 1 8th century verse. The solution of both was for
a long time found in foreign influence. It was natural

3—2

36 JOHN LYLY

to assume that France, the pivot of our foreign policy at
the end of the I7th century, gave us the classical move-
ment, and that Spain, equally important politically in
the 1 6th century, gave us euphuism. Closer investigation
has disproved both these theories1, showing that, while
foreign influence was undoubtedly an immense factor in
the development of these literary fashions, their real origin
was English.

The proof of this does not rest entirely on the case of
Berners. We might even concede that he was acquainted
with an earlier edition of Guevara, and that his style was
actually derived from Spanish sources, without surren-
dering our thesis that euphuism was a natural growth.
Berners' euphuism, whatever its origin, was premature ;
and, though the Golden Boke passed through twelve
editions between 1534 and 1560, we cannot say that its
style influenced English writing until the time of Lyly,
for its vogue was confined to a small class of readers,
designated by Mr Underhill as the " Guevara-group." On
the other hand, it is possible to trace a feeling towards
euphuism among writers who were quite outside this
group.

Latimer, for example, delighted in alliterative turns
of speech, though the antithetical mannerisms are absent
in him. His famous denunciation of the unpreaching
prelates is an excellent instance :

" But now for the faults of unpreaching prelates,
methink I could guess what might be said for the ex-
cusing of them. They are so troubled with lordly living,
they be so placed in palaces, couched in courts, ruffling
in their rents, dancing in their dominions, burdened with
ambassages, pampering of their paunches like a monk
that maketh his jubilee, munching in their mangers, and

1 For 1 8th century v. Gosse, From Shakespeare to Pope.

EUPHUISM 37

moiling in their gay manors and mansions, and so
troubled with loitering in their lordships, that they
cannot attend it."

Here is no transverse alliteration, such as we find so
frequently in Lyly, but a simple alliteration — " a rudi-
mentary euphuism of balanced and alliterative phrases,
probably like the alliteration of Anglo-Saxon homilies,
borrowed from popular poetry1." Latimer also employs
the responsive method so frequently used by Lyly. "But
ye say it is new learning. Now I tell you it is old
learning. Yea, ye say, it is old heresy new scoured.
Nay, I tell you it is old truth long rusted with your
canker, and now made new bright and scoured." It is
no long step from this to the rhetorical question and its

formal answer " ay but ." Alliteration is not found

in Guevara ; it was an addition, and a very important
one, made by his translators. This was at any rate a
purely native product, and cannot be assigned to Spain.
The antithesis and parallelism were the fruits of humanism,
and they appear, combined with Latimer's alliteration, in
the writings of Sir John Cheke and his pupil Roger
Ascham. Cheke's famous criticism of Sallust's style, as
being " more art than nature and more labour than art,"
introduces us at once to euphuism, and gives us by the
way a very excellent comment upon it. Again he speaks
of " magistrates more ready to tender all justice and piti-
full in hearing the poor man's causes which ought to
amend matters more than you can devise and were ready
to redress them better than you can imagine5"'; which is
a good example of the euphuistic combination of alliter-
ation and balance.

In Ascham the style is still more marked. There
are, indeed, so many examples of euphuism in the

1 Craik, vol. I. p. 224. 2 Craik, p. 258.

38 JOHN LYLY

Schoolmaster and in the Toxophilus, that one can only
select. As an illustration of transverse alliteration quite
as complex as any in Euphues, we may notice the fol-
lowing: "Hard wittes be hard to receive, but sure to
keep ; painfull without weariness, hedefull without wa-
vering, constant without any new fanglednesse ; bearing
heavie things, though not lightlie, yet willinglie ; entering
hard things though not easily, yet depelie1." Classical
allusions abound throughout Ascham's work, and he
occasionally indulges in the ethics of natural history as
follows :

" Young Graftes grow not onlie sonest, but also
fairest and bring always forth the best and sweetest
fruite ; young whelps learne easilie to carrie ; young
Popingeis learne quickly to speak ; and so, to be short,
if in all other things though they lacke reason, sense, and
life, the similitude of youth is fittest to all goodnesse,
surelie nature in mankinde is more beneficial and effec-
tual in this behalfeV

We know that Lyly had read the Schoolmaster, as he
took the very title of his book from its description of
EiJ^u^v as "he that is apte by goodnesse of witte and
applicable by readiness of will to learning " — a descrip-
tion which is in itself a euphuism ; and it is probable
that he knew his Ascham as thoroughly as he did his
Guevara.

Sir Henry Craik has some very pertinent remarks
on the peculiarities of Ascham's style. "One of these,"
he writes, "is his proneness to alliteration, due perhaps
to his desire to reproduce the most striking features of

the Early English A tendency of an almost directly

opposite kind is the balance of sentences which he
imitates from Classical models These two are

1 Arber, Schoolmaster, p. 35. 2 id., p. 46.

EUPHUISM 39

perhaps the most striking characteristics of Ascham's
prose; and it is interesting to observe how much the
structure of the sentence in the more elaborated stages
of English prose is due to their combination1." Here
we have the two elements of our native-grown euphuism,
and their origins, carefully distinguished. Of course
with euphuism we do not commence English prose;
that is already centuries old ; but we are dealing with
the beginnings of English prose style, by which we mean
a conscious and artistic striving after literary effect.
That the first stylists should look to the rhetoricians for
their models was inevitable, and of these there were two
kinds available; the classical orators and the alliterative
homilies of the Early English. But, deferring this point
for a later treatment, let us conclude our study of the
evolution of euphuism in England.

So far we have been dealing with euphuistic tendencies
only, since in the style of Ascham and his predecessors,
alliteration and antithesis are not employed consistently,
but merely on occasion for the sake of emphasis. Other
marks of euphuism, such as the fantastic embroidery of
mythical beasts and flowers, are absent. Even in North's
Diall alliteration is not profuse, and similes from natural
history are comparatively rare. In George Pettie,
however, we find a complete euphuist before EupJiues.
This writer again brings us in touch with that Oxford
atmosphere, which, I maintain, surrounded the birth of
the full-blown euphuism. A student of Christ Church,
he took his B.A. degree in 1569'-', and so probably just
escaped being a contemporary of Lyly. But, as he was
a "dear friend" of William Gager, who was a considerably
younger man than himself, it seems probable that he
continued his Oxford connexion after his degree.
1 Craik, I. p. 269. '2 Diet, of Nat. Biog., Pettie.

40 JOHN LYLY

However this may be, he published his Petite Pallace of
Pettie his Pleasure, which so exactly anticipates the style
of Euphues, in 1 576, only two years before the later book.
The Petite Pallace was an imitation of the famous
Palace of Pleasure published in 1566 by William
Painter, who, though he had known Guevara's writings,
drew his material almost entirely from Italian sources.
That Pettie also possessed a knowledge of Spanish
literature, as we should expect from the period of his
residence at Oxford, is shown by his translation of
Guazzo's Civile Conversation in 1581, to which he affixes
a euphuistic preface. This again was only a left-handed
transcript from the French. Therefore the Spanish
elements, though undoubtedly present, cannot be insisted
upon. We may concede that Pettie had read North,
or even go so far as to assert with Mr Underhill that
he was acquainted with "parts of the Gallicized Guevara,"
without lending countenance to Dr Landmann's radical
theories. No one, reading the Petite Pleasure, can doubt
that Pettie was the real creator of euphuism in its fullest
development, and that Lyly was only an imitator.
Though I have already somewhat overburdened this
chapter. I cannot refrain from quoting a passage from
Pettie, not only as an example of his style, but also
because the passage is in itself so delightful, that it is
one's duty to rescue it from oblivion:

"As amongst all the bonds of benevolence and good
will, there is none more honourable, ancient, or honest
than marriage, so in "my fancy there is none that doth
more firmly fasten and inseparably unite us together
than the same estate doth, or wherein the fruits of true
friendship do more plenteously appear: in the father is
a certain severe love and careful goodwill towards the
child, the child beareth a fearful affection and awful

EUPHUISM 41

obedience towards the father: the master hath an
imperious regard of the servant, the servant a servile
care of the master. The friendship amongst men is
grounded upon no love and dissolved upon every light
occasion: the goodwill of kinsfolk is constantly cold,
as much of custom as of devotion: but in this stately
estate of matrimony there is nothing fearful, all things
are done faithfully without doubting, truly without
doubling, willingly without constraint, joyfully without
complaint: yea there is such a general consent and
mutual agreement between the man and wife, that they
both wish and will covet and crave one thing. And as
a scion grafted in a strange stalk, their natures being
united by growth, they become one and together bear
one fruit r so the love of the wife planted in the breast
of her husband, their hearts by continuance -of love
become one, one sense and one soul serveth them both.
And as the scion severed from the stock withereth
away, if it be not grafted in some other: so a loving
wife separated from the society of her husband withereth
away in woe and leadeth a life no less pleasant than
death1." Lyly never wrote anything to equal this. Indeed
it is not unworthy of the lips of one of Shakespeare's
heroines.

The euphuism of the foregoing quotation will be
readily detected. The sole difference between the styles
of Lyly and Pettie is that, while Pettie's similes from
nature are simple and natural, Lyly, with his knowledge
of Pliny and of the bestiaries, added his fabulous
"unnatural natural history." Pettie's book was popular
for the time, three editions of it being called for in the
first year of its publication, but it was soon to be thrust
aside by the fame of the much more pretentious, and,

1 I have taken the liberty of modernising the spelling.

42 JOHN LYLY

apart from the style, better constructed Enphues of Lyly.
In truth, as Gabriel Harvey justly but unkindly remarks,
"Young Euphues but hatched the eggs his elder freendes
laid." But the parental responsibility and merit must
be attributed to him who hatches. It was Lyly who
made euphuism famous and therefore a power; and,
despite the fact that he marks the culmination of the
movement, he is the most dynamical of all the euphuists.
It remains to sum up our conclusions respecting the
origin and development of this literary phase. Difficult
as it is to unravel the tangled network of obscure
influences which surrounded its birth, I venture to think
that a sufficiently complete disproof of that extreme
theory, which would ascribe it entirely to Guevara's
influence, has been offered. Guevara, in the translation
of Berners, undoubtedly took the field early, but, as we
have seen, Berners was probably feeling towards the
style before he knew Guevara ; and moreover the bishop's
alto estilo must have suffered considerably while passing
through the French. Even allowing everything, as we
have done, for the close connexion between Spain and
England, for the Spanish tradition at Oxford, and for the
interest in peninsular writings shown by Lyly's immediate
circle of friends, we cannot accord to Dr Landmann's
explanation anything more than a very modified accept-
ance. Nor would a complete rejection of this solution
of the Lyly problem render English euphuism inex-
plicable ; for something very like it would naturally
have resulted from the close application of classical
methods to prose writing ; and in the case of Cheke and
Ascham we actually see the process at work. And yet
Lyly owed a great debt to Guevara. A true solution,
therefore, must find a place for foreign as well as native
influences. And to say that the Spanish intervention

EUPHUISM 43

confirmed and hastened a development already at work,
of which the original impulse was English, is, I think, to
give a due allowance to both.

SECTION III. Lylys Legatees and the relation
between Euphuism and the Renaissance.

The publication of Euphues was the culmination,
rather than the origin, of that literary phase to which
it gave its name. And the vogue of euphuism after
1579 was short, lasting indeed only until about 1590;
yet during these ten years its influence was far-reaching,
and left a definite mark upon later English prose. It
would be idle, if not impossible, to trace its effects upon
every individual writer who fell under its immediate
fascination. Moreover the task has already been per-
formed in a great measure by M. Jusserand1 and
Mr Bond2. They have shown once and for all that
Greene, Lodge, Welbanke, Munday, Warner, Wilkinson,
and above all Shakespeare, were indebted to our author
for certain mannerisms of style. I shall therefore con-
tent myself with noticing two or three writers, tainted
with euphuism, who have been generally overlooked, and
who seem to me important enough, either in themselves,
or as throwing light upon the subject of the essay, to
receive attention.

The first of these is the dramatist Kyd, who com-
pleted his well-known SpanisJi Tragedy between 1584
and 1589, that is at the height of the euphuistic fashion.
This play was apparently an inexhaustible joke to the
Elizabethans ; for the references to it in later dramatists
are innumerable. One passage must have been particu-
larly famous, for we find it parodied most elaborately by

1 Jusserand, ch. iv. 2 Bond, vol. I. pp. 164-175.

44 JOHN LYLY

Field, as late as 1606, in his A Woman is a Weathercock1.
The passage in question, which was obviously inspired by
Lyly, runs as follows :

" Yet might she love me for my valiance :
I, but that's slandered by captivity.
Yet might she love me to content her sire :
I, but her reason masters her desire.
Yet might she love me as her brother's friend:
I, but her hopes aim at some other end.
Yet might she love me to uprear her state :
I, but perhaps she loves some nobler mate.
Yet might she love me as her beautie's thrall:
I, but I feare she cannot love at all."

Nathaniel Field's parody of this melodramatic nonsense
is so amusing that I cannot forbear quoting it. This
time the despairing lover is Sir Abraham Ninny, who
quotes Kyd to his companions, and they with the cry of
" Ha God-a-mercy, old Hieromino ! " begin the game of
parody, which must have been keenly enjoyed by the
audience. Field improves on the original by putting the
alternate lines of despair into the mouths of Ninny's
jesting friends. It runs, therefore :

" — Yet might she love me for my lovely eyes.
— Ay but, perhaps your nose she does despise.
— Yet might she love me for my dimpled chin.
— Ay but, she sees your beard is very thin.
— Yet might she love me for my proper body.
— Ay but, she thinks you are an arrant noddy.
— Yet might she love me 'cause I am an heir.
— Ay but, perhaps she does not like your ware.
— Yet might she love me in despite of all.
(the lady herself) — Ay but indeed I cannot love at all."

This parody, apart from any interest it possesses for the
student of Lyly, is an excellent illustration of the ways
of Elizabethan playwrights, and of the thorough know-
ledge of previous plays they assumed their audience to

1 Act i. Sc. it.

EUPHUISM 45

have possessed. There are several other examples of
Kyd's acquaintance with the Euphttes in the Spanish
Tragedy^, in the other dramas2, and in his prose works3,
which it is not necessary to quote. But there is one more
passage, again from his most famous play, which is so
full of interest that it cannot be passed over in silence.
It is a counsel of hope to the despairing lover, and
assumes this inspiring form :

"My Lord, though Belimperia seem thus coy
Let reason hold you in your wonted joy;
In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke,
In time all Haggard Hawkes will stoop to lure,
In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake,
In time the flint is pearst with softest shower,
And she in time will fall from her disdain,
And rue the sufferance of your deadly paine4."

Now these lines are practically a transcript of the open-
ing words of the 47th sonnet in Watson's Hekatompathia
published in 1582. Remembering Lyly's penetrating
observation that " the soft droppes of rain pearce the
hard marble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oake5,"
and bearing in mind that the high priest of euphuism
himself contributed a commendatory epistle to the
Hekatompathia^ we should expect that these Bulls and
Hawkes and Oakes were choice flowers of speech, culled
from that botanico-zoological " garden of prose " — the
Euphues. But as a matter of fact Watson himself in-
forms us in a note that his sonnet is an imitation of the
Italian Serafino, from whom he also borrows other
sonnet-conceits in the same volume, some of which are
full of similar references to the properties of animals and

1 Sp. Trag., Act iv. 190 (cp. Euphues, p. 146).

2 Soliman and Perseda, Act in. 130 (cp. Euphues, p. 100), and Act
II. 199.

3 Kyd's Works (Boas), p. 288, and ch. ix.

4 Sp. Trag. Act n. 1-8. s Euphues, p. 337.

46 JOHN LYLY

plants. The conclusion is forced upon us therefore that
Watson and Lyly went to the same source, or, if a know-
ledge of Italian cannot be granted to our author, that he
borrowed from Watson. At any rate Watson cannot be
placed amongst the imitators of Euphues. Like Pettie
and Gosson he must share with Lyly the credit of
creation. He was a friend of Lyly's at Oxford ; they
dedicated their books to the same patron, and they
employed the same publisher. Moreover, the little we
have of Watson's prose is highly euphuistic, and it is
apparent from the epistle above mentioned that he was
on terms of closest intimacy with the author of Euphues.
In him we have another member of that interesting circle
of Oxford euphuists, who continued their connexion in
London under de Vere's patronage.

Watson again was a friend of the well-known poet
Richard Barnefield, who though too young in 1578 to
have been of the University coterie of euphuists, shows
definite traces of their affectation in his works. The
conventional illustrations from an " unnatural natural
history" abound in his Affectionate Shepherd^ (1594),
and he repeats the jargon about marble and showers2
which we have seen in Lyly, Watson and Kyd. Again
in his Cynthia (1594) there is a distinct reference to the
opening words of Euphues in the lines,

"Wit without wealth is bad, yet counted good;
Wealth wanting wisdom's worse, yet deemed as well3."

His prose introduction betrays the same influence.

These then are a few among the countless scribblers
of those prolific times who fell under the spell of the
euphuistic fashion. They are mentioned, either because
their connexion with the movement has been over-

1 Poems, Arber, pp. iSand 19. 2 id., p. 24.

3 id., p. 51.

EUPHUISM 47

looked, or because they throw a new and important
light upon Lyly himself. Of other legatees it is im-
possible to treat here ; and it is enough, without tracing
it in any detail, to indicate " the slender euphuistic
thread that runs in iron through Marlowe, in silver
through Shakespeare, in bronze through Bacon, in
more or less inferior metal through every writer of
that age1."

There is nothing strange in this infatuation, if we
remember that euphuism was " the English type of an
all but universal disease2," as Symonds puts it. Dr Land-
mann, we have decided, was wrong in his insistence
upon foreign influence ; but his error was a natural one,
and points to a fact which no student of Renaissance
literature can afford to neglect. Matthew Arnold long
ago laid down the clarifying principle that <- the criti-
cism which alone can much help us for the future, is
a criticism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual
and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound
to a joint action and working to a common result3."
And the truth of this becomes more and more indis-
putable, the longer we study European history, whether
it be from the side of Politics, of Religion, or of Art.
Landmann ascribes euphuism to Spain, Symonds ascribes
it to Italy, and an equally good case might be made out
in favour of France. There is truth in all these hypo-
theses, but each misses the true significance of the matter,
which is that euphuism must have come, and would have
come, without any question of borrowing.

The date 1453 is usually taken as a convenient
starting point for the Renaissance, though the movement
was already at work in Italy, for that was the year of

1 Symonds, p. 407. 2 id., p. 404.

3 Essays in Criticism, I. p. 39.

48 JOHN LYLY

Byzantium's fall and of the diffusion of the classics over
Europe. But, for the countries outside Italy, I think
that the date 1493 is almost as important. Hitherto the
new learning had been in a great measure confined to
Italy, but with the invasion of Charles VIII., which com-
mences a long period of French and Spanish occupation
of Italian soil, the Renaissance, especially on its artistic
side, began to find its way into the neighbouring states,
and through them into England. It is the old story, so
familiar to sociologists, of a lower civilization falling
under the spell of the culture exhibited by a more
advanced subject population, of a conqueror worshipping
the gods of the conquered. It is the story of the con-
quest of Greece by Rome, of the conquest of Rome by
the Germans. But the interesting point to notice is that,
when the " barbarian " Frenchman descended from the
Alps upon the fair plains of Lombardy, the Italian
Renaissance was already showing signs of decadence.
It was in the age of the Petrarchisti, of Aretino, of Doni,
and of Marini that Europe awoke to the full conscious-
ness of the wonders of Italian literature. Thus it was
that those beyond the Alps drank of water already
tainted. That France, Spain, and England should be
attracted by the affectations of Italy, rather than by
what was best in her literature, was only to be expected.
" It was easier to catch the trick of an Aretino, and
a Marini, than to emulate the style of a Tasso or a
Castiglione " : and besides they were themselves invent-
ing similar extravagances independently of Italy. The
purely formal ideal of Art had in Spain already found
expression among the courtiers of Juan II. of Castile.
One of them, Baena, writes as follows of poetry : " that
it cannot be learned or well and properly known, save by
the man of very deep and subtle invention, and of a very

EUPHUISM 49

lofty and fine discretion, and of a very healthy and un-
erring judgment, and such a one must have seen and
heard and read many and diverse books and writings,
and know all languages and have frequented kings'
Courts and associated with great men and beheld and
taken part in worldly affairs ; and finally he must be of
gentle birth, courteous and sedate, polished, humorous,
polite, witty, and have in his composition honey, and
sugar, and salt, and a good presence and a witty manner
of reasoning ; moreover he must be also a lover and ever
make a show and pretence of it 1." Such a catalogue of
the poet's requisites might have been written by any
one of our Oxford euphuists ; and Watson, at least,
among them fulfilled all its conditions.

