initial commit of ebook 22525HEADmain

1 files changed, 5473 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/22525.txt b/22525.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db13163
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22525.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5473 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Lyly, by John Dover Wilson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: John Lyly
+
+Author: John Dover Wilson
+
+Release Date: September 6, 2007 [EBook #22525]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN LYLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jana Srna and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note:
+
+This e-text contains one Greek word that has been transliterated and
+placed inside slashes: /Euphues/.]
+
+
+
+
+                          JOHN LYLY
+
+
+                              BY
+
+                      JOHN DOVER WILSON,
+
+
+
+ B.A., Late Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
+       Members' Prizeman, 1902. Harness Prizeman, 1904.
+                Honours in Historical Tripos.
+
+
+
+
+                     Macmillan and Bowes
+                          Cambridge
+                             1905
+
+
+
+
+                              A
+                             MIA
+                            DONNA.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The following treatise was awarded the _Harness Prize_ at Cambridge in
+1904. I have, however, revised it since then, and in some matters
+considerably enlarged it.
+
+A list of the chief authorities to whom I am indebted will be found at
+the end of the book, but it is fitting that I should here make
+particular mention of my obligations to the exhaustive work of Mr
+Bond[1]. Not only have his labours of research and collation lightened
+the task for me, and for any future student of Lyly, to an incalculable
+extent, but the various introductory essays scattered up and down his
+volumes are full of invaluable suggestions.
+
+  [1] _The Complete Works of John Lyly._ R. W. Bond, 3 Vols. Clarendon
+  Press.
+
+This book was unfortunately nearing its completion before I was able to
+avail myself of Mr Martin Hume's _Spanish Influence on English
+Literature_. But, though I might have added more had his book been
+accessible earlier, I was glad to find that his conclusions left the
+main theory of my chapter on Euphuism untouched.
+
+Much as has been written upon John Lyly, no previous critic has
+attempted to cover the whole ground, and to sum up in a brief and
+convenient form the three main literary problems which centre round his
+name. My solution of these problems may be faulty in detail, but it will
+I hope be of service to Elizabethan students to have them presented in a
+single volume and from a single point of view. Furthermore, when I
+undertook this study, I found several points which seemed to demand
+closer attention than they had hitherto received. It appeared to me that
+the last word had not been said even upon the subject of Euphuism,
+although that topic has usurped the lion's share of critical treatment.
+And again, while Lyly's claims as a novelist are acknowledged on all
+hands, I felt that a clear statement of his exact position in the
+history of our novel was still needed. Finally, inasmuch as the
+personality of an author is always more fascinating to me than his
+writings, I determined to attempt to throw some light, however fitful
+and uncertain, upon the man Lyly himself. The attempt was not entirely
+fruitless, for it led to the interesting discovery that the
+fully-developed euphuism was not the creation of Lyly, or Pettie, or
+indeed of any one individual, but of a circle of young Oxford men which
+included Gosson, Watson, Hakluyt, and possibly many others.
+
+I have to thank Mr J. R. Collins and Mr J. N. Frazer, the one for help
+in revision, and the other for assistance in Spanish. But my chief debt
+of gratitude is due to Dr Ward, the Master of Peterhouse, who has twice
+read through this book at different stages of its construction. The
+readiness with which he has put his great learning at my disposal, his
+kindly interest, and frequent encouragement have been of the very
+greatest help in a task which was undertaken and completed under
+pressure of other work.
+
+As the full titles of authorities used are to be found in the list at
+the end, I have referred to works in the footnotes simply by the name of
+their author, while in quoting from _Euphues_ I have throughout employed
+Prof. Arber's reprint. Should errors be discovered in the text I must
+plead in excuse that, owing to circumstances, the book had to be passed
+very quickly through the press.
+
+JOHN DOVER WILSON.
