John Lyly

CENTRE
for
REFORMATION
and
RENAISSANCE
STUDIES

VICTORIA
UNIVERSITY

TORONTO

JOHN LYLY

Çambrittc:
PP, INTEIï) l'" JOHN CLAY,
AI" "I'HE I.NI.'EP, SIT'" FP, ESS.

JOHN

LYLY

BY

JOHN DOVER \VILSON,
B.A., Late Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Members' Prizeman, x9o2. Harness PrJzeman, x9o4.
Honours in Historical Trpos.

Macmillan and Bowes
Cambridge
I9O5

E. & REN.

A
MIA
DONNA.

PREFACE.

HE following treatise was awarded the Harnss
t)ri«e at Cambridge in 19o4. I have, however,
revised it since then, and in some matters considerably
enlarged it.
A list of the chier authorities to whom I am indebted
will be round at the end of the book, but it is fitting
that I should here make particular mention of my
obligations to the exhaustive work of Mr Bondk Not
only bave 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 lXIartin Hmne's
SpaMslt lttflueltce on Ettgh'slt Lito'ature. But, though
I might bave added more had his book been accessible
earlier, I was glad to find that his conclusions left the
main theory of mg chapter on Euphuism untouched.
Much as has been written upon John Lyly, no
previous critic has attempted to cover the whole ground,
 The Çotttt*lete lf'orks of.lohn Lyl3'. R. XV, Bond, 3 Vols. Clarendon
1  ress.

ri PREFACE

and to sure up in a brief and convenient form the three
main literary problems which centre round his naine.
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 round several points which seemed to
demand closer attention than they had hitherto received.
It appeared to me that the last word had hot bcen said
even upon the subject of Euphuism, although that topic
has usurped the lion's share of critical treatment. And
again, while Lyly's claires as a novelist are acknowledged
OI1 ail hands, I felt that a clear statement of his exact
position in the history of out novel was still needed.
Finally, inasmuch as the personality of a author is
always more fascinating to me than his writings,
I determined to attempt to thl'ow some light, however
fitful and uncertain, upon the man Lyly himself. The
attempt was hot entirely fruitless, for it led to the
interesting discovery that the fuily-developed euphuism
was hot the creation of Lyly, or Pettie, or indeed of
any one individual, but of a circle of young Oxford men
which included Gosson, Vatson, Hakluyt, and possibly
man)" 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 Vard, 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 vii
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 tobe round
in the list at the end, I bave referred to works in the
footnotes simply by the name of their author, while in
quoting from Eu/,hucs I bave 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 tobe passed ver)" quickly through
the press.
JOHN DOVER WILSON.

HOLMLEIGH, SHELFORD, Att-USl, 19o5 .

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

The problem stated--Sketch of Lyly's lire .

CHAPTER I.

EUPHUISM
Section l. The Anatomy of Euphuism
Section II. The Origin of Euphuism
Section III. Lyly's legatees and the relation be-
tween Euphuism and the Renaissance .
Section IV'. The position of Euphuism in the his-
tory of English l'rose

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL
The rise of the Novelthe characteristics of The
M natomy of I l'it and Etthues and his England--
the Elizabethan Novel.

CHAPTER III.

LYLV THE I.)RAMATIST
Section I. English Comedy before 158o .
Section Il. The Eight PIays
Section III. Lyly's advance and subsequent
fluence

in-

CHAPTER IV.

CONCLUSION
Lyly's CharactcrSummary.

PAG E
1

IO

43

52

64

85
89
98

132

I NDEX . I43

INTRODUCTION.

SINCE the day when Taine established a scientific
basis for the historical study of Art, criticism bas tended
gradually but naturally to fa11 into two divisions, as dis-
tinct from each other as the functions they respectively
perform are distinct. The one, which we may cal1
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 hot, 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 cla[m
to scientific precision, but must be classed as a depart-
ment of Art itself. The other, an application of the
Darxvinian hypothesis to literature, which owes its exist-
ence almost entirely to the great French critic before
mentioned, but which bas 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, hot 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.

2 JOH N LYLY
the cause of subsequent effects. Its function is one of
classification, and with interpretation or appreciation it
bas 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 z,ice '«rsa ; and in such instances the
critic must be guided in his action by the relative im-
portance of these values in an)" particular example. This
is so in the case of John Lyly. In the course of the
following treatise we shall bave occasion to pass many
aesthetic judgments upon his work; but it will be from
the historical side that we shall viexv 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 xvas, 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 claire more for John Lyly than this,
an)" 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 claire 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 out justification must ultimately rest.
In the first place John Lyly, inasmuch as he was one

INTRODUCTION
of the earliest writers who considered prose as an artistic
end in itseif, and not simply as a medium of expression,
may be justly described as a founder, if hOt t/te founder,
of English prose style.
In the second place he was the author of the first
novei of manners in the ianguage.
And in the third place, and from the point of view of
Elizabethan iiterature most important of ail, he was one
of out very earliest dramatists, and without doubt merits
the title of Father of English Comedy.
It is almost impossible to over-estimate his historicai
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 iiterature and at the very entrance to its
splendid Eiizabethan ante-room, and therefore ail who
came after feit something of his influence. These are
thc three chief points of interest about Lyly, but they do
not exhatt the problems he presents. We shall have to
notice also that as a pamphleteer he becomes entangled
in the famous ll[ar/relate controversy, and that he was
one of the first, being perhaps even earlier than Mariowe,
to perceive the value of blank verse for dramatic purposes.
Finaily, 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 worid by storm and ruade euphuism
the fashion at court before he was weil out of his nonage,
who for years provided the great Queen with food t'or
iaughter, and who was connected with the first ominous
outburst of the Puritan spirit, surely possesses personai
attractions apart from any iiterary considerations. .Ve

4 JOHN LYL¥
shall presently see reason to believe that his personality
was a brilliant and fascinating one. But such a recon-
struction of the artist Iis only possible after a thorough
analysis of his works. It would be as well here, however,
by way ofobtaining an historical framework for out study,
to give a brief account of his lire as it is known to us.
"Eloquent and witty" John Lyly first saw light in
the year 1553 or I5542. Anthony à Vood, the I7th
century author of .qthcllar O.ronie«es, relis us that he
was, like his contemporary Stephen Gosson, a Kentish
man borna; and with this clue to help them both
Mr Bond and Mr Baker are inclined to accept much
of the story of Fidus as autobiographical . If their
infercnce 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 lire must begin, and even then our informa-
tion is very meagre. Wood tells us that he "became a
student in Magdalen College in the beg/nning of I569,
aged J6 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 assistanceU' And yet,
limited as our knowledge is, it is possible, I think, to
form a fairly accurate conception of Lyly's manner of
lire at Oxford, if we are bold enough to read between
the lines of the scraps of contemporary evidence that
bave corne down to us. Lyly himself tells us that he
left Oxford for three years hot long after his arrival.
"Oxford," he says, "seemed to weane me before she
brought me forth, and to give me boanes to gnawe,
 Cf. tlennequin. 2 Bond, I. p. • ; Baker, p. v.
a .4th. Ox. (ed. Bliss), I. p. 676.  Euphues, p. 68.
 Bond, l. p. 6. But Baker, pp. vil, viii, would seem to disagree with this.

INTRODUCTION

before I could get the teate to suck. Wherein she played
the nice mother in sending me into the countrie to nurse,
where l 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 ]zt.P/tues, which, as we shall see,
was merely a traditional literary p/ose borrowed from the
moral court treatise, is anxious to vindicate Lyly from
ail charges of lawlessness, and refuses to adroit that the
foregoing words refer to rustication 1. 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 I57I'-' , while
Lyly's words must refer to a departure (at the very
latest) in 157o. 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
"ahvays 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 hot so much but that he took the Degree in Arts,
that of Master being completed in I575s. ''
Neglect of the recognised studies, however, was not
the only blot upon Lyly's Oxford lire. From the hints
thrown out by his contemporaries, and from some
allusions, doubtless personal, in the Eupkucs, 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-

Bond, I. p. **.
Athenae Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), I. p. 676.

 Baker, p. xii.

6 JOHN LVLY
seeking circle of friends, despising the persons and ideas
of their elders, eager to adopt the latest fashion vhether
in dress or in thought, and intolerant alike of regulations
and of dut)-. Gabriel Harvey, who nursed a grudge
against L)'ly, even speaks of" horning, gaming, fooling
and knaving," words which convey a distinct sense of
something discreditable, whatever may be their exact
significance. Itis necessary to lay stress upon this
period of Lyl),'s life, because, as 1 hope to show, his
residence at Oxford, and thc friends he ruade there, had
a pr«,found 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, itis 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 575.
He however, quite naturally, saw matters otherwise. It
,vould seem to him that the Collcge was suffcring wrong
in losing so excellent a wit, and accordingly he heroically
took steps to prevent such a catastrophe, for in 576 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 quietl), admitted a Felloxv
there." The petition was refused, Burleigh's sense of
propriety overcoming his sense of humour, and the
petitioner quitted Oxford, leaving his Collcge the legacy
of an unpaid bill for battels, and probably alrëady pre-
paring in his brain the revenge, which subsequently took
the form of an attack upon his University in EtiOhues ,
which he published in '578.
It is interesting to learn that in 579, according to
the common practice of that day, he proceeded to his

I NTRODUCTION 7
degree of M.A. at Cambridge, though there is no
evidence of any residence there l. 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 wcre 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 Èlizabethan literature. The second
part of Ethues published in 1580, and the Ifekatompathia
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 out 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, Camp«se and Salho, in 1384. But this
point vill require a fuller treatment at a later stage of
out study.
Somewhere about I585 Fate settled once and for ail
the lines on which Lyly's genius was to develop, for at
that rime 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 ruade 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-
I Mr Baker.however seems to think that his reference to Cambridge
(luhues, p. 436) implies a terre of residence there. Baker, p. xxii.

8 JOHN LYLY
ments ; and thcrcforc thcy and thcir instructor would bc
constantly brought into touch with thc P, cvcls' Occ.
.As wc know from his lcttcrs to Elizabcth and to Cccil,
thc mastcrship of thc Rcvcis was thc post Lyly covctcd,
and covctcd without succcss, as far as wc can tcli, until
thc end of his lire. But thcsc lcttcrs also show us that
he was already connccted with this office by his position
in the subordinate office of Tents and Toiis. The latter,
originai)' instituted for the purpose of furnishing the
necessaries of royal hunting and campaigning I, had ap-
parently become amalgamated under a femme sovereign
with the Revels' Office, possibly owing to the fact that its
costumes and weapons provided usefid materiai for enter-
tainments and interludes. Another position which, as
Mr Bond shows, was held atone 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 L)'iy was drawn into the whirlpool of
the ][arr«lat« controvers)-. Finally we know that he
was elccted a member of Parliament on four separate
occasions".
These varied occupations are proof of the energy
and versatiiity of our author, but not one of them can
be described as lucrative. Nor can his publications bave
brought him much profit ; for, though both Etthnes and
its sequei passed thr«)ugh ten editions before his death,
an author in those days received vcry iittle 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 I585 he became "vice-toaster of Poules
I Bond, 1.
" I have to thank Dr XVard for pointing out to me the intere»ting fact
that a large proportion of Elizabeth's M.P.'s were royal oflïcials.

INTRODUCTION 9

and Foolmaster of the Thcater," 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' actin rights in I591 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 bclieves that he found an occupa-
tion after 159I in writing royal entertainments, and
though the inhibition on the choristers' acting was re-
moved as early as i 599, )'et the last years of Lyly's lire
were probably full of disappointment. This indecd 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 ail
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 hot onlydue to the distress
of poverty. Belote his death in I6o6 he had seen his
novel eclipsed by the new Arcadian fashion, and had
watched the fise of a host of rival dramatists, thrusting
him aside while they took advantage of his methods.
Greatest of them ail, 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 I578 he published a volume,
bearing the inscription, Eupltues: tlze anatomy of xyt,
to which was subjoined the attractive advertisement,
ve O' il«asant for ai1 gentlcmcn to readc, ami most necessary
fo retitelttber. This book, which was to work a revolution
in our literature, was completed in I58O by a sequel,
entitled Eutltues ami his Etgl«n«l. Euphu's, to combine
the two parts under one naine, the fruit of Lyly's nonage,
seems to have determined the form of lais reputation
for the Eizabethans; 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 hOt surprising
that critics, living in the century of the novel, and
with their eyes toxvards 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 hot with the modern
appraisement of Eultues that we are here concerned.
Nor need we proceed immediately to a consideration
of its position in the history of the English novel.

EUPHUISM I I

We bave first to deal with its Elizabethan reputation.
Had tuphucs 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 pureIy archaeological
interest for us to-day. It would still be the first of
English novels: but this claire would Iose hall its
significance, did it hOt carry with it the implication that
the book was also the origin of English novel xvriting.
The importance, therefore, of El];ues is hot 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. Out tirst task is therefore to
enquire what this spell was, and to discover whether the
attraction of Eupkucs must be ascribed to Lyly's own
invention or to artifices which he borrows from others.
,Vhile, as I have said, Lyly's naine 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
simpl), nonsense, clothed in bombast. It was a blind
acceptance of these Ioose ideas which led Sir \Valter
Scott to create (as a caricature of Lyly) his Sir Piercie
Shafton in The I[onast«uan historical faux pas for
which he has been since sufficiently cailed 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 round in the words of William Webbe. Writing
in 1586 of the "great good grace and sweet vogue which

I2 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 vits, as
frorn tirne to tirne rnyght still aride sorne arnendrnent to
the sarne. Arnong whorn I think there is none that vill
gainsay, but glaster John Lyly hath deservedly rnoste
high cornrnendations, as he hath stept one steppe further
therein than any either before or since he first began the
wyttie discourse of his Euhues, whose works, surely in
respect of his singular eloquence and brave composition
of apt vords and sentences, let the learned examine and
rnake 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 rny
judgrnent, I think he wyll yeelde hirn that verdict which
Quintillian giveth of both the best orators Dernosthenes
and Tully, that frorn the one, nothing rnay be taken
away, to the other nothing rnay be added'." After such
eulogy, the description of Lyly by another writer as
"airer Tullius anglorurn" vill hot seern strange. These
praises were hot the extravagances of a few uncritical
admirers; they echo the verdict of the age. Lyly's
enthronernent vas of short duration--a rnatter of sorne
ten years--but, while it lasted, he reigned suprerne.
Such literary idolatries are by no rneans uncornrnon,
and often hold their ground for a considerable period.
Beside the vogue of \\'aller, for exarnple, the duration
of Lyly's reputation was cornparatively brief. More
than a century after the publication of his poerns,
Waller was hailed by the Sidney Lee of the day in the
Biographia Britauuica of I766 , as "the most celebrated
Lyric Poet that England ever produced." Whence
cornes this striking contrast betveen past glory and
a A discourse of English Poetrie, Arber's reprint.