The Italian influence, therefore, did but hasten a
process already at work. The reasons for this universal
movement are very difficult to determine. But among
many suggestions of more or less value, a few causes of
the change may here be hazarded. In the first place,
then, the Renaissance happened to be contemporaneous
with the death of feudalism. The ideal of chivalry is
dying out all over Europe ; and the romances of chivalry
are everywhere despised. The horizontal class divisions
become obscured by the newly found perpendicular
divisions of nationality; and in Italy and England at
least the old feudal nobility have almost entirely dis-
appeared. A new centre of national life and culture is
therefore in the process of formation, that of the Court ;
and thanks to this, the ideal of chivalry gives place to
the new ideal of the courtier or the gentleman. This
ideal found literary expression in the moral Court
treatises, which were so universally popular during the
Renaissance, and of which Guevara, Castiglione, and

1 Butler Clarke, Spanish Literature, p. 71.
w. 4

50 JOHN LYLY

Lyly are the most famous instances. The ambition of
those who frequent Courts has always been to appear
distinguished — distinguished that is from the vulgar and
the ordinary, or, as we should now say, from the Philis-
tine. In the Courts of the Renaissance period, where
learning was considered so admirable, this necessary
-distinction would naturally take the form of a cultured,
if not pedantic, diction ; and for this it was natural that
men should go to the classics, and more especially to
classical orators, as models of good speech. It must
not be imagined that this process was a conscious one.
In many countries the rhetorical style was already
formed by scholars before it became the speech of the
Court. In fact the beginnings of modern prose style are
to be found in humanism. Ascham with his hatred of
the " Italianated gentleman," was probably quite uncon-
scious of his own affinity to that objectionable type,
when imitating the style of his favourite Tully in the
Schoolmaster. The classics it must be remembered
were not discovered by the humanists, they were only
rediscovered. The middle ages had used them, as they
had used the Old Testament, as prophetic books. Vir-
gil's mediaeval reputation for example rests for the most
part upon the fourth Eclogue. The humanists, on the
other hand, looked upon the classics as literature and
valued them for their style. But here again they drank
from tainted sources; for, with the exception of a few
writers such as Cicero and Terence, the classics they
knew and loved best were the product of the silver age
of Rome, the characteristics of which are beautifully
described by the author of Marius the Epicurean in his
chapter significantly called Euphuism. Few of the Re-
naissance students had the critical acumen of Cheke,
and they fell therefore an easy prey to the stylism of the

EUPHUISM 51

later Latin writers, with its antithesis and extravagance.
But, with all this, men could not quite shake off the
middle ages. There is much of the Scholastic in Lyly,
and the exuberance of ornament, the fantastic similes
from natural history, and the moral lessons deduced
from them, are quite mediaeval in feeling. We learnt
the lessons of the classics backward ; and it was not
until centuries after, that men realised that the essence
of Hellenism is restraint and harmony.

I have spoken of the movement generally, but it
passed through many phases, such as arcadianism, gon-
gorism, dubartism ; and yet of all these phases euphuism
was, I think, the most important : certainly if we confine
our attention to English literature this must be admitted.
But, even if we keep our eyes upon the Continent alone,
euphuism would seem to be more significant than the
movements which succeeded it; for it was a definite
attempt, seriously undertaken, to force modern languages
into a classical mould, while the other and later affecta-
tions were merely passing extravagances, possessing
little dynamical importance. In this way, short-lived
and abortive as it seemed, euphuism anticipated the
literature of the ancien regime.

The movement, moreover, was only one aspect of the
Renaissance; it was the under-current which in the i8th
century became the main stream. Paradoxical as it may
seem, the Renaissance in its most modern aspect was a
development of the middle ages, and not of the classics.
This we call romanticism. As an artistic product it was
developed on strictly national and traditional lines, born
of the fields as it were, free as a bird and as sweet, giving
birth in England to the drama, in Italy to the plastic
arts. It is essentially opposed to the classical movement,
for it represents the idea as distinct from the form. Lyly

4—2

52 JOHN LYLY

belongs to both movements, for, while he is the prot-
agonist of the romantic drama, in his Euphues we may
discover the source of the artificial stream which, con-
cealed for a while beneath the wild exuberance of the
romantic growth, appears later in the i8th century em-
bracing the whole current of English literature. Before,
however, proceeding to fix the position of euphuism in
the development of English prose, let us sum up the
results we have obtained from our examination of its
relation to the general European Renaissance. Origi-
nating in that study of classical style we find so forcibly
advocated by Ascham in his Schoolmaster, it was essen-
tially a product of humanism. In every country scholars
were interested as much in the style as in the matter of
the newly discovered classics. This was due, partly to
the lateness of the Latin writers chiefly known to them,
partly to the mediaeval preference for words rather than
ideas, and partly to the fact that the times were not yet
ripe for an appreciation of the spirit as distinct from the
letter of the classics. In Italy, in France, and in Spain,
therefore, we may find parallels to euphuism without
supposing any international borrowings. Euphues, in
fact, is not so much a reflection of, as a Glasse for
Europe.

SECTION IV. The position of Euphuism in tJie history
of English prose.

A few words remain to be said about this literary
curiosity, by way of assigning a place to it in the history
of our prose. To do so with any scientific precision is
impossible, but there are many points of no small
significance in this connexion, which should not be
passed over.

EUPHUISM 53

English prose at the beginning of the i6th century,
that is before the new learning had become a power in
the land, though it had not yet been employed for
artistic purposes, was already an important part of our
literature, and possessed a quality which no national
prose had exhibited since the days of Greece, the quality
of popularity1. This popularity, which arose from the
fact that French and Latin had for so long been the
language of the ruling section of the community, is still
the distinction which marks off our prose from that of
other nations. In Italy, for example, the language of
literature is practically incomprehensible to the dwellers
on the soil. But what English prose has gained in
breadth and comprehension by representing the tongue
of the people, it has lost in subtlety. French prose,
which developed from the speech of the Court, is a
delicate instrument, capable of expressing the finest
shades of meaning, while the styles of George Meredith
and of Henry James show how difficult it is for a subtle
intellect to move freely within the limitations of English
prose. Indeed, " it is a remarkable fact," as Sainte Beuve
noticed, " and an inversion of what is true of other lan-
guages that, in French, prose has always had the pre-
cedence over poetry." Repeated attempts, however, have
been made to capture our language, and to transport it
into aristocratic atmospheres ; and of these attempts the
first is associated with the name of Lyly.

We have seen that English euphuism was at first a
flower of unconscious growth sprung from the soil of
humanism. But ultimately, in the hands of Pettie,
Gosson, Lyly, and Watson, it became the instrument
of an Oxford coterie deliberately and consciously em-
ployed for the purpose of altering the form of English

1 Cf. Earle, pp. 422, 423.

54 JOHN LYLY

prose. These men did not despise their native tongue ;
they used the purest English, carefully avoiding the
favourite "ink-horn terms" of their contemporaries:
they admired it, as one admires a wild bird of the
fields, which one wishes to capture in order to make it
hop and sing in a golden cage. The humanists were
already developing a learned style within the native
language ; Lyly and his friends utilized this learned
style for the creation of an aristocratic type. Euphuism
was no " transient phase of madness1," as Mr Earle con-
temptuously calls it, but a brave attempt, and withal a
first attempt, to assert that prose writing is an art no less
than the writing of poetry ; and this alone should give it
a claim upon students of English literature.

The first point we must notice, therefore, about
English euphuism is that it represents a tendency to
confine literature within the limits of the Court — in
accordance, one might almost say, with the general
centralization of politics and religion under the Tudors
— and that, as a necessary result of this, conscious prose
style appears for the first time in our language. I say
English euphuism, because that is our chief concern, and
because though euphuism on the Continent was, as we
have seen, the expression in literature of the new ideal
of the courtier, yet it was by no means so great an inno-
vation as it was in England, inasmuch as the Romance
literatures had always represented the aristocracy. The
form which this style assumed was dependent upon the
circumstances which gave it birth, and upon the general
conditions of the age. Owing to the former it became
erudite, polished, precise, meet indeed for the "parleyings"
of courtiers and maids-in-waiting; but it was to the latter
that it owed its essentials. Hitherto we have contented

1 Earle, p. 436.

EUPHUISM 55

ourselves with indicating the rhetorical aspect of eu-
phuism. We have seen that the Latin orators and the
writers of our English homilies exercised a considerable
influence over the new stylists. It was natural that
rhetoricians should attract those who were desirous of
writing ornamental and artistic prose, and one feels in-
clined to believe that it was not entirely for spiritual
reasons that Lyly frequently attended Dr Andrews'
sermons1. But the euphuistic manner has a wider
significance than this, for it marks the transition from
poetry to prose.

" The age of Elizabeth is pre-eminently an age of
poetry, of which prose may be regarded as merely the
overflow-." It was at once the end of the mediaeval,
and the beginning of the modern, world, and conse-
quently, it displays the qualities of both. But the future
lay with the small men rather than with the great.
Shakespeare and Milton were no innovators. With their
names the epoch of primitive literature, which finds ex-
pression in the drama and the epic, ends, while it reaches
its highest flights. The dawn of the modern epoch,
the age of prose and of the novel, is, on the other hand,
connected with the names of Lyly, Sidney, and Nash.
Thus, as in the i8th century poetry was subservient, and
so became assimilated, to prose, so the prose of the i6th
century exhibited many of the characteristics of verse.
And of this general literary feature euphuism is the
most conspicuous example ; for in its employment of
alliteration and antithesis, in addition to the excessive
use of illustration and simile which characterizes arca-
dianism and its successors, the style of Lyly is transi-
tional in structure as well as in ornament. Moreover
the alliteration, which is peculiar to English euphuism,

1 Bond, i. p. 60. 2 Raleigh, p. 45.

56 JOHN LYLY

gives it a musical element which its continental parallels
lacked. The dividing line between alliteration and
rhyme, and between antithesis and rhythm, is not a
broad one1. Indeed Pettie found it so narrow that he
occasionally lapsed into metrical rhythm. And so,
though we cannot say that euphuism is verse, we can
say that it partakes of the nature of verse. In this
endeavour to provide an adequate structure for the
support of the mass of imagery that the taste of the
age demanded, it showed itself superior to the rival
prose fashions. Euphues is a model of form beside the
tedious prolixity of the Arcadia, or the chaotic effusions
of Nash. The weariness, which the modern reader feels
for the romance of Lyly, is due rather to the excessive
quantity of its metaphor, which was the fault of the age,
than to its pedantic style.

I write loosely of " style," but strictly speaking the
euphuists paid especial attention to diction. And here
again the poetical and aristocratic tendencies of euphuism
show themselves. For diction, which is the art of
selection, the selection of apt words, is of course one of
the first essentials of poetic art, and is also more pro-
minent in the prose of Court literature than elsewhere.
The precision, the finesse, the subtlety, of French prose
has only been attained by centuries of attention to
diction. English prose, on the other hand, is singularly
lacking in this quality ; and for this cause it would
never have produced a Flaubert, despite its splendid
achievements in style. Had euphuism been more suc-
cessful, it might have altered the whole aspect of later
English prose, by giving us in the i6th century that

1 This touches upon the famous dispute between Dr Schwan and
Dr Goodlet which is excellently dealt with by Mr Child, p. 77.

EUPHUISM 57

quality of diction which did not become prominent in
our prose until the days of Pater and the purists.

And yet, though it failed in this particular, the in-
fluence of the general qualities of its style upon later
prose must have been incalculable. The vogue of
euphuism as a craze was brief; but Euphues received
fresh publication about once every three years down to
1636, and long after its social popularity had become a
thing of the past, it probably attracted the careful study
of those who wished to write artistic prose. The only
model of prose form which the age possessed could
scarcely sink into oblivion, or become out of date, until
its principal lessons had been so well learnt as to pass
into common-places. The exaggerations, which first
gave it fame, were probably discounted by the more
sincere appreciation of later critics, to whom its more
sterling qualities would appeal. For some reason, the
musical properties of euphuism do not appear to have
found favour among those critics, and this was probably
a loss to our literature. " Alliteration," as Professor
Raleigh remarks, " is often condemned as a flaw in
rhymed verse, and it may well be open to question
whether Lyly did not give it its true position in attempt-
ing to invent a place for it in what is called prose1."
Possibly its failure in this respect was due to the growth
of that intellectual asceticism, and that reaction against
the domination of poetry, which are, I think, intimately
bound up with the fortunes of Puritanism. The begin-
ning of this reaction is visible as early as 1589 in the
words of Warner's preface to Albion's England, which
display the very affectation they protest against : " onely
this error may be thought hatching in our English, that
to runne on the letter we often runne from the matter :

1 Raleigh, p. 47.

58 JOHN LYLY

and being over prodigall in similes we become lesse
profitable in sentences and more prolixious to sense."
But, however this may be, it was the formal rather than
the musical qualities which gave Euphues its dynamical
importance in the history of English prose. Subsequent
writers had much to learn from a book in which the
principle of design is for the first time visible.' With
euphuism, antithesis and the use of balanced sentences
came to stay. We may see them in the style of Johnson
and Gibbon, while alliterative antithesis reappears to-day
in the shape of the epigram. Doubtless Lyly abused
the antithetical device ; but his successors had only to
discover a means of skilfully concealing the structure,
an improvement which the early euphuists, with all the
enthusiasm of inventors, could not have appreciated.

Moreover, in aiming at elegance and precision, Lyly
attained a lucidity almost unequalled among his con-
temporaries. His attention to form saved him from
the besetting sin of Elizabethan prose, — incoherence by
reason of an overwhelming display of ornament. His
very illustrations were subject to the restraint which his
style demanded, being sown, to use his own metaphor,
"here and there lyke Strawberries, not in heapes, lyke
Hoppes1." Arcadianism came as a reaction against
euphuism, attempting to replace its artificiality by
simplicity. But how infinitely more preferable is the
novel of Lyly, with its artificial precision and lucidity,
to the conscious artlessness of Sidney's Arcadia, with
its interminable sentences and confused syntax. As a
modern euphuist has taught us, of all poses the natural
pose is the most irritating. In accordance with his
desire for precision, Lyly made frequent use of the short
sentence. In this we have another indication of his

1 Euphues, p. 220.

EUPHUISM 59

modernity: for the short sentence, which is so character-
istic of English prose style to-day, occurs more often in
his work than in the writings of any of his predecessors.
And, in reference to the same question of lucidity, we
may notice that he was the first writer who gave special
attention to the separation of his prose into paragraphs, —
a matter apparently trivial, but really of no small
importance. Finally, it is a remarkable fact that the
number of words to be found in Euphnes which have
since become obsolete is a very small one — "at most but
a small fraction of one per cent.1" And this is in itself
sufficient to indicate the influence which Lyly's novel
has exerted upon English prose. As he reads it, no one
can avoid being struck by the modernity of its language,
an impression not to be obtained from a perusal of the
plays. The explanation is simple enough. The plays
were not read or absorbed by their author's contem-
poraries and successors ; Euphues was. In the domain
of style, Euphues was dynamical; the plays were not.
But the true value of Lyly's prose lies not so much
in what it achieved as in what it attempted; for the
qualities, which euphuism, by its insistence upon design
and elegance, really aimed at, were strength, brilliancy,
and refinement. For the first time in the history of our
literature, men are found to write prose with the purpose
of fascinating and enticing the reader, not merely by
what is said, but also by the manner of saying it.
"Lyly" (and, we may add, his associates), writes his latest
editor, "grasped the fact that in prose no less than in
poetry, the reader demanded to be led onward by a
succession of half imperceptible shocks of pleasure in
the beauty and vigour of diction, or in the ingenuity
of phrasing, in sentence after sentence — pleasure in-
1 Child, p. 4i.

60 JOHN LYLY

separable from that caused by a perception of the nice
adaptation of words to thought, pleasure quite other than
that derivable from the acquisition of fresh knowledge1."
The direct influence of the man who first taught us this
lesson, who showed us that a writer, to be successful,
should seek not merely to express himself, but also to
study the mind of his reader, must have been something
quite beyond computation. And that his direct influence
was not more lasting was due, in the first place, to the
fact that he had not grasped the full significance of this
psychological aspect of style, if we may so call it, which
he and his friends had been the first to discover. As
with most first attempts, euphuism, while bestowing
immense benefits upon those who came after, was itself
a failure. The euphuists perceived the problem of style,
but successfully attacked only one half of it. More
acute than their contemporaries, they realised the
principle of economy, but, as with one who makes an
entirely new mechanical invention, they were themselves
unable to appreciate what their discovery would lead to.
They were right in addressing themselves to the task
of attracting, and stimulating, the reader by means of
precision, pointed antithesis, and such like attempts
to induce pleasurable mental sensations, but they forgot
that anyone must eventually grow weary under the
influence of continuous excitation without variation.
The soft drops of rain pierce the hard marble, many
strokes overthrow the tallest oak, and much monotony
will tire the readiest reader. Or, to use the phraseology
of a somewhat more recent scientist, they "considered
only those causes of force in language which depend
upon economy of the mental energies," they paid no
attention to "those which depend upon the economy

1 Bond, I. p. 146.

EUPHUISM 6l

of the mental sensibilities^" This is one explanation
of the weariness with which Euphues fills the modern
reader, and of the speed with which, in spite of its
priceless pioneer work, that book was superseded and
forgotten in its own days. It is our duty to give it its
full meed of recognition, but we can understand and
forgive the ungratefulness of its contemporaries.

Another cause of the oblivion which so soon over-
took the famous Elizabethan novel, has already been
suggested. Euphuism was too antagonistic to the
general current of English prose to be successful. Lyly
and his Oxford clique were attempting a revolution
similar to that undertaken, at the same period, by Ron-
sard and his Pleiad. Lyly failed in prose, where Ronsard
succeeded in poetry, because he endeavoured to go back
upon tradition, while the Frenchman worked strictly
within its limits. The attempt to throw Court dress over
the plain homespun of our English prose might have
been attended with success, had our literature been
younger and more easily led astray. As it was, prose in
this country, when euphuism invaded it, could already
show seven centuries of development, and, moreover,
development along the broad and national lines of
common or vulgar speech. Euphuism was after all only
part of the general tendency of the age to focus every-
thing that was good in politics, religion, and art, on the
person and immediate surroundings of the sovereign ;
and the history of the eighteenth century, which saw the
last issue of the series of Euphues reprints, is the history
of the collapse of this centralization all along the line,
ending in the complete vindication of the democratic
basis of English life and literature.

With these general remarks we must leave the

1 H. Spencer, Essays, n. Phil, of Style.

62 JOHN LYLY

subject of euphuism. No history of its origin and its in-
fluence can be completely satisfactory : such questions
must of necessity receive a speculative and tentative
solution, for it is impossible to give them an exact
answer which admits of no dispute. The age of Lyly
was far more complex than ours, with all our artistic
sects and schisms ; the currents of literary influence were
multitudinous and extremely involved. As Symonds
wrote, " The romantic art of the modern world did not
spring like that of Greece from an ungarnered field of
flowers. Troubled by reminiscences from the past and
by reciprocal influences from one another, the literatures
of modern Europe came into existence with composite
dialects and obeyed confused canons of taste, exhibited
their adolescent vigour with affected graces and showed
themselves senile in their cradles." In the field of lite-
rature to-day the standards are more numerous, but
more distinctive, than those of the Elizabethans. Our
ideals are classified with almost scientific exactness, and
we wear the labels proudly. But the very splendour of
the Renaissance was due to the fact that in the same
group, in the same artist, were to be found the most
diverse ideals and the most opposite methods. They
worshipped they knew not what, we know what we wor-
ship. Yet this difference does not prevent us from
seeing curious points of similarity between our own and
those times. The i6th, like the ipth century, was a
period of revolt from the past : and at such moments
men feel a supreme contempt for the common-place in
literature. The cry of art for art's sake is raised, and
the result is extravagance, euphuism. A wave of intel-
lectual dandyism seems to sweep over the face of litera-
ture, aristocratic in its aims and sympathies. Then are
the battle lines drawn up, and the spectators watch, with

EUPHUISM 63

admiration or contempt, the eternally recurrent strife
between David and the Philistines; and whether the
young hero be clad in the knee-breeches of aestheticism,
or the slashed doublet of the courtier; whether he be
armed with epigram and sunflower, or with euphuism
and camomile ; variation of costume cannot conceal the
identity of his personality — the personality of the fop of
culture.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL.

DESPITE the disproportionate attention given to
euphuism by so many of Lyly's critics, Euphues is no
less important as a novel than as a piece of prose. We
can, however, dismiss this second branch of our subject
in fewer words, because the problem of Euphues is much
simpler and more straightforward than the problem of
euphuism. It can scarcely be said that Lyly has yet
been thoroughly appreciated as a novelist ; indeed, the
whole subject of the Elizabethan novel is very far from
having received a satisfactory treatment at present.
This is not surprising when we consider that the last
word remains to be said upon the Elizabethan drama.
The birth of modern literature was so sudden, its life,
even in the cradle, was so complex that it baffles criti-
cism. Like the peal of an organ with a thousand stops,
the English Renaissance seemed to break the stillness
of the great mediaeval church, shaking its beautiful
sombre walls and filling it from floor to roof with wild,
pagan music. Indeed, the more we study those 50 or
60 years which embrace the so-called Elizabethan period,
the more are we struck by the fact that, ever since,
we have been simply making variations upon the themes
which the men of those times gave us. Modern science,

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 65

modern poetry, modern drama, sat like pages at the feet
of the Great Queen. Among these the novel cut but an
insignificant figure, although it was the novel which had
perhaps the longest future before it. We need not
wonder therefore that our first English novelist has been
treated by many with neglect. None I think have done
more to make amends in this direction than Professor
Raleigh and M. Jusserand; the former in his graceful,
humorous, and penetrating little book, The English
Novel; and the latter in his well-known work on The
English Novel in the time of Shakespeare, which gives
one, while reading it, the feeling of being present at a
fancy-dress ball, so skilfully does he detect the forms
and faces of present-day fiction behind euphuistic mask
and beneath arcadian costume. To these two books
the present writer owes a debt which all must feel who
have stood bewildered upon the threshold of Elizabeth's
Court with its glittering throng of genius and wit.