+
+HOLMLEIGH, SHELFORD, _August, 1905_.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+The problem stated--Sketch of Lyly's life                           1
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EUPHUISM                                                           10
+
+Section I. The Anatomy of Euphuism                                 13
+
+Section II. The Origin of Euphuism                                 21
+
+Section III. Lyly's legatees and the relation between
+Euphuism and the Renaissance                                       43
+
+Section IV. The position of Euphuism in the history of English
+Prose                                                              52
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL                                            64
+
+The rise of the Novel--the characteristics of _The Anatomy of
+Wit_ and _Euphues and his England_--the Elizabethan Novel.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LYLY THE DRAMATIST                                                 85
+
+Section I. English Comedy before 1580                              89
+
+Section II. The Eight Plays                                        98
+
+Section III. Lyly's advance and subsequent influence              119
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CONCLUSION                                                        132
+
+Lyly's Character--Summary.
+
+INDEX                                                             143
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Since the day when Taine established a scientific basis for the
+historical study of Art, criticism has tended gradually but naturally to
+fall into two divisions, as distinct from each other as the functions
+they respectively perform are distinct. The one, which we may call
+aesthetic criticism, deals with the artist and his works solely for the
+purpose of interpretation and appreciation, judging them according to
+some artistic standard, which, as often as not, derives its only
+sanction from the prejudices of the critic himself. It is of course
+obvious that, until all critics are agreed upon some common principles
+of artistic valuation, aesthetic criticism can lay no claim to
+scientific precision, but must be classed as a department of Art itself.
+The other, an application of the Darwinian hypothesis to literature,
+which owes its existence almost entirely to the great French critic
+before mentioned, but which has since rejected as unscientific many of
+the laws he formulated, may be called historical or sociological
+criticism. It judges a work of art, an artist, or an artistic period, on
+its dynamic and not its intrinsic merits. Its standard is influence, not
+power or beauty. It is concerned with the artistic qualities of a given
+artist only in so far as he exerts influence over his successors by
+those qualities. It is essentially scientific, for it treats the artist
+as science treats any other natural phenomenon, that is, as the effect
+of previous causes and the cause of subsequent effects. Its function is
+one of classification, and with interpretation or appreciation it has
+nothing to do.
+
+Before undertaking the study of an artist, the critic should carefully
+distinguish between these two critical methods. A complete study must of
+course comprehend both; and in the case of Shakespeare, shall we say,
+each should be exhaustive. On the other hand, there are artists whose
+dynamical value is far greater than their intrinsic value, and _vice
+versa_; and in such instances the critic must be guided in his action by
+the relative importance of these values in any particular example. This
+is so in the case of John Lyly. In the course of the following treatise
+we shall have occasion to pass many aesthetic judgments upon his work;
+but it will be from the historical side that we shall view him in the
+main, because his importance for the readers of the twentieth century is
+almost entirely dynamical. His work is by no means devoid of aesthetic
+merit. He was, like so many of the Elizabethans, a writer of beautiful
+lyrics which are well known to this day; but, though the rest of his
+work is undoubtedly that of an artist of no mean ability, the beauty it
+possesses is the beauty of a fossil in which few but students would
+profess any interest. Moreover, even could we claim more for John Lyly
+than this, any aesthetic criticism would of necessity become a secondary
+matter in comparison with his importance in other directions, for to the
+scientific critic he is or should be one of the most significant figures
+in English literature. This claim I hope to justify in the following
+pages; but it will be well, by way of obtaining a broad general view of
+our subject, to call attention to a few points upon which our
+justification must ultimately rest.
+
+In the first place John Lyly, inasmuch as he was one of the earliest
+writers who considered prose as an artistic end in itself, and not
+simply as a medium of expression, may be justly described as a founder,
+if not _the_ founder, of English prose style.
+
+In the second place he was the author of the first novel of manners in
+the language.
+
+And in the third place, and from the point of view of Elizabethan
+literature most important of all, he was one of our very earliest
+dramatists, and without doubt merits the title of Father of English
+Comedy.
+
+It is almost impossible to over-estimate his historical importance in
+these three departments, and this not because he was a great genius or
+possessed of any magnificent artistic gifts, but for the simple reason
+that he happened to stand upon the threshold of modern English
+literature and at the very entrance to its splendid Elizabethan
+ante-room, and therefore all who came after felt something of his
+influence. These are the three chief points of interest about Lyly, but
+they do not exhaust the problems he presents. We shall have to notice
+also that as a pamphleteer he becomes entangled in the famous
+_Marprelate_ controversy, and that he was one of the first, being
+perhaps even earlier than Marlowe, to perceive the value of blank verse
+for dramatic purposes. Finally, as we have seen, he was the reputed
+author of some delightful lyrics.