EUPHUISM 13
present neglect? How is it that a writer once known
as the greatest toaster of English prose, and a poet once
named the most conspicuous of English lyrists, are now
but names? The¥ have hOt faded from memor¥ owing
to a mere caprice of fashion. Great artists are subject
to an ebb and flow of popularit¥, 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 tupitues and Sacitarissa "to their own again."
The¥ are as dead as the Jacobite cause. And for that
ver), reason the¥ are ali the more interesting for the
iiterary historian. AIl writers are conditioned by their
environment, but some concern themselves with the
essentials, others with the accidents, of that internall¥
constant, but externall¥ unstable, phenomenon, known
as humanit¥. Waller and L¥1y were of the latter class.
Like jewels suitable to one costume only, the¥ remained
in favour just as long as the fashion that created them
lasted. Waller was probabl¥ inferior to L¥1¥ as an
artist, but he happened to strike a rein which was hot
exhausted until the end of the ISth century; while the
vogue of Eutitues, though at first far-reaching, was soon
crossed by new artificialities such as arcadianism. The
secret of Vraller's influence was that he stereot)'ped a
new poetic form, a form which, in its restraint and
precision, vas exactly suited to the intellect of the
ancien rdgime with its craving for form and its contempt
for ideas. The mainspring of L¥1y's popularity 'as
that he did in prose what XValler did in poetr¥.
SECTION I. 7"he .Jnatomy of Euhuism.
The books which have been written upon the charac-
teristics of Lyly's prose are numberless, and far outweigh

I4 JOHN LYLY

the attention given to his power as a novelist, to sa),
nothing of his dramas . Indeed the absorption of the
critics in the analysis of euphuism seems to have been,
up to a few years ago, definitel¥ injurious to a true
appreciation of out author's position, by blocking the
path to a recognition of his importance in other direc-
tions. And yet. in spite of ail this, it cannot be said
that any adequate examination of the structure of Lyly's
style appeared until Mr Child too] the matter in hand
in I894 -. 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.
OEhis being the case, a description of the euphuistic style
need hOt 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. OEhe great value of Mr Child's work lies
in the fact that he has at once simplified and amplified
the conclusions ofprevious investigators. Dr Weymouth 
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 Landmam carried the analysis still further in his
now famous paper published in the 2Vew Sakesteare
Sad«ty's Transactians (I88o-82). But these two, and
those who have followed them, have erred, on the one
hand in implying that euphuism was much more complex

Child, pp. 6-o, for an account of chier writers who have dealt with
euphuism.
JeAn Lyly and EuAuism. C.G. Child.
On Euz#Auism, Phil. Soc. Trans., 8o-2.

EUPHUISM 1 5
than itis in reality, and on the other by confining their
attention to single sentences, and so failing to perceive
that the euphuistic nxethod vas applicable to the para-
graph, as a vhole, 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 ve observe that it employs but one simple
principle in practice, and that it applies this, hOt only to
the ordering of the single sentence, but in every structural
relation  ": and this simple principle is "the inducement
of artificial emphasis through Antithesis and Repetition--
Antithesis to giv.e pointed expression to the thought,
Repetition to enforce it"." \Vhen 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 ail gentlemen to read and
most necessary to remember," was itself an antithesis;
the discourses it contains were framed upon the saine
plan ; the sentences are grouped antithetically ; while
the antithesis is pointed by an equaily elaborate repeti-
tion of ideas, of vowel sounds and of consonant sounds.
Letters, syllables, words, sentences, sentence groups,
paragraphs, ail are empioyed for the purpose of pro-
ducing the antithetical style now known as euphuism.
.An example x'ill 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
i Child, p. 43- " id., p. 44.

I6 JOHN LYL¥
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 fait to be
seen, yet the syrup depriveth sight--that friendship
though it be plighted by the shaking of the hand, )'et
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 friendV' It is irnpossible 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 purpose  ; 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 ruade more pointed by means of alliteration, e.g.
"shrined thee for a trust), 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 marie by Dr Landmann, but which, as Mr Child shows,
plays a subordinate, and an entirely mechanical, part in
Lyly's style s. 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 ve 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. .atll that is here attempted is an enumeration
1 ttphttes, p. 9 o.  Child, p. 39. a id., p. 46-

EUPtlUISI! 17
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 tw6 more characteristics of Lyly's prose xvhich
are very noticeable, but vhich corne under the head
of ornamental, rather than constructional, dcvices. Tle
first of these is a peculiar use of tle rhetorical interro-
gation. Lyly makes use of it when he wishes to portray
his characters in distress or exciteme|t, and it most fie-
quently occurs in so.liloquies. Sometimes xve find a string
of these interrogations, at others tley 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 las a certain connexion with tle 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 hov even the idlest
lady of Elizabeth's court round rime or patience to vade
through them. They consist first of anecdotes and allu-
sions relating to historical or mythological persons of the
ancient world ; some being drawn flore Plutarch, Pliny,
Ovid,Virgil, and other sources, but many springing simply
from Lyly's exuberant fancy. In the second place Ft«-
//t«es is a collection of similes borrowed flore "a fantastical
natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones,
W. 2

18 JOHN LYLV

to which the most extraordinar" virtues are attributed. ''
" 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 ber
selfe until the heate of the sunne so harden ber shell,
that she cannot sink when she woulde, whereb- she is
caught. And so it may rare with me that in this good
companye displaying my minde, having more regard to
my delight in talking, than to the ears of the hcarers, I
forget what I speake, and so be taken in something
I would hot utter, which happil-e the itchyng ears of
young gentlemen would so canvas that when I vould
call it in, I cannot, and so be caught with the Tortoise,
when I vould not. '' 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 )'ou are in speaking, she vould 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 EttlhzLes has ruade famous. An unending pro-
cession of such similes, often of the most extrava,ant
nature, runs throughout the book, and sometimes the
developmcnt of the plot is marie dependent on them.
Thus Lucilla hesitates to forsake Philautus for Euphues,
because she feels that ber new loyer 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-
 Jusserand, p. o'. .'2 EutShues" p. 4o.

EUPHUISM 19
lesse to one, will never be faithfull to anyV' 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 fariner 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:
hot 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 argumetts 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 fait, such
reasoning is hot 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 speedeth"." More-
over the soi-disant founder of the inductive method, the
great Bacon himself, is, as Liebig  shows in his amusing
and interesting study of the renowned "scientist's"
scientific methods, tarred with the saine mediaeval
brush, and should be ranked with Lyly and the other
Elizabethan "scholastics" rather than vith men like
Harvey and Newton.
1 Eupues, p. 58.  id., p. 46-
a Lord Bacon et les sciences d'observation en moyen âKe, par Liebig,
traduit par de Tchihatchef.

20 JOttN LYLY
Lyly's natural history was at any rate the restait of
learning; many of his "facts" were drawn from Pliny,
while others were to be fouud 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 footuotes indicative of sources,
were hot demanded of the scientist of those days, and
one can thoroughly sympathise with an author who
round an added zest in invcnting the facts upon which
his thcories rested. Have hot ethical philosophers of ail
ages becn 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 wombe. ''
The affectations we bave just enumerated are much
less conspicuous in the second part of tïthncs than in
the first, and, though they find a place in his earlier
plays, Lyly gradually frees himself from their influence,
owing pcrhaps to the decline of the euphuistic fashion,
but more probably to the growth of lais dramatic instinct,
which saw that such forms wcre a drag upon the action
of a pla)'. And yet at times Lyly could use his clumsy
veapon with grcat 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 hand. '' Other little delicate turns
of phrase may be found in the mine of Euphues--for the
digging. Our author vas no genius, but he had a full
a Bond, t. p. t3 t note.  uDhues , p. a99.

EUPHU1SM 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 bave forgotten, ye middle I understand hot,
and the end hangeth hot well together 1''; and with this
piece of self-criticism we may leave Lyly for the present
and turn to his predecessors.

SECTION II. The Origits of Euphnism.

When we pass from an analytical to an historical
consideration of the style which Lyly ruade his own and
stamped for ever with the naine of his hero. we corne
upon a problem which is at once the most difficult and
the most fascinating with which we bave to deal. The
search for a solution will lead us far afield; but, inas-
much as the publication and success of [iuphues bave
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 bave long
since decided that the peculiar style, which we have just
dissolved into its elements, was hot 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 claire to finality. Perhaps a tentative solution is ail
that is possible in the present stage of our knowledge.
It is, of course, easy to point to the book or books from

22 JOtlN LYLV
which Lyly borrowed, and to dismiss the question thus.
But this simply evades the whole issue ; for, though it
explains lz'uthttes, it by no means explains euphuism.
Equally unsatisfactory is the theory that euphuism was
of purely Spanish origin. Snch a solution has ail 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 L),ly'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 boole of t/te e»qeror
,Uarctts Attrc]itts z«it/t a 1)ia]l for prittces. "/'lais book
was translated into Eglish 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 Bcrners
being The Goldcst lok«, that of North being T/te 1)iall of
lrittces. Dr Landmann is very positive with regard to
his theory, but the fact that both translations corne from
the French and hot from the Castilian, seems to me to
constitute a scrious drawback to its acceptance. And
moreover this theory does hot explain the really im-
portant crux of the whole marrer, namely the reason
why a style of this kind, whatever its origin, found a
ready acceptance in England: for fourteen editions of
The Gold«t 13ok 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 ail kinds and in
Guevara among others; and that the euphuistic style
was already forming in England, and that this was the

EUPHUIbM 2 3
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 out 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 VllI.'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 tonguesl. '' At such a time
this number represents a very considerable influence;
and it is, therefore, no wonder that critics bave 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 Montemayor -, and Nash with Mendoza, and
thus to point at Spain as the parent, hot only of the
euphuistic, but also ofthe pastoral and picaresqueromance,
is to furnish an explanation almost irresistible in its
symmetry. It must have been with the joy of a
 Underhill, p. 339-
 id., p. 268 note. Mr Underhill wriles: " The attempt to connect the
style of Sidney with that of Montemayor has failed."

2 4 J()HN LYLY
mathematician, solving an intricate problem, that
Dr Landmann formulated this thcory of literary equa-
tions. But without going to such lengths, without
pressing the connexion between particular writers, one
may adroit 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 saine time cautioning us against the
dangers of over-estimating it. Any contact on the side
of the lyric and the drama was, he declares, ver), slight ,
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
litcrature, comprising scientific treatises, accounts of
voyages such as inspired Hakluyt, works on militaty
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 ltalian literature; moreover most of
the Spanish translations under this head came into
England after I58o, and could not therefore have
influenced Lyly's novel. But of course the Libro Aureo
had been englished long bcfore this, while the Laari[[o
de Tdrmes, 3Iendoza's * picaresque romance, was given
an English garb by Rowland in I57i5, and, though
iX,[ontemayor's Diaua was not translated until 1596 ,
Spanish and French editions of it had existed in England
long previous to that date. Perhaps most important
of ail was the famous realistic novel Celcstina, which was
well known, in a French translation, to Englishmen at
a Underhill, p. 48, but see Martin Hume, ch. x.
z Some doubt bas been lhrown upon Mendoza's authorship. See
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, p. 58, and Martin Hume, p.

EUPHUISM 2 5
the beginning of the 16th century, and was denounced
by Vives at Oxford. It was actually traraslated into
English as early as 153 o. There was on the whole,
therefore, quite an appreciable quantity of Spanish
artistic literature circulating in England before IEuhues
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 evera greater literary stimulus than the
former alliance. Throughout the whole of Elizabeth's
rule, the English were contiraully coming into contact
with the Spaniards, cither 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 ltaly, and, in both, the ltalian influence took
a similar form, modified on the one hand by humanism,
and on the other b¥ feelings of patriotism, if not of
imperialism. Spain and England took the Renaissance
fever more coldl),, and at the saine time more seriously,
than did Italy. .And in both the new movement even-
tually assumed the character of intellectual asceticism
I /Martin Hume, p.  26.

26 JOHN LYL¥
moulded by the sombre hand of religious fanaticism;
for Spain was the cradle of the Counter-Reformation,
England of Puritanism.
Eeaving 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 hot a strong case, can be made out.
Eer since the beginning of the 6th centur)' a Spanish
tradition had existed at Oxford. Vives, the Spanish
humanist, and the friend of Erasmus, was in x57
admitted Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and in  523
became reader in rhetoric ; and, though he was banished
in x5-'8, at the time of the divorce, it seems that he was
continually lecturing before the University during the
rive years of lais 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 S«to and Juan de Villa Garcia. But Elizabeth
maintained the tradition; and in 559 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 575 to 585, 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 Castillan,
though himself an Englishman. This was Hakluyt, who
must have been known to Lyly; and for the following
reason. In 597 Henry Lok  published a volume of
religious poems to which Lyly contributed commenda-
 Bond, I. p. 6 7.

EUPHUIbM 2 7
tory verses. On the other hand Hakluyt's first book
was supplemented by a woodcut map executed by his
friend Michael LokL 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 ma)- feel
justified in supposing that Hakluyt, Sidney, Carew, Lyly,
Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Rogers (the translator of
]stdla) were all personally acquainted, if hot intimate,
at the University. Another and very important naine
may be added to this list, that of Stephen Gosson, who,
"a Kentish man born " like out hero, alld entering
Oxford a year after him (in I572), must, I feel sure,
have been one of his friends. The fact that he was
at first interested in actin, 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 Histvly
of the Cnquest of IIç'st India, a translation of Cortes'
book published in t578. Taking ail this into conside-
ration, it is extremel}r interesting to find Gosson publish-
ing in I579 his famous Sckoole of Mbuse, which bears
most of the distinguishing marks of euphuism already
noted, but which can scarcely bave been modelled upon
Lyly's work; for as Professor Saintsbury writes: "the
very short interval between the appearance of Euphues
and the Schoole of tbuse, shows that he must rather
bave mastered the Lylian style in the same circumstances
 Underhill, p. 178, to whonl I ana indebtel for nearly ail the preceling
renaarks in connexion with the Spanish atnaosphere at Oxford.
* Arber's reprint, çchool of.4buse, p. 97-

28 JOtlN IVL¥
and situations as Lyly than have directly borrowed it
from his fellow at Oxford. '' And moreover Gosson's
style does hot read like an imitation of Lyly. The
same tricks and affectations are employed, but they are
empioyed differently and perhaps more effectively.
Lyly is again found in contact with the h;panish atmo-
sphere, as one of the dependents of the Earl of Oxford,
who patronized Robert Baker, George lqaker, and
Anthony lIunday, who were ail under the "spell of the
peninsulaï" 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 Euphu«s, the
point is hot 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 vere 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 wa)" he would have corne to a knowledge of
the most famous Spanish book which had )'et received
translation, the Libro ,'tureo 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
 Craik, vol. I. = Underhill, ch. Vll. § =.

EUPHUISM 2 9

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 ail 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 ail, it
merely widens the issue ; for we are still left asking for
a reason of his continental fame. The problem requires
a doser investigation than it has at present received.
It was undoubtedly Guevara's alto cstilo 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 sinailar style themselves.
¢t priori therefore the ansver to out 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 euplauism.
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 LVL¥
of Mrs Humphry Ward's article on Euthuism in the
Encycloa«dia Britannica. in which she follows Dr Land-
mann. His criticism, which appeared in the Athcnwum,
was afterwards enlarged in an appendix to his edition
of Berners' translation of /-/uon of Bordcau.r. " Lord
Berners' sentences," Mr Lee writes, " are euphuistic
beyond ail question; they are characterized by the
forced antitheses, alliteration, and the far-fetched illus-
trations from natural phenomena, peculiar to Lyly and
his successors'." 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 lXlr Lee's deduction is correct. Ir Bond
therefore is in grave error when he writes, " North
endeavoured what Berners had hot 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 hot to Spanish ; and it is he who must be
regarded as the real founder of our euphuistic literary
fashionV' 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 158o, it is
Berners and hot 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
toke states that the translation was undertaken "at the
instaunt desire ofhis nevewe Sir Francis Bryan Knyghte."
It was Bryan also who wrote the passage at the
conclusion of the toke applauding the "swete styleU'
x Huon of Bordeaux, appendix I., Lord t«rners and Euphuism, p. 786.
 Bond, I. p. 158.  See 4theoeum, July 14, I883.