Sudden, however, as was this crop of warriors wield-
ing pen, it must not be forgotten that the dragon's teeth
had first been sown in mediaeval soil. With Lyly the
English novel came into being, but that child of his
genius was not without ancestry or relations. And so,
before discussing the character and fortunes of the in-
fant, let us devote a few introductory remarks to pedi-
gree. Roughly speaking, the prose narrative in England,
before Euphues, falls into three divisions, the romance of
chivalry, the novella, and the moral Court treatise, — and
all three are of foreign extraction, that is to say, they
are represented in England by translations only. Chaucer
indeed is a mine of material suitable for the novel, but
the father of English literature elected to write in verse,
and his Canterbury Tales have no appreciable influence
upon the later prose story. For some reason, the medi-

w. 5

66 JOHN LYLY

aeval prose narrative seems to have been confined to the
so-called Celtic races. Certainly, both the romance of
chivalry and the novella are to be traced back to French
sources. The novella, which, at our period, had become
thoroughly naturalized in Italy, under the auspices of
Boccaccio, had originally sprung from the fabliaux of
J3th century France. Nor was the fabliau the only
article of French production which found a new and
more stimulative home across the Alps ; for just as it is
possible to trace the German Reformation back, through
Huss, to its birth in Wycliff' s England, so French critics
have delighted to point out that the Italian Renaissance
itself was but an expansion of an earlier Renaissance in
France, which, for all the strength and maturity it
gained under its new conditions, lost much of that
indescribable flavour of direct simplicity and gracious
sweetness which breathes from the pages of Aucassin
and Nicolette and its companion Amis and Amile.
Under Charles VIII. and his successors this Renaissance
was carried home, as it were, to die — so subtle is the ebb
and flow of intellectual influences between country and
country. In England the novella, of which Chaucer had
made ample use, first appeared in prose dress from the
printing-press of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde.
The Dutch printer had also published Lord Berners'
translation of Huon of Bordeaux, the best romance of
chivalry belonging to the Charlemagne cycle. But,
before the dawn of the i6th century Malory had already
given us Morte D' Arthur, from the Arthurian cycle,
printed, as everyone knows, by the industrious Caxton
himself. Thus, if we neglect, as I think we may, trans-
lations from the Gesta Romanorum, we may say that the
prose narrative appeared in England simultaneously
with the printing-press, a fact which is more than coin-

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 6/

cidence ; since the multiplication of books, which Caxton
began, decreased the necessity for remembering tales ;
and therefore it was now possible to dispense with the
aid of verse ; in fact Caxton deprived the minstrel of his
occupation.

Of the third form of prose narrative — the moral
Court treatise — we have already said something. It had
appeared in Italy and in Spain, and our connexion with
it came from the latter country, through Berners' trans-
lation of the Golden Boke of Guevara. So slight was
the thread of narrative running through this book, that
one would imagine at first sight that it could have little
to do with the history of our novel. And yet in com-
parison with its importance in this respect the novella
and the romance of chivalry are quite insignificant.
The two latter never indeed lost their popularity during
the Elizabethan age, but they had ceased to be con-
sidered respectable — a very different thing — before that
age began. The first cause of their fall in the social
scale was the disapprobation of the humanists. Ascham,
echoing Plato's condemnation of Homer, attacks the
romance of chivalry from the moral point of view, at the
same time cunningly associating it with " Papistrie."
But he holds the novella even in greater abhorrence, for,
after declaring that the whole pleasure of the Morte
D1 Arthur " standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open
mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye," he goes on to say :
" and yet ten Morte Arthurs do not a tenth part so much
harm as one of those bookes, made in Italy and trans-
lated in England V

But there were social as well as moral reasons for the
depreciation of Malory and Boccaccio. The taste of the
age began to find these foreign dishes, if not unpalatable,
1 Schoolmaster, p. 80.

5—2

68 JOHN LYLY

at least not sufficiently delicate. England was fortunate
in receiving the Reformation and the Renaissance at the
same time ; and the men of those " spacious times " set
before their eyes that ideal of the courtier, so exquisitely
embodied by Sir Philip Sidney, in which godliness was
not thought incompatible with refinement of culture and
graciousness of bearing. For the first time our country
became civilized in the full meaning of that word, and
the knight, shedding the armour of barbarism, became
the gentleman, clothed in velvet and silk. The romance
of chivalry, therefore, became old-fashioned ; and it
seemed for a time doomed to destruction until it received
a new lease of life, purged of mediaevalism and modern-
ised by the hands of Sidney himself, under the guise of
arcadianism. While, however, Arcadia remained an un-
discovered country, the needs of the age were supplied
by the " moral Court treatise." It was perhaps not so
much that the old stories found little response in the
new form of society, as that they did not reflect that
society. We may well believe that the taste for mirrors,
which now became so fashionable, found its psychological
parallel in the desire of the Elizabethans to discover
their own fashions, their own affectations, themselves,
in the stories they read ; and if this indeed be what is
meant by realism in literature that quality in the novel
dates from those days. In this sense if in no other, in
the sense that he held, for the first time, a polished
mirror before contemporary life and manners, Lyly must
be called the first of English novelists.

The Anatomy of Wit, which it is most important to
distinguish from its sequel, was the descendant in the
direct line from the " moral Court treatise." Something
perhaps of the atmosphere of the novella clung about its
pages, but that was only to be expected : Lyly added

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 69

incident to the bare scheme of discourses, and for that
he had no other models but the Italians. But Guevara
was his real source. Dr Landmann's verdict, that
" Euphuism is not only adapted from Guevara's alto
estilo, but Euphues itself, as to its contents, is a mere
imitation of Guevara's enlarged biography of Marcus
Aurelius," has certainly been shown by Mr Bond to be
a gross overstatement ; yet there can be no doubt that
the Diall of Princes was Lyly's model on the side of
matter, as was Pettie's Pallace on the side of style. Our
author's debt to the Spaniard is seen in a correspondence
between many parts of his book and the Aureo Libro, in
certain of the concluding letters and discourses, and in
many other ways which Mr Bond has patiently noted1.
Guevara, however, was but one among many previous
writers to whom Lyly owed obligations. Etiphues was
justly styled by its author "compiled," being in fact
a mosaic, pieced together from the classics, and especially
Plutarch, Pliny, and Ovid, and from previous English
writers such as Harrison, Heywood, Fortescue, and
Gascoigne ; names that indicate the course of literary
"browsing" that Lyly substituted for the ordinary
curriculum at Oxford. To mention all the authors from
whom he borrowed, and to point out the portions of
his novel which are due to their several influences,
would only be to repeat a task already accomplished
by Mr Bond'2.

Allowing for all its author's " picking and stealing,"
The Anatomy of Wit was in the highest sense an original
book ; for, though it is the old moral treatise, its form is
new, and it is enlivened by a thin thread of narrative.
The hero Euphues is a young man lately come from
Athens, which is unmistakeably Oxford, to Naples,

1 Bond, I. pp. 154-156. 2 Bond, I. pp. 156-159.

70 JOHN LYLY

which is just as unmistakeably London. Here he soon
becomes the centre of a convivial circle, where he is wise
enough to distinguish between friend and parasite, to
discern the difference between the " faith of Laelius
and the flattery of Aristippus." The story thus opens
bravely, but the words of the title-page, " most necessary
to remember," are ever present in the author's mind,
and before we have reached the fourth page the sermon
is upon us. For " conscience " attired as an old man,
Eubulus, now enters the stage of this Court morality and
proceeds to deliver a long harangue upon the folly of
youth, concluding with much excellent though obvious
counsel. We should be in sympathy with the rude
answer of Euphues, were it but curt at the same time,
but, alas, it covers six pages. Having thus imprudently
crushed the " wisdom of eld " by the weight of his
utterance, our hero shows his natural preference for the
companionship and counsel of youth, by forming an
ardent friendship with Philautus, of so close a nature,
that " they used not only one boorde but one bed, one
booke (if so be that they thought it not one too many)."
This alliance, however, is not concluded until Euphues
has given us his own views, together with those of half
antiquity, upon the subject of friendship, or before he
has formally professed his affection in a pompous ad-
dress, beginning " Gentleman and friend," and has been
as formally accepted. By Philautus he is introduced to
Lucilla, the chief female character of the book, a lady,
if we are to believe the description of her " Lilly cheeks
dyed with a Vermilion red," of startling if somewhat
factitious beauty. To say that the plot now thickens
would be to use too coarse a word ; it becomes slightly
tinged with incident, inasmuch as Euphues falls in
love with Lucilla, the destined bride of Philautus. She

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 71

reciprocates his passion, and the double fickleness of
mistress and friend forms an excellent opportunity,
which Lyly does not fail to seize, for infinite moralizings
in euphuistic strains. Philautus is naturally indignant
at the turn affairs have taken, and the former friends
exchange letters of recrimination, in which, however,
their embittered feelings are concealed beneath a vast
display of classical learning. But Nemesis, swift and
sudden, awaits the faithless Euphues. Lucilla, it turns
out, is subject to a mild form of erotomania and is
constitutionally fickle, so that before her new lover has
begun to realise his bliss she has already contracted
a passion for some other young gentleman. Thus,
struck down in the hour of his pride and passion,
Euphues becomes " a changed man," and bethinks him-
self of his soul, which he has so long neglected. This is
the turning-point of the book, the turning point of half
the English novels written since Lyly's day. The
remainder of the Anatomy of Wit is taken up with what
may be described as the private papers of Euphues,
consisting of letters, essays, and dialogues, including
A Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers, a treatise on
education, and a refutation of atheism, and so amid the
thunders of the artillery of platitude the first part of
Euphues closes.

Professor Raleigh's explanation of this tedious
moralizing is that Lyly, wit and euphuist, possessed
the Nonconformist conscience : " Beneath the courtier's
slashed doublet, under his ornate brocade and frills, there
stood the Puritan." This I believe to be a mistaken
view of the case. As we shall later see reason to suppose,
Lyly never became, as did his acquaintance Gosson, a
very seriously-minded person. Certainly Euphues does
not prove that Puritanism was latent in him. The moral

72 JOHN LYLY

atmosphere which pervades it was not of Lyly's in-
vention ; he inherited it from his predecessors Guevara
and Castiglione, and he employed it because he knew
that it was expected of him. That he moralized not so
much from conviction as from convention (to use a
euphuism), is, I think, sufficiently proved by the fact
that in the second part of his novel, where he is address-
ing a new public, the pulpit strain is much less frequent,
while in his plays it entirely disappears. The Anatomy
of Wit is essentially the work of an inexperienced writer,
feeling his way towards a public, and without sufficient
skill or courage to dispense with the conventions which
he has inherited from previous writers. One feels, while
reading the book, that Lyly was himself conscious that
his hero was an insufferable coxcomb, and that he only
created him because he wished to comply with the
public taste. It may be, as M. Jusserand asserts, that
Lyly anticipated Richardson, but, if the light-hearted
Oxford madcap had any qualities in common with the
sedate bookseller, artistic sincerity was not one of them.
What has just been said is not entirely applicable to
the treatise on education which passed under the title of
Euphnes and his Ephoebus. Although simply an adapta-
tion of the De Educatione of Plutarch, it was not entirely
devoid of originality. Here we find the famous attack
upon Oxford, which was, we fear, prompted by a desire
to spite the University authorities rather than by any
earnest feeling of moral condemnation. But in addition
to this there are contributions of Lyly's own invention
to the theory of teaching which are not without merit.
He was, as we have seen, interested in education. It
seems, even possible that he had actually practised as
a master before the Euphues saw light1; and, therefore,

1 Bond, I. p. 10.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 73

we have every reason to suppose that this little treatise
was a labour of love. Possibly Ascham's Schoolmaster
inspired him with the idea of writing it. Certainly, when
we have allowed everything for Plutarch's work, enough
remains over to justify Mr Quick's inclusion of John
Lyly, side by side with Roger Ascham, in his Educational
Reformers.

But such excellent work has but little to do with the
business of novel-writing, and, when we turn to this
aspect of the Anatomy of Wit, there is little to be said
for it from the aesthetic point of view. Indeed, it cannot
strictly be called a novel at all. It is the bridge between
the moral Court treatise and the novel, and, as such, all
its aesthetic defects matter little in comparison with its
dynamical value. It was a great step to hang the chest-
nuts of discourse upon a string of incident. The story
is feeble, the plot puerile, but it was something to have
a story and a plot which dealt with contemporary life.
And lastly, though characterization is not even attempted,
yet now and again these euphuistic puppets, distinguish-
able only by their labels, are inspired with something
that is almost life by a phrase or a chance word.

I have said that it is very important to distinguish
between the two parts of Euphues. Two years only
elapsed between their respective publications, but in
these two years Lyly, and with him our novel, had
made great strides. In 1578 he was not yet a novelist,
though the conception of the novel and the capacity for
its creation were, as we have just shown, already forming
in his brain. In 1580, however, the English novel had
ceased to be merely potential ; for it had come into being
with the appearance of Euphues and his England. Here
in the same writer, in the same book, and within the
space of two years, we may observe one of the most

74 JOHN LYLY

momentous changes of modern literature in actual pro-
cess. The Anatomy of Wit is still the moral Court
treatise, coloured by the influence of the Italian novella;
Eiiphues and his England is the first English novel.
Lyly unconsciously symbolizes the change he initiated
by laying the scene of his first part in Italy, while in
the second he brings his hero to England. That sea
voyage, which provoked the stomach of Philautus sore,
was an important one for us, since the freight of the
vessel was nothing less than our English novel.

The difference between the two parts is remarkable
in more ways than one, and in none more so than in the
change of dedication. The Anatomy of Wit, as was
only fitting in a moral Court treatise, was inscribed to
the gentleman readers; Euphues and his England, on the
other hand, made an appeal to a very different class of
readers, and a class which had hitherto been neglected
by authors — " the ladies and gentlewomen of England."
With the instinct, almost, of a religious reformer, Lyly
saw that to succeed he must enlist the ladies on his side.
And the experiment was so successful that I am inclined
to attribute the pre-eminence of Lyly among other
euphuists to this fact alone. " Hatch the egges his
friendes had laid " he certainly did. but he fed the
chicks upon a patent food of his own invention.
Mr Bond suggests that the general attention which the
A natomy secured by its attacks upon women gave Lyly
the idea for the second part. But, though this was pro-
bably the immediate cause of his change of front, some-
thing like Euphues and his England must have come
sooner or later, because all the conditions were ripe for
its production. Side by side with the ideal of the
courtier had arisen the ideal of the cultured lady.
Ascham, visiting Lady Jane Grey, "founde her in her

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 75

chamber reading Phaedon Platonis in Greeke and that
with as much delite, as some gentlemen would read a
merie tale in Bocase1"; and, when a Queen came to the
throne who could talk Greek at Cambridge, the fashion
of learning for ladies must have received an immense
impetus. With a "blue stocking" showing on the royal
footstool, all the ladies of the Court would at least lay
claim to a certain amount of learning. Dr Landmann
has attributed the vogue of euphuism, at least in part, to
feminine influences, but in so far as England shared that
affectation with the other Courts of Europe, where the
fair sex had not yet acquired such freedom as in England,
we must not press the point too much in this direction.
The importance in English literature of that " monstrous
regiment of women," against which John Knox blew his
rude trumpet so shamelessly, is seen not so much in the
style of EupJmes as in its contents; indeed, in the second
part of that work euphuism is much less prominent than
in the first. The romance of chivalry and the Italian
tale would be still more distasteful to the new woman
than they were to the new courtier. Doubtless Boccaccio
may have found a place in many a lady's secret book-
shelf as Zola and Guy de Maupassant do perchance to-
day, but he was scarcely suitable for the boudoir table
or for polite literary discussion. Something was needed
which would appeal at once to the feminine taste for
learning and to the desire for delicacy and refinement.
This want was only partially supplied by the moral
Court treatise, which was ostensibly written for the
courtier and not the maid-in-waiting. What was re-
quired was a book expressly provided for the eye of
ladies — such a book, in fact, as Euplmes and his England.
Lyly's discovery of this new literary public and its

1 Schoolmaster, p. 47.

76 JOHN LYLY

requirements was of great importance, for have not the
ladies ever since his day been the patrons and purchasers
of the novel ? What would happen to the literary market
to-day were our mothers, wives, and sisters to deny them-
selves the pleasure of fiction ? The very question would
send the blood from Mr Mudie's lips. The two thousand
and odd novels which are published annually in this
country show the existence of a large leisured class in
our community, and this class is undoubtedly the femi-
nine one. The novel, therefore, owes not only its birth,
but its continued existence down to our own day, to the
"ladies and gentlewomen of England"; and this dedi-
cation may be taken as a general one for all novels
since Lyly's time. "Euphues," he writes, " had rather lye
shut in a Ladye's casket than open in a scholar's studie,"
and he continues, " after dinner you may overlooke him
to keepe you from sleepe, or if you be heavie, to bring
you to sleepe.. .it were better to hold Euphues in your
hands though you let him fall, when you be willing to
winke, then to sowe in a clout, and pricke your fingers
when you begin to nod1." "With Euphues" remarks
M. Jusserand, " commences in England the literature of
the drawing-room2"; and the literature of the drawing-
room is to all intents and purposes the novel.

All the faults of its predecessor are present in Euphues
and his England, but they are not so conspicuous. The
euphuistic garb and the mantle of the prophet Guevara
sit more lightly upon our author. In every way his
movements are freer and bolder; having gained con-
fidence by his first success, he now dares to be original.
The story becomes at times quite interesting, even for
a modern reader. At its opening Euphues and Philautus,
who have come to terms on a basis of common con-

1 Euphues, p. 220. 2 Jusserand, p. 5.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 77

demnation of Lucilla, are discovered on their way to
England. By way of enlivening the weary hours, our
hero, ever ready to play the preacher now that he has
ceased to be the warning, delivers himself of a lengthy,
but highly edifying tale, which evokes the impatient
exclamation of Philautus already quoted ; we may how-
ever notice as a sign of progress that Euphues has
substituted a moral narrative for his usual discourse.
The relations between the two friends have become
distinctly amusing, and might, in abler hands, have
resulted in comic situation. Euphues, having learnt the
lesson of the burnt child, is now a very grave person,
proud of his own experience and of its fruits in himself.
Extremes met,

" Where pinched ascetic and red sensualist
Alternately recurrent freeze and burn,"

and it is interesting to note that Euphues embodies
many of the characteristics of the Byronic hero — his
sententiousness, his misogyny, his cynicism born of dis-
illusionment, and his rhetorical flatulency; but he is no
rebel like Manfred because he finds consolation in his
own pre-eminence in a world of platitude. Conscious
of his dearly bought wisdom, he makes it his continuous
duty, if not pleasure, to rebuke the over-amorous
Philautus, who was at least human, and to enlarge upon
the infidelity of the opposite sex. Lyly failed to realise
the possibilities of this antagonism of character, because
he always appears to be in sympathy with his hero, and
so misses an opportunity which would have delighted
the heart of Thackeray. I say " appears," because I
consider that this sympathy was nothing but a pose
which he considered necessary for the popularity of his
book. It is important however to observe that the idea
of one character as a foil to another, though unde-

78 JOHN LYLY

veloped, is here present for the first time in our national
prose story.

The tale ended and the voyage over, our friends
arrive in England, where after stopping at Dover " 3 or
4 days, until they had digested ye seas, and recovered
their healths," they proceeded to Canterbury, at which
place they fell in with an old man named Fidus, who
gave them entertainment for body and mind. To those
who have conscientiously read the whole history of
Euphues up to this point, the incident of Fidus will
appear immensely refreshing. It seems to me, in fact,
to mark the highest point of Lyly's skill as a novelist,
doubtless because he is here drawing upon his memory1
and not his imagination. The old gentleman, very
different from his prototype Eubulus, moves quite
humanly among his bees and flowers, and tells the
graceful story of his love with a charm that is almost
natural. And, although he checks the action of the
story for thirty-three pages, we are sorry to take leave
of this "fatherlye and friendlye sire"; for he lays for
a time the ghost of homily, which reappears directly
his guests begin to " forme their steppes towards
London." Having reached the Court, in due time
Philautus, in accordance with the prophecies of Euphues
though much to his disgust, falls in love. The lady of
his choice, however, has unfortunately given her heart
to another, by name Surius. The despondent lover,
after applying in vain to an Italian magician for a love-
philtre, at length determines to adopt the bolder line of
writing to his scornful lady. The letter is conveyed in
a pomegranate, and the incident of its presentation is
prettily conceived and displays a certain amount of
dramatic power. The upshot is that Philautus eventually

1 Mr Bond thinks it a picture of Lyly's father.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 79

finds a maiden who is unattached and who is ready to
return love for love. Her he marries, and remains
behind with "his Violet" in England, while Euphues,
less happy than self-satisfied, returns to Athens. The
interest of the latter half of the book centres round the
house of Lady Flavia, where the principal characters
of both sexes meet together and discuss the philosophy
of love and the psychology of ladies. Such intellectual
gatherings were a recognised institution at Florence at
this time, being an imitation of Plato's symposium, and
Lyly had already attempted, not so successfully as here,
to describe one in the house of Lucilla of the Anatomy
of Wit.