+
+The man of whom one can say such things, the man who showed such
+versatility and range of expression, the man who took the world by storm
+and made euphuism the fashion at court before he was well out of his
+nonage, who for years provided the great Queen with food for laughter,
+and who was connected with the first ominous outburst of the Puritan
+spirit, surely possesses personal attractions apart from any literary
+considerations. We shall presently see reason to believe that his
+personality was a brilliant and fascinating one. But such a
+reconstruction of the artist[2] is only possible after a thorough
+analysis of his works. It would be as well here, however, by way of
+obtaining an historical framework for our study, to give a brief account
+of his life as it is known to us.
+
+  [2] Cf. Hennequin.
+
+"Eloquent and witty" John Lyly first saw light in the year 1553 or
+1554[3]. Anthony a Wood, the 17th century author of _Athenae
+Oxonienses_, tells us that he was, like his contemporary Stephen Gosson,
+a Kentish man born[4]; 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[5]. If their inference be correct, our author would
+seem to have been the son of middle-class, but well-to-do, parents. But
+it is with his residence at Oxford that any authentic account of his
+life must begin, and even then our information is very meagre. Wood
+tells us that he "became a student in Magdalen College in the beginning
+of 1569, aged 16 or thereabouts." "And since," adds Mr Bond, "in 1574 he
+describes himself as Burleigh's alumnus, and owns obligations to him, it
+is possible that he owed his university career to Burleigh's
+assistance[6]." And yet, limited as our knowledge is, it is possible, I
+think, to form a fairly accurate conception of Lyly's manner of life at
+Oxford, if we are bold enough to read between the lines of the scraps of
+contemporary evidence that have come down to us. Lyly himself tells us
+that he left Oxford for three years not long after his arrival.
+"Oxford," he says, "seemed to weane me before she brought me forth, and
+to give me boanes to gnawe, before I could get the teate to suck.
+Wherein she played the nice mother in sending me into the countrie to
+nurse, where I tyred at a drie breast for three years and was at last
+inforced to weane myself." Mr Bond, influenced by the high moral tone of
+_Euphues_, which, as we shall see, was merely a traditional literary
+prose borrowed from the moral court treatise, is anxious to vindicate
+Lyly from all charges of lawlessness, and refuses to admit that the
+foregoing words refer to rustication[7]. 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 1571[8], while
+Lyly's words must refer to a departure (at the very latest) in 1570.
+Everything, in fact, goes to show that he was out of favour with the
+University authorities. In the first place he seems to have paid small
+attention to his regular studies. To quote Wood again, he was "always
+averse to the crabbed studies of Logic and Philosophy. For so it was
+that his genie, being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry (as
+if Apollo had given to him a wreath of his own Bays without snatching or
+struggling), did in a manner neglect academical studies, yet not so much
+but that he took the Degree in Arts, that of Master being completed in
+1575[9]."
+
+  [3] Bond, I. p. 2; Baker, p. v.
+
+  [4] _Ath. Ox._ (ed. Bliss), I. p. 676.
+
+  [5] _Euphues_, p. 268.
+
+  [6] Bond, I. p. 6. But Baker, pp. vii, viii, would seem to disagree
+  with this.
+
+  [7] Bond, I. p. 11.
+
+  [8] Baker, p. xii.
+
+  [9] _Athenae Oxonienses_ (ed. Bliss), I. p. 676.
+
+Neglect of the recognised studies, however, was not the only blot upon
+Lyly's Oxford life. From the hints thrown out by his contemporaries, and
+from some allusions, doubtless personal, in the _Euphues_, we learn
+that, as an undergraduate, he was an irresponsible madcap. "Esteemed in
+the University a noted wit," he would very naturally become the centre
+of a pleasure-seeking circle of friends, despising the persons and
+ideas of their elders, eager to adopt the latest fashion whether in
+dress or in thought, and intolerant alike of regulations and of duty.