EU PH UISM  I
This Sir Francis Bryan was a favourite of Henry VIII.,
a friend of Surrey and Wyatt, possib[y of Ascham and
of his toaster Ceke, in fact a very weil-known figure at
court and in the literary circles of his day'. Euphuism
must, therefore, bave had a considerable vogue even in
the da),s of Henr), VIII. If it could be shown that
Bryan could read Castillan, the Guevara theory might
still possess some plausibilit),, for it would be argued
that Berners learnt his style from his nephev. But,
though we kllow 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 Z)ispraise of
the lire of a courtier, he, like his uncle, had to go to a
French translation-". Vherever 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 nov about to bring
forward ought to dispose of the Landmann-Guevara
theory once and for ail. In the article before mentioned
Mr Lee goes on to sa),: "The translator's prologue to
Lord Berners' troissart vritten in 15_4 and that to be
round in other of his works show him to bave corne
under Guevara's or a similar influence before he trans-
lated the Golden BokeS. '" Here is an extract from the
prologue in question. " The most profitable thing in this
 Z)i«t. orgeat. Biog., Br)'an.
 The 2nd edition of this book, which was published under another title,
is thus described in the B. bi. Car. : ".4 Iooking-glas for the «t«rt...out of
Castilian drawne into French by A. Alaygre ; and out of the French into
Eaglish by Sir F. I3riant."
3 Huon, p. 787-

3 2 JOtlN LVLV
wor]d for the institution of the human lire is history.
Once the continual reading thereof maketh young men
equa] in prudence to old men, and to old fathers striken
in age it ministereth cxperience 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
bave 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 bave been moved, some to build cries, some
to devise and establish laws right, profitable, necessary
and behoveful for the human lire, some other to find new
arts, crafts and sciences, very requisite to the use of
mankind. But above ail things, whereby man's wealth
riseth, special laud and praise ought to be given to
history: it is the keeper of such things as bave been
virtuously donc, and the witness of evil deeds, and by
the benefit of history ail noble, high and virtuous acts be
immortal. What moved the strong and tierce Hercules
to euterprise in his lire so many great incomparable
labours and perils ? Certainly nought else but that for
his great merit immortality might be given him of ail
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 hot 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,
 'roissart, Globe edition, p. xxviii.

EUPHUISM 33
when he declares that "the parallelism of the sentences,
the repetition of the saine thought differentl¥ expressed,
the rhetorical question, the accumulation of synonyms,
the classical references, are irrefutable witnesses to the
presence of euphuism. '' But Mr Lee appeared to be
quite unconscious of the full significance of his discovery.
[t meats that Berners was writing ehuism in 1524,five
years belote Çtte,ara lublished kis bookin Slaiz. No
critic, as far as I bave been able to discover, bas shown
any consciousness of this significant fact ', which is of
course of the utmost importance in this connexion ; as, if
itis to carry all the weight that is at first sight due toit,
the theo W that euphuism was a mere borrowing from
the Spanish must be pronounced entirely explodcd.
But it is as well hot to be over-confident. Guevara's
Libro Aureo, his earliest work, was undoubtedly first
published by his authority in  5_99, 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 edition , which describes the book as "nuettcl-
ttezte rettisto 2#or slt se9oria," 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 X, Vest of Dublin, yet the
words of so well known a writer cannot be ignored. He
quotes Dr X, Vest in a footnote as follows : "There are
 Huon, p. 788.
 After writing the above I have noticed that Mr G. C. Macaulay,
in the Introduction to the Globe Froissarl, writes as follows {p. xvi):
" If nothing else could be adduced to show that the tendency {i.e. euphuisrn)
existed already in English literature, the prefaces to Lord Berners' Frais-
sart written before he couhl possibly bave read Guevara, would be enough
to prove it."
a There are two extant editions of 59, (i) published ai Valladolid,
frorn which the words above are quoted, iii} published at Enueres, which
appears to be an earlier edition. Copies of both in the British Museurn.
w. 3

34 JOHN LYLY

some circumstances connected with the Rclox {i.e. the
sub-title of the Zibro Aureo) hot generally known, which
satisfactorily account for various erroneous statements
that bave been ruade on the subject by writers of high
authority. The fact is that Guevara, about the year I 5 1 8,
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 subsequcmly published it
(529) with considerable additionsl. '' From this it ap-
pears that previous unauthorised editions of Guevara's
book had becn published before I529. Might not
Berners therefore bave come under Guevara's influence
as early as  524 ? We must concede that it is possible,
but, on the other hand, the difficulties in the way of such
a contingenc)' seem aimost insuperable. In the first place,
if we are to believe Dr \Vest, Guevara did hot begin to
write his work belote 58, and it was hOt until "some
time aftcrwards" (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
524. But further it mu.t be remembered that Berners
ahnost certainly could hot read Castilianï Now the
earliest kuown French translation of Guevara is one by
Réné Bertaut in 53, which Berners himself is known
to bave used . Therefore, if Berners was alrcady under
Guevara's influence in t 524, he must bave known of an

1 tlailam, Lit. of Europe, ed. ,85, vol. I. p. 403 n. Brunet in his
3Ianuel de Libraire gives Hallam's view without comment, tome II.
«' Guevara."
- Underhill, p. 69. n Bond, vol. I. p. t37-

EUPHUISM 35
earlier French pirated translation of an earlier pirated
edition of the Libro turea. To sum up; if the euphuistic
tendency in English prose is tobe ascribed entirely, or
even mainly, to the influence of Guevara's Libra ]ttreo,
we must digest four improbabilities : (i) that there existed
a pirated edition of the book in Spain earlier than I524:
(ii that this had been translated into French, also before
524, although the version of Bertaut in 153 is the
earliest French translation we bave any trace of: (iii) that
]3erners himself had corne across this hypothetical French
edition, again before 5_4 : 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 Fraissart.
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 bave been
approached from the first--that is from the English and
hot the Spanih side. I say the natural side, becaue 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 Egland 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 6th century prose is analogous to
that of 8th century verse. The solution of both was for
a long time found in foreign influence. It was natural

36 JOHN LYLV
to assume that France, the pivot of our foreign policy at
the end of the Tth century, gave us the classical move-
ment, and that Spain, equally important politically in
the 6th century, gave us euphuism. Closer investigation
has disproved both these theories , showing that, while
foreign influence was undoubtedly an immense factor in
the dc,dot»teut of these literary fashions, their real origin
was English.
The proof of this does not rest entirely on the case of
Berncrs. We might even concede that he was acquainted
with an earlier edition of Guevara, and that his style xvas
actually derived from Spanish sources, without surren-
dering out thesis that euphuism was a natural growth.
lerners' euphuism, whatever its origin, was premature;
and, though the Goldt'n toke passed through twelve
editions between 1534 and I56O, 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 b, Mr Underhill as the" Guevara-group." On
the other hand, itis possible to trace a feeling towards
euphuism among writers who were quite outside this
group.
Latimer, for example, delighted in alliterative turns
of speech, tbough the antithetical manncrisms 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 I8th century v. Gosse, Frottt Shakespeare la

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 poetryl. '' Latimer also employs
the responsive method so frequenily used by Lyly. "But
ye say it is new learning. Now I tell you it is old
learning. Y'ea, 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 hot round
in Guevara; it was an addition, and a very important
one, ruade 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
Aschaln. 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 ail 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 imagine""; 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. 1. p. 224. = Craik, p. 28.

38 JOHN LVLV
Schooimastcr and in the ToxolOhilus, that one can only
select. As an illustration of transverse alliteration quite
as complex as any in Eu.hues, we ma), 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 hot lightlie, yet willinglie ; entering
hard things though hOt easily, yet depelieU' Classical
allusions abound throughout Ascham's work, and he
occasionally indulges in the ethics of natural history as
follows :
" Young Graftes grov hOt 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 ail other things though they lacke reason, sense, and
lire, the similitude of youth is fittcst to ail goodnesse,
surelie nature in mankinde is more beneficial and effec-
tual in this behalf&."
We know that Lyly had read the Schoolmastcr, as he
took the ver), title of his book from its description of
Etçbo,ç 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. 3.5- " id., p. 46.

EUPH UISM 39
perhaps the most striking characteristics of Ascham's
prose; and it is /nteresting to observe hov much the
structure of the sentence in the more elaborated stages
of Engl]sh prose fs due to their combinationl. '' Here
we bave the tvo elements of out native-grown euphuism,
and their origins, carefuIIy distinguished. Oç course
vith euphuism we do hot commence English prose;
that is already centuries old; but we are dealing with
the beginnings of Ènglish prose style, by xhich 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 Ear|y Èng|ish. But, deferring this point
for a [ater treatment, let us conclude out study of the
evolution of euphuism in Êngland.
Go far we bave been dealing with euphuistic tendencies
only, since in the style of Ascham and his predecessors,
aIl]teration and antithesis are hot employed consistently,
but merely on occasion for the sake of emphasis. Other
marks of euphu]sm, such as the fantastic embroidery of
mythica| beasts and flowers, are absent. Even in .North's
Diallalliteration is hot profuse, and similes from natural
history are comparatively rare. In George Pettie,
however, we find a complete euphuist belote Euthues.
This writer aga]n br]ngs us in touch with that Oxford
atmosphere, which, I maintain, surrounded the birth of
the full-blown euphuism. A student of Crist Church,
he took his B.A. degree in I569L and so probably just
escaped being a contemporary of Ly|¥. 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. *6 9. 2 Dict. oflVat. BioK., Pettie.

4 ° JOltN LYLY
However this may be, he published his .D,'tile .Da/lace of
Pe//le Iris Pl«asttre, which so exactly anticipates the style
of Ethues, in 1 !;76, only two years before the later book.
The Petite Pallace was an imitation of the famous
t)ahce of Pleasure published in 11;66 by x, Villiam
Painter, who, though he had known Guevara's writings,
drew his material almost entirely from Italian sources.
That l'ettie 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 Ci,ile Cou,crsation ila 1581, to which lac affixcs
a euphuistic preface. This again was only a left-handed
transcript from the French. Therefore the Spanish
elemcnts, though undoubtedly present, cannot be insisted
upon. We may concede that l'ettie had read North,
or even go so far as to assert with lr 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
chaptcr, I cannot refrain from qu«»ting a passage from
Pettie, hot only as an example of his style, but also
because the passage is in itself so delightful, that it is
onc's duty to rescue it from oblivion:
".As amongst ail the bonds of benevolence and good
will, there is none more honourable, ancient, or honest
than marriage, so in m t" fancy there is none that doth
more firmly fasten and inscparably unite us together
than the saine 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

EUPttUISM 4I
obedience towards the father: the master hath an
imperious regard of the servant, the servant a servile
care of the toaster. 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 witlaout doubting, truly without
doubling, willingly without constraint, joyfully without
complailat: yea there is such a general consent and
mutual agreement between the man and wife, that tlaey
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: so the love of the wife planted in the breast
of ber 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 societ), of her husband withercth
away in woe and leadeth a life no less pleasant than
death. '' 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
readilydetected. The sole difference between the styles
of Lyly and Pettie is that, while lettie's similes from
nature are simple and natural, Lyly, with his knowledge
of Iliny and of the bestiaries, added his fabulous
"unnatural natural history." Pettie's book vas 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 faine of the much more pretentious, and,
 I have taken the liberty of modernising the spelling.

4 2 JOll LVLV
apart from the style, better constructed Et«/t«es of Lyly.
In truth, as Gabriel Harveyjustly 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 vas Lyly vho
ruade 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 sure up out conclusions respecting the
origin and development of this literary phase. Difficult
as it is to unravel the tangled nctwork 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 Bemers, undoubtedly took the field early, but, as we
have seen, Berners vas probably feeling towards the
style belote he knew Guevara; and moreover the bishop's
alto csti/o must have suffered considerably while passing
through the French. Even alloving everything, as ve
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 tender 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 vork. And yet
Lyly owed a great debt to Guevara. A true solution,
therefore, nust 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 aliovance to both.

SECTION III. Æyly's Leffatces and the relation
between Eulhuism and t/le Renaissance.
The publication of lUl/tucs was the culmination,
rather than the origin, of that literary phase to which
it gave its naine. And the vogue of euphuism after
I579 was short, lasting indeed only until about I59o;
yet during these ten years its influence was far-reaching,
and left a definite mark upon iater English prose. It
wouid be idle, if hOt impossible, to trace its effects upon
every individual writcr who feil under its immediate
fascination. Moreover the task has already been per-
formed in a great measure bv M. Jusserand  and
Mr Bond". They have shown once and for ail that
Greene, Lodge, \Velbanke, Munday, \Varner, Wilkinson,
and above ail Shakespeare, were indebted to our author
for certain mannerisms of style. I shail 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 Slanish Trag«'dy between t584
and  589, that is at the height of the euphuistic fashion.
This play was apparently an inexhaustible joke to thc
Elizabethans ; for the rcferences toit in later dramatists
are innumerable. One passage must have been particu-
lady famous, for we find it parodied most elaborately by
 Jusscrand, ch. tv. 2 Bond, vol. 1. pp. 64-75-

44 JoHN LYLY
Field, as late as 16o6, in his ,4 IVoman is a ll'«athercock .
The passage in question, which was obviously inspired by
Lyly, runs as follows :
"'et might she Ioce 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.
'et might she love me to uprear her state:
I, but perhaps she Ioves some nobler mate.
'et might she love me as her beautie's thrall:
I, but I feare she cannot love at ail."
Nathaniel Field's parody of this melodramatic nonsense
is so amusing that I cannot forbear quoting it. This
rime the despairing loyer is Sir Abraham Ninn¥, who
quotes Kyd to his companions, and the¥ with the cry of
" Ha God-a-merc¥, old Hieromino !" begin the gaine of
parody, which must bave been keenl¥ enjoyed b¥ the
audience. Field improves on the original by putting the
alternate lines of despair into the mouths of Ninn¥'s
jesting friends. It runs, therefore:
"--Yet might she love me for my lovely eyes.
--Ay but, perhaps your nose she does despise.
--Vet might she love me for my dimpled chin.
--Ay but, she sees your beard is very rhin.
--,'et tnight 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 hot like your ware.
--Ver nfight she love me in despite of ail.
(the lady herself)--Ay but indeed I cannot love at ail."
This parod)', 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 knov-
ledge of previous plays they assumed their audience to
1 Act I. Sc. II.