In every way Euphues and his England is an im-
provement upon its predecessor. The story and plot
are still weak, but the situations are often well thought
out and treated with dramatic effect. The action indeed
is slow, but it moves; and in the story of Fidus it
moves comparatively quickly. Such motion of course
can scarcely ruffle the mental waters of those accus-
tomed to the breathless whirlwinds which form the
heart of George Meredith's novels; but these whirlwinds
are as directly traceable to the gentle but fitful agitation
of Euphues, as was the storm that overtook Ahab's
chariot to the little cloud undiscerned by the prophet's
eye. The figures, again, that move in Lyly's second
novel are no longer clothes filled with moral sawdust.
The character of Philautus is especially well drawn,
though at times blurred and indistinct. Lyly had not
yet passed the stage of creating types, that is of por-
traying one aspect and an obvious one of such a
complex thing as human nature. But a criticism which
would be applicable to Dickens is no condemnation of
an Elizabethan pioneer. It was much to have attempted

80 JOHN LYLY

characterization, and in the case of Philautus, Iffida,
Camilla, and perhaps "the Violet" the attempt was
nearly if not quite successful. It is noticeable that for
one who was afterwards to become a writer of comedy,
Lyly shows a remarkable absence of humour in these
novels. Now and again we seem trembling on the
brink of humour, when the young wiseacre is brought
into contact with his weak-hearted friend, but the line
is seldom actually crossed. Wit, as Lyly here under-
stood it, had nothing of the risible in it; for it meant
to him little more than a graceful handling of obvious
themes.

But the importance of EtipJmes was in its influence,
not in its actual achievement. And here again we must
reassert the significance of Lyly's appeal to women.
"That noble faculty," as Macaulay expresses it, "whereby
man is able to live in the past and in the future in the
distant and in the unreal," is rarely found in the opposite
sex. They delight in novelty, their minds are of a practi-
cal cast, and their interests almost invariably lie in the
present. The names of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and
Mrs Humphry Ward are sufficient to show how entirely
successful a woman may be in delineating the life around
her. If there is any truth in this generalization, it was
no mere coincidence that the first English romance
dealing with contemporary life was written expressly for
the ladies of Elizabeth's Court. The alteration in the
face of social life, brought about by the recognition of
the feminine claim and hastened no doubt by the fact
that England, Scotland, and France were at this period
under the rule of three ladies of strong character, was
inevitably attended with great changes in literature.
This change is first expressed by Lyly in his second
novel and later in his dramas. The mediaeval conception

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 8 1

of women, a masculine conception, now underwent
feminine correction ; and what is perhaps of more im-
portance still, the conception of man undergoes trans-
formation also. The result is that the centre of gravity
of the story is now shifted. Of old it had treated of
deeds and glorious prowess for the sake of honour, or
more often for the sake of some anaemic damsel ; now
it deals with the passion itself and not its knightly
manifestations, — with the very feelings and hearts of the
lovers. In other words under the auspices of Elizabeth
and her maids of honour, the English story becomes
subjective, feminine, its scene is shifted from the battle-
field and the lists to the lady's boudoir ; it becomes a
novel. "We change lance and war-horse, for walking-
sword and pumps and silk stockings. We forget the
filletted brows and wind-blown hair, the zone, the flowing
robe, the sandalled or buskined feet, and feel the dawn-
ing empire of the fan, the glove, the high-heeled shoe,
the bonnet, the petticoat, and the parasol1": in fact we
enter into the modern world. At the first expression of
this change in literature Euphues and his England is of
the very greatest interest. Characters in fiction now for
the first time move before a background of everyday
life and discuss matters of everyday importance. And,
as if Lyly wished to leave no doubt as to his aims and
methods, he gives at the conclusion of his book that in-
teresting description of Elizabethan England entitled
A glass e for Europe.

It is however in Lyly's treatment of the subject of
love that the change is most conspicuous. The subtleties
of passion are now realised for the first time. We are
shown the private emotions, the secret alternations of

1 Bond, I. p. 161.

82 JOHN LYLY

hope and despair which agitate the breasts of man and
maid, and, more important still, we find these emotions
at work under the restraint of social conditions ; the
violent torrent of passion checked and confined by the
demands of etiquette and the conventions of aristocratic
life. The relation between these unwritten laws of our
social constitution and the impetuous ardour of the lover,
has formed the main theme of our modern love stories
in the novel and on the stage. In the days of chivalry,
when love ran wild in the woods, woman was the passive
object either of hunt or of rescue ; but the scene of battle
being shifted to the boudoir she can demand her own
conditions with the result that the game becomes in-
finitely more refined and intricate. Persons of both
sexes, outwardly at peace but inwardly armed to the
teeth, meet together in some lady's house to discuss the
subject so dangerous to both, and conversation con-
ditioned by this fact inevitably becomes subtle, allusive,
intense; for it derives its light and shade from the flicker
of that fire which the company finds such a perilous
fascination in playing with. Lyly's work does not ex-
hibit quite such modernity as this, but we may truthfully
say that his Euphues and his England is the psychological
novel in germ.

Its latent possibilities were however not perceived by
the writers of the i6th century. The style which had in
part won popularity for it so speedily was the cause also
of its equally speedy decline. Like a fossil in the stratum
of euphuism it was soon covered up by the artificial layer
of arcadianism. The novel of Sidney, though its loose and
meandering style marked a reaction against euphuism,
carried on the Lylian tradition in its appeal to ladies.
The Arcadia, in no way so modern as the Euphues, lies
for that very reason more directly in the line of develop-

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 83

ment1 ; for, while the former is linked by the heroical
romance of the seventeenth century to the romance
of this day, the latter's influence is not visible until
the eighteenth century, if we except its immediate
Elizabethan imitators. And yet, as we remarked of
Lyly's prose, a book which received so many editions
cannot have been entirely without effect upon the minds
of its readers and upon the literature of the age. This
influence, however, could have been little more than
suggestive and indirect, and it is quite impossible to
determine its value. Its importance for us lies in the
fact that we can realise how it anticipated the novel of
the 1 8th and ipth centuries. Not until the days of
Richardson is it possible to detect a Lylian flavour in
English fiction ; and even here it would be risky to
insist too pointedly on any inference that might be
drawn from the coincidence of an abridged form of
Euphues being republished (after almost a century's
oblivion) twenty years before the appearance of Pamela.
A direct literary connexion between Lyly and Richard-
son seems out of the question : and the utmost we can
say with certainty is that the novel of the latter, in pro-
viding moral food for its own generation, relieved the
1 8th century reader of the necessity of going back to
the Elizabethan writer for the entertainment he desired.
As a novelist, therefore, Lyly was only of secondary
dynamical importance, by which I mean that, although
we can rest assured that he exercised a considerable
influence upon later writers, we cannot actually trace
this influence at work ; we cannot in fact point to Lyly
as the first of a definite series. The novel like its style
coloured, but did not deflect, the stream of English
literature. And indeed we may say this not only of

1 It was Sidney and Nash who set the fashion for the i7th century.

6—2

84 JOHN LYLY

Euphues but of Elizabethan fiction as a whole. The
public to which a i6th century novel would appeal was
a small one. Few people in those days could read, and
of these the majority preferred to read poetry; and
though, as we have seen, Euphues passed through, for
the age, a considerable number of editions, the circle of
those who appreciated Lyly, Sidney, and Nash must
have been for the most part confined to the Court. And
this accounts for the brevity of their popularity and for
its intensity while it lasted ; a phenomenon which is not
seen in the drama, and which is due to the susceptibility
of Court life to sudden changes of fashion. Drama was
the natural form of literature in an age when most people
were illiterate and yet when all were eager for literary
entertainment. Drama was therefore the main current
of artistic production, the prose novel being quite a
minor, almost an insignificant, tributary. Realising then
the inevitable limitations which surrounded our English
fiction at its birth we can understand its infantile
imperfections and the subsequent arrest of its de-
velopment.

"The novel held in Elizabeth's time very much the
same place as was held by the drama at the Restoration ;
it was an essentially aristocratic entertainment, and the
same pitfall waylaid both, the pitfall of artificiality.
Dryden's audiences and the readers of Euphues both
sought for better bread than is made of wheat; both
were supplied with what satisfied them in an elaborate
confection of husks1."

1 Raleigh, p. 57. He writes Arcadia for Euphues but the substitution
is legitimate.

CHAPTER III.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST.

So far we have been dealing with those of Lyly's
writings, which, though they are his most famous, form
quite a small section of his work, and exerted an influence
upon later writers which may have been considerable but
was certainly indirect. His plays on the other hand, in the
production of which he spent the better part of his life,
greatly outweigh his novel both in aesthetic and historical
importance. To attempt to estimate Lyly's position as
a novelist and as a prose writer is to chase the will-o'-the-
wisp of theory over the morass of uncertainty ; the task
of investigating his comedies is altogether simpler and
more straightforward. After groping our way through
the undergrowth of minor literature, we come out upon
the great highway of Elizabethan art — the drama. Let
us first see how Lyly himself came to tread this same
pathway.

There is a difference of opinion between Mr Bond
and Mr Baker, our chief authorities, as to the order in
which Lyly wrote his plays1. But though Mr Baker
claims priority for Endymion, and Mr Bond for Campaspe,

1 Baker, p. Ixxxviii, places Endymion as early as Sept. 1579. Bond,
vol. in. p. 10, attempts to disprove Baker's contention, and in vol. II. p. 309,
he maintains chiefly on grounds of style that Campaspe was the earliest of
Lyly's plays, being produced at the Christmas of 1580.

86 JOHN LYLY

both are convinced that our author was already in 1580
beginning to look to the stage as a larger arena for his
artistic genius than the novel. And from what I have
said of his life at Oxford and his connexion with de Vere,
we need not be surprised that this was so. It would be
well however at this juncture to recapitulate, and in part
to expand those remarks, in order to show more clearly
how Lyly's dramatic bent was formed. Seats of learning,
as we shall see presently, had long before the days of
Lyly favoured the comic muse, and Oxford was no
exception to this rule. Anthony a Wood tells us how
Richard Edwardes in 1566 produced at that University
his play Palamon and Arcite, and how her Majesty
"laughed heartily thereat and gave the author great
thanks for his pains"; a scene which would still be fresh
in men's minds five years after, when Lyly entered
Magdalen College. But it is scarcely necessary to stretch
a point here since we know from the Anatomy of Wit
that Lyly was a student of Edwardes' comedies1. Again,
William Gager, Pettie's "dear friend" and Lyly's fellow-
student, was a dramatist, while Gosson himself tells us
of comedies which he had written before 1577.

Probably however it was not until he had left Oxford
for London that Lyly conceived the idea of writing
comedy, for we must attribute its original suggestion
to his friend and employer the Earl of Oxford. Edward
de Vere, Burleigh's son-in-law, had visited Italy, and
affected the vices and artificialities of that country,
returning home, we are told, laden with silks and oriental
stuffs for the adornment of his chamber and his person.
He was frequently in debt and still more frequently in
disgrace with the Queen and with his father-in-law.
Dilettante, aesthete, and euphuist, he would naturally

1 Bond, II. p. 238.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 8/

attract the Oxford fop, and that Lyly attached himself
to his clique disposes, in my mind at least, of all theories
of his puritanical tendencies. Certainly a Nonconformist
conscience could not have flourished in de Vere's house-
hold. One bond between the Earl and his secretary was
their love of music — an art which played an important
part in the beginning of our comedy.

In relieving the action of his plays by those songs
of woodland beauty unmatched in literature Shake-
speare was only following a custom set by his predecessors,
Udall, Edwardes, and Lyly, who being schoolmasters
(and the two latter being musicians and holding positions
in choir schools), embroidered their comedies with lyrics
to be sung by the fresh young voices of their pupils.
De Vere, though unconnected with a school, probably
followed the same tradition. For the interesting thing
about him is that he also wrote comedy. Like many
members of the nobility in those days he maintained his
own company of players; and we find them in 1581
giving performances at Cambridge and Ipswich. His
comedies, moreover, though now lost were placed in the
same rank as those of Edwardes by the Elizabethan
critic Puttenham1. Now as secretary of such a man, and
therefore in close intimacy with him, it would be the
most natural thing in the world for Lyly to try his hand
at play-writing, and, if his patron approved of his efforts,
an introduction to Court could be procured, since Oxford
was Lord High Chamberlain, and the play would be
acted. It was to Oxford's patronage, therefore, and
not to his subsequent connexion with the "children of
Powles," that Lyly owed his first dramatic impulse, and
probably also his first dramatic success, for Campaspe
and Sapho were produced at Court in I5822. His

1 Diet, of Nat. Biog., Edward de Vere.
- Bond, II. p. 230 (chronological table).

88 JOHN LYLY

appointment at the choir school of course confirmed his
resolutions and thus he became the first great Elizabethan
dramatist.

But a purely circumstantial explanation of an import-
ant departure in a man's life will only appear satisfactory
to fatalists who worship the blind god Environment.
And without indulging in any abstruse psychological
discussion, but rather looking at the question from
a general point of view, we can understand how an
intellect of Lyly's type, as revealed by the EupJines,
found its ultimate expression in comedy. Comedy, as
Meredith tells us, is only possible in a civilized society,
"where ideas are current and the perceptions quick."
We have already touched upon this point and later we
must return to it again ; but for the moment let us
notice that this idea of comedy, though he would have
been quite unable to formulate it in words, was in reality
at the back of Lyly's mind, or rather we should perhaps
say that he quite unconsciously embodied it. He was
par excellence the product of a " social " atmosphere ; he
moved more freely within the Court than without ; his
whole mind was absorbed by the subtleties of language ;
a brilliant conversation, an apt repartee, a well-turned
phrase were the very breath of his nostrils ; his ideal
was the intellectual beau. Add to this compound the
ingredient of literary ambition and the result is a comic
dramatist. Lyly, Congreve, Sheridan, were all men
of fashion first and writers of comedy after. In the
author of Lady Windermeres Fan we have lately seen
another example — the example of one whose ambition
was to be " the first well-dressed philosopher in the
history of thought." Poems, novels, fairy stories, he
gave us, but it was on the stage of comedy that he
eventually found his true me'tier. " With Ettp/tues,"
writes Mr Bond, " we enter the path which leads to the

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 89

Restoration dramatists and in Lucilla and Camilla

we are prescient of Millamant and Belinda1." This is
very true, but the statement has a nearer application
which Mr Bond misses. Camilla is the lady who moves
under varied names through all Lyly's plays. The
second part of Euphues and the first of Lyly's comedies
are as closely connected psychologically and aesthetic-
ally, as they were in point of time.

SECTION I. English Comedy before 1580.

But when Lyly's creations began to walk the boards,
the English stage was already some centuries old and
therefore, in order to appreciate our author's position,
a few words are necessary upon the development of
our drama and especially of comedy previous to his
time.

Though the miracle play of our forefathers frequently
contained a species of coarse humour usually put into
the mouth of the Devil, who appears to have been for
the middle ages very much what the " comic muse " is
for us moderns, it is to the morality not to the miracle
that one should look for the real beginnings of comedy
as distinct from mere buffoonery.

The morality was not so much an offshoot as a com-
plement of the miracle. They stood to each other, as
sermon does to service. To say therefore that the
morality secularized the drama is to go too far ; as well
might we say that Luther secularized Christianity.
What it did, however, was important enough ; it severed
the connexion between drama and ritual. The miracle,
treating of the history of mankind from the Creation to
the days of Christ, unfolded before the eyes of its
1 Bond, I. p. 161.

90 JOHN LYLY

audience the grand scheme of human salvation ; the
morality on the other hand was not concerned with
historical so much as practical Christianity. Its object
was to point a moral : and it did this in two ways ;
either as an affirmative, constructive inculcator of what
life should be, — as the portrayer of the ideal ; or as
a negative, critical describer of the types of life actually
existing, — as the portrayer of the real. It approached
more nearly to comedy in its latter function, but in both
aspects it really prepared the way for the comic muse.
The natural prey of comedy, as our greatest comic
writer has taught us, is folly, "known to it in all her
transformations, in every disguise ; and it is with the
springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox,
that it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure
of having her, allowing her no rest." Thus it is that
characters in comedy, symbolizing as they often do some
social folly, tend to be rather types than personalities.
The morality, therefore, in substituting typical figures,
however crude, for the mechanical religious characters of
the miracle, makes an immense advance towards comedy.
Moreover, the very selection of types requires an appre-
ciation, if not an analysis, of the differences of human
character, an appreciation for which there was no need
in the miracle. In the morality again the action is no
longer determined by tradition, and it becomes incum-
bent on the playwright to provide motives for the move-
ments of his puppets. It follows naturally from this
that situations must be devised to show up the particular
quality which each type symbolizes. We need not
enter the vexed question of the origin of plot construc-
tion ; but we may notice in this connexion that the
morality certainly gave us that peculiar form of plot-
movement which is most suitable to comedy. To quote

LYLY THE' DRAMATIST 9 1

Mr Gayley's words : " In tragedy, the movement must
be economic of its ups and downs ; once headed down-
wards it must plunge, with but one or two vain recovers,
to the abyss. In comedy, on the other hand, though the
movement is ultimately upward, the crises are more
numerous ; the oftener the individual stumbles without
breaking his neck, and the more varied his discomfitures,
so long as they are temporary, the better does he

enjoy his ease in the cool of the day Now the

novelty of the plot in the moral play, lay in the fact that
the movement was of this oscillating, upward kind — a
kind unknown as a rule to the miracle, whose conditions
were less fluid, and to the farce, which was too shallow
and superficial1."

If all these claims be justifiable there can be no
doubt that the morality was of the utmost importance
in the history not only of comedy but of English
drama as a whole. Though it was the cousin, not the
child of the miracle, though it cannot be said to have
secularized our drama, it is the link between the ritual
play and the play of pure amusement ; it connects the
rood gallery with the London theatre. When Symonds
writes that the morality " can hardly be said to lie in
the direct line of evolution between the miracle and the
legitimate drama" we may in part agree with him; but
he is quite wrong when he goes on to describe it as "an
abortive side-effect, which was destined to bear barren
fruit2."

The real secularization of the drama was in the first
place probably due to classical influences — or, to be
more precise, I should perhaps say, scholastic influences
— and it is not until the i6th century that these in-
fluences become prominent. I say "become prominent,"
1 Gayley, p. Ixiv. 2 Symonds, p. 199.

92 JOHN LYLY

because Terence and Plautus were known from the
earliest times, and Dr Ward is inclined to think that
Latin comedy affected the earlier drama of England to
a considerable extent1, although good examples of
Terentian comedy are not found until the i6th century.
Humanism again comes forward as an important
literary formative element. The part which the student
class took in the development of European drama as a
whole has as yet scarcely been appreciated. It is to
scholars that the birth of the secular Drama must be
attributed. Lyly, as we said, made use of his master-
ship for the production of his plays, but Lyly was by
no means the first schoolmaster-dramatist. Schools and
universities had long before his day been productive of
drama; our very earliest existing saints' play or marvel
was produced by a certain Geoffrey at Dunstable, "de
consuetudine magistrorum et scholarum2." And this
was only natural, seeing that at such places any number
of actors is available and all are supposed to be in-
terested in literature. It is a remarkable fact, however,
and illustrative of the connexion between comedy and
music, that of all places of education choir schools
seem to have usurped the lion's share of drama. John
Hey wood, the first to break away from the tradition of
the morality, was a choir boy of the Chapel Royal, and
afterwards in all probability held a post there as
master3. Heywood's brilliant, but farcical interludes
are too slight to merit the title of comedy, yet he is
of great importance because of his rejection of allegories
and of his use of "personal types" instead of "personified

1 Ward, I. p. 7.
- Gayley, p. xiv.

3 I put this interpretation upon the account of Heywood's receiving
40 shillings from Queen Mary "for pleying an interlude with his children."

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 93

abstractions1." It was not until 1540, a few years after
Heywood's interlude The Play of the Wether, that pure
English comedy appears, and we must turn to Eton to
discover its cradle, for Nicholas Udall's Roister Doister
has every claim to rank as the first completely con-
structed comedy in our language — the first comedy of
flesh and blood. Roister smacks of the "miles gloriosus";
Merygreeke combines the vice with the Terentian rogue;
and yet, when all is said, Udall's play remains a remark-
ably original production, realistic and English.

Next, in point of time and importance, comes
Stevenson's Gammer Gurton's Needle, still more
thoroughly English than the last, though quite inferior
as a comedy, and indeed scarcely rising above the level
of farce. Inasmuch, however, as it is a drama of English
rustic life, it is directly antecedent to Mother Bombie,
and perhaps also to the picaresque novel. Secular
dramas now began to multiply apace. But keeping our
eye upon comedy, and upon Lyly in particular as we
near the date of his advent, it will be sufficient I think
to mention two more names to complete the chain of
development. From Cambridge, the nurse of Stevenson,
we must now turn to Oxford ; and, as we do so, we seem
to be drawing very close to the end of our journey.
Thus far we have had nothing like the romantic comedy
— the comedy of sentiment, of love, the comedy which
is at once serious and witty, and which contains the
elements of tragedy. This appears, or is at least fore-
shadowed for the first time, about four years after
Stevenson's "first-rate screaming farce," as Symonds
has dubbed it, in the Damon and Pithias of Richard
Edwardes, a writer with whom, as we have seen, Lyly
was thoroughly familiar. Indeed, the play in question

1 Ward, Diet, of Nat. Biog., Heywood.

94 JOHN LYLY

anticipates our author in many ways, for example in
the introduction of pages, in the use of English proverbs
and Latin quotations, and in the insertion of songs1.
With reference to the last point, we may remark that
Edwardes like Lyly was interested in music, and like
him also held a post in a choir school, being one of the
"gentlemen of the Chapel Royal." In the Damon and
Pithias the old morality is once and for all discarded.
The play is entirely free from all allegorical elements,
and is only faintly tinged with didacticism. But we
cannot express the aim of Edwardes better than in his
own words:

"In comedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch
All thynges to the quick ; and eke to frame each person so
That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know."

To touch lightly and yet with penetration, to reveal
character by dialogue, this is indeed to write modern
drama, modern comedy.