+Gabriel Harvey, who nursed a grudge against Lyly, even speaks of
+"horning, gaming, fooling and knaving," words which convey a distinct
+sense of something discreditable, whatever may be their exact
+significance. It is necessary to lay stress upon this period of Lyly's
+life, because, as I hope to show, his residence at Oxford, and the
+friends he made there, had a profound influence upon his later
+development, and in particular determined his literary bent. For our
+present purpose, however, which is merely to give a brief sketch of his
+life, it is sufficient to notice that our author's conduct during his
+residence was not so exemplary as it might have been. It must,
+therefore, have called forth a sigh of relief from the authorities of
+Magdalen, when they saw the last of John Lyly, M.A., in 1575. He
+however, quite naturally, saw matters otherwise. It would seem to him
+that the College was suffering wrong in losing so excellent a wit, and
+accordingly he heroically took steps to prevent such a catastrophe, for
+in 1576 we find him writing to his patron Burleigh, requesting him to
+procure mandatory letters from the Queen "that so under your auspices I
+may be quietly admitted a Fellow there." The petition was refused,
+Burleigh's sense of propriety overcoming his sense of humour, and the
+petitioner quitted Oxford, leaving his College the legacy of an unpaid
+bill for battels, and probably already preparing in his brain the
+revenge, which subsequently took the form of an attack upon his
+University in _Euphues_, which he published in 1578.
+
+It is interesting to learn that in 1579, according to the common
+practice of that day, he proceeded to his degree of M.A. at Cambridge,
+though there is no evidence of any residence there[10]. 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 Burleigh's generosity for the rooms he occupied
+here--unless they were hired for him by Burleigh's son-in-law Edward de
+Vere, Earl of Oxford. This person, though few of his writings are now
+extant, is nevertheless an interesting figure in Elizabethan literature.
+The second part of _Euphues_ published in 1580, and the _Hekatompathia_
+of Thomas Watson, are both dedicated to him, and he seems to have acted
+as patron to most of Lyly's literary associates when they left Oxford
+for London. Lyly became his private secretary; and as the Earl was
+himself a dramatist, though his comedies are now lost, his influence
+must have confirmed in our author those dramatic aspirations, which were
+probably acquired at Oxford; and we have every reason for believing that
+Lyly was still his secretary when he was publishing his two first plays,
+_Campaspe_ and _Sapho_, in 1584. But this point will require a fuller
+treatment at a later stage of our study.
+
+  [10] Mr Baker however seems to think that his reference to Cambridge
+  (_Euphues_, p. 436) implies a term of residence there. Baker, p. xxii.
+
+Somewhere about 1585 Fate settled once and for all the lines on which
+Lyly's genius was to develop, for at that time he became an assistant
+master at the St Paul's Choir School. Schools, and especially those for
+choristers, at this time offered excellent opportunities for dramatic
+production. Lyly in his new position made good use of his chance, and
+wrote plays for his young scholars to act, drilling them himself, and
+perhaps frequently appearing personally on the stage. These
+chorister-actors were connected in a very special way with royal
+entertainments; and therefore they and their instructor would be
+constantly brought into touch with the Revels' Office. As we know from
+his letters to Elizabeth and to Cecil, the mastership of the Revels was
+the post Lyly coveted, and coveted without success, as far as we can
+tell, until the end of his life. But these letters also show us that he
+was already connected with this office by his position in the
+subordinate office of Tents and Toils. The latter, originally instituted
+for the purpose of furnishing the necessaries of royal hunting and
+campaigning[11], had apparently become amalgamated under a female
+sovereign with the Revels' Office, possibly owing to the fact that its
+costumes and weapons provided useful material for entertainments and
+interludes. Another position which, as Mr Bond shows, was held at one
+time by Lyly, was that of reader of new books to the Bishop of London.
+This connexion with the censorship of the day is interesting, as showing
+how Lyly was drawn into the whirlpool of the _Marprelate_ controversy.
+Finally we know that he was elected a member of Parliament on four
+separate occasions[12].
+
+  [11] Bond, I. p. 38.
+
+  [12] I have to thank Dr Ward for pointing out to me the interesting
+  fact that a large proportion of Elizabeth's M.P.'s were royal
+  officials.