EUPHUISM 45
bave possessed. There are several other examples of
Kyd's acquaintance vith the lïuphues in the Spanisk
Tragedy , in the other dramas , and in his prose works ,
which itis hot 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.
Itis a counsel of hope to the despairing loyer, and
assumes this inspiring form:
"My Lord, though Belimperia seem thus coy
Let reaon hold you in your wonted joy;
In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke,
In time ail Haggard IIawkes will stoop to lure,
In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake,
In rime the flint is pearst with softest shower,
And she in rime will rail from her disdain,
And rue tbe sufferance of your deadly paine4. ''
Now these lines are practically a transcript of the open-
ing words of the 4îth sonnet in Watson's I-fekatonathia
published in 582. Remembering Lyly's penetrating
observation that " the soft droppes of rain pearce the
hard lnarble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oake, ''
and bearing in mind that the high priest of euphuism
himself contributed a commendatory epistle to the
1-]ekato»qoathia, xve should expect that these Bulls and
Hawkes and Oakes were choice flowers of speech, culled
from that botanico-zoological "garden of prose"--the
EulhUes. 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 animais and
t Sp. Trag., Act Iv. t9o (cp. Euphues, p. 46).
 Soliman and lerseda, Act 1II. I.O (cp. iEuphttes, p. oo), and Act
1. 99"
z J'yd's lVorks [Boas), p. 88, and ch. Ix.
 Sp. Traff. Act 11. 1-8.  Euphu$, p. $37"

4 6 JOHN LYL¥
plants. The conclusion is forced upon us therefore that
Watson and Lyly went to the saine 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 anaongst the imitators of Eithu«s. Like Pettie
and Gosson he must share with Lyly the credit of
creation. I-le was a friend of Lyly's at Oxford; they
dedicated their books to the saine patron, and they
empIoyed 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
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 poct
Richard Barnefield, who though too young in 1578 to
have been of the University coterie of euphuists, shows
definite traces of their affectation in lais works. The
conventional illustrations from an "unnatural natural
history" abound in his Affectionate Shelherd  (i594) ,
and he repeats the jargon about marble and showers 
which we have seen in Lyly, "Vatson and Kyd. Again
in his C3,nthia (594) there is a distinct reference to the
opcning words of Ethttcs in the lines,
"Wit without wealth is bad, yet counted good ;
bVealth wanting wisdom's worse, yet deemed as wella. ''
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 xvith the movement has been over-
1 190eU15, Arber, pp. 8 and '9- u id., p. 4.
 id.,p.$,.

EU PHUISM 47
looked, or because they throw a new and important
light upon Lyly hirnseif. Of other legatees itis im-
possible to treat here ; and itis enough, without tracing
it in any detaii, to indicate "the slender euphuistic
thread that runs in iron through lMarlowe, in silver
through Shakespeare, in bronze through Bacon, in
rnore or less inferior rnetal through every writer of
that age. ''
There is nothing strange in this infatuation, if we
rernernber that euphuisrn was "the English type of an
ail but universal diseaseL" as Syrnonds puts it. Dr Land-
rnann, 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
iiterature can afford to neglect. Mattlew rkrnoid long
ago laid down the clarifying principle that "the criti-
cisrn which aione can rnuch help us for the future, is
a criticisrn which regards Europe as being, for inteilectual
and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound
to a joint action and working to a cornrnon result. ''
.And the truth of this becornes more and more indis-
putable, the longer we study European history, whether
it be frorn the side of Politics, of Religion, or of 2rt.
Landrnann ascribes euphuisrn to Spain, Syrnonds ascribes
it to Italy, and an equally good case rnight be ruade out
in favour of France. There is truth in ail these hypo-
theses, but each rnisses the true significance of the rnatter,
which is that euphuisrn rnust have corne, and wouid have
corne, without any question of borrowing.
The date 1453 is usually taken as a convenient
starting point for the Renaissance, though the rnovement
was already at work in Italy, for that was the year of
I Symonds, p. 407.  id., p. 404.
* Essays in Critigis«, l. p. 39.

48 JOHN LX L¥

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
ltaly, but with the invasion of Charles VII I., which com-
mences a long period of French and Spanish occupation
of ltalian 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 [talian literature. Thus it was
that those beyond the Alps drank of vater 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 tobe 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 themse]ves invent-
ing similar extravagances independently of Italy. The
purely formal ideal of Art had in Spain already round
expression among the courtiers of Juan Il. of Castile.
One of them. Baena, writes as follows of poetry : " that
it cannot be learned or wel/and properly known, save by
the man of very deep and subtle invention, and of a very

EUPHUI.%M 49
lofty" and fine discretion, and of a ver T healthy and un-
erring judgment, and such a one mu.,t have seen and
heard and read many" and diverse books and writings,
and know ail languages and bave frequented kings'
Courts and associated with great men and beheld and
taken part in vorldly affairs ; and finally" he must bc of
gentle birth, courteous and sedate, polished, humorous,
polite, witty, and bave in his composition honey, and
sugar, and salt, and a good presence and a witt)- manner
of reasoning ; moreover he must be also a loyer and ever
make a show and pretence of it ." Such a catalogue of
the poet's requisites might have been written by any
one of out Oxford euphuists; and \Vatson, at least,
among them fulfilled ail 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 chivalr)- is
dying out ail over Europe ; and the romances ofchivalrT
are everTwhere despised. The horizontal class divisions
become obscured by the newl)" 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 lire and culture is
therefore in the process of formation, that of the Court ;
and thanks to this, the idem of chivalry gives place to
the new ideal of the courtier or the gentleman. This
ideal round literary expression in the moral Court
treatises, which vere so universally popular during the
Renaissance, and of which Guevara, Castiglione, and
 Butler Clarke, Sanist Litera/ure, p.
W. 4

5 ° JOtlN 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 hot pedantic, diction; and for this it vas natural that
men should go to the classics, and more especially to
classical orators, as models of good speech. It must
hot be imagined that this process vas a conscious one.
In many countries the rhetorical style vas already
formed by scholars before it became the speech of the
Court. In fact the beginnings of modern prose style are
tobe round 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
Sdloo[mastt'r. The classics it must be remembered
were hOt 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 the), 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 «Iarius the Epicurean in his
chapter significantly called EUl]tuism. Few of the Re-
naissance students had the critical acumen of Cheke,
and they fell therefore an eas)- prey to the stylism of the

EUPHUISM 5 [
later Latin xvriters, xvith its antithesis and extravagance.
But, with ail this, men could hot 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 hot
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 ail these phases euphuism
was, I think, the most important : certainly if we confine
out attention to English literature this must be admitted.
But, even if we keep our e),es upon the Continent alone,
euphuism would seem to be more significant than the
movements xvhich 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 d),namical importance. In this way, short-lived
and abortive as it seemed, euphuism anticipated the
literature of the ancien rtime.
The movement, moreover, was only one aspect of the
Renaissance; it was the under-current which in the 18th
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 hOt 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. Itis essentiall)- opposed to the classical movement,
for it represents the idea as distinct from the form. Lyly

52 JOHN LYLV
belongs to both movements, for, while he is the prot-
agonist of the romantic drama, in his Ez«hucs 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 18th century em-
bracing the whole current of English literature. Belote,
however, proceeding to fix the position of euphuism in
the development of English prose, let us sure up the
results we have obtained from out 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-
tia]]y a prodoct of homanism. In every country scho]ars
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 lnediaeval preference for words rather than
ideas, and part]y to the fact that the times were hot yet
r/pe 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. Euplmes, in
fact, is hot so much a reflection of, as a Glasse for
Europe.

SECTION IV. TAc position of Et/tuism in t/te Aistory
of E»ff/isk prose.

A few words remain to be said about this literary
curiosity, by way of assigning a place toit 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 hOt 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 hot yet been employed for
artistic purposes, was already an important part of out
literature, and possessed a quality which no national
prose had exhibited since the days of Greece, the quality
of popularity . 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 out prose from that of
other nations. In Italy, for example, the language of
literature is practicaIly 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 more freely within the lim'itations of English
prose. Indeed," itis a remarlable fact," as Sainte Beuve
noticed, "and an inversion of what is true of other lan-
guages that, in lrench, prose has always had the pre-
cedence over poetry." Repeated attempts, however, have
been ruade to capture out 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 Vatson, it became the instrument
of an Oxford coterie deliberately and consciously em-
ployed for the purpose of altering the form of English
 Cf. Earle, pp. 4.22, 4.z 3.

54 JOHN LYL¥
prose. These men did hot despise their native tongue;
they used the purest English, carefully avoiding the
favourite "ink-horn terres" 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. Euphuisrn
was no "transient phase of madness, '' 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 claire upon students of English literature.
The first point we must notice, therefore, about
English euphuism is that it represents a tender, cy to
confine literature within the limits of the Curt--in
accordance, one might almost say, with the general
centralization of politics and religion under the Tudors
--and that, as a nëcessary result of this, conscious prose
style appears for the first rime in our language. I say
English euphuism, because that is our chief concern, and
because though euohuism on the Cntinent was, as we
have seen, the expression in literature of the new ideal
of the courtier, )'et it was by no means so great an inno-
vation as it was in England, inasmuch as the Romance
literatures had aRvays 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, rneet 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
 Earle, p. 436.

EUPHUISM 55
ourselves with indicating the rhetorical aspect of eu-
phuism. \Ve bave 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 hot entirely for spiritual
reasons that Lyly frequently attended Dr Andrews'
serinons . 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 ma), be regarded as merely the
overflow'L" 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
la), 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 I Sth 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,
 Bond, I. p. 60.  Raleigh, p. 45-

5 6 JOIIN LYLY
gives ita musical elcment which its continental parallels
lacked. The dividing line betveen alliteration and
rhyme, and betwecn antithesis and rhythm, is hOt a
broad one . Indeed Pettie found it so narrov 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. Eulhncs is a model of form beside the
tedious prolixity of the qrcadia, 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 toits 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 fllesse, the subtlety, of French prose
bas 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 vhole aspect of later
Ênglish prose, by giving us in the 16th century that

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

EUPHUISII 57
quality of diction which did hot 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
636, and long after its ocial popularity had become a
thing of the past, it probably attracted the careful stud¥
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 faine, 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 hOt appear to have
round favour among those critics, and this was probably
a loss to our literature. "Alliteration," as Professor
Raleigh remarks, "is often condemned as a flav in
rhymed verse, and it may well be open to question
whether Lyly did hOt give it its true position in attempt-
ing to invent a place for it in what is called prosel. ''
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 I589 in the
words of Warner's preface to ,llion's En, friand, 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 marrer:
1 Raleigh, p. 47-

5 8 JOHN LYLV
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 Eut*hucs 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 antithctical device; but his successors had only to
discover a means of skilfull¥ concealing the structure,
an improvement which the early euphuists, with all the
enthusiasm of inventors, could hot have appreciated.
Moreover, in aiming at elegance and precision, Lyly
attained a lucidity ahnost 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 Gtrawberries, hot in heapes, lyke
Hoppes. '' Arcadianism came as a reaction against
euphuism, attempting to replace its artificiality by
simplicity. But how infinitely more prefcrable is the
novel of Lyly, with its artificial precision and lucidity,
to the conscious artlessness of Gidney's trcadia, with
its interminable sentences and confused syntax. As a
modern euphuist bas taught us, of all poses the natural
pose is the most irritating. In accordance with his
desire for precision, L¥1y made frequent use of the short
sentence. In this we bave another indication of his
I Eututs ' 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 saine 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 round in lïuphues which have
since become obsolete is a vcry smali one--"at most but
a smaii fraction of one per cent. '' And this is in itself
sufficient to indicate the influence which Lyly's novei
has exerted upon English prose. As he reads it, no one
can avoid bcing struck by the modernity of its language,
an impression not to be obtained from a perusai of the
plays. The explanation is simple enough. The plays
were not read or absorbed by their author's contem-
poraries and successors; lïulhues was. In the domain
of style, E«lbues was dynamicai; the plays were not.
But the true value of Lyly's prose lies hot so much
in what it achieved as in what it attempted; for the
qualities, which euphuism, by its insistence upon design
and elegatace, really aimed at, xvere strength, brilliancy,
and refinement. For the first rime in the history of out
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 iatest
editor, "grasped the fact that in prose no less than in
poetry, the reader demanded to be ied onward by a
succession of half i,nperceptible shocks of pleasure in
the beauty and vigour of diction, or in the ingenuity
of phrasing, in sentence after sentence--pleasure in-
1 Chiid, p.

60 JOHN LYLY

separable from that caused by a perception of the nice
adaptation of vords to thought, pleasure quite other than
that derivable from the acquisition of fresh knowledgeU'
The direct influence of the man who first taught us this
lesson, who showed us that a writer, tobe successful,
should seek hot 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 hOt more lasting was due, in the first place, to the
fact that he had hot 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. lXlore
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 eventuall)r grol weary under the
influence of continuous excitation without variation.
The sort drops of tain 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 eztcz'g'ies," they paid no
attention to "those which depend upon the economy
1 Bond, I. p. t46.

EUPHUISM 6 l
of the mental sensibilitiesl. '' This is one explanation
of the weariness with which luphues fills the modern
reader, and of the speed with which, in spite of its
priceless pioneer work, that book vas superseded and
forgotten in its ovn days. It is out duty to give it its
full meed of recognition, but ve 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 becn
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 Eglish prose might have
been attended with success, had our literature been
younger and more easily led astray. As it was, prose in
this country, xvhen 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 tcndency of the agc to focus every-
thing that xvas 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 luphttes reprints, is the history
of the collapse of this centralization ail 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, I. tghiL afSt),lt.

66 JOHN
aeval prose narrative seems to have been confined to the
so-called Celtic faces. Certainly, both the romance of
chivalry and the novd[a are to be traced back to French
sources. The nord/a, which, at our period, had become
thoroughly naturalized in Italy, under the auspices of
Boccaccio, had originally sprung from the fabliaux of
lth century France. Nor was the fabliau the only
.article of Frcnch production which round a new and
rnore stimulative home across the Alps; for just as it is
possible to trace the Gcrman Reformation back, through
Huss, toits birth in \Vycliff's Egland, so French critics
have delighted to point .out that the Italian Renaissance
itsclf was but an expansion of an earlier Renaissance in
France, which, for ail the strength and maturity it
gained under its new conditions, lost much of that
indescribable flqvour of direct simplicity and gracious
sweetness which breathes from the pages of lucassit
ara/ iVicol«ttê and its companion Mmis atd 4milê.
Under Charles V I I l. 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 no»«lla, of which Chaucer had
ruade ample use, first appeared in prose dress from the
printing-press of Caxton's successor, \Vynkyn de \Vorde.
The Dutch printer had also published Lord Berners'
translation of Huott tf tordeaux, the best romance of
chivalry belonging to the Charlemagne cycle. But,
belote the dawn of the I6th century IIalory had already
given us elIortc l)'.4rthur, from the Arthurian cycle,
printed, as everyone knows, by the industrious Caxton
himself. Thus, if xve neglect, as I think we may, trans-
lations from the Gesta omatorum, ve ma), say that the
prose narrative appeared in England simultaneously
with the printing-press, a fact which is more than coin-

THE FIRST ENGLIStt NOVEL 67
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 lninstrel 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 Goldeu Boke of Guevara. So slight was
the thread of narrative running through this book, that
one would imagine at tir.st 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 tobe con-
sidered respectable--a very different thing--before that
age began. The first cause of their rail in the social
scale was the disapprobation ofthe humanists. Ascham,
echoing Plato's condemnation of Homer, attacks the
romance of chivalry from the moral point of view, at the
saine rime cunningly associating it with " Papistrie."
But he holds the novella even in greater abhorrence, for,
after declaring that the whole pleasure of the 3[orte
Jg'Arthur "standeth in txso speciall poyntes, in open
mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye," he goes on to say :
"and yet ten «llorte Arthurs do hot a tenth part so much
harm as one of those bookes, ruade in Ital¥ and trans-
lated in England
But there were social as well as moral reasons for the
depreciation of Malory and Boccaccio. The taste of the
age begart to find these foreigrt dishes, if rtot unpalatable,
a Schoolmaster, p. 80.