It would seem that between Edwardes and Lyly
there was no room for another link, so closely does the
one follow the other; and yet one more play must be
mentioned to complete the series. This time we are
no longer brought into touch with the classics or with
the scholastic influences, for the play in question is a
translation from the Italian, being in fact Ariosto's
Suppositi, englished by George Gascoigne2. Though
a translation it was more than a transcript ; it was
englished in the true sense of that word, in sentiment
as well as in phrase. Its chief importance lies in the
fact that it is written in prose, and is therefore the first
prose comedy in our language. But Mr Gay ley would
go further than this, for he describes it as "the first
English comedy in every way worthy of the name."

1 Bond, II. p. 238. 2 1566.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 95

It was written entirely for amusement, and for the
amusement of adults, not of children ; and if it were
the only product of Gascoigne's pen it would justify the
remark of an early i/th century critic, who says of this
writer that he "brake the ice for our quainter poets who
now write, that they may more safely swim through the
main ocean of sweet poesy"; for, to quote a modern
writer, "with the blood of the New comedy, the Latin
comedy, the Renaissance in its veins, it is far ahead
of its English contemporaries, if not of its time1." The
play was well known and popular among the Eliza-
bethans, being revived at Oxford in I5822. Shakespeare
used it for the construction of his Taming of the SJirew:
and altogether it is difficult to say how much Elizabethan
drama probably owed to this one comedy, which though
Italian in origin was carefully adapted to English taste
by its translator. There can be no doubt that Lyly
studied this among other of Gascoigne's works, and that
he must have learnt many lessons from it, though the
fact does not appear to have been sufficiently appre-
ciated by Lylian students ; for even Mr Bond fails, I
think, to realise its importance.

This, in brief outline, is the history of our comedy
down to the time when Lyly took it in hand ; or should
we not rather say " an introduction to the history of our
comedy " ? For true English comedy is not to be found
in any of the plays we have mentioned. Heywood,
Udall, Stevenson, Edwardes, are the names that convey
" broken lights " of comedy, hints of the dawn, nothing
more ; and Gascoigne was a translator. The supreme
importance of a writer, who at this juncture produced
eight comedies of sustained merit, and of varying types,
is something which is quite beyond computation. But
1 Gayley, p. Ixxxv. 2 Diet, of Nat. Biog., Gascoigne, George.

96 JOHN LYLY

if we are to attempt to realise the greatness of our debt
to Lyly, let us estimate exactly how much these previous
efforts had done in the way of pioneer work, and how far
also they fell short of comedy in the strict sense of that
word.

The fifty years which lie between Heywood and Lyly
saw considerable progress, but progress of a negative
rather than a constructive nature, and moreover progress
which came in fits and starts, and not continuously. It
was in fact a period of transition and of individual and
disconnected experiments. Each of the writers above
mentioned contributed something towards the common
development, but not one of them, except Ariosto's
translator, gave us comedy which may be considered
complete in every way. They all display a very
elementary knowledge of plot construction. Udall is
perhaps the most successful in this respect ; his plot is
trivial but, well versed as he is in Terence, he manages
to give it an ordered and natural development. But the
other pre-Lylian dramatists quite failed to realise the
vital importance of plot, which is indeed the very essence
of comedy; and, in expending energies upon the develop-
ment of an argument, as in Jacke Jugeler, which was a
parody of transubstantiation, or upon the construction
of disconnected humorous situations, as in Gammer
Gurtoris Needle, they missed the whole point of comedy.
Again, though there is a clear idea of distinction and
interplay of characters, there is little perception of the
necessity of developing character as the plot moves
forward. Merygreeke, it may be objected, is an example
of such development, but the alteration in Merygreeke's
nature is due to inconsistency, not to evolution. More-
over, stage conventions had not yet become a matter of
fixed tradition. "We have a perpetual conflict between

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 97

what spectators actually see and what they are supposed
to see, between the time actually passed and that sup-
posed to have elapsed ; an outrageous demand on the
imagination in one place, a refusal to exercise or allow
us to exercise it in another1." Further, English comedy
before 1580 was marked, on the one hand, by its poetic
literary form and, on the other, by its almost complete
absence of poetic ideas. Lyly, with the instinct of a
born conversationalist, realised that prose was the only
possible dress for comedy that should seek to represent
contemporary life. But even in their use of verse his
predecessors were unsuccessful. Udall seemed to have
thought that his unequal dogtail lines would wag if he
struck a rhyme at the end, and even Edwardes was little
better. The use of blank verse had yet to be discovered,
and Lyly was to have a hand in this matter also2. As
for poetical treatment of comedy, Edwardes is the only
one who even approaches it. He does so, because he
sees that the comic muse only ceases to be a mask when
sentiment is allowed to play over her features. And
even he only half perceives it ; for the sentiment of
friendship is not strong enough for complete animation,
the muse's eyes may twinkle, but passion alone will give
them depth and let the soul shine through. But, in
order that passion should fill comedy with the breath
of life, it was necessary that both sexes should walk the
stage on an equal footing. That which comedy before
1580 lacked, that which alone could round it off into a
poetic whole, was the female element. "Comedy," writes
George Meredith, " lifts women to a station offering
them free play for their wit, as they usually show it,

1 Bond, ii. p. 237.

2 George Gascoigne, whose importance does not seem to have been
realised by Elizabethan students, also produced a drama in blank verse. •

W. 7

98 JOHN LYLY

when they have it, on the side of sound sense. The
higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they
enjoy in it." But the dramatist cannot lift them far ;
the civilized plane must lie only just beneath the comic
plane ; the stage cannot be lighted by woman's wit if
the audience have not yet realised that brain forms
a part of the feminine organism. In the days of Eliza-
•beth this realisation began to dawn in men's minds ; but
it was Lyly who first expressed it in literature, in his
novel and then in his dramas. Those who preceded
him were only dimly conscious of it, and therefore they
failed to seize upon it as material for art. It was at
Court, the Court of a great virgin Queen, that the
equality of social privileges for women was first estab-
lished ; it was a courtier who introduced heroines into
our drama.

SECTION II. The Eight Plays.

Concerning the order of Lyly's plays there is, as we
have seen, some difference of opinion. The discussion
between Mr Bond and Mr Baker in reality turns upon
the interpretation of the allegory of Endymion, and it is
therefore one of those questions of literary probability
which can never hope to receive a satisfactory answer.
Both critics, however, are in agreement as to the proper
method of classification. They divide the dramas into
four categories : historical, of which Campaspe is the sole
example ; allegorical, which includes Sapho and Phao,
Endymion, and Midas; pastoral, which includes Gallathea,
The Woman in the Moon, and Love's Metamorphosis; and
lastly realistic, of which again there is only one example,
Mother Bombie. The fault which may be found with this
classification is that the so-called pastoral plays have

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 99

much of the allegorical about them, and it is perhaps
better, therefore, to consider them rather as a subdivision
of class two than as a distinct species.

For the moment putting on one side all questions of
the allegory of Endymion, there are two reasons which
seem to go a long way towards justifying Mr Bond for
placing Campaspe as the earliest of Lyly's plays. In the
first place the atmosphere of Eupkues, which becomes
weaker in the other plays, is so unmistakeable in this
historical drama as to force the conclusion upon us that
they belong to the same period. The painter Apelles,
whose name seemed almost to obsess Lyly in his novel,
is one of the chief characters of Campaspe, and the
dialogue is more decidedly euphuistic than any other
play. . The second point we may notice is one which can
leave very little doubt as to the correctness of Mr Bond's
chronology. Campaspe and Sapho were published before
1585, that is, before Lyly accepted the mastership at the
St Paul's choir school, whereas none of his other plays
came into the printer's hands until after the inhibition of
the boys' acting rights in 1591; the obvious inference
being that Lyly printed his plays only when he had no
interest in preserving the acting rights.

But whatever date we assign to Campaspe, there can
be little doubt that it was one of the first dramas in our
language with an historical background. Indeed, Kynge
JoJian is the only play before 1580 which can claim to
rival it in this respect. But Kynge JoJian was written
solely for the purpose of religious satire, being an attack
upon the priesthood and Church abuses. It must, there-
fore, be classed among those political moralities, of which
so many examples appeared during the early part of the
1 6th century. Campaspe, on the other hand, is entirely
devoid of any ethical or satirical motive. Allegory,

7—2

100 JOHN LYLY

which Lyly was able to put to his own peculiar uses,
is here quite absent. The sole aim of its author was to
provide amusement, and in this respect it must have
been entirely successful. The play is interesting, and at
times amusing, even to a modern reader ; but to those
who witnessed its performance at Blackfriars, and, two
years later, at the Court, it would appear as a marvel of
wit and dramatic power after the crude material which
had hitherto been offered to them. In the choice of his
subject Lyly shows at once that he is an artist with a
feeling for beauty, even if he seldom rises to its sublimi-
ties. The story of the play, taken from Pliny, is that of
Alexander's love for his Theban captive Campaspe, and
of his subsequent self-sacrifice in giving her up to her
lover Apelles. The social change, which I have sought
to indicate in the preceding pages, is at once evident in
this play. " We calling Alexander from his grave," says
its Prologue1, " seeke only who was his love"; and the
remark is a sweep of the hat to the ladies of the Court^
whose importance, as an integral part of the audience, is
now for the first time openly acknowledged. " Alexander,
the great conqueror of the world," says Lyly with his
hand upon his heart, "only interests me as a lover."
The whole motive of the play, which would have been
meaningless to a mediaeval audience, is a compliment to
the ladies. It is as if our author nets Mars with Venus,
and presents the shamefaced god as an offering of flattery
to the Queen and her Court. Campaspe is, in fact, the
first romantic drama, not only the forerunner of Shake-
speare, but a remote ancestor of Hernani and the iQth
century French theatre. " The play's defect," says
Mr Bond, " is one of passion " — a criticism which is
applicable to all Lyly's dramas ; and yet we must not

1 From Prologue at the Court.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST IOI

forget that Lyly was the earliest to deal with passion
dramatically. The love of Alexander is certainly un-
emotional, not to say callous ; but possibly the great
monarch's equanimity was a veiled tribute to the sup-
posed indifference of the virgin Queen to all matters of
Cupid's trade. Between Campaspe and Apelles, how-
ever, we have scenes which are imbued, if not vitalized,
by passion. Lyly was a beginner, and his fault lay in
attempting too much. Caring more for brilliancy of
dialogue than for anything else, he was no more likely
to be successful here, in portraying passion through con-
versation weighted by euphuism, than he had been in his
novel. Yet his endeavour to depict the conflict of mas-
culine passion with feminine wit, impatient sallies neatly
parried, deliberate lunges quietly turned aside, was in
every way praiseworthy. "A witte apt to conceive and
quickest to answer" is attributed by Alexander to Cam-
paspe, and, though she exhibits few signs of it, yet in his
very idea of endowing women with wit Lyly leads us on
to the high-road of comedy leading to Congreve.

In addition to the romantic elements above described,
we have here also that page-prattle which is so charac-
teristic of all Lyly's plays. These urchins, full of mischief
and delighting in quips, were probably borrowed from
Edwardes, but Lyly made them all his own ; and one
can understand how naturally their parts would be played
by his boy-actors. Their repartee, when it is not pulling
to pieces some Latin quotation familiar to them at school,
or ridiculing a point of logic, is often really witty. One
of them, overhearing the hungry Manes at strife with
Diogenes over the matter of an overdue dinner, exclaims
to his friend, "This is their use, nowe do they dine one
upon another." Diogenes again, in whom we may see
the prototype of Shakespeare's Timon, is amusing enough

102 JOHN LYLY

at times with his " dogged " snarlings and sallies which
frequently however miss their mark. He and the pages
form an underplot of farce, upon which Lyly improved
in his later plays, bringing it also more into connexion
with the main plot. In passing, we may notice that few
of Shakespeare's plays are without this farcical sub-
stratum.

Leaving the question of dramatic construction and
characterization for a more general treatment later, we
now pass on to the consideration of Lyly's allegorical
plays. The absence of all allegory from Campaspe shows
that Lyly had broken with the morality : and we seem
therefore to be going back, when two years later we have
an allegorical play from his pen. But in reality there is
no retrogression ; for with Lyly allegory is not an ethical
instrument. I have mentioned examples of plays before
his day which employed the machinery of the morality,
for the purposes of political and religious satire. The
old form of drama seems to have developed a keen
sensibility to double entendre among theatre-goers.
Nothing indeed is so remarkable about the Elizabethan
stage as the secret understanding which almost in-
variably existed between the dramatist and his audience.
We have already had occasion to notice it in connexion
with Field's parody of Kyd. The spectators were always
on the alert to detect some veiled reference to prominent
political figures or to current affairs. Often in fact, as
was natural, they would discover hints where nothing
was implied; and for one Mrs Gallup in modern America
there must have been a dozen in every auditorium of
Elizabethan England. Such over-clever busybodies
would readily twist an innocent remark into treason or
sacrilege, and therefore, long before Lyly's time, it was
customary for a playwright to defend himself in the pro-

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 1 03

logue against such treatment, by denying any ambiguity
in his dialogue. In an audience thus susceptible to
innuendo Lyly saw his opportunity. He was a courtier
writing for the Court, he was also, let us add, anxious to
obtain a certain coveted post at the Revels' Office. He
was an artist not entirely without ideals, yet ever ready
to curry favour and to aim at material advantages by
his literary facility. The idea therefore of writing dramas
which should be, from beginning to end, nothing but an
ingenious compliment to his royal mistress would not be
in the least distasteful to him. But we must not attribute
too much to motives of personal ambition. Spenser's
Faery Queen was not published until 1590; but Lyly
had known Spenser before the latter's departure for
Ireland, and, even if the scheme of that poet's master-
piece had not been confided to him, the ideas which it
contained were in the air. The cult of Elizabeth, which
was far from being a piece of insincere adulation, had
for some time past been growing into a kind of literary
religion. Even to us, there is something magical about
the great Queen, and we can hardly be surprised that the
pagans of those days hailed her as half divine. When
Lyly commenced his career, she had been on the throne
for twenty years, in itself a wonderful fact to those who
could remember the gloom which had surrounded her
accession. Through a period of infinite danger both at
home and abroad she had guided England with in-
trepidity and success ; and furthermore she had done
all this single-handed, refusing to share her throne with
a partner even for the sake of protection, and yet im-
proving upon the Habsburg policy1 by making coquetry
the pivot of her diplomacy. It was no wonder therefore
that,

1 " Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube."

104 JOHN LYLY

"As the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation fancy free,"

the courtiers she fondled, and the artists she patronized,
should half in fancy, half in earnest, think of her as
something more than human, and search the fables of
their newly discovered classics for examples of enthroned
chastity and unconquerable virgin queens.

All Lyly's plays except Campaspe and Mother Bombie
are written in this vein ; each, as Symonds beautifully
puts it, is " a censer of exquisitely chased silver, full of
incense to be tossed before Elizabeth upon her throne."
In the three plays Sapho and Pkao, Endymion, and
Midas this element of flattery is more prominent than
in the others, inasmuch as they are not only full of com-
pliments unmistakeably directed towards the Queen, but
they actually seek to depict incidents from her reign
under the guise of classical mythology. It is for this
reason that they have been classified under the label of
allegory. It is quite possible, however, to read and enjoy
these plays without a suspicion of any inner meaning ;
nor does the absence of such suspicion render the action
of the play in any way unintelligible, so skilfully does
Lyly manipulate his story. With a view, therefore, to
his position in the history of Elizabethan drama, and to
the lessons which he taught those who came after him,
the superficial interpretation of each play is all that need
engage our attention, and we shall content ourselves
with briefly indicating the actual incident which it
symbolizes.

The story of Sapho and P/iao is, very shortly, as
follows. Phao, a poor ferryman, is endowed by Venus
with the gift of beauty. Sapho, who in Lyly's hands
is stripped of all poetical attributes and becomes simply
a great Queen of Sicily, sees him and instantly falls in

LYLY THE DRAMATIST IO5

love with him. To conceal her passion, she pretends to
her ladies that she has a fever, at the same time sending
for Phao, who is rumoured to have herbs for such com-
plaints. Meanwhile Venus herself falls a victim to the
charms she has bestowed upon the ferryman. Cupid is
therefore called in to remedy matters on her behalf.
The boy, who plays a part which no one can fail to
compare with that of Puck in the Midsummer Nights
Dream, succeeds in curing Sapho's passion, but, much to
his mother's disgust, won over by the Queen's attractions,
refuses to go further, and even inspires Phao with a
loathing for the goddess. The play ends with Phao's
departure from Sicily in despair, and Cupid's definite
rebellion from the rule of Venus, resulting in his re-
maining with Sapho. In this story, which is practically
a creation of Lyly's brain, though of course it is founded
upon the classical tale of Sapho's love for Phao, our
playwright presents under the form of allegory the
history of Alencon's courtship of Elizabeth. Sapho,
Queen of Sicily, is of course Elizabeth, Queen of England.
The difficulty of Alencon's (that is Phao's) ugliness is
overcome by the device of making it love's task to
confer beauty upon him. Phao like Alen^on quits the
island and its Queen in despair ; while the play is
rounded off by the pretty compliment of representing
love as a willing captive in Elizabeth's Court.

As a play Sapho and Phao shows a distinct advance
upon Campaspe. The dialogue is less euphuistic, and
therefore much more effective. The conversation be-
tween Sapho and Phao, in the scene where the latter
comes with his herbs to cure the Queen, is very charming,
and well expresses the passion which the one is too
humble and the other too proud to show.

io6

JOHN LYLY

PHAO. I know no hearb to make lovers sleepe but

Heartesease, which because it groweth

so high, I cannot reach : for —
SAPHO. For whom ?
PHAO. For such as love.
SAPHO. It groweth very low, and I can never stoop

to it, that—
PHAO. That what ?
SAPHO. That I may gather it : but why doe you

sigh so, Phao ?

PHAO. It is mine use Madame.
SAPHO. It will doe you harme and mee too : for I

never heare one sighe, but I must sigh't

also.
PHAO. It were best then that your Ladyship give

me leave to be gone : for I can but sigh.
SAPHO. Nay stay : for now I beginne to sighe, I

shall not leave though you be gone.

But what do you thinke best for your

sighing to take it away ?
PHAO. Yew, Madame.
SAPHO. Mee ?

PHAO. No Madame, yewe of the tree.
SAPHO. Then will I love yewe the better, and

indeed I think it should make me sleepe

too, therefore all other simples set aside,

I will simply use onely yewe.
PHAO. Doe Madame : for I think nothing in the

world so good as yewe1.

Altogether there is a great increase in general vitality
in this play. Lyly draws nearer to the conception of
ideal comedy. " Our interest," he tells us in his Pro-
logue, "was at this time to move inward delight not

1 Sapho and Phao, Act ill. Sc. iv. 60-85.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST IO/

outward lightnesse, and to breede (if it might be) soft
smiling, not loud laughing"; and to this end he tends
to minimize the purely farcical element. The pages are
still present, but they are balanced by a group of
Sapho's maids-in-vvaiting who discuss the subject of love
upon the stage with great frankness and charm. Mileta,
the leader of this chorus, is, we may suspect, a portrait
drawn from life ; she is certainly much more convincing
than the somewhat shadowy Campaspe. The figures in
Lyly's studio are limited in number — Camilla, Lucilla,
Campaspe, Mileta, all come from the same mould : in
Pandion we may discover Euphues under a new name,
and the surly Vulcan is only another edition of the
"crabbed Diogenes." And yet each of these types
becomes more life-like as he proceeds, and if the puppets
that he left to his successors were not yet human, they
had learnt to walk the stage without that angularity of
movement and jerkiness of speech which betray the
machine.

Departing for a moment from the strictly chrono-
logical order, and leaving Gallathea for later treatment,
we pass on to Endymion, the second of the allegorical
dramas, and, without doubt, the boldest in conception
and the most beautiful in execution of all Lyly's plays.
The story is founded upon the classical fable of Diana's
kiss to the sleeping boy, but its arrangement and de-
velopment are for the most part of Lyly's invention :
indeed, he was obliged to frame it in accordance with
the facts which he sought to allegorize. All critics are
agreed in identifying Cynthia with Elizabeth and En-
dymion with Leicester, but they part company upon the
interpretation of the play as a whole. The story is
briefly as follows. Endymion, forsaking his former love
Tellus, contracts an ardent passion for Cynthia, who, in

108 JOHN LYLY

accordance with her character as moon-goddess, meets
his advances with coolness. Tellus determines to be
revenged, and, by the aid of a sorceress Dipsas, sends
the youth into a deep sleep from which no one can
awaken him. Cynthia learns what has befallen, and
although she does not suspect Tellus, she orders the
latter to be shut up in a castle for speaking maliciously
of Endymion. She then sends Eumenides, the young
man's great friend, to seek out a remedy. This man is
deeply in love with Semele, who scorns his passion, and
therefore, when he reaches a magic fountain which will
answer any question put to it, he is so absorbed with his
own troubles as almost to forget those of his friend.
A carefully thought-out piece of writing follows, for he
debates with himself whether to use his one question for
an enquiry about his love or his sleeping friend. Friend-
ship and duty conquer at length, and, looking into the
well, he discovers that the remedy for Endymion's sick-
ness is a kiss from Cynthia's lips. He returns with his
message, the kiss is given, Endymion, grown old after
40 years' sleep, is restored to youth, the treachery of
Tellus is discovered and eventually forgiven, and the
play ends amid a peal of marriage bells. Endymion,
however, is left unmarried, knowing as he does that
lowly and distant worship is all he can be allowed to
offer the virgin goddess. The play, of course, has a
farcical underplot which is only connected very slightly
with the main story by Sir Tophas' ridiculous passion
for Dipsas. His love in fact is presented as a kind of
caricature of Endymion's, and he is the laughing-stock
of a number of pages who gambol and play pranks after
the usual manner of Lyly's boys. The solution of the
allegory lies mainly in the interpretation of Tellus'
character, and I cannot but agree with Mr Bond when

LYLY THE DRAMATIST IOQ

he decides that Tellus is Mary Queen of Scots. He is
perhaps less convincing where he pairs Endymion with
Sidney, and Semele with Penelope Devereux, the famous
Stella. Lastly we may notice his suggestion that Tophas
may be Gabriel Harvey, which certainly appears to be
more probable than Halpin's theory that Stephen Gosson
is here meant1. But the whole question is one of such
obscurity, and of so little importance from the point of
view of my argument, that I shall not attempt to enter
further into it.