+
+These varied occupations are proof of the energy and versatility of our
+author, but not one of them can be described as lucrative. Nor can his
+publications have brought him much profit; for, though both _Euphues_
+and its sequel passed through ten editions before his death, an author
+in those days received very little of the proceeds of his work. Moreover
+the publication of his plays is rather an indication of financial
+distress than a sign of prosperity. The two dramas already mentioned
+were printed before Lyly's connexion with the Choir School; and, when in
+1585 he became "vice-master of Poules and Foolmaster of the Theater,"
+he would be careful to keep his plays out of the publisher's hands, in
+order to preserve the acting monopoly. It is probable that the tenure of
+this Actor-manager-schoolmastership marks the height of Lyly's
+prosperity, and the inhibition of the boys' acting rights in 1591 must
+have meant a severe financial loss to him. Thus it is only after this
+date that he is forced to make what he can by the publication of his
+other plays. The fear of poverty was the more urgent, because he had a
+wife and family on his hands. And though Mr Bond believes that he found
+an occupation after 1591 in writing royal entertainments, and though the
+inhibition on the choristers' acting was removed as early as 1599, yet
+the last years of Lyly's life were probably full of disappointment. This
+indeed is confirmed by the bitter tone of his letter to Elizabeth in
+1598 in reference to the mastership of the Revels' Office, which he had
+at last despaired of. The letter in question is sad reading. Beginning
+with a euphuism and ending in a jest, it tells of a man who still
+retains, despite all adversity, a courtly mask and a merry tongue, but
+beneath this brave surface there is visible a despair--almost amounting
+to anguish--which the forced merriment only renders more pitiable. And
+the gloom which surrounded his last years was not only due to the
+distress of poverty. Before his death in 1606 he had seen his novel
+eclipsed by the new Arcadian fashion, and had watched the rise of a host
+of rival dramatists, thrusting him aside while they took advantage of
+his methods. Greatest of them all, as he must have realised, was
+Shakespeare, the sun of our drama before whom the silver light of his
+little moon, which had first illumined our darkness, waned and faded
+away and was to be for centuries forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EUPHUISM.
+
+
+It was as a novelist that Lyly first came before the world of English
+letters. In 1578 he published a volume, bearing the inscription,
+_Euphues: the anatomy of wyt_, to which was subjoined the attractive
+advertisement, _very pleasant for all gentlemen to reade, and most
+necessary to remember_. This book, which was to work a revolution in our
+literature, was completed in 1580 by a sequel, entitled _Euphues and his
+England_. _Euphues_, to combine the two parts under one name, the fruit
+of Lyly's nonage, seems to have determined the form of his reputation
+for the Elizabethans; and even to-day it attracts more attention than
+any other of his works. This probably implies a false estimate of Lyly's
+comparative merits as a novelist and as a dramatist. But it is not
+surprising that critics, living in the century of the novel, and with
+their eyes towards the country pre-eminent in its production, should
+think and write of Lyly chiefly as the first of English novelists. The
+bias of the age is as natural and as dangerous an element in criticism
+as the bias of the individual. But it is not with the modern
+appraisement of _Euphues_ that we are here concerned. Nor need we
+proceed immediately to a consideration of its position in the history of
+the English novel. We have first to deal with its Elizabethan
+reputation. Had _Euphues_ been a still-born child of Lyly's genius, had
+it produced no effect upon the literature of the age, it would possess
+nothing but a purely archaeological interest for us to-day. It would
+still be the first of English novels: but this claim would lose half its
+significance, did it not carry with it the implication that the book was
+also the origin of English novel writing. The importance, therefore, of
+_Euphues_ is not so much that it was primary, as that it was primordial;
+and, to be such, it must have laid its spell in some way or other upon
+succeeding writers. Our first task is therefore to enquire what this
+spell was, and to discover whether the attraction of _Euphues_ must be
+ascribed to Lyly's own invention or to artifices which he borrows from
+others.