68 JOHN LYLY

at least not suflîciently delicate. England was fortunate
in receiving the Reformation and the Renaissance at the
saine time ; and the men of those "spacious times" set
belote 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 lire, purged of mediaevalism and modern-
ised by the hands of Sidney himself, under the guise of
arcadianism. V'hile, however, .4rcadia 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 hot 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 vhat 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 rime, a polished
mirror before contemporary life and manners, Lyly must
be called the first of English novelists.
T/ce lætatomy af llZit, 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
incident to the bare schetaae 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
es¢ilo, but lttlhttes 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 con be no doubt that
the 29iall af 19rinces was Lyly's model on the side of
marrer, as was Pettie's tgallace 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 ,4ureo Libro, in
certain of the concluding letters and discourses, and in
man), other ways which Mr Bond bas patientl¥ noted a.
Guevara, however, was but one among many previous
vriters to whom Lyly oved obligations, lttpltttcs was
justly styled by its author "compiled," being in fact
a mosaic, pieced together from the classics, and especiall¥
Plutarch, Pliny, and Ovid, and from previous Eglish
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 ail the authors from
whom he borrowed, and to point out the portions of
his novel which are due to their several influences,
vould onl¥ be to repeat a task already accomplished
by Mr Bond '.
Allowing for ail its author's "picking and stealing,"
Tlte ,4uatomy of II/'tt 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 corne from
Athens, which is unmistakeably Oxford, to Naples,
a Bond, 1. pp. 54-56.  Bond, I. pp.

7 2 JOHN LYLY
atmosphere which pervades it was hot of Lyly's in-
vention; he inherited it from his predecessors Guevara
and Castiglione, and he employed it because he knev
that it was expected of him. That he moralized hot 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 nev public, the pulpit strain is much less frequent,
while in his plays it entirely disappears. The Anatomy
of ll'it 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 coxcornb, and that he only
created him because he wished to cornply with the
public taste. It may be, as M. Jusserand asserts, that
Lyly anticipated Richardson, but, if the light-hearted
Oxford madcap had an)-qualities in common with the
sedate bookseller, artistic sincerity was hot one of them.
Vhat has just been said is hot entirely applicable to
the treatise on education which passed under the title of
EtŒEhtws and his Ephoebus. Although simply an adapta-
tion of the 19c Educatione of l'lutarch, it was hot 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 toaster before the lulhUcs saw-light; and, therefore,
 Bond, . p. o.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 73
we bave every reason to suppose that this little treatise
was a labour of love. Possibly Ascham's Sckoolmaster
inspired him with the idea of writing it. Certainly, when
we bave allowed everything for Plutarch's work, enough
remains over to justify Mr Quick's inclusion of John
Lyly, side by side with Rogcr 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 A natomy of IVit, there is little to be said
for it from the aesthetic point of view. Indeed, it cannot
strictly be called a novel at ail. 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 lire.
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 lire by a phrase or a chance word.
I have said that it is very important to distinguish
between the two parts of Euphucs. Two years only
elapsed between their respective publications, but in
these two years Lyly, and with him out novel, had
ruade great strides. In x578 he was hOt 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 58o, however, the English novel had
ceased to be merely potential ; for it had corne into being
with the appearance of Eupi«ucs aud his Eugland. Here
in the saine writer, in the saine book, and within the
space of two years, we may observe one of the most

74 JOHN LYLV
momentous changes of modern literature in actual pro-
cess. The ,zlnatolt3 of ll'it is stil} the moral Court
treatise, coloured by the influence of the Ita}ian no,ella;
lz-ulOhucs and his Etffland is the first English novel.
Lyly unconsciously symbolizes the change he initiated
by laying the scene of his first part in Ital)', 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 Anato»o' of llZit, as was
only fitting in a moral Court treatise, was inscribed to
the gentleman readers ; Ettl]tttes and his Ettgland, on the
other hand, ruade 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."
XVith 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 ara 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
.4uato» O, 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 Eutehucs and his Etfflatd must have corne
sooner or later, because ail 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 '5
chamber reading 19haedon 191atonis in Greeke and that
with as much delite, as some gentlemen would read a
tuerie tale in Bocase"; 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, ail the ladies of the Court would at least lay
claire 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 hot 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 trurnpet so shamelcssly, is seen hot so much in the
style ofluphues 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 .till more distasteful to the new voman
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 necded
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 hot the maid-in-waiting. What was re-
quired was a book expressly provided for the eye of
ladies--such a book, in fact, as Euphues and his Eltgland.
Lyly's discovery of this new literary public and its
 Schoolmaster, p. 4ï.

76 JOHN LYLY
requirements was of great importance, for bave hot the
ladies ever since his day been the patrons and purchasers
of the novel ? XVhat would happen to the literary market
to-day were out mothers, wives, and sisters to deny them-
selves the pleasure of fiction ? The very question would
send the blood from Mr Mudie's ]ips. The two thousand
and odd novels which are published annually in this
country show the existence of a large leisured class in
out community, and this class is undoubtedly the femi-
nine one. The novel, therefore, owes hot only its birth,
but its continued existence down to out own day, to the
" ladies and gentlewomen of England"; and this dedi-
cation may be taken as a general one for ail novels
since Lyly's rime. "Ehucs," 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 tEul]tues 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 nod. '' " With Eup&ucs," remarks
M. Jusserand, "commences in England the literature of
the drawing-room «''; and the literature of the drawing-
room is to ail intents and purposes the novel.
Ail the faults of its predecessor are present in l'uphues
and his Enoeland, but they are hot 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 rimes quite interesting, even for
a modern reader. At its opening Euphues and Philautus,
who bave corne to terres on a basis of common con-
 Euhues, p. zo.  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 bave 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 owrx 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 bave 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, out friends
arrive in England, where afterstopping 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 memory*
and hot 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
Fhilautus, 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 naine Surius. The despondent loyer,
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 poxver. The upshot is that Philautus eventually
t iIr 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
LyIy had already attempted, hot so successfully as here,
to describe one in the bouse of Lucilla of the .dlzatony
 tva.
In every way t?thues and his Enffland 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
tan 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 Etthucs, 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

8o JOtlN LVLY

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 Ethu«s vas in its influence,
not in its actual achievement. And here again ,ve must
reassert the significance of Lyly's appeal to women.
"That noble faculty," as Macaulay expresses it, "whereby
man is able to lire in the past and in the future in the
distant and in the unreal," is rarely round 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 Èliot, and
Mrs Humphry Ward are sufficient to show hov 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 81

of women, a masculine conception, nov 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 nov 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 hot its knightly
manifestations,--with the very feelings and hearts of the
loyers. 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 valking-
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 parasolS": 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
lire and discuss matters of everyday importance. And,
as if Lyly wished to leave no doubt as to lais aires and
methods, he gives at the conclusion of his book that in-
teresting description of Elizabethan England entitled
A glasse for tfuroe.
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, . p. 6.

w. 6

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 loyer,
has formed the main theme of our modern love stories
in the novel and on the stage. In the days of chivalry,
• vhen love tan 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 gaine 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 tire vhich the company finds such a perilous
fascination in playing with. Lyly's work does hot ex-
hibit quite such modernity as this, but we may truthfully
say that his Euphues and his Enland is the psychological
novel in germ.
Its latent possibilities were however not perceived by
the writers of the t6th century. The style vhich had in
part xvon 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 $idney, though its loose and
meandering style marked a reaction against euphuism,
carried on the Lylian tradition in its appeal to ladies.
The lrcadia, in no vay so modern as the Euphucs, lies
for that very reason more directly in the line of develop-

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 8 3
rnent; 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 hot 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
deterrnine its value. Its importance for us lies in the
fact that we can remise how it anticipated the novel of
the Sth and 19th 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 tgamela.
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
ISth century reader of the necessity of going back to
the Elizabethan writer for the entertainrnent he desired.
As a novelist, therefore, Lyly was only of secondary
dynarnical importance, by which 1 rnean 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 LyIy
as the first of a deltite series. The novel like its style
coloured, but did hot deflect, the stream of English
literature. And indeed we may say this hot only of
* It was Sidney and Nash who set the fashion for the Tth century.

84 JOHN LYLY
EtIzues but of Elizabethan fiction as a whole. The
public to which a 16th 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, Eu/Imes 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 hot
seen in the drama, and which is due to the susceptibility
of Court lire to sudden changes of fashion. Drama was
the natural form of literature in an age when most people
were illiterate and yet when ail 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 out 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
saine place as was held by the drama at the Restoration;
it was an essentially aristocratic entertainment, and the
saine pitfall waylaid both, the pitfall of artificiality.
Dryden's audiences and the readers of Eu//mes both
sought for better bread than is ruade of wheat; both
were supplied with what satisfied them in an elaborate
confection of husksU'
I Raleigh, p. 57- He writes trcadta for Euhues 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 corne out upon
the great highway of Elizabethan art--the drama. Let
us first see how Lyly himself came to tread this saine
pathway.
There is a difference of opinion betveen Mr Bond
and Mr Baker, out chief authorities, as to the order in
which Lyly wrote his plays 1. But though lVlr Baker
claims priority for Endymion, and Mr Bond for Campaspe,
I Baker, p. lxxxviii, places ndymion as early as Sept. 579- Bond,
vol. I!I. p. IO, attempts to disprove Baker's contention, and in vol. 11. p. 3o9,
he maintains ehiefly on grounds of style that Çam2aspe was the earliest of
Lyly's plays, being produeed at the Christmas of w58o.

86 JOHN LYL¥
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 lire 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 clearl
how Lyly's dramatic bent was formed. Seats of learning,
as we sha]] see present]y, had long belote the days of
Lyly favoured the comic muse, and Oxford was no
exception to this fuie. Anthony à Wood tells us how
Richard Edwardes in x566 produced at that University
his play Palamon and Arcile, and how her Majesty
"]aughed heartily thereat and gave the author great
thanks for his pains"; a scene which would still be fresh
in men's minds rive years after, when Lyly entered
Magdalen College. But it is scarcely necessary to stretch
a point here since we know from the tnatomy of ll'it
that Lyly was a student of Edwardes' comedies'. 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 I577.
Probably however it was hOt 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
 Bond, 11. p.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 8 7
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 hot 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 Puttenham . 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 pla¥ would be
acted. It was to Oxford's patronage, therefore, and
hot to his subsequent connexion with the "children of
Powles," that Lyly owed his first dramatic impulse, and
probably also his first dranatic success, for Camaspe
and Sapho were produced at Court in I58Z . His
1 Di£1. ofNat. Biog., Edward de Vere.
 Bond, Il. p. 230 (chronologieal table}.

9 ° JOHN LYL$'

audience the grand scheme of human salvation: the
morality on the other hand was hOt 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 il ail 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 test." 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 hOt 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 more-
ments of his puppets. It follovs 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 ma), notice in this connexion that the
morality certainly gave us that peculiar form of plot-
movement vhich is most suitable to comedy. To quote

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 91
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, tle better does Ie
enjoy his ease in the cool of the day .......... Now the
novelty of the plot in the »zora[ play, lay in the fact that
the movement was of this oscillating, upward kind--a
kind unknown as a rule to the »tirade, whose conditions
were less fluid, and to the farce, which was too shallow
and superficial. ''
If ail these claires be justifiable there can be no
doubt that the »torality was of the utmost importance
in the history hot 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
fruit:"
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 hot until the 16th century that these in-
fluences become prominent. I say "become prominent,"
a Gayley, p. lxiv. 2 Symonds, p. 99"

9 2 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 extent 1, although good examples of
Terentian comedy are not found until the I6th centur),.
Humanism again cornes 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 marvd
was produced by a certain Geoffrey at Dunstable, "de
consuetudine magistrorum et scholarum. '' 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
Heywood, the first to break away from the tradition of
the »zorality, was a choir boy of the Chapel Royal, and
afterwards in ail probability held a post there as
master 3. 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

I Ward, t. p. 7-
" Gayley, p. xiv.
a I put this interpretation upon the account of Heywood's receiving
4o shillings from Queen lIary "for pleying an interlude ssith his child'en."

LYLY THE DRAMATIST 93
abstractions. '' It was hot until I54o, a few years after
Heywood's interlude The Play of t/te lVether, that pure
English comedy appears, and we must turn to Eton to
discover its cradle, for Nicholas Udall's Roister Doister
has every" claire to rank as the first completely" con-
structed comedy in our language--the first comedy of
flesh and blood. Roister smacks of the "toiles gloriosus";
1Merygreeke combines the vice with the Terentian rogue;
and yet, when all is said, Udail's play remains a remark-
ably- original production, realistic and English.
Next, in point of rime and importance, cornes
Stevenson's Gammer Gurton's 2V-eedle, 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 2[ot]«er 2Bombie,
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 bave 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 rime, about four years after
Stevenson's "first-rate screaming farce," as Symonds
bas dubbed it, in the Damon and 2Pit/das of Richard
Edwardes, a writer with whom, as we have seen, Lyly
was thoroughly familiar. Indeed, the play in question
x Ward, l)ict, of2Vat. Biog., Heywood.

94 JOHN LYLY
anticipates out 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 songs 1.
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 Damot ami
Pit/tias the old morali is once and for ail discarded.
The play is entirely free from ail allegorical elements,
and is only faintly tinged with didacticism. But we
cannot express the aim of Edwardes better than in his
own vords:
"In comedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch
Ail 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 xvrite modern
drama, modern comedy.
It would seem that between Edwardes and Lyly
there xvas 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
St/ositi, englished by George Gascoigne 2. 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 chier importance lies in the
fact that itis written in prose, and is therefore the first
prose comedy in our language. But Mr Gayley would
go further than this, for he describes it as "the first
English comedy in every xvay worthy of the name."
I Bond, Ii. p. 238. 2 1566.

LVLY" THE DRAMATIST 95
It was written entirely for amusement, and for the
amusement of adults, hot of children ; and if it were
the only product of Gascoigne's pen it would justify the
remark of an early 17th century critic, who says of this
writer that he "brake the ice for out 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 hot of its time. '' The
play was well known and popular among the Eliza-
bethans, being revived at Oxford in 15829. Shakespeare
used it for the construction of his Tamin of t/ze '/rew:
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 hot appear to bave been sufficiently appre-
ciated by Lylian students; for even Mr Bond fails, I
think, to remise its importance.
This, in brief outline, is the history of out comedy
clown to the rime when Lyly took it in hand ; or should
we hot rather say "an introduction to the history of out
comedy"? For true English comedy is hOt to be round
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
 Gayley, p. lxxxv  ict. ef2Vat. BioK., Gascoigne, George.