In Endymion Lyly shows that his mastership of
St Paul's has increased his knowledge of stage-craft.
For example, while Campaspe contains at least four
imaginary transfers in space in the middle of a scene,
Endymion has only one : and it is a transfer which
requires a much smaller stretch of imagination than
the constant appearance of Diogenes' tub upon the
stage whenever and wherever comic relief was con-

o

sidered necessary. There is improvement moreover in
characterization. But the interesting thing about this
play is Shakespeare's intimate knowledge of it, visible
chiefly in the Midsummer Night's Dream. The well-
known speech of Oberon to Puck, directing him to
gather the " little western flower," is to all intents and
purposes a beautiful condensation of Lyly's allegory.
One would like, indeed, to think that there was some-
thing more than fancy in Mr Gollancz's suggestion that
Shakespeare when a boy had seen this play of Lyly's
acted at Kenilworth, where Leicester entertained Eliza-
beth ; little William going thither with his father from
the neighbouring town of Stratford. But however that
may be, Endymion certainly had a peculiar fascination
for him ; we may even detect borrowings from the

1 Halpin, Oberon's Vision, Shakespeare Society, 1843.

110 JOHN LYLY

underplot. Tophas' enumeration of the charms of
Dipsas1 foreshadows Thisbe's speech over the fallen
Pyramus2, while, did we not know Lyly's play to be the
earlier, we might suspect the page's song near the sleep-
ing knight to be a clumsy caricature of the graceful
songs of the fairies guarding Titania's dreams. Again
there are parallels in Shakespeare's earliest comedy
Love's Labour's Lost. Sir Tophas, who is undoubtedly
modelled upon Roister Doister, reappears with his page,
as Armado with his attendant Moth. And I have no
doubt that many other resemblances might be dis-
covered by careful investigation. We cannot wonder
that Endymion attracted Shakespeare, for it is the
most " romantic " of all Lyly's plays. Indistinctness of
character seems to be in keeping with an allegory of
moonshine ; and even the mechanical action cannot
spoil the poetical atmosphere which pervades the whole.
Here if anywhere Lyly reached the poetical plane. He
speaks of " thoughts stitched to the starres," of " time
that treadeth all things down but truth," of the " ivy
which, though it climb up by the elme, can never get
hold of the beames of the sunne," and the play is full of
many other quaint poetical conceits.

From the point of view of drama, however, it cannot
be considered equal to the third of the allegorical plays.
As a man of fashion Lyly was nothing if not up to date.
In August 1588 the great Armada had made its abortive
attack upon Cynthia's kingdom, and twelve months were
scarcely gone before the industrious Court dramatist had
written and produced on the stage an allegorical satire
upon his Catholic Majesty Philip, King of Spain. Though
it contains compliments to Elizabeth, Midas is more of

1 Endymion, Act in. Sc. n. 11. 30-60.

2 Cp. also Shakespeare, Sonnet cxxx.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST III

a patriotic than a purely Court play. The story, with
but a few necessary alterations, comes from Ovid's
Metamorphoses^. It is the old tale of the three wishes.
Love, power, and wealth are offered, and Midas chooses
the last. But he soon finds that the gift of turning
everything to gold has its drawbacks. Even his beard
accidentally becomes bullion. He eventually gets rid
of his obnoxious power by bathing in a river. The
fault of the play is that there are, as it were, two sections ;
for now we are introduced to an entirely new situation.
The King chances upon Apollo and Pan engaged in a
musical contest, and, asked to decide between them,
gives his verdict for the goat-foot god. Apollo, in
revenge, endows him with a pair of ass's ears. For
some time he manages to conceal them ; but " murder
will out," for the reeds breathe the secret to the wind.
Midas in the end seeks pardon at Apollo's shrine, and is
relieved of his ears. At the same time he abandons his
project of invading the neighbouring island of Lesbos,
to which continual references are made throughout the
play. This island is of course England ; the golden
touch refers to the wealth of Spanish America, while,
if Halpin be correct, Pan and Apollo signify the Catholic
and the Protestant faith respectively. We may also notice,
in passing, that the ears obviously gave Shakespeare the
idea of Bottom's " transfiguration."

The weakness of the play, as I have said, lies in its
duality of action. In other respects, however, it is cer-
tainly a great advance on its predecessors, especially in
its underplot, which is for the first time connected satis-
factorily with the main argument. Motto, the royal
barber, in the course of his duties, obtains possession
of the golden beard : and the history of this somewhat
1 xi. 85-193.

112 JOHN LYLY

unusual form of treasure affords a certain amount of
amusing farcical relief. It is stolen by one of the Court
pages, Motto recovers it as a reward for curing the thief's
toothache, but he loses it again because, being overheard
hinting at the ass's ears, he is convicted of treason by
the pages, and is blackmailed in consequence. From
this it will be seen that the underplot is more embroi-
dered with incident and is, in every way, better arranged
than in the earlier plays.

We must now turn to the pastoral plays, GallatJica,
TJte Woman in the Moon, and Love's Metamorphosis,
which we may consider together since their stories,
uninspired by any allegorical purpose beyond general
compliments to the Queen, do not require any detailed
consideration. And yet it should be pointed out that
this distinction between Lyly's allegorical and pastoral
plays is more apparent than real. There are shepherds
in Midas, the Queen appears under the mythological
title of Ceres in Love's Metamorphosis. Such overlapping
however is only to be expected, and the division is at
least very convenient for purposes of classification.
Lyly's pastoral plays form, as it were, a link between
the drama and the masque ; indeed, when we consider
that all the Elizabethan dramatists were students of
Lyly, it is possible that comedy and masque may have
been evolved from the Lylian mythological play by a
process of differentiation. It may be that our author
increased the pastoral element as the arcadian fashion
came into vogue, but this argument does not hold of
Gallathea, while we are uncertain as to the date of Loves
Metamorphosis. None of these plays are worth consider-
ing in detail, but each has its own particular point of
interest. In Gallathea this is the introduction of girls
in boys' clothes. As far as I know, Lyly is the first to

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 113

use the convenient dramatic device of disguise. How
effective a trick it was, is proved by the manner in which
later dramatists, and in particular Shakespeare, adopted
it. Its full significance cannot be appreciated by us to-
day, for the whole point of it was that the actors, who
appeared as girls dressed up as boys, were, as the audience
knew, really boys themselves ; a fact which doubtless
increased the funniness of the situation. The Woman in
the Moon gives us a man disguised in his wife's clothes,
which is a variation of the same trick. But the import-
ance of The Woman lies in its poetical form. Most
Elizabethan scholars have decided that this play was
Lyly's first dramatic effort, on the authority of the
Prologue, which bids the audience

" Remember all is but a poet's dream,
The first he had in Phoebus' holy bower,
But not the last, unless the first displease."

But the maturity and strength of the drama argue a
fairly considerable experience in its author, and we shall
therefore be probably more correct if we place it last in-
stead of first of Lyly's plays, interpreting the words of
the Prologue as simply implying that it was Lyly's first
experiment in blank verse, inspired possibly by the
example of Marlowe in Tamburlaine and of Shakespeare
in Loves Labours Lost1. But, whatever its date, The
Woman in the Moon must rank among the earliest
examples of blank verse in our language, and, as such,
its importance is very great. In Loves Metamorphosis
there is nothing of interest equal to those points we have
noticed in the other two plays of the same class. The
only remarkable thing, indeed, about it is the absence of
that farcical under-current which appears in all his other

1 Bond, in. p. 234.
w. 8

114 JOHN LYLY

plays. Mr Bond suggests, with great plausibility, that
such an element had originally appeared, but that, be-
cause it dealt with dangerous questions of the time,
perhaps with the Marprelatc controversy, it was ex-
punged.

It now remains to say a few words upon Mother
Bombie, which forms the fourth division of Lyly's
dramatic writings. Though it presents many points
of similarity in detail to his other plays, its general
atmosphere is so different (displaying, indeed, at times
distinct errors of taste) that I should be inclined to assign
it to a friend or pupil of Lyly, were it not bound up with
Blount's Sixe Court Comedies*, and therein said to be
written by " the onely Rare Poet of that time, the \vittie(
comical, facetiously quicke, and unparalleled John Lilly
master of arts." It is clever in construction, but un-
deniably tedious. It shows that Lyly had learnt much
from Udall, Stevenson, and Gascoigne, and perhaps its
chief point of interest is that it links these writers to the
later realists, Ben Jonson, and that student of London
life, who is surely one of the most charming of all the
Elizabethan dramatists, whimsical and delightful Thomas
Dekker. Mother Bombie was an experiment in the drama
of realism, the realism that Nash was employing so
successfully in his novels. It has been labelled as our
earliest pure farce of well-constructed plot and literary
form, but, though it is certainly on a much higher plane
than Roister Doister, it would only create confusion if
we denied that title to Udall's play. Yet, despite its
comparative unimportance, and although it is evident
that Lyly is here out of his natural element, Mother
Bombie is interesting as showing the (to our ideas) extra-
ordinary confusion of artistic ideals which, as I have

1 For title-page, Bond, III. p. i, date 1632.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 115

already noticed, is the remarkable thing about the
Renaissance in England. Here we have a courtier, a
writer of allegories, of dream-plays, the first of our
mighty line of romanticists, producing a somewhat
vulgar realistic play of rustic life. There is nothing
anomalous in this. " Violence and variation," which
someone has described as the two essentials of the ideal
life, were certainly the distinguishing marks of the New
Birth ; and the men of that age demanded it in their
literature. The drama of horror, the drama of insanity,
the drama of blood, all were found on the Elizabethan
stage, and all attracted large audiences. People delighted
to read accounts of contemporary crime ; often these
choice morsels were dished up for them by some famous
writer, as Kyd did in The Murder of John Brewer. The
taste for realism is by no means a purely iQth century
product. Moreover, the Elizabethans soon wearied
of sameness ; only a writer of the greatest versatility,
such as Shakespeare, could hope for success, or at least
financial success ; and it was, perhaps, in order to
revive his waning popularity that Lyly took to realism.
But the child of fashion is always the earliest to
become out of date, and we cannot think that Mother
Bombie did much towards improving our author's re-
putation.

At this point of our enquiry it will be as well to say
a few words upon the lyrics which Lyly sprinkled broad-
cast over his plays. From an aesthetic point of view
these are superior to anything else he wrote. " Fore-
shortened in the tract of time," his novel, his plays, have
become forgotten, and it is as the author of Cupid and
my Campaspe played that he is alone known to the lover
of literature There is no need to enter into an investi-
gation of the numerous anonymous poems which Mr Bond

8—2

Il6 JOHN LYLY

has claimed for him1; even if we knew for certain that
he was their author, they are so mediocre in themselves
as to be unworthy of notice, scarcely I think of recovery.
But let us turn to the songs of his dramas, of which there
are 32 in all. These are, of course, unequal in merit, but
the best are worthy to be ranked with Shakespeare's
lyrics, and our greatest dramatist was only following
Lyly's example when he introduced lyrics into his plays.
I have already pointed out that music was an important
element in our early comedy. Udall had introduced
songs into his Roister Doister, and we have them also in
Gammer Gurton and Damon and Pithias, but never, be-
fore Lyly's day, had they taken so prominent a part in
drama, for no previous dramatist had possessed a tithe
of Lyly's lyrical genius. Every condition favoured our
author in this introduction of songs into his plays. He
had tradition at his back ; he was intensely interested in
music, and probably composed the airs himself; and
lastly he was master of a choir school, and would
therefore use every opportunity for displaying his pupils'
voices on the stage. Too much stress, however, must
not be laid upon this last condition, because Lyly had
already written three songs for Campaspe and four for
Sapho arid Phao before he became connected with
St Paul's, a fact which points again to de Vere, himself
a lyrist of considerable powers, as Lyly's adviser and
master. Doubts, indeed, have been cast upon Lyly's
authorship of these lyrics on the ground that they are
omitted from the first edition of the plays. But we need,
I think, have no hesitation in accepting Lyly as their
creator, since the omission in question is fully accounted
for by the fact that they were probably written separately
from the plays, and handed round amongst the boys

1 Bond, in. p. 433.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 1 1/

together with the musical score1. These songs are of
various kinds and of widely different value. We have,
for example, the purely comic poem, probably accom-
panied by gesture and pantomime, such as the song of
Petulus from Midas, beginning, " O my Teeth ! deare
Barber ease me," with interruptions and refrains supplied
by his companion and the scornful Motto. Many of
these songs, indeed, are cast into dialogue form, some-
times each page singing a verse by himself, as in " O for
a Bowie of fatt canary." This last is the earliest of
Lyly's wine-songs, which for swing and vigour are among
some of the best in our language, reminding us irresistibly
of those pagan chants of the mediaeval wandering scholar
which the late Mr Symonds has collected for us in his
Wine, Woman, and Song. The drinking song, " lo
Bacchus," which occurs in Mother Bombie, is undoubt-
edly, I think, modelled on one of these earlier student
compositions ; the reference to the practice of throwing
hats into the fire is alone sufficient to suggest it. But it
is as a writer of the lyric proper that Lyly is best known.
No one but Herrick, perhaps, has given us more graceful
love trifles woven about some classical conceit. Mr
Palgrave has familiarized us with the best, Cupid and
my Campaspe played, but there are others only less
charming than this. The same theme is employed in
the following :

' ' O Cupid ! Monarch over Kings !
Wherefore hast thou feet and wings ?
Is it to show how swift thou art,
When thou would'st wound a tender heart ?
Thy wings being clipped, and feet held still,
Thy bow so many would not kill.
It is all one in Venus' wanton school
Who highest sits, the wise man or the fool !

1 Bond, I. p. 36, II. p. 265.

118 JOHN LYLY

Fools in love's college

Have far more knowledge
To read a woman over,
Than a neat prating lover.

Nay, 'tis confessed
That fools please women best x ! "

Another quotation must be permitted. This time it is
no embroidered conceit, but one of those lyrics of pure
nature music, of which the Renaissance poets were so
lavish, touched with the fire of Spring, with the light of
hope, bird-notes untroubled by doubt, unconscious of
pessimism, which are therefore all the more charming
for us who dwell amid sunsets of intense colouring, who
can see nothing but the hectic splendours of autumn.
For the melancholy nightingale the poet has surprise
and admiration, no sympathy:

"What Bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O 'tis the ravished Nightingale.
JUS> Jug> Jug> JUS> tereu, she cries,
And still her woes at Midnight rise.
Brave prick song! who is't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
The Morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat
Poor Robin-red-breast tunes his note.
Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing
' Cuckoo ' to welcome in the spring,
'Cuckoo' to 'welcome in the spring2."

This delightful song comes from the first of Lyly's
dramas, and few even of Shakespeare's lyrics can
equal it. Indeed, coming as it does at the dawn of the
Elizabethan era, it seems like the cuckoo herself "to
welcome in the spring."

1 Mother Bombie, Act in. Sc. in. 1-14.

2 Campaspe, Act v. Sc. I. 32-44. I have modernised the spelling.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 119

SECTION III. Lylfs dramatic Genius and Influence.

Having thus very briefly passed in review the various
plays that Lyly bequeathed to posterity1, we must say
a few words in conclusion on their main characteristics,
the advance they made upon their predecessors, and
their influence on later drama.

In Lyly, it is worth noticing, England has her first
professional dramatist. Unlike those who had gone
before him he was no amateur, he wrote for his living, and
he wrote as one interested in the technical side of the
theatre. They had played with drama, producing indeed
interesting experiments, but accomplishing only what
one would expect from men who merely took a lay
interest in the theatre, and who possessed a certain
knowledge, scholastic rather than technical, of the
methods of the classical playwrights. He, having
probably learnt at Oxford all there was to be known
concerning the drama of the ancient world, came to
London, and, definitely deciding to embark upon the
dramatist's career, saw and studied such moralities and
plays as were to be seen, aided and directed by the
experience and knowledge of his patron : finding in
the moralities, allegory ; in the plays of Udall and
Stevenson, farce ; in Damon and Pithias, a romantic play
upon a classical theme ; and in Gascoigne's Supposes,
brilliant prose dialogue. That he was induced to make
such a study, and that he was enabled to carry it out so
thoroughly, was due partly, I think, to his peculiar
financial position. As secretary of de Vere, and later
as Vice-master of St Paul's School, he was independent
of the actual necessity of bread-winning, which forced

1 I have said nothing of the Maydes Metamorphosis, as most critics are
agreed in assigning it to some unknown author.

I2O JOHN LYLY

even Shakespeare to pander to the garlic-eating multi-
tude he loathed, and wrung from him the cry,

" Alas, 'tis true I have been here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear "...

But, on the other hand, neither post was sufficiently
remunerative to secure for him the comforts, still less
the luxuries, of life. His income required supplement-
ing, if only for the sake of meeting his tobacco bill,
though I have a strong suspicion that the bills sent in
to him served no more useful purpose than to light his
pipe. But, however, adopting the theatre as his pro-
fession, he would naturally make a serious study of
dramatic art, and, having no need for constantly filling
the maw of present necessity, he could undertake such
a study thoroughly and at his leisure. And to this
cause his peculiar importance in the history of the
Elizabethan stage is mainly due. Next to Jonson, the
most learned of all the dramatists, yet possessing little of
their poetical capacity, he set them the most conspicuous
example in technique and stage- craft, in the science of
play-writing, which they would probably have been far
too busy to acquire for themselves. Lyly's eight dramas
formed the rough-hewn but indispensable foundation-
stone of the Elizabethan edifice. Spenser has been
called the poet's poet, Lyly was in his own days the
playwright's dramatist.

Of his dramatic construction we have already spoken.
We have noticed that he introduced the art of disguise;
that he varied his action by songs, accompanied perhaps
with pantomime. Mr Bond suggests further that he
probably did much to extend the use of stage properties
and scenery1. But the real importance of his plays lies

1 Bond, II. pp. 265-266.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 121

in their plot construction and character drawing, points
which as yet we have only touched upon. The way in
which he manages the action of his plays shows a skill
quite unapproached by anything that had gone before,
and more pronounced than that of many which came
after. Too often indeed we have dialogues, scenes, and
characters which have no connexion with the develop-
ment of the story ; but when we consider how frequently
Shakespeare sinned in this respect, we cannot blame
Lyly for introducing a philosophical discussion between
Plato and Aristotle, as in Campaspe, or those merry
altercations between his pages which added so much
colour and variety to his plays. However many inter-
ruptions there were, he never allowed his audience to
forget the main business, as Dekker, for example, so
frequently did. Nowhere, again, in Lyly's plays are
the motives inadequate to support the action, as they
were in the majority of dramas previous to 1580. Even
Alexander's somewhat tame surrender of Campaspe is
quite in accordance with his royal dignity and magna-
nimity; and, moreover, we are warned in the third act
that the King's love is slight and will fade away at the
first blast of the war trumpet, for as he tells us he is
"not so far in love with Campaspe as with Bucephalus,
if occasion serve either of conflict or of conquest1."
In Endymion the motives are perhaps most skilfully
displayed, and lead most naturally on to the action, and
in this play, also, Lyly is perhaps most successful in
creating that dramatic excitement which is caused by
working up to an apparent deadlock (due to the
intrigues of Tellus), and which is made to resolve itself
and disappear in the final act. Closely allied with the
development of action by the presentation of motives

1 Campaspe, Act in. Sc. iv. 31.

122 JOHN LYLY

is the weaving of the plot. And in this Lyly is not so
satisfactory, though, of course, far in advance of his
predecessors. A steady improvement, however, is dis-
cernible as he proceeds. In the earlier plays the page
element does little more than afford comic relief: the
encounters between Manes and his friends, and between
Manes and his master, can hardly be dignified by the
name of plot. It is in Midas, as I have already
suggested, that this farcical under-current displays inci-
dent and action of its own, turning as it does upon the
relations of the pages with Motto and the theft of the
beard. Here again the comic scenes, now connected
together for the first time, are also united with the main
story. But the page element by no means represents
Lyly's only attempt at creating an underplot. It will
be seen from the story of Endymion related above that
in that play our author is not contented with a single
passion-nexus, if the expression may be allowed, that of
Tellus, Cynthia, and Endymion, but he gives us another,
that of Eumenides and Semele, which has no real con-
nexion with the action, but which seriously threatens to
interrupt it at one point. Other interests are hinted at,
rather than developed, by the infatuation of Sir Tophas
for Dipsas, and by the history of the latter's husband.
Though Midas is more advanced in other ways, it
displays nothing like the complexity of Endymion, and
it is moreover, as I have said, cut in two by the want of
connexion between the incident of the golden touch
and that of the ass's ears. Lastly, in Love's Meta-
morphosis, which is without the element of farce, the re-
lations between the nymphs and the shepherds complete
that underplot of passion which is hinted at in Sapho^
in the evident fancy which Mileta shows for Phao, and
developed as we have just noticed in Endymion.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 123

In this plot construction and interweaving, Lyly had
no models except the classics, and we may, therefore,
say that his work in this direction was almost entirely
original. The last-mentioned play was produced at
Court some time before 1590, and we cannot doubt, was
attended by our greatest dramatist. At any rate the
lessons which Shakespeare learnt from Lyly in the
matter of plot complication are visible in the Midsummer
Night's Dream, which was produced in I5951. The in-
tricate mechanism of this play, reminding us with its
four plots (the Duke and Hippolyta, the lovers, the
mechanics, and the fairies) of the miracle with its im-
posing but unimportant divinities in the Rood gallery, its
main stage whereon moved human characters, its Crypt
supplying the rude comic element in the shape of devils,
and its angels who moved from one level to another
welding the whole together, was far beyond Lyly's
powers, but it was only possible even for Shakespeare
after a thorough study of Lyly's methods.