9 6 JOHN LYLV

if we are to attempt to realise the greatness of our debt
to Lyly, let us estimate exactly how rnuch these previous
efforts had done in the way of pioneer work, and how far
also they fell short of cornedy in the strict sense of that
v¢ord.
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 hot continuously. It
was in fact a period of transition and of individual and
disconnectcd experinaents, lïach of the writers above
mentioned contributed something towards the common
development, but hot one of them, except Ariosto's
translator, gave us comedy which may be considered
complete in every way. They ail 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 Jueler, which was a
parody of transubstantiation, or upon the construction
of disconnected humorous situations, as in Ga»t»ter
Gurtou's 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 Mery,reekes
nature is due to inconsistency, hOt to evolution. More-
over, stage conventions had hOt yet become a matter of
fixed tradition. "We bave a perpetual conflict between

LYLY THE DRA,MATIST 97
what spectators actually see and what they are supposed
to see, between the rime 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 another. '' Further, English comedy
before 58o was marked, on the one hand, b)r its poetic
literary form and, on the other, by its almost complete
absence of poetic ideas. Lyly, xvith the instinct of a
born conversationalist, realised that prose was the only
possible dress for comedy that should seek to represent
contemporary lire. But even in their use of verse his
predecessors xvere unsuccessful. Udall seemed to have
thought that his unequal dogtail lines xvould xvag if he
struck a rhyme at the end, and even Edxvardes xvas little
better. The use of blank verse had yet tobe discovered,
and Lyly was to have a hand in this matter also . 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 hall 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 xvith the breath
of life, it xvas necessary that both sexes should walk the
stage on an equal footing. That xvhich comed), before
58o lacked, that which alone could round it off into a
poetic xvhole, vas the female element. "Comedy," vrites
George Meredith, " lifts women to a station offering
them free play for their xvit, as they usually show it,
 Bond, Il. p. 37-
 George Gascoigne, whose importance does hOt seem to have been
realised by Elizabethan students, also produced a drama in blank verse.
W. 7

9 8 JOHN LYLY
when they bave 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 bave hot 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
ît 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 vomen was first estab-
lished ; it vas a courtier who introduced heroines into
our drama.

SECTION I I. T/te Eight Plays.

Concerning the order of Lyly's plays there is, as we
bave seen, some difference of opinion. The discussion
bet,veen Mr Bond and Mr Baker in reality turns upon
the interpretation of the allegory of tndymion, and itis
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 Capas;#e is the sole
example; allegorical, which includes Sa2êho and 19hao,
Endymion, and 3Iidas; pastoral, which includes Gallathea,
T/te lVoman in t/te ilIoon, and Loz,e's «]Ictamor2êhosis ; and
lastly realistic, of which again there is only one example,
21[other tombie. The fault which may be found with this
classification is that the so-called pastoral plays have

L'LY THE DRAMATIST 99
m'uch of the allegorical about them, and itis perhaps
better, therefore, to consider them rathcr as a subdivision
of class two than as a distinct species.
For the moment putting on one side ail questions of
the allegory of Endymien, there are two reasons which
seem to go a long way towards justifying Mr Bond for
placing Çampaste 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 saine period. The painter Apelles,
whose naine seemed almost to obsess Lyly in his novel,
is one of the chier characters of Çam/aate , 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. Cmpase and Sat/to 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 I59; 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 Çampaspe, there can
be little doubt that it was one of the first dramas in our
language with an historical background. Indeed, A'ynge
Jokan is the only play before 158o which can claire to
rival it in this respect. But Kynge foban 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
x6th century. Camipasipe, on the other hand, is entirely
devoid of any ethical or satirical motive. Allegory,

IOO JOHN
which Lyly was able to put to his own peculiar usës,
is here quite absent. The sole aire of its author was to
provide amusement, and in this respect it must bave
been entirely successful. The play is interesting, and at
rimes 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 toits sublimi-
ries. 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 ber
lover Apelles. The social change, which I bave sought
to indicate in the preceding pages, is at once evident in
this play. "We calling Alexander from his grave," says
its Prologue , "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 rime openly acknowledged. "Alexander,
the great conqueror of the vorld," says Lyly with his
hand upon his heart, "only interests me as a loyer."
The whole motive of the play, which vould 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. Ca»tpaspe is, in fact, the
first romantic drama, hot only the forerunner of Shake-
speare, but a remote ancestor of Hernani and the Igth
century French theatre. "The play's defect," says
Mr Bond, "is one of passion"ua criticism which is
applicable to all Lyly's dramas; and yet we must not
 From Prologue at the Court.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST IOI

forget that Lyly was the earliest to deal with passion
dramaticaily. The love of Aiexander is certainly un-
emotional, hot to say callous; but possibly the great
monarch's equanimity was a veiled tribute to the sup-
posed indifference of the virgin Queen to ail 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 briiliancy of
dialogue than for anything eise, he was no more iikely
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 fexv 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 ail Lyly's plays. These urchins, full of mischief
and delighting in quips, were probably borrowed from
Edwardes, but Lyly made them ail his own; and one
can understand how naturally their parts would be played
by lais boy-actors. Their repartee, when it is hOt 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 ganes at strife with
Diogenes over the marrer 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

I02 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 Camase 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 hot 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 eutemh'e 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 Egland. Such over-clever busybodies
would readily twist an innocent remark into treason or
sacrilege, and therefore, long before Lyly's rime, it was
customary for a playwright to defend himself in the pro-

LYLV THE DRAMATIST IO 3
logue against such treatment, by denying any ambiguity
in his dialogue. In an audience thus susceptible to
innuendo L),ly saxv his opportunity. He was a courtier
writing for the Court, he vas also, let us add, anxious to
obtain a certain coveted post at the Revels' Office. He
was an artist hOt entirel), without ideals, ),et ever ready
to curr), favour and to aim at material advantages by
his literar), facility. The idea therefore of writing dramas
which should be, from beginning to end, nothing but an
ingenious compliment to his royal mistress would hot be
in the least distasteful to him. But xve must hot attribute
too much to motives of personal ambition. Spenser's
Fae 0, Quêen was not published until I59O; 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 cuit of Elizabeth, which
xvas far from being a piece of insincere adulation, had
for some rime 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 txventy years, in itself a xvonderful 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
ail this single-handed, refusing to share her throne with
a partner even for the sake of protection, and yet im-
proving upon the Habsburg policy I by making coquetry
the pivot of her diplomacy. It xvas no wonder therefore
that,
1 . Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube."

I04 JOHN LYLY
"As the imperial votaress pssed on
In maiden meditation fancy free,"
the courtiers she fondled, and the artists she patronized,
should hall in fancy» hall 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.
Ail Lyly's plays except Camase and [otlter Bombie
are written in this vein; each, as Symonds beautifully
purs it, is "a censer of exquisitely chased silver, full of
incense to be tossed before Èlizabeth upon her throne."
In the three plays Sapho and Plmo, Endymion, and
3[idas this element of flattery is more prominent than
in the others, inasmuch as they are not only full of com-
pliments unmistakeablydirected 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. Vith a view, therefore, to
his position in the history of Èizabethan drama, and to
the lessons which he taught those who came after him,
the superficial interpretation of each play is ail that need
engage our attention, and we shall content ourselves
with briefly indicating the actual incident which it
symbolizes.
The story of Sapko and Phao 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 ail poetical attributes and becomes simply
a great Queen of Sicily, sees him and instantly falls in

LYL¥ THE DRAMATIST 10 5
love with him. To conceal her passion, she pretends to
her ladies that she has a lever, 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 rail to
compare xvith that of Puck in the JIidsummer Night's
19ream, 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 Alençon's courtship of Elizabeth. Sapho,
Queen of Sicily, is of course Elizabeth, Queen of England.
The difficulty of Ælençon's (that is Phao's) ugliness is
overcome by the device of making it love's task to
confer beauty upon him. Phao like Alençon quits the
island and its Queen in despair; while the play is
rounded off by the prctty compliment of representing
love as a willing captive in Elizabeth's Court.
As a play Sapko 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
cornes 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.

I06 JOHN LYLY
PHAO. I know no hcarb to makc loyers slccpc but
Hcartcscasc, which bccausc it growcth
so high, I cannot rcach : for--
SAPHO. For whom ?
PHAO. For such as love.
SAPHO. It groweth very low, and I can never stoop
toit, 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 ),ou 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
,ne leave to be gone: for I can but sigh.
SAPHO. Nay stay: for now I beginne to sighe, I
shall hot 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.
SAPtO. Then will I love yewe the better, and
indeed I think it should make me sleepe
too, therefore ail other simples set aside,
I will simply use onely yewe.
PHAO. Doe Madame: for I think nothing in the
world so good as yewe*.
Altogether there is a great increase in general vitality
in this play. Lyly draws nearer to the conception of
ideal comedy. "Out interest," he tells us in his Pro-
logue, "was at this rime to move inward delight hot
I Sa,ko andPltao, Act Iii. Sc. IV.

LVLV THE DRAMATIST

[o7

outward lightnesse, and to breede (if it might be) sort
smiling, hOt 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-waiting 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, ail corne 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 hOt 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,
ve pass on to lndymion, the second of the allegorical
dramas, and, without doubt, the boldest in conception
and the most beautiful in execution of ail 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. Ail critics are
agreed in identifying Cynthia with Elizabeth and En-
dymion vith 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

IO8 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 hot 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 toit, 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
4o 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 lir Bond when

LVL¥ THE DRAMATIST 10 9
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 meant . But the whole question is one of such
obscurity, and of so little importance from the point of
view of mv" argument, that I shall hOt 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 Cam/,as/,e 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-
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 3Iidsummer Nig/tt's Drmm. The well-
known speech of Oberon to Puck, directing him to
gather the "little western flower," is to ail intents and
purposes a beautiful condensation of Lyly's allegory.
One would like, indeed, to think that there was some-
thing more tlan fancy in Ms 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
* Halpin, Oberon's Vision, Shakespeare Society,

IIO JOHN LYLY
underplot. Tophas' enumeration of the charms of
Dipsas I foreshadows Thisbe's speech over the fallen
Pyramus*, while, did we hOt know Lyly's play tobe the
earlier, we might suspect the page's song near the sleep-
ing knight tobe 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 Koister 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 itis the
most "romantic" of ail Lyly's plays. Indistinctness of
character seems tobe 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 "rime
that treadeth ail 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 hot up to date.
In August 588 the great Armada had ruade 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
æ Endymion, Act tir. Sc. il. 11. 3o-60.
u Cp- also Shakespeare, Sonnet cxxx.

LYLY THE DRAMAT1ST I I I

a patriotic than a purely Court play. The story, with
but a few necessary alterations, cornes from Ovid's
2zretamorpkoses. It is the o|d 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 eventual|y 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 saine time he abandons his
project of invading the neighbouring island of Lesbos,
to which continual references are ruade throughout the
p|ay. 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 nay 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 XL 85-93.

II2 JOHN LYL¥

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, Gallathca,
The ll'o»tan in t/te )lIoon, and Loz,e's JtIetamorhasis,
which we may consider together since their stories,
uninspired by any allegorical purpose beyond general
compliments to the Queen, do not require any dctailed
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 3Iidas, the Queen appears under the mythological
title of Ceres in Love's Ietanorphosis. Such overlapping
however is only tobe 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 ail the Elizabethan dramatists were students of
Lyly, itis 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
Gallathca, while we are uncertain as to the date of Love's
$[eta»torhosis. 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

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-
da),, 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 lVoman in
the Moon gives us a man disguised in his wife's clothes,
which îs a variation of the saine trick. But the import-
ance of T/te bVoman 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 ail is but a poet's dream,
The first he had in Phoebus' holy bower,
But hot the la.st, unless the first disp|ease."

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 Love's Labour's Lostk But, whatever its date, T/te
IVoman in t/te lIoon must tank among the earliest
examples of blank verse in out language, and, as such,
its importance is very great. In Love's «lIetamorpkosis
there is nothing of interest equal to those points we have
noticed in the other two plays of the saine class. The
only remarkable thing, indeed, about it is the absence of
that farcical under-current which appears in all his other

1 Bond, ttL p. 34-

W. 8

i 14 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 «çlarprelat« controversy, it was ex-
punged.
It now remains to say a few words upon A/fther
Bmbie, 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 Si;ce Court Conedi«s !, and therein said to be
written by "the onely Rare Poet of that rime, the wittie,
comical, facetiously quicke, and unparalleled John Lilly
toaster 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
chier 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 ail the
Elizabethan dramatists, whimsical and delightful Thomas
Dekker. .[therBmbic 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 pla),. ï'et, despite its
comparative unimportance, and although it is evident
that Lyly is here out of his natural element, ]k[other
Bombie is interesting as showing the (to our ideas) extra-
ordinary confusion of artistic ideals which, as I have
 For title-page, Bond, III. p. I, date 1632.

LYLY TItE DRAMATIST 1 1 5
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 lire. There is nothing
anomalous in this. "Violence and variation," which
someone has described as the two essentials of the ideal
lire, 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, ail were round on the Elizabethan
stage, and ail 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 T/tc 3lurd«r ofJo/m Brcwer. The
taste for realism is b)' no means a purely Igth 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 3[otlter
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 l)'rics which L)'l)" 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, bave
become forgotten, and it is as the author of Cupid and
my Campaspe played that he is alone known to the loyer
of literature There is no need to enter into an investi-
gation of the numerous anonymous poems which Mr Bond
8--2

1 I6 JOHN LVL¥
has claimed for himX; 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 3 2 in ail. 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 pointcd out that music was an important
element in out early comedy. Udall had introduced
songs into his Roister Doister, and we have them also in
Gammcr Gurton and Damon and Pitldas, but never, be-
fore Lyly's day, had the). taken so prominent a part in
drama, for no previous dramatist had possessed a tithe
of Lyly's lyrical genius. Every condition favoured out
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.
astly he was toaster of a choir school, and would
therefore use every opportunity for displaying his pupils'
voices on the stage. Too much stress, however, must
hot be laid upon this last condition, because Lyly had
already written three songs for Camaspe and four for
Sa[,ko and P/tao before he became connected with
St Paul's, a fact which points again to de Vere, himself
a l)'rist of considerable powers, as Lyly's adviser and
toaster. Doubts, indeed, bave 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
 Bond, III. p. 433-

LYLY THE DRAMATIST I I7
together with the musical score 1. These songs are of
various kinds and of widely different value. We have,
for example, the purel)" comic poem, probably accom-
panied by gesture and pantomime, such as the song of
Petulus from «Iidas, beginning, "O m)" Teeth! deare
Barber ease me," with interruptions and refrains supplied
by his companion and the scornful Motto. IXIan)- of
these songs, indeed, are cast into dialogue form, some-
times each page singing a verse b)" himself, as in "O for
a Bowle of fatt canar)'." 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 irresistibl)"
of those pagan chants of the mediaeval wandering scholar
which the late Mr Symonds has collected for us in his
lVine, IVoman, and Song. The drinking song, " Io
Bacchus," whicla occurs in l[ot/ter Bombie, is undoubt-
edly, I think, modelled on one of these earlier student
compositions; the reference to the practice of throwing
hats into the tire is alone sufficient to suggest it. But it
is as a writer of the lyric proper that L)'ly is best knoxvn.
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 Ca»aslc lla)«'d, but there are others only less
charming than this. The same theme is employed in
the following :
"O Cupid! llonarch over Kings!
Wherefore hast thou feet and wing?
ls it to show how swift thou art,
,Vhen thou would'st wound a tender heat?
Thy wings being clipped, and feet held still,
Thy bow so many would hot kill.
It is ail one in Venus' wanton school
Who highest sits, the wise man or the fool!

Bond, t. p. 36, !. p. 265.

118 JOHN LYLY

Fools in Iove's college
Have far more knowledge
To read a woman over,
Than a neat prating lover.
Nay, 'tis confessed
That fools please women best
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 tire of Spring, with the light of
hope, bird-notes untroubled by doubt, unconscious of
pessimism, which are therefore al| the more charming
for us who dwell amid sunsets of intense colourng, who
can see nothing but the hectc splendours of autumn.
For the melancholy nightngale the poet has surprise
and admiration, no sympathy:
"What Bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O 'tis the ravi.hed Nightingale.
Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu, she cries,
And still ber woes at *Iidnight fise.
Brave prick song! who is't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven's gates she claps ber wings,
The *lorn hOt waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what t pretty throat
Poor Robin-red-breat tunes his note.
Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing
'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring,
'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring ". "
This delightful song cornes 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."