As I have previously pointed out, Lyly was not very
successful in the matter of character drawing. Never,
even for a moment, is passion allowed to disturb the
cultured placidity of the dialogue. The conditions under
which his plays were produced may in part account for
this. The children of Paul's could hardly be expected
to display much light and shade of emotion in their
acting, certainly depth of passion was beyond their
scope. But the fault, I think, lies rather in the dramatist
than in the actors. Lyly's mind was in all probability
altogether of too superficial a nature for a sympathetic
analysis of the human soul. That at least is how I in-
terpret his character. All his work was more " art than
nature," some of it was " more labour than art." On the

1 Sidney Lee, Life, p. 151.

124 JOHN LYLY

technical side his dramatic advance is immense, but we
may look in vain in his dramas for any of that apprecia-
tion of the elemental facts of human nature which can
alone create enduring art. In their characterization,
Lyly's plays do little more than form a link between
Shakespeare and the old morality. This comes out most
strongly in their peculiar method of character grouping.
By a very natural process the moral type is split up with
the intention of giving it life and variety. Thus we have
those groups of pages, of maids-in-\vaiting, of shepherds,
of deities, etc., which are so characteristic of Lyly's plays.
There is no real distinction between page and page, and
between nymph and nymph ; but their merry conversa-
tions give a piquancy and colour to the drama which
make up for, and in part conceal, the absence of character.
All that was necessary for the creation of character was
to fit these pieces of the moral type together again in a
different way, and to breathe the spirit of genius into
the new creation. We can see Lyly feeling towards this
solution of the problem in his portrayal of Gunophilus,
the clown of The Woman in the Moon. This character,
which anticipates the immortal clowns of Shakespeare,
is formed by an amalgamation of the pages in the
previous plays into one comic figure. But Lyly also
attempts to create single figures, in addition to these
group characters which for the most part have little to
do with the action. Often he helps out his poverty of
invention by placing descriptions of one character in the
mouth of another. " How stately she passeth bye, yet
how soberly ! " exclaims Alexander watching Campaspe
at a distance, " a sweet consent in her countenance with
a chaste disdaine, desire mingled with coyness, and I can-
not tell how to tearme it, a curst yeelding modestie ! " —
an excellent piece of description, and one which is very

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 12$

necessary for the animation of the shadowy Campaspe.
At times however Lyly can dispense with such adven-
titious aids. Pipenetta, the fascinating little wench in
Midas and one of our dramatist's most successful crea-
tions, needs no other illumination than her own pert
speeches. Diogenes again is an effective piece of work.
But both these are minor characters who therefore receive
no development, and if we look at the more important
personages of Lyly's portrait gallery, we must agree
with Mr Bond1 that Tellus is the best. She is a character
which exhibits considerable development, and she is also
Lyly's only attempt to embody the evil principle in
woman — a hint for the construction of that marvellous
portrait of another Scottish queen, the Lady Macbeth,
which Lyly just before his death in 1606 may have seen
upon the stage.

On the whole Lyly is most successful when he is
drawing women, which was only as it should be, if we
allow that the feminine element is the very pivot of true
comedy. This he saw, and it is because he was the first
to realise it and to grapple with the difficulties it entailed
that the title of father of English comedy may be given
him without the least reserve or hesitation. Sapho the
haughty but amorous queen, Mileta the mocking but
tender Court lady, Gallathea the shy provincial lass, and
Pipenetta the saucy little maid-servant, fill our stage for
the first time in history with their tears and their laughter,
their scorn of the mere male and their " curst yeelding
modestie," their bold sallies and their bashful blushes.
Nothing like this had as yet been seen in English
literature. I have already pointed out why it was
that woman asserted her place in art at this juncture.
Yet, although the revolution would have come about in

1 Bond, II. p. 284.

126 JOHN LYLY

any case, all honour must be paid to the man who saw
it coming, anticipated it, and determined its fortunes by
the creation of such a number of feminine characters
from every class in the social scale. And if it be true
that he only gave us " their outward husk of wit and
raillery and flirtation," if it be true that his interpretation
of woman was superficial, that he had no understanding
for the soul behind the social mask, for the emotional
and passionate current, now a quiet stream, now a raging
torrent, beneath the layer of etiquette, his work was none
the less important for that.

"Blood and brain and spirit, three
Join for true felicity."

Blood his girls had and brain, but his genius was not
divine enough to bestow upon them the third essential.
Yet they were alive, they were flesh, they had wit, and
in this they are undoubtedly the forerunners not only of
Shakespeare's heroines but of Congreve's and of Mere-
dith's— to mention the three greatest delineators of
women in our language. They are the Undines in the
story of our literature, beautiful and seductive, complete
in everything but soul !

While realising that woman should be the real
protagonist in comedy, Lyly also appreciated the fact
that skilful dialogue and brilliant repartee are only less
important, and that for this purpose prose was more suit-
able than verse. Gascoigne's Supposes was his model in
both these innovations, and yet he would undoubtedly
have adopted them of his own accord without any
outside suggestion. And since The Supposes was a
translation, Campaspe deserves the title of the first purely
English comedy in prose. The Euphues had given him
a reputation for sprightly and witty dialogue, he himself
was possibly known at Court as a brilliant conversation-

LYLY THE DRAMATIST I2/

alist, and therefore when he came to write plays he
would naturally do all in his power to maintain and to
improve his fame in this respect. With his acute sense
of form he would recognise how clumsy had been the
efforts of previous dramatists, and he knew also how
impossible it would be, in verse form, to write witty
dialogue, up to date in the subjects it handled. He
therefore determined to use prose, and, though he ma-
nipulates it somewhat awkwardly in his earlier plays
while still under the influence of the euphuistic fashion,
he steadily improves, as he gains experience of the
function and needs of dialogue, until at length he suc-
ceeds in creating a thoroughly serviceable dramatic
instrument. This departure was a great event in English
literature. Shakespeare was too much of a poet ever to
dispense altogether with verse, but he appreciated the
virtue of prose as a vehicle of comic dialogue, and he
uses it occasionally even in his earliest comedy, Loves
Labours Lost, Ben Jonson on the other hand — perhaps
more than any other Lyly's spiritual heir — wrote nearly
all his comedies in prose. And it is not fanciful I think
to see in Lyly's pointed dialogue, tinged with euphuism,
the forerunner of Congreve's sparkling conversation and
of the epigrammatic writing of our modern English
playwrights.

Such are the main characteristics of Lyly's dramatic
genius. To attempt to trace his influence upon later
writers would be to write a history of the Elizabethan
stage. In the foregoing remarks I have continually in-
dicated Shakespeare's debt to him in matters of detail.
T)ie Midsummer Nights Dream is from beginning to end
full of reminiscences from the plays of the earlier drama-
tist, transmuted, vitalized, and beautified by the genius
of our greatest poet. It is as if he had witnessed in one

128 JOHN LYLY

day a representation of all Lyly's dramatic work, and
wearied by the effort of attention had fallen asleep and
dreamt this Dream. Love's Labour s Lost is only less
indebted to Lyly ; indeed nearly all Shakespeare's plays,
certainly all his comedies, exhibit the same influence :
for he knew his Lyly through and through, and his
assimilative power was unequalled. Shakespeare might
almost be said to be a combination of Marlowe and Lyly
plus that indefinable something which made him the
greatest writer of all time. Marlowe, his master in
tragedy, was also his master in poetry, in that strength
of conception and beauty of execution which together
make up the soul of drama. Lyly, besides the lesson he
taught him in comedy, was also his model for dramatic
construction, brilliancy of dialogue, technical skill, and all
that comprises the science of play-making — things which
were perhaps of more moment to him, with his scanty
classical knowledge, than Marlowe's lesson which he had
little need of learning. And what we have said of
Shakespeare may be said of Elizabethan drama as a
whole. " Marlowe's place," writes Mr Havelock Ellis,
" is at the heart of English poetry " ; his " high, astound-
ing terms " took the world of his day by storm, his gift
to English literature was the gift of sublime beauty, of
imagination, and passion. Lyly could lay claim to none
of these, but his contribution was perhaps of more im-
portance still. He did the spade-work, and did it once
and for all. With his knowledge of the Classics and of
previous English experiments he wrote plays that, com-
pared with what had gone before, were models of plot
construction, of the development of action, and even of
characterization. Moreover he was before Marlowe by
some nine years in the production of true romantic
drama, and in his treatment of women. In spite, there-

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 1 29

fore, of Marlowe's immense superiority to him on the
aesthetic side, Lyly must be placed above the author of
Edward II. in dynamical importance.

In connexion with Lyly's influence the question of
the exact nature of his dramatic productions is worth
a moment's consideration. Are they masques or dramas ?
and if the latter are they strictly speaking classical or
romantic in form ? As I have already suggested, the
answer to the first half of this question is that they were
neither and both. In Lyly's day drama had not yet
been differentiated from masque, and his plays, therefore,
partook of the nature of both. Produced as they were
for the Court, it was natural that they should possess
something of that atmosphere of pageantry, music, and
pantomime which we now associate with the word
masque. But Elizabeth was economical and preferred
plain drama to the expensive masque displays, though
she was ready to enjoy the latter, if they were provided
for her by Leicester or some other favourite. Lyly's
work therefore never advanced very far in the direction
of the masque, though in its complimentary allegories it
had much in common with it. The question as to
whether it should be described as classical rather than
as romantic is not one which need detain us long. It is
interesting however as it again brings out the peculiarity
of Lyly's position. It may indeed be claimed for him
that all sections of Elizabethan drama, except perhaps
tragedy, are to be found in embryo in his plays. I have
said that he was the first of the romanticists, but he was
no less the first important writer of classical drama.
Gorbuduc and its like had been tedious and clumsy
imitations, and, moreover, they had imitated Seneca, who
was a late classic. Lyly, though the Greek dramatists
were unknown to him, had probably studied Aristotle's

w, 9

130 JOHN LYLY

Poetics, and was certainly acquainted with Horace's Ars
Poetica, and with the comedies of Terence and Plautus.
He was, therefore, an authority on matters dramatic, and
could boast of a learning. on the subject of technique
which few of his contemporaries or his successors could
lay claim to, and which they were only too ready to
glean second-hand. And yet, though he was wise
enough to appreciate all that the classics could teach
him, he was a romanticist at heart, or perhaps it would
be better to say that he threw the beautiful and loosely
fitting garment of romanticism over the classical frame
of his dramas. And even in the matter of this frame he
was not always orthodox. He bowed to the tradition of
the unities : but he frequently broke with it ; in The
Woman alone does he confine the action to one day ;
and, though he is more careful to observe unity of place,
imaginary transfers occurring in the middle of scenes
indicate his rebellion against this restriction. Neverthe-
less, when all is said, he remains, with the exception of
Jonson, the most classical of all Elizabethan playwrights,
and just as he anticipates the i/thand i8th centuries in
his prose, so in his dramas we may discover the first
competent handling of those principles and restrictions
which, more clearly enunciated by Ben Jonson, became
iron laws for the post-Elizabethan dramatists.

It is this " balance between classic precedent and
romantic freedom1" that constitutes his supreme im-
portance, not only in Elizabethan literature, but even
in the history of subsequent English drama. From
Lyly we may trace the current of romanticism, through
Shakespeare, to Goethe and Victor Hugo ; in Lyly
also we may see the first embodiment of that classical
tradition which even Shakespeare's "purge" could do

1 Bond, II. p. 266.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 131

nothing to check, and which was eventually to lay its
dead hand upon the art of the i8th century. May we
not say more than this ? Is he not the first name in a
continuous series from 1580 to our own day, the first
link in the chain of dramatic development, which binds
the " singing room of Powles " to the Lyceum of Irving ?
And it is interesting to notice that the principle which
he was the first to express shows at the present moment
evident signs of exhaustion ; for its future developments
seem to be limited to that narrow strip of social melo-
drama, which lies between the devil of the comic opera
and the deep sea of the Ibsenic problem play. Indeed
it would not be altogether fanciful, I think, to say that
The Importance of being Earnest finishes the process that
Campaspe started ; and to view that process as a circle
begun in euphuism, and completed in aestheticism.

9—2

CHAPTER IV.

CONCLUSION.

AT the beginning of this essay I gave a short account
of the main facts of our author's life, reserving my judg-
ment upon his character and genius until after the
examination of his works. That examination which
I have now concluded is far too superficial in character
to justify a psychological synthesis such as that advo-
cated by M. Hennequin1. But though this essay cannot
claim to have exhausted the subject of the ways and
means of Lyly's art, yet in the course of our survey we
have had occasion to notice several interesting points in
reference to his mind and character, which it will be well
to bring together now in order to give a portrait, however
inadequate, of the man who played so important a part
in English literature.

Nash supplies the only piece of contemporary infor-
mation about his person and habits, and all he tells us
is that he was short of stature and that he smoked.
But Ben Jonson gives us an unmistakeable caricature
of him under the delightfully appropriate name of
Fastidious Brisk in Every Man out of His Humour.
He describes him as a " neat, spruce, affecting courtier,
one that wears clothes well, and in fashion ; practiseth

1 La Critique Scientifique.

CONCLUSION 133

by his glass how to salute ; speaks good remnants not-
withstanding his base viol and tobacco ; swears tersely
and with variety ; cares not what lady's favour he belies,
or great man's familiarity : a good property to perfume
the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man's
horse to praise and back him as his own. Or, for a need
can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with
the gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand1."
Allowing for the exaggeration of satire, we cannot
doubt that this portrait is in the main correct. It
indicates a man who follows fashion, even in swearing,
to the excess of foppery, who delights in scandal, who
contracts debts with an easy conscience, and who is
withal a merry fellow and a wit. All this is in accord-
ance with what we know of his life. We can picture
him at Oxford serenading the Magdalen dons with his
" base viol," or perhaps organizing a night party to
disturb the slumbers of some insolent tradesman who
had dared to insist upon payment ; his neat little figure
leading a gang of young rascals, and among them the
" sea-dog " Hakluyt, the sturdy and as yet unconverted
Gosson, the refined Watson, and perchance George
Pettie concealing his thorough enjoyment of the situa-
tion by a smile of elderly amusement. Or yet again we
can see him at the room of some boon companion
seriously announcing to a convulsed assembly his in-
tention of applying for a fellowship, and when the last
quip had been hurled at him through clouds of smoke
and the laughter had died down, proposing that the
house should go into committee for the purpose of
concocting the now famous letter to Burleigh. When
we next catch a glimpse of him he is no longer the
madcap ; he walks with such dignity as his stature
1 From the Preface.

134 JOHN LYLY

permits, for he is now author of the much-talked-of
Anatomy of Wit, and one of the most fashionable young
men of the Court. What elaboration of toilet, what
adjustment and readjustment of ruffles and lace, what
bowing and scraping before the glass, preceded that
great event of his life — his presentation to the Queen —
can only be guessed at. But we can well picture him,
following his magnificently over-dressed patron up the
long reception-room, his heart beating with pleasurable
excitement, yet his manners not forgotten in the hour
of his pride, as he nods to an acquaintance and bows
with sly demureness to some Iffida or Camilla. Those
were the days of his success, the happiest period of his
life when, as secretary to the Lord Chamberlain and
associate of the highest in the land, he breathed his
native atmosphere, the praises and flattery of a fickle
world of fashion. But, time-server as he was, he was no
sycophant. Leaving de Vere's service after a sharp
quarrel, he was not ashamed to take up the profession
of teaching in which he had already had some experience.
We see him next, therefore, a master of St Paul's,
engrossed in the not unpleasant duties of drilling his
pupils for the performance of his plays, accompanying
their songs on his instrument, or himself taking his
place on the stage, now as Diogenes in his ubiquitous
tub, and now as the golden-bearded and long-eared
Midas. And last of all he appears as the disappointed,
disillusioned man, " infelix academicus ignotus." A wife
and children on his hands, his occupation gone, his hopes
of the Revels Mastership blasted, he becomes desperate,
and writes that last bitter letter to Elizabeth.

The man of fashion out of date, the social success
left high and dry by the unheeding current, he died
eventually in poverty, not because he had wasted his

CONCLUSION 135

substance, like Greene, in Bohemia, but because, thinking
to take Belgravia by storm, he had forgotten that the
foundations of that city are laid on the bodies of her
sons. But leaving

"The thrice three muses mourning for the death
Of Learning late deceased in beggary,"

let us look more closely into the character of this man,
whose brilliant and successful youth was followed by so
sad an old age.

In spite of Professor Raleigh and the moralizing of
EnpJines, we may decide that there was nothing of the
Puritan about him. His life at Oxford, his attachment
to the notorious de Vere, the keen pleasure he took in
the things of this world, are, I think, sufficient to prove
this. His general attitude towards life was one of vigorous
hedonism, not of intellectual asceticism. The ethical
element of Ejiphues links him rather to the already
vanishing Humanism than to the rising Puritanism,
against which all his sympathies were enlisted, as his
contributions to the Marprelate controversy indicate. I
have refrained from touching upon these Mar-Martin
tracts because they possess neither aesthetic nor dyna-
mical importance, being, as Gabriel Harvey — always
ready with the spiteful epigram — describes them, " ale-
house and tinkerly stuffe, nothing worthy a scholar or a
real gentleman." They are worth mentioning, however,
as throwing a light upon the religious prejudices of our
author. He was a courtier and he was a churchman, and
in lending his aid to crush sectarians he thought no more
deeply about the matter than he did in voting as Member
of Parliament against measures which conflicted with his
social inclinations. There was probably not an ounce of
the theological spirit in his whole composition ; for his
refutation of atheism was a youthful essay in dialectics,

136 JOHN LYLY

a bone thrown to the traditions of the moral Court
treatise.

If, indeed, he was seriously minded in any respect, it
was upon the subject of Art. Himself a novelist and
dramatist, he displayed also a keen delight in music, and
evinced a considerable, if somewhat superficial, interest
in painting. And yet, though he apparently made it his
business to know something of every art, he was no
sciolist, and, if he went far afield, it was only in order to
improve himself in his own particular branch. All the
knowledge he acquired in such amateur appreciation was
brought to the service of his literary productions. And
the same may be said of his extensive excursions into
the land of books. No Elizabethan dramatist but Lyly,
with the possible exception of Jonson, could marshal
such an array of learning, and few could have turned even
what they had with such skill and effect to their own
purposes. Lyly had made a thorough study of such
classics as were available in his day, and we have seen
how he employed them in his novel and in his plays.
But the classics formed only a small section of the books
digested by this omnivorous reader. If he could not
read Spanish, French, or Italian, he devoured and as-
similated the numerous translations from those languages
into English, Guevara indeed being his chief inspiration.
Nor did he neglect the literature of his own land. Few
books we may suppose, which had been published in
English previous to 1580, had been unnoticed by him.
We have seen what a thorough acquaintance he possessed
of English drama before his day, and how he exhibits
the influence of the writings of Ascham and perhaps
other humanists, how he laid himself under obligation

o

to the bestiaries and the proverb-books for his euphuistic
philosophy, and how his lyrics indicate a possible study

CONCLUSION 137

of the mediaeval scholar song-books. In conclusion, it
is interesting to notice that we have clear evidence that
he knew Chaucer1.

Idleness, therefore, cannot be urged against him; nor
does this imposing display of learning indicate a pedant.
Lyly had nothing in common with the spirit of his old
friend Gabriel Harvey, whom indeed he laughed at.
There is a story that Watson and Nash invited a com-
pany together to sup at the Nag's Head in Cheapside,
and to discuss the pedantries of Harvey, and our euphuist
in all probability made one of the party. His erudition
sat lightly on him, for it was simply a means to the end
of his art. Moreover, a student's life could have possessed
no attraction for one of his temperament. Unlike Mar-
lowe and Greene, he had harvested all his wild oats
before he left Oxford ; but the process had refined rather
than sobered him, for his laugh lost none of its merri-
ment, and his wit improved with experience, so that
we may well believe that in the Court he was more
Philautus than Euphues. In his writings also his aim
was to be graceful rather than erudite ; and, ponderous
as his Eiiphues seems to us now, it appealed to its
Elizabethan public as a model of elegance. His art was
perhaps only an instrument for the acquisition of social
success, but he was nevertheless an artist to the fineer-

o

tips. Yet he was without the artist's ideals, and this fact,
together with his frivolity, vitiated his writings to a con-
siderable extent, or, rather, the superficiality of his art
was the result of the superficiality of his soul. Of that
" high seriousness," which Aristotle has declared to be
the poet's essential, he has nothing. Technique through-
out was his chief interest, and it is in technique alone
that he can claim to have succeeded. " More art than

1 Bond, I. p. 401.

9—5

138 JOHN LYLY

nature" is a just criticism of everything he wrote, with
the exception of his lyrics. He was supremely clever,
one of the cleverest writers in our literature when we
consider what he accomplished, and how small was the
legacy of his predecessors ; but he was much too clever
to be simple. He excelled in the niceties of art, he
revelled in the accomplishment of literary feats, his
intellect was akin to the intellect of those who in their
humbler fashion find pleasure in the solution of acrostics.
And consequently his writings were frequently as finical
as his dress was fastidious ; for it was the form and not
the idea which fascinated him ; to his type of mind the
letter was everything and the spirit nothing. Indeed,
the true spirit of art was quite beyond his comprehension,
though he was connoisseur enough to appreciate its pre-
sence in others. Artist and man of taste he was, but he
was no poet. Artist he was, I have said, to the finger-
tips, but his art lay at his fingers' ends, not at his soul.
He was facile, ingenious, dexterous, everything but in-
spired. He had wit, learning, skill, imagination, but
none of that passionate apprehension of life which
makes the poet, and which Marlowe and Shakespeare
possessed so fully. And therefore it was his fate to be
nothing more than a forerunner, a straightener of the
way; and before his death he realised with bitterness
that he was only a stepping-stone for young Shakespeare
to mount his throne. He was, indeed, the draughtsman
of the Elizabethan workshop, planning and designing
what others might build. He was the expert mathema-
tician who formulated the laws which enabled Shakespeare
to read the stars. Of the heights and depths of passion
he was unconscious ; he was no psychologist, laying bare
the human soul with the lancet ; and though now and
again, as in Endymion> he caught a glimpse of the silver

CONCLUSION 139

beauties of the moon, he had no conception of the glories
of the midday sun.