 «llother tombie, Act III. Sc. III. -4-
"' Camz#ase, Act v. Sc. I. 3-44 . I have modernised the spelling.

LYLV THE DRAMATIST I 19

SECT1ON III. L),l),'s dratatic Getius and Influence.
Having thus very briefly passed in review the various
plays that Lyly bequeathed to posterity , 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 ail 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 moraKties, allegory; in the plays of Udall and
Stevenson, farce ; in Damou aud Pitbias, a romantic play
upon a classical theme; and in Gascoigne's SuplOSeS ,
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, vhich forced
 I have said nothing of the «lla),des .lIela»torzhosis, as most critics are
agreed in assigning it to some unknown author.

120 JOHN LYLY
even Shakespeare to pander to the garlic-eating multi-
tude he loathed, and wrung from him the cry,
"Alas, 'tis true I hav¢ been here and there
And marie mys¢lf 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 Mss
the luxuries, of lire. His income required supplement-
ing, if only for the sake of meeting his tobacco bill,
though I have a srong 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 thi.
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«vriting, 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 bave 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 scenery . But the rem importance of his plays lies
 Bond, ll. pp. 65-66.

LVLV THE DRAMATIST I2I

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 bave 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
Piato and Aristotle, as in Ca»qaspe, 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 I58o. Een
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
"hOt so far in love with Campaspe as with Bucephalus,
if occasion serve either of conflict or of conquestl. ''
In lïndymion 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 ruade to resolve itself
and disappear in the final act. Closely aIlied with the
development of action by the presentation of motives
 Cam/aspe, Act 1II. SC. I. ". .:I.

122 JOHN LYLY
is the weaving of the plot. And in this Lyly is hot 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 2llidas, 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 lndymion related above that
in that play out author is hOt 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 b¥ the history of the latter's husband.
Though «llidas 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 .Ieta-
morthosis, 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 SaiOho ,
in the evident fancy which Mileta shows for Phao, and
developed as we have just noticed in Endymion.

LYLY THE DRAMATIST I2 3
In this plot construction and interweaving, Lyly had
no modeis except the classics, and we may, therefore,
say that his work in this direction was almost entirely
original. The iast-mentioned play was produced at
Court some time before 159o, and we cannot doubt, was
attended by out greatest dramatist. At any rate the
lessons which Shakespeare iearnt from Lyly in the
matter of plot complication are visible in the 21Iidsummer
Nig]tt's Drmm, which was produced in I595 a. The in-
tricate mechanism of this play, reminding us with its
four plots (the Duke and Hippolyta, the loyers, the
mechanics, and the fairies) of the miracle with its im-
posing but unimportant divinities in the Rood gailery, its
main stage whereon moved human characters, its Crypt
supplying the rude comic element in the shape of deviis,
and its angels who moved from one ievel 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 Paui's could hardly be expected
to display much iight and shade of emotion in their
acting, certainly depth of passion was beyond their
scope. But the fauit, I think, lies rather in the dramatist
than in the actors. Lyly's mind was in ail probability
altogether of too superficial a nature for a sympathetic
analysis of the human soui. That at least is how I in-
terpret his character. Ail his work was more "art than
nature," some of it was "more labour than art." On the
 Sidney Lee, ZoEe, p.  5 -

124 JOHN LYLY

technical side his dramatic advance is immense, but we
ma)" look in vain in his dramas for an)" of that apprecia-
tion of the elemental facts of human nature which can
alone create enduring artr In their characterization,
Lyly's plays do little more than form a link between
Shalespeare and the old morality. This cornes out most
strongly in their peculiar method of character grouping.
B)" a ver), natural process the moral type is split up with
the intention of giving it lire and variety. Thus we have
those groups of pages, of maids-in-waiting, of shepherds,
of deities, etc., which are so characteristic of Lyly's pla)-s.
There is no real distinction between page and page, and
between n}'mph and n)'mph ; but their merry conversa-
tions give a piquanc)" and colour to the drama which
make up for, and in part conceal, the absence of character.
Ail that was necessar)" for the creation of character was
to fit these pieces of the moral type together again in a
different wa)', and to breathe the spirit of genius into
the tew creation. We can see Lyly feeling towards this
solution of the problem in his portrayal of Gunophilus,
the clown of T]w ll'oman in t/te Ioon. 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 b)'e, yet
how soberl)" !" exclaims Alexander watching Campaspe
at a distance, "a sweet consent in her countenance with
a chaste disdaine, desire mingled with coyness, and I can-
hOt tell how to tearme it, a curst yeelding modestie!"--
an excellent piece of description, and one which is very

LYLY THE DRAMATIST I2 5
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
3Iidas 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 Bond * 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 16o6 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 out stage for
the first time in history with their tears and their laughter,
their scorn of the mere maie 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 corne about in
 Bond, II. p. -84-

I26 JOHN LYLY
any case, ail 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 svas hot
divine enough to bestow upon them the third essential.
Yet they were alive, they were flesh, they had vit, 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 SulOoses was his model in
both these innovations, and )'et he would undoubtedly
bave adopted them of his own accord without any
outside suggestion. And since T/te Supfioses was a
translation, Camaspe 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

I27

alist, and therefore when he came to write plays he
would naturally do ail in his power to maintain and to
improve his faine in this respect. With his acute sense
of form he would recognise how clumsy had been the
efforts of previous dramatists, and he kne,v 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 ,vas a great event in English
literature. Shakespeare ,vas 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, Lo,e's
LabouFs Lost. Ben Jonson on the other hand--perhaps
more than an)- other Lyly's spiritual heir--wrote nearly
ail his comedies in prose. And it is hOt 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 out 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 bave continually in-
dicated Shakespeare's debt to him in matters of detail.
Tire zlIidsummer,Vigkt's Dre«m is from beginning to end
full of reminiscences from the plays of the earlier drama-
tist, transmuted, vitalized, and beautified by the genius
of out greatest poet. It is as if he had witnessed in one

JOHN LYLY

day a representation of ail Lyly's dramatic work, and
wearied by the effort of attention had fallen asleep and
dreamt this 19ream. Love's Labour's Lost is only Mss
indebted to Lyly; indeed nearly ail Shakespeare's plays,
certainly ail his comedies, exhibit the saine 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 ruade him the
greatest writer of all rime. Marlowe, his toaster in
tragedy, was also his toaster 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 ail
that comprises the science ofpla),-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 bave said of
Shakespeare may be said of Elizabethan drama as a
whole. " Marlowe's place," writes Mr Haveiock Ellis,
"is at the heart of English poetry" ; his "high, astound-
ing terres" took the world of his day by storm, his gift
to English literature was the gift of sublime beauty, of
imagination, and passion. Lyly couid la), claire 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 ail. XVith his knowledge of the Classics and of
previous English experiments he wrote plays that, com-
pared with what had gone before, xvere 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 12 9
fore, of Marlowe's immense superiority" to him on the
aesthetic side, Lyly must be placed above the author of
Edzvard I[. in dynamical importance.
In connexion with L),lfs 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 classicai or
romantic in form ? As I have already suggested, the
answer to the first hall of this question is that they were
neither and both. In Lyly's day drama had hOt ),et
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 Elizabcth was economical and preferred
plain drama to the expensive masque displa3zs, though
she was ready to enjo3z the latter, if they were provided
for ber by Leicester or some other favourite. Lylfs
work therefore never advanced very far in the direction
of the masque, though in its complimentar3z 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 Lyl)"s position. It ma)" indeed be claimed for him
that ail sections of Elizabethan drama, except perhaps
tragedy, are to be round in embryo in his pla)'s. I have
said that he was the first of the romanticists, but he was
no less the first important writer of classical drama.
Grl)uduc 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 LYL¥
'o¢ti«s, and was certainly acquainted with Horace's ¢q fs
l°o¢tica, 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 daim to, and which they were only too ready to
glean second-hand. And yet, though he was wise
enough to appreciate ail 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 marrer of this frame he
was not always orthodox. He bowed to the tradition of
the unities: but he frequently broke with it; in T/te
l¢/o»tau 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, xvhen ail is said, he remains, with the exception of
Jonson, the most classical of ail Elizabethan playwrights,
and just as he anticipates the ITth and 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 freedom '' 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, n. p. 266.

LYL r THE DRAMATIST

I3I

nothing to check, and which was eventually to lay its
dead hand upon the art of the ISth century. May we
not sa), more than this? fs he hOt the first name in a
continuous series from I58o to out own da),, 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
T/w [mlportance of being Earnest finishes the process that
Campaspe started ; and to view that process as a circle
begun in euphuism, and completed in aestheticism.

92

CHAPTER IV.

CONCLUSION.

AT the beginning of this essay I gave a short account
of the main facts of out author's lire, 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. Hennequin . But though this essay cannot
claire to have exhausted the subject of the ways and
means of Lyly's art, yet in the course of out 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 ail 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 naine of
Fastidious Brisk in Every )Ian 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 StientifllUe.

COCLUStO X 33
by his glass how to salute ; speaks good remnants not-
withstanding his base viol and tobacco; swears tersely
and with variet), ; cares hot what lad),'s favour he belles,
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 wandL"
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 fopper),, who delights in scandal, who
contracts debts with an eas), conscience, and who is
withal a merr), fellow and a wit. AIl this is in accord-
ance with what we know of his lire. We can picture
him at Oxford serenading the Magdalen dons with his
"base viol," or perhaps organizing a night part), to
disturb the slumbers of some insolent tradesman who
had dared to insist upon payment ; his neat little figure
leading a gang of ),oung rascals, and among them the
"sea-dog" Haklu),t, the sturdy and as )'et unconverted
Gosson, the refined "Vatson, and perchance George
Pettie concealing his thorough enjo),ment of the situa-
tion b), a smile of elderl), amusement. Or ),et again we
can see him at the room of some boon companion
seriously announcing to a convulsed assembl), 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
 From the 'reface.

 34 JOHN LVLY
permits, for he is now author of the much-talked-of
Anato»o' of Wit, and one of the most fashiouable young
meu 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 xveli picture him,
following his magnificently over-dressed patron up the
long reception-room, his heart beating xvith pleasurable
excitement, yet his manners hot 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 ancl
associate of the highest in the land, he breathed his
native atmosphere, the praises and flattery of a fickle
world of fashion. But, rime-serrer as he was, he was no
sycophant. Leaving de Vere's serrice after a sharp
quarrel, he was hot ashamed to take up the profession
of teaching in which he had already had some experience.
We see him next, therefore, a toaster of St Paul's,
engrossed in the not unpleasant duties of drilling his
pupils for the performance of his plays, accompan),ing
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 ail he appears as the disappointed,
disiilusioned 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 iast bitter ietter to Elizabeth.
The man of fashion out of date, the social success
left high and dr)- by the unheeding current, he died
eventually in poverty, hot because he had wasted his

CONCLUSION 135
subs.tance, 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
Ethues, we ma)" decidc that there was nothing of the
Puritan about him. His lire 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 Euthues 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 3Ia1relate controversy indicate. I
have refrained from touching upon these 3Iar-2Iarti«
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 marrer 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,

36 JOHN LYLV
. 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. Himseif 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 ruade 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. Ail the
knowledge he acquired in such amateur appreciation was
brought to the service of his literary productions. And
the saine may b said of his extensive excursions into
the land of books. No Elizabethan dramatist but Lyly,
with the possible exception of Jonson, couid marshal
such an array of learning, and few could bave turned even
what they had with such skiii and effect to their own
purposes. Lyly had ruade a thorough study of such
classics as were available in his day, and we bave 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 couid not
read Spanish, French, or Italian, he devoured and as-
similated the numerous translations from those languages
into English, Guevara indeed being his chicf inspiration.
Nor did he neglect the literature of his own iand. Few
books we may suppose, which had been published in
English previous to 58o, 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
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 xve have clear evidence that
he knew Chaucer a.
Idleness, therefore, cannot be urged against him ; nor
does this imposing displa), of learning indicate a pedant.
Lyly had nothing in common with the spirit of his old
friend Gabrie! Harvey, whom indeed he laughed at.
There is a story that XVatson and Nash invited a com-
pany together to sup at the Nag's Head in Ceapside,
and to discuss the pedantries of Harvey, and out euphuist
in ail probability ruade one of the part)'. His erudition
sat lightly on him, for it was simply a means to the end
of his art. Moreover, a student's lire cofild bave 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 u'it improved with experience, so that
we may well believe that in the Court he was more
Philautus than Euphues. In his writings also his aire
was to be graceful rather than erudite ; and, ponderous
as his Eullues 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 finger-
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 hls 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 claire to have succeeded. "More art than
a Bond, L p. 4oi.
9--5

I38 n, .Ls
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 out 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 everythg 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, hot 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 lire 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-sone for young Shakespeare
to mourir his throne. He was, indeed, the draughtsman
of the Elizabethan workshop, planning and designing
what others might build. He was the expert mathema-
ticianwho formulated the lawswhich 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 EmO'»tiou, 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 out 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 hoxv brilliant his wit
seemed to the Elizabethans belote it was eclipsed by
the genius of Shakespeare. Even as late as I632 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 out hero played like a dancing
sunbeam over the early Elizabethan stage. Never belote
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 ail rime. How could they know that
he was only the first voice in a choir of singers which,
bursting forth belote 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 rhin. The
magic has long passed from Ezfl/«z«'«, once a name to
conjure with, and even the plays seem dull and lifeless.
OEhat it should be so was inevitable, for the wit xvhich
illuminated these works was of the time, temporary, the
earliest beam of the rising sun. This sunbeam it is
impossible to recover, and xvith ail out efforts we catch
little but dust.
And yet for the scientific critic Lyly's xvork is still
alive with significance. Worthless as much of it is from

I4o JOHN LVLY
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 claire
more for Lyly than this. Extravagant as it ma¥ sound,
he was one of the great founders of out 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 utilit of blank verse for
dramatic purposes, he wrote the first English novel in
our language, and finally he is hot only deservedly re-
cognised as the father of English comedy, but b), 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 out 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.
BRUNET. Manuel de Libraire.
BUOELE CLARKE- Spanish Literature.
CHILD, C. G. John Lyly and Euphuism. ,lliinchener teitme
VIL
CRAIK, SIR H. Specimens of English Prose.
DICTIONAR r Of" National Biography.
EARLE- History of English Prose.
FIELD, NATHANIEL. A Woman is a XVeathercock.
FITZMAURICE-KELL'. Spanish Literature. Heinemann.
GAYLE r. Representative English Comedies.
GOSSE. From Shakespeare to Pope.
GOSSON. Schooi of Abuse. Arber's English Repi'ints.
GUEVARA, ANTONIO DE. Libro Aureo del emperado Marco
Aurelio.
HALLAM. Introduction to the Literature of Europe.
HENNEQUIN. La Critique Scientifique.
HUMF 3IARTIN. Spanish Influence on English Literature.
JUSSERAND. The English Novel in the time of Shakespeare.
LANDMANN, DR. Shakespeare and Euphuism. ,Xëw Sh,rk. Soc.
Trans. 188o-2.
,, ,, Introduction toEuphues. Sprache und Literatur.
LA'IIMER. Serinons. Arber's English Reprints.

142 JOHN LVLX5

LEE, SIDNEV. Athenaîum, July I4, 1883.
,, Huon of Bordeaux (Berners'L Early Eng. Text
Soc. Extra Series XL., XL1.
,, Lire of Shakespeare.
LIEBIG. Lord Bacon et les sciences d'observation en moyen fige.
LYLg. Euphues. Arber's English Reprints.
MACAULA', G. G. Introd. to Froissart's Chronicles. Globe
Edition.
]IEREDITH, GEORt;È Essay on Comedy.
|ÉZIÈREs. Prédécesseurs et contemporains de Shakespeare.
MINTO. Manual of English Prose Literature.
]'qORTH, THOMAS. Diall of Princes.
PEARSON, KARL. Chances of Death. Vol. II. German Passion
Play.
PETTIE, GEORGE. Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure.
RALEIGH, PROF. ,V. The English Novel.
RETURN FROM PARNASSUS. Arber's Scholar's Library.
SAINTSBUR'. 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.
UNDERHILL. Spanish Literature in Tudor England.
"t, VARD, DR A. XV. English Dramatic Literature. 3 Vols.
,, MRS H. "John Lyly," Article in Enc. Brit.
WATSON, THOMAS. Poems. Arber's English Reprints.
WEBV,. Discourses of English Poetry. Arber's English Re-
prints.
,VEYMOUTH, DR R. F. On Euphuism. Phil. Soc. Trans.
1870-2.

INDEX.

Bacon, Lord, t 9, 47
Baena, 48
Baker, G. P., 4, 5, 7, 85, 98
Baker, George, 28
Baker, Robert, 28
Barnefield, Richard, 46
Berners, Lord, 21, 29, 3 o, 3, 33,
34, 35, 36 , 42, 66, 67
Bertaut, Réné, 34, 35
bestiaries, 2o, 41, 136
Biograhia Britamica,  2

Blackfriars, lOO
blank verse, 3, 97, 113
Blount, 1 4, 39
Boa.s, 45
Boccaccio, 66, 67, 75
Bond, R. W., 4, 5, 8, 9, 26, i]o, i]4,
43, 55, 6o, 69, 72, 74, 78, 81, 85,
86, 87, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99,
IOO, lO8, Iii], 114 , 115, 116, Il 7,
12o, 12 5, 13o, 137
Brunet, i]4
BDan, Sir Francis, 3 o, 31
Burleigh, 4, 6, 7, 86, 133
Butler Clarke, 49
Byron (anticipated by Lyly}, 77

Cambridge, 7, 75, 87, 93
CompasSe, 7, 85, 87, 9 8-1Ol, 104,
105, lO9, 116, .-1. 124, 126
Canterbury Tales, 65
Carew, 27
Carpenter, EdwaM, 9
Castiglione, 48, 49, 7
Caxton, 66, 67
Cecil, 8
Celeslitta, 4
Charles VIII., 48, 66
Chaucer, 65, 66, I37
Cheke, Sir John, 16, 3, 37, 4, 5o
Child, C. G., 14, 1, I6, 56, 59
chofisters, 7, 8, 87, 92, 94,  6
Christ Church, 16, 39.
Cicero, l, o
C,ile Consa/ion, 4o

144

INDEX

comedy
I,efore Lyly. 89-98
and folly. 9 °
and masque. I I 2
and music. 87. 92 . 94.
and society. 88
and woman. 97-98, oo-o.
Congreve. 88.-o.
Cooling Çar #r all Fond Z.ers.
.4, 7
Corpus Christi College (OxfoM),
6
Corto, Antonio de, 6, 28
Cortes, 27
Craik, Sir H., 28, 37, 38 , 39
Cuid and my Camase lay.
Cy,hia. 46
Da.ton and PiIMa6 93, 1,6, * '9
De d.calione (of Plutarch),
Dekker, Thomas, ,,4,
Demosthen, , 2
Devereux, Penelope,
Diall of Princes, ,
iana 4
Dickens, 79
Disraise  kt L@ / a Couli,
3
Doni, 48
Dryden, 84
dubartism, 5'
Earle, 53, 54
education (Lyly's views on), 72-
73
dard I.,  9
Edwardes, Richard, 86, 87, 93, 94,
Eliot, George, 8o
Elizabeth, Queen, 3, 6, 8, 9,
5, 26, 65, 75, 80, 8,, 86, 98 ,
IOO, IOI, IO 3, IO4, IO IO, It2
 9, t34

Ellis, Havelock,
Endy,nion, 85, 98, 99, *o4, *o7-* *o,
English Nord, The (v. Raleigh)
EnglisA A'm.el in tac ti»te  Shake-
seare, The (v.
Erasmus, x6
Estella, 7
Eton, 93
antedents of, 65-69
criticism and description of
(i) Mnatomy q[ ilït, 69-73
[iii Euhnes and kis Englan
76-8o
dedicadon of, 74-6
distinction between the two pacts,
73-74
Elizabethan reputation of,
43-47, 57, 6h 84,
first English novel, 3, , 74,
4o
moral tone of, , 7-2
publication and editions of, 6,
8, o, 43, 57, 6, 73, 83, 84
45, 58, 7o, 76, 78
Eukues and his England (. Eu-
Euhues and his boebus, îu-7$
Euphuism
analysis off
an aristocratic fashion, $, 49, 54,
56, 6,, 6z
diction and, 56
humanism and, 339,
imitato,s o, 43-46
origins of, ,-43
Oxford and, 8, $9-4, 45-46,
54, 60, 6,
et,-y and,
Renaissance ami, 47-$, 6
Scott's misapprehension of,
ret of Lyly's influence,
Spain and,

INDEX

F.z'er 3" z]lan out of ttig [-Iumour,
fabliau, the, 66
Fae Quttn, TAe,
Field, Nathaniel. 44,
Fitzmaufiee-Kelly. 4
Flauberh $6
Florence, ç
Fo¢tescue, 69
France (and French}, l,
M, $4, 8$, $6, 40, 4,
53, 56, 6,, 66, 80, ,36
Froissart, 3', 33, 35
Ger, William, 39, 86
Gallatla, 98, *o7,
Gammer Gurlon's Needle, 93, 96,
6
Gascoigne, Goerge, , 94, 95, 9,
'4, *'9,
Gayley, 9 *, 9 , 94, 95
Geoffrey of Dunstable, 9
Gesla omano*m, 66
Gibn, 58
Glasse for Europe, A, 5, 8
Goethe,
Gol'n Bokt, The, , 3o, 3, 36,
37
Gollancz, *
gongorism, $,
Goodlet, Dr, 56
Gorbuduc. ! 9
Gosse. 36
Gosson. Stephen. 4, xT. x8,
7i. 86. IO 9,
Granada, x4
Grk. 48, 6x
Greene. 43. I35.
Grey, dy Jane. 74
Gazzo, 4o
Guerrero. 6
Guevara. Antonio de. x2-x4, x8-$.,
$3-38, 4, ¢, 49, , 7. ;6,

145

Habsburgs. lo 3
Hakluyt.
Hallam, 33, 34
Halpin. *o9,
Harfison. 69
Harvey, Dr, 9
Han'ey, Gabfiel,
H«katomhia, , 45, 46
Henne]uin,
Henry VIII.,
ernati
Herric, t 7
He-ood, 69, 9 z, 95, 96
Homer, 6
Horace, 130
Itugo. Victor,
humanism, x$, x6, 7, 5o, 3z, 53,
54, 6, 9
Hume, Martin,
uon  Boréaux, $o, 66
Huss, John, 66
Importance  being Earnest, The,
Italy (and Italian), x4, 25, 4, 48,
49, $x, 5., 66, 6, 69, 4, 5, 78,
86, 94, 95,
Jacke Jugelar, 96
James I..
James, HenD',
Johnson, Dr, 58
Jonson. Ben,
.3, *36
Jserand, ,8, 43. 65, 7. 6
Kathefine of Afin, 3
Kenilworth,
Knox, John,
Kyd, 43-46, *o,
),n#e Johan, 99
Zady llïndmere's Fart, 88
Landmann, Dr. '4, 6. . 4, 9,
3o, 3', 4o, , 7, 69,

Latimer, 36
Lazarillo de Tdrmes,
Lee. Sidney, ,, 9-33, 13
Leicester, Earl of, IO7, IO 9, 1 9
Libro Aureo {v. Guevara
Liebig, 19
Litcrature of aEuro:e, 33, 34
Lodge. Thomas, 7, 3
Lok, Hen, Thomas, and Michael,
6, 7
London, 7, 7, 78. 9 , 4, 9
London, Bishop of, 8
Z,t's Zabour's Zosl,  o,  3, 7,
Zove's «lletamorhosis, 98,   ,   3,
Luther, 89
Lyly, John :
charaeter and genius, 3, 5, 6,
63, z3, 37-39
compared with Marlowe,  8-  9
courtier and man of fashion, 63,
87, 88, 98, o3,  o, 34,
dramatist, 7, 8, 9, 85-3
forerunner of Shakesare, 43, 47,
95, oo, o, o, o5, o9-
, 6, 3, z4, 7-8,
3 o, 38-.9
friends of, 8, 39, 4, 46, 53,
5, 6, 33, 35, 37
Jonson's caricature of, 3-33
leaming, 7, o, 38, 69, 86, 95,
9-zo, 3o, 337
lire, 4-9, 888,  9-o, 3z-3fi
novelist, o, 64-84
poet, 3, o, 3, fi-8, 38,
39
position in English literature, -3,
3, 5, 5-63, 65-69, 73-
84, 98-3, 38-4o
prooe, 3, -, 5z-63, 97,
reputation, 9, -3, 43, 57, 8,
60, 6
lyrics,  5-8

Macaulay, G. C., 33
Macaulay, Lord, 80
«llmbeth, i z5
Magdalen College [Oxford), 4, 6,
86. 133
Malory, 66, 67
Marini, 48
AlaHus the Eicurean, $o
Madowe, 3,47, 3, I8-t9, 137,
,38
xllartin ,llarrdate, 3, 8,  4, 135-
36
Mary {Tudor}, '5, x6
Mary {of Scots}, 1o 9
masque, i i x, 129
Maupassant, Guy de, tri
«]Iayde's alleta,norhosis, I 9
Mendoza, '3, 4
Meredith. George, 53, 79, 88, 97,
26
J/files, 98, o4, 1111, 117, I,
Alidsnmmer Night's Dream (antici-
pated by Lyly}, o, o9-,
3,
Milton, 55
miracle-play, the, 89-9, 3
lo»tasteo,  Tire, I I
Montemayor, '3, '4
moral court treatise, the, 49, 6ri, 67,
68, 69 , 73, 74, 7
morality-play, the, 70, 89-9, 94,
99, *ox, 9, *x4
«lIorte d'.4rthur, 66, 67
• ]lother Bombie, 98, o5,  4- 7
Munday, Anthony, .8, 43
Jlurr of John Brewetq Tht,

Naples, 69
Nash, z3, 55, 56, 84, 114, x37
Newton, 19
Nicholas, Thomas, 27
North, Sir Thomas, 22, 29, 3 o, 39
novella, the, 6.5, 66, 67, 68,
75

INDEX

147

Ovid, 17, 69, 111
Oxford, 4-7, 25-28, 39, 42, 46, 49,
53, 61, 69, 72, 86, 87, 93, 95,
19, 133, 137
Oxford, Earl of (v. Vere, Edward
de)

Painter, William, 40
Palgrave,  I î
talamon and .4rcite, 86
tallace af tleasttre, 40
tamda, 83
pastoral romance, 23, 68
Petrarchisti, 48
Pettie, George, 32, 39, 4o, ¢i, 46,
33, 56, 69, 86, x33
tetite tallace af tëttie ]ris tleasure,
4o, 69
Philip II. of Spain (caricatured by
Lyly}, Io
picaresque romance, 23
Plato, 67 , 75, 79, 12
Plautus, 92
tlay af the Met]ter, Tire, 93
191casant History af the Conyuest af
lVest India, 27
Pliny, t 7, 20, 4x, 69 , 1oo
Plutarch, 17, 69, 72, 73
tgoetÆçs af .4ristotle, The,  3 °
puritanism, 3, 26, 57, 7 I, 13$
Puttenham, 87

Quick, 73
Quintilian, i .

Raleigh, Prof. W., 2o, riS, 7, 65,
7 I, 8¢, 135
al,#h A'oister 19oister, 93, 1 Io, 114,
Renaissance, the, 25, 47-52, 62, 64,
66, 68, 95, ri3, 18
Revels' Office, the, 8, 9, 1o3, 13,1.
Richardson, 72, 83
Rogers, Thomas, 27
romance of chivalry, 65-68, 75

Ronsard, 6x
Rowland, 2 4

Sacharissa, 13
Sainte-Beuve, 33
St Paul's Choir School, 7, 8, 87,
99, x°9, tt6, It9, I 3, 13t, t34
Saintsbury, Prof., 27
Sallust, 37
Sapho and thao, 7, 87, 98, 99, Io4-
O 7, 6,
Savoy Hospital, the, 7
Schoal af Abuse, The, 27
Sc/wolmaster, The, 38, 5o, 52, 67,
73, 73
Schwan, Dr, 56
Scott, Sir Walter, xt
Seneca,  9
Shakespeare, , 9, 43, 47, 55. 95,
IOO I IOI1 IO21 IO IO 9, IIO II1
28, 13o, 138, 139
Sheridan, 88
Sidney, Sir Philip, 23, 7, 55, 58,
68, 82, 84
Sixe Court Comedies, I I 4
Saliman and tërseda, ¢
Soto, Pedro de, 26
Spain [and Spanish), 22-28, 3o, 3 I,
• 33-36, 4o, 42, 47, 48, 32, 66, 69,
136
Spanish Tragedy, The, 43, 44, 45
Spencer, Herbert, 61
Spenser, o 3, izo
Stdla, io 9
Stevenson, 93, 93, 14, 119
Strat ford, Io 9
Su, Olo$iti (Su#poses}, 94, 119, 126
Surrey, 3 I
Symonds, J. A., 47, 62, 9 I, 93, Io4,

Taine, i
Tamburlaine, i  3 .
Tamin af the Shrew, Toee, 93

148

INDEX

Tasso, 8
Tents and Toils (office of), 8
Terence, o, 97, 96
Thackeray, 77
îri»wn of Mtiens (anticipated by
Lyly), rot
îoxolidlus, 38
Tully {v. Cicero)
Udall, Nicholas, 87, 93, 95, 96, 97,
114. , 6, 9
Underhill, 2, 2, 7, 28, , 36,
Vere, Edward de, 7, 28, 6, 86, 87,
116, ii9, 14
Villa Garcia, 26
Virgil, 7, o
Vives, 2, 6

Ward, Mrs H., 3 o, 80
Warner, 43,
Watson, Thomas, 7, 45, 46, 49, 53,
133,
Webbe, William, t t
Welbanke, 43
West, Dr, 33, 34
XVeymouth, Dr, 14.
Wilkinson,
Il'fric, il'omen and SonK,
l;roman in tiw .loon,
II, 124, 130
women» importance of» in the Eliza-
bethan e, 74-6, 8o-8, 97#8,
Vood, thony , 4, 5, 86
VyoEtt, i
Wynkyn de Vorde, 66

Waller, ¢, 4o
Ward, Dr, 8, 9"-, 93 Zola, 7.;

CAMBKIDGE : PKINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRE5S