And yet though he lacked the poet's sense, his wit
did something to repair the defect, and even if it has a
musty flavour for our pampered palates, it saves his
writings from becoming unbearably wearisome ; and
moreover his fun was without that element of coarse-
ness which mars the comic scenes of later dramatists
who appealed to more popular audiences. But it is
quite impossible for us to realise how brilliant his wit
seemed to the Elizabethans before it was eclipsed by
the genius of Shakespeare. Even as late as 1632 Blount
exclaims, " This poet sat at the sunne's table," words
referring perhaps more especially to Lyly's poetical
faculty, but much truer if interpreted as an allusion
to his wit. The genius of our hero played like a dancing
sunbeam over the early Elizabethan stage. Never before
had England seen anything like it, and we cannot wonder
that his public hailed him in their delight as one of the
greatest writers of all time. How could they know that
he was only the first voice in a choir of singers which,
bursting forth before his notes had died away, would
shake the very arch of heaven with the passion and the
beauty of their song? But for us who have heard the
chorus first, the recitative seems poor and thin. The
magic has long passed from Euphues, once a name to
conjure with, and even the plays seem dull and lifeless.
That it should be so was inevitable, for the wit which
illuminated these works was of the time, temporary, the
earliest beam of the rising sun. This sunbeam it is
impossible to recover, and with all our efforts we catch
little but dust.

And yet for the scientific critic Lyly's work is still
alive with significance. Worthless as much of it is from

140 JOHN LYLY

the aesthetic point of view, from the dynamical, the
historical aspect few English writers are of greater
interest. Waller was rescued from oblivion and labelled
as the first of the classical poets. But we can claim
more for Lyly than this. Extravagant as it may sound,
he was one of the great founders of our literature. His
experiments in prose first taught men that style was a
matter worthy of careful study, he was among the earliest
of those who realised the utility of blank verse for
dramatic purposes, he wrote the first English novel in
our language, and finally he is not only deservedly re-
cognised as the father of English comedy, but by his
mastery of dramatic technique he laid such a burden of
obligation upon future playwrights that he placed English
drama upon a completely new basis. Of the three main
branches of our literature, therefore, two — the novel and
the drama — were practically of his creation, and though
his work suffered because it lacked the quality of poetry,
for the historian of literature it is none the less important
on that account.

LIST OF CHIEF AUTHORITIES.

ARBER. The Martin Marprelate Controversy. Scholar's Library.
ASCHAM, ROGER. The Schoolmaster. Arber's English Reprints.

„ „ Toxophilus. „ „ „

BAKER, G. P. Lyly's Endymion.

BARNEFIELD, RICHARD. Poems. Arber's Scholar's Library.
BERNERS, LORD. The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius.

„ „ Froissart's Chronicles. Globe Edition.

BOAS. Works of Kyd. Clarendon Press.
BOND, R. W. John Lyly. „ „ 3 Vols.

BRUNEI. Manuel de Libraire.
BUTLER CLARKE. Spanish Literature.
CHILD, C. G. John Lyly and Euphuism. Miinchener Beitrage

VII.

CRAIK, SIR H. Specimens of English Prose.

DICTIONARY of National Biography.

EARLE. History of English Prose.

FIELD, NATHANIEL. A Woman is a Weathercock.

FITZMAURICE-KELLY. Spanish Literature. Heinemann.

GAYLEY. Representative English Comedies.

GOSSE. From Shakespeare to Pope.

GOSSON. School of Abuse. Arber's English Reprints.

GUEVARA, ANTONIO DE. Libro Aureo del emperado Marco

Aurelio.

HALLAM. Introduction to the Literature of Europe.
HENNEQUIN. La Critique Scientifique.
HUME, MARTIN. Spanish Influence on English Literature.
JUSSERAND. The English Novel in the time of Shakespeare.
LANDMANN, DR. Shakespeare and Euphuism. New Shak. Soc.

Trans. 1880-2.

„ „ Introduction to Euphues. Sprache und Literatur.

LATIMER. Sermons. Arber's English Reprints.

142 JOHN LYLY

LEE, SIDNEY. Athenaeum, July 14, 1883.

„ Huon of Bordeaux (Berners')- Early Eng. Text

Soc. Extra Series XL., XLI.
„ Life of Shakespeare.

LIEBIG. Lord Bacon et les sciences d'observation en rnoyen age.

LYLY. Euphues. Arber's English Reprints.

MACAULAY, G. G. Introd. to Froissart's Chronicles. Globe
Edition.

MEREDITH, GEORGE. Essay on Comedy.

MEziERES. Pre'de'cesseurs et contemporains de Shakespeare.

MINTO. Manual of English Prose Literature.

NORTH, THOMAS. Diall of Princes.

PEARSON, KARL. Chances of Death. Vol. II. German Passion
Play.

PETTIE, GEORGE. Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure.

RALEIGH, PROF. W. The English Novel.

RETURN FROM PARNASSUS. Arber's Scholar's Library.

SAINTSBURY. Specimens of English Prose.

SPENCER, HERBERT. Essays — Philosophy of Style.

SYMONDS, J. A. Shakespeare's Predecessors.

UDALL, NICHOLAS. Ralph Roister Doister. Arber's English
Reprints.

UNDERBILL. Spanish Literature in Tudor England.

WARD, DR A. W. English Dramatic Literature. 3 Vols.
„ MRS H. "John Lyly," Article in Enc. Brit.

WATSON, THOMAS. Poems. Arber's English Reprints.

WEBBE. Discourses of English Poetry. Arber's English Re-
prints.

WEYMOUTH, DR R. F. On Euphuism. Phil. Soc. Trans.
1870-2.

INDEX.

Affectionate Shepherd, 46

Albiori 's England, 57

Alen9on, Due d', 105

Amis and Amile, 66

Anatomy of Wit (v. Euphues)

Andrews, Dr, 55

Arber (reprints), 12, 27, 38, 46

Arcadia, 9, 51, 56, 58, 68, 82, 84

Aretino, 48

Ariosto, 94, 96

Aristotle, 121, 129, 137

Armada, Spanish, no

Arnold, Matthew, 47

Ars Poetica (of Horace), 130

Ascham, 31, 37, 38, 39, 42, 50, 52,

6?> 73. 74. i36

Athenae Oxonienscs, 4, 5

Athemzum, 30

Athens, 69, 79

Aucassin and Nicolette, 66

Aurelius, Marcus, 22, 34, 69

Austen, Jane, 80

Bacon, Lord, 19, 47

Baena, 48

Baker, G. P., 4, 5, 7, 85, 98

Baker, George, 28

Baker, Robert, 28

Barnefield, Richard, 46

Berners, Lord, 22, 29, 30, 31, 33,

34. 35. 36, 42, 66, 67
Bertaut, Rene, 34, 35
bestiaries, 20, 41, 136
Biographia Britannica, 12

Blackfriars, 100

blank verse, 3, 97, 113

Blount, 114, 139

Boas, 45

Boccaccio, 66, 67, 75

Bond, R. W., 4, 5, 8, 9, 26, 30, 34,
43> 55. °~°, 69, 72, 74, 78, 81, 85,
86, 87, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99,
100, 108, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,
120, 125, 130, 137

Brunei, 34

Bryan, Sir Francis, 30, 31

Burleigh, 4, 6, 7, 86, 133

Butler Clarke, 49

Byron (anticipated by Lyly), 77

Cambridge, 7, 75, 87, 93
Campaspe, 7, 85, 87, 98-102, 104,

105, 109, 116, i2i, 124, 126
Canterbury Tales, 65
Carew, 27

Carpenter, Edward, 19
Castiglione, 48, 49, 72
Caxton, 66, 67
Cecil, 8
Celestina, 24
Charles VIII., 48, 66
Chaucer, 65, 66, 137
Cheke, Sir John, 26, 31, 37, 42, 50
Child, C. G., 14, 15, 16, 56, 59
choristers, 7, 8, 87, 92, 94, 116
Christ Church, 26, 39
Cicero, 12, 50
Civile Conversation, 40

144

INDEX

comedy

before Lyly, 89-98

and folly, 90

and masque, 112

and music, 87, 92, 94, 116

and society, 88

and woman, 97-98, 100-101, 125-

126

Congreve, 88, 101, 126, 127
Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers,

A, ji
Corpus Christi College (Oxford),

26

Corro, Antonio de, 26, 28
Cortes, 27

Craik, Sir H., 28, 37, 38, 39
Cupid and my Campaspe played,

"5» "7
Cynthia, 46

Damon and Pithias, 93, 116, 119

De Educalione (of Plutarch), 72

Dekker, Thomas, 114, 121

Demosthenes, 1 2

Devereux, Penelope, 109

Diatt of Princes, 22, 30, 39, 69

Diana, 24

Dickens, 79

Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier,

31

Doni, 48
Dryden, 84
dubartism, 51

Earle, 53, 54

education (Lyly's views on), 72-

73

Edward II., 129
Edwardes, Richard, 86, 87, 93, 94,

95. 97, ioi
Eliot, George, 80
Elizabeth, Queen, 3, 6, 8, 9, 17,

25, 26, 65, 75, 80, 81, 86, 98,

ICO, IOI, 103, 104, IO5, IO7, 112,
129, 134

Ellis, Havelock, 128

Endymion, 85, 98, 99, 104, 107-110,
121, 122, 138

English Novel, The (v. Raleigh)

English Novel in the time of Shake-
speare, The (v. Jusserand)

Erasmus, 26

E stella, 27

Eton, 93

Euphues

antecedents of, 65-69
criticism and description of
(i) Anatomy of Wit, 69-73
(ii) Euphues and his England,

76-80

dedication of, 74-76
distinction between the two parts,

73-74
Elizabethan reputation of, 10-13,

43-47, 57, 61, 84, 137
first English novel, 3, 10-11, 74,

140

moral tone of, 5, 71-72
publication and editions of, 6, 7,

8, 10, 43, 57, 61, 73, 83, 84
quoted, 4, 10, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21,

45, 58, 7°, 76, /8

Euphues and his England (v. Eu-
phues')

Euphues and his Ephoebus, 72-73
Euphuism

analysis of, 13-21

an aristocratic fashion, 3, 49, 54,

56, 61, 62
diction and, 56
humanism and, 36-39, 50-53
imitators of, 43-46
origins of, 21-43
Oxford and, 26-28. 39-42, 45-46,

54, 60, 6 1
poetry and, 55-56
Renaissance and, 47-52, 62
Scott's misapprehension of, n
secret of Lyly's influence, 11-13
Spain and, 22-36

INDEX

Every Man out of His Humour,

fabliau, the, 66

Faery Queen, The, 103

Field, Nathaniel, 44, 102

Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 24

Flaubert, 56

Florence, 79

Fortescue, 69

France (and French), 22, 23, 29,

3i» 34, 35, 36, 40, 42, 47, 48, 52,

53, 56, 61, 66, 80, 136
Frolssart, 31, 33, 35

Gager, William, 39, 86
Gallathea, 98, 107, 112
Gammer Gurtoifs Needle, 93, 96,

116
Gascoigne, George, 69, 94, 95, 97,

114, 119, 126
Gayley, 91, 92, 94, 95
Geoffrey of Dunstable, 92
Gesta Romanorum, 66
Gibbon, 58

Glasse for Europe, A, 52, 81
Goethe, 130
Golden Boke, Tiie, 22, 30, 31, 36,

37

Gollancz, 109
gongorism, 51
Goodlet, Dr, 56
Gorbuditc, 129
Gosse, 36
Gosson, Stephen, 4, 27, 28, 46, 53,

71, 86, 109, 133
Granada, 24
Greek, 48, 62
Greene, 43, 135, 137
Grey, Lady Jane, 74
Guazzo, 40
Guerrero, 26
Guevara, Antonio de, 22-24, 28-31,

33-38, 40, 42, 49> 69, 72, 76,

136

Habsburgs, 103

Hakluyt, 24, 26, 27, 133

Hallam, 33, 34

Halpin, 109, in

Harrison, 69

Harvey, Dr, 19

Harvey, Gabriel, 6, 20, 42, 109, 135,

137

Hekatompathia, 7, 45, 46
Hennequin, 4, 132
Henry VIII., 23, 31
Hernani, 100
Herrick, 117
Heywood, 69, 92, 95, 96
Homer, 67
Horace, 130
Hugo, Victor, 130
humanism, 25, 26, 37, 50, 52, 53,

54, 67, 92, 135
Hume, Martin, 24, 25
Huon of Bordeaux, 30, 66
Huss, John, 66

Importance of being Earnest, The,

»3J

Italy (and Italian), 24, 25, 47, 48,
49' 52, 53» 66, 67, 69, 74, 75, 78,
86, 94, 9.5, 136

Jacke Jugelar, 96

James I., 23

James, Henry, 53

Johnson, Dr, 58

Jonson, Ben, 114, 120, 127, 130,

132, 136
Jusserand, 18, 43, 65, 72, 76

Katherine of Aragon, 23
Kenilworth, 109
Knox, John, 75
Kyd, 43-46, 102, 115
Kynge Johan, 99

Lady WindermerJs Fan, 88
Landmann, Dr, 14, 16, 22, 24, 29,
30, 31, 40, 42, 47, 69, 75

146

INDEX

Latimer, 36

Lazarillo de T6rmes, 24

Lee, Sidney, 12, 29-33, 123

Leicester, Earl of, 107, 109, 129

Libra Aureo (v. Guevara)

Liebig, 19

Literature of Eiirope, 33, 34

Lodge, Thomas, 27, 43

Lok, Henry, Thomas, and Michael,

26, 27

London, 7, 71, 78, 91, 114, 119
London, Bishop of, 8
Love's Labour's Lost, no, 113, 127,

128
Love's Metamorphosis, 98, 112, 113,

122

Luther, 89
Lyly, John :

character and genius, 3, 51, 62,
63. 123, i37-J39

compared with Marlowe, 128-129

courtier and man of fashion, 63,
87, 88, 98, 103, no, 134, 135

dramatist, 7, 8, 9, 85-131

forerunner of Shakespeare, 43, 47,
95, 100, 101, 102, 105, 109-
iii, 116, 123, 124, 127-128,
130, 138-139

friends of, 26-28, 39, 42, 46, 53,
54, 61, 133, 135, 137

Jonson's caricature of, 132-133

learning, 17, 20, 38, 69, 86, 95,
119-120, 130, 136-137

life, 4-9,86-88, 119-120, 132-135

novelist, 10, 64-84

poet, 3, no, 113, 115-118, 138,

139
position in English literature, 2-3,

10-13, 51, 52-63, 65-69, 73-

84, 98-131, 138-140
prose, 3, 11-21, 52-63, 97, 126-

127
reputation, 9, 11-13, 43, 57, 58,

60, 6 1
lyrics, 115-118

Macaulay, G. C., 33

Macaulay, Lord, 80

Macbeth, 125

Magdalen College (Oxford), 4, 6,

86, 133

Malory, 66, 67
Marini, 48

Marius the Epicurean, 50
Marlowe, 3, 47, 113, 128-129, 137,

138
Martin Marprclate, 3, 8, 114, 135-

136

Mary (Tudor), 25, 26
Mary (of Scots), 109
masque, 112, 129
Maupassant, Guy de, 75
MaydJs Metamorphosis, 119
Mendoza, 23, 24
Meredith, George, 53, 79, 88, 97,

126
Midas, 98, 104, 110-112, 117, 122,

125

Midstimmer Nighfs Dream (antici-
pated by Lyly), 105, 109-111,
123, 127

Milton, 55

miracle-play, the, 89-91, 123

Monastery, The, 1 1

Montemayor, 23, 24

moral court treatise, the, 49, 65, 67,
68, 69, 73, 74, 75

morality-play, the, 70, 89-92, 94,
99, 102, 119, 124

Morte d' 'Arthur, 66, 67

Mother Bombie, 98, 105, 114-117

Munday, Anthony, 28, 43

Murder of John Brewer, The, 115

Naples, 69

Nash, 23, 55, 56, 84, 114, 137
Newton, 19
Nicholas, Thomas, 27
North, Sir Thomas, 22, 29, 30, 39
novella, the, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74,
75

INDEX

Ovid, 17, 69, in
Oxford, 4-7, 25-28, 39, 42, 46, 49,
53. 61, 69, 72, 86, 87, 93, 95,

"9- '33. 137
Oxford, Earl of (v. Vere, Edward

de)

Painter, William, 40

Palgrave, 117

Palawan and Arcite, 86

Pallace of Pleasure, 40

Pamela, 83

pastoral romance, 23, 68

Petrarchisti, 48

Pettie, George, 32, 39, 40, 41, 46,

53> 56, 69, 86, 133
Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure,

40, 69
Philip II. of Spain (caricatured by

Lyly), no

picaresque romance, 23
Plato, 67, 75, 79, 121
Plautus, 92

Play of the Wether, The, 93
Pleasant History of the Conquest of

West India, 27
Pliny, 17, 20, 41, 69, 100
Plutarch, 17, 69, 72, 73
Poetics of Aristotle, The, 130
puritanism, 3, 26, 57, 71, 135
Puttenham, 87

Quick, 73
Quintilian, 12

Raleigh, Prof. W., 20, 55, 57, 65,

7'. 84, i3S
Ralph Roister Doister, 93, no, 114,

116
Renaissance, the, 25, 47-52, 62, 64,

66, 68, 95, 115, 118
Revels' Office, the, 8, 9, 103, 134
Richardson, 72, 83
Rogers, Thomas, 27
romance of chivalry, 65-68, 75

Ronsard, 61
Rowland, 24

Sacharissa, 13

Sainte-Beuve, 53

St Paul's Choir School, 7, 8, 87,

99, 109, 116, 119, 123, 131, 134
Saintsbury, Prof., 27

Sallust, 37

Sapho and Phao, 7, 87, 98, 99, 104-

107, n6, 122
Savoy Hospital, the, 7
School of Abuse, The, 27
Schoolmaster, The, 38, 50, 52, 67,

73, 75

Schwan, Dr, 56
Scott, Sir Walter, it
Seneca, 129
Shakespeare, 2, 9, 43, 47, 55, 95,

100, IOI, IO2, IO5, 109, IIO, III,

ii3> IJ5' IJ6' "8, 120-124, 127,

128, 130, 138, 139
Sheridan, 88
Sidney, Sir Philip, 23, 27, 55, 58,

68, 82, 84

Sixe Court Comedies, 114
Soliman and Perse.da, 45
Soto, Pedro de, 26
Spain (and Spanish), 22-28, 30, 31,

33-36, 40, 42, 47, 48, 52, 66, 69,

136

Spanish Tragedy, The, 43, 44, 45
Spencer, Herbert, 61
Spenser, 103, 120
Stella, 109

Stevenson, 93, 95, 114, 119
Stratford, 109

Suppositi (Supposes), 94, 119, 126
Surrey, 31

Symonds, J. A., 47, 62, 91, 93, 104,
117

Taine, i

Tamburlaine, 1 1 3

Taming of the Shrew, The, 93

148

INDEX

Tasso, 48

Tents and Toils (office of), 8

Terence, 50, 92, 96

Thackeray, 77

Titnon of Athens (anticipated by

Lyly), 10 1
Toxophilus, 38
Tully (v. Cicero)

Udall, Nicholas, 87, 93, 95, 96, 97,

114, 116, 119
Underbill, 23, 24, 27, 28, 34, 36,

40

Vere, Edward de, 7, 28, 46, 86, 87,

116, 119, 134
Villa Garcia, 26
Virgil, 17, 50
Vives, 25, 26

Waller, 12, 140
Ward, Dr, 8, 92, 93

Ward, Mrs H., 30, 80

Warner, 43, 57

Watson, Thomas, 7, 45, 46, 49, 53,

133. 137

Webbe, William, n

Welbanke, 43

West, Dr, 33, 34

Weymouth, Dr, 14

Wilkinson, 43

Wine, Women and Song, \ 1 7

Woman in the Moon, The, 98, 112,
113, 124, 130

Woman is a Weathercock, A, 44

women, importance of, in the Eliza-
bethan age, 74-76, 80-82, 97-98,
100-101, 125-126, 128

Wood, Anthony a, 4, 5, 86

Wyatt, 31

Wycliff, 66

Wynkyn de Worde, 66

Zola, 75

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

A 000 675 748 8