+
+While, as I have said, Lyly's name is associated with the novel by most
+modern critics, it has earned a more widespread reputation among the
+laity for affectation and mannerisms of style. Indeed, until fifty years
+ago, Lyly spelt nothing but euphuism, and euphuism meant simply
+nonsense, clothed in bombast. It was a blind acceptance of these loose
+ideas which led Sir Walter Scott to create (as a caricature of Lyly) his
+Sir Piercie Shafton in _The Monastery_--an historical _faux pas_ for
+which he has been since sufficiently called to account. Nevertheless
+Lyly's reputation had a certain basis of fact, and we may trace the
+tradition back to Elizabethan days. It is perhaps worth pointing out
+that, had we no other evidence upon the subject, the survival of this
+tradition would lead us to suppose that it was Lyly's style more than
+anything else which appealed to the men of his day. A contemporary
+confirmation of this may be found in the words of William Webbe. Writing
+in 1586 of the "great good grace and sweet vogue which Eloquence hath
+attained in our Speeche," he declares that the English language has thus
+progressed, "because it hath had the helpe of such rare and singular
+wits, as from time to time myght still adde some amendment to the same.
+Among whom I think there is none that will gainsay, but Master John Lyly
+hath deservedly moste high commendations, as he hath stept one steppe
+further therein than any either before or since he first began the
+wyttie discourse of his _Euphues_, whose works, surely in respect of his
+singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and sentences, let
+the learned examine and make tryall thereof, through all the parts of
+Rethoricke, in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in galant tropes, in
+flowing speeche, in plaine sense, and surely in my judgment, I think he
+wyll yeelde him that verdict which Quintillian giveth of both the best
+orators Demosthenes and Tully, that from the one, nothing may be taken
+away, to the other nothing may be added[13]." After such eulogy, the
+description of Lyly by another writer as "alter Tullius anglorum" will
+not seem strange. These praises were not the extravagances of a few
+uncritical admirers; they echo the verdict of the age. Lyly's
+enthronement was of short duration--a matter of some ten years--but,
+while it lasted, he reigned supreme. Such literary idolatries are by no
+means uncommon, and often hold their ground for a considerable period.
+Beside the vogue of Waller, for example, the duration of Lyly's
+reputation was comparatively brief. More than a century after the
+publication of his poems, Waller was hailed by the Sidney Lee of the day
+in the _Biographia Britannica_ of 1766, as "the most celebrated Lyric
+Poet that England ever produced." Whence comes this striking contrast
+between past glory and present neglect? How is it that a writer once
+known as the greatest master of English prose, and a poet once named the
+most conspicuous of English lyrists, are now but names? They have not
+faded from memory owing to a mere caprice of fashion. Great artists are
+subject to an ebb and flow of popularity, for which as yet no tidal
+theory has been offered as an explanation; but like the sea they are
+ever permanent. The case of our two writers is different. The wheel of
+time will never bring _Euphues_ and _Sacharissa_ "to their own again."
+They are as dead as the Jacobite cause. And for that very reason they
+are all the more interesting for the literary historian. All writers are
+conditioned by their environment, but some concern themselves with the
+essentials, others with the accidents, of that internally constant, but
+externally unstable, phenomenon, known as humanity. Waller and Lyly were
+of the latter class. Like jewels suitable to one costume only, they
+remained in favour just as long as the fashion that created them lasted.
+Waller was probably inferior to Lyly as an artist, but he happened to
+strike a vein which was not exhausted until the end of the 18th century;
+while the vogue of _Euphues_, though at first far-reaching, was soon
+crossed by new artificialities such as arcadianism. The secret of
+Waller's influence was that he stereotyped a new poetic form, a form
+which, in its restraint and precision, was exactly suited to the
+intellect of the _ancien regime_ with its craving for form and its
+contempt for ideas. The mainspring of Lyly's popularity was that he did
+in prose what Waller did in poetry.
+
+  [13] _A discourse of English Poetrie_, Arber's reprint.
+
+
+SECTION I. _The Anatomy of Euphuism._
+
+The books which have been written upon the characteristics of Lyly's
+prose are numberless, and far outweigh the attention given to his power
+as a novelist, to say nothing of his dramas[14]. Indeed the absorption
+of the critics in the analysis of euphuism seems to have been, up to a
+few years ago, definitely injurious to a true appreciation of our
+author's position, by blocking the path to a recognition of his
+importance in other directions. And yet, in spite of all this, it cannot
+be said that any adequate examination of the structure of Lyly's style
+appeared until Mr Child took the matter in hand in 1894[15]. And Mr
+Child has performed his task so scientifically and so exhaustively that
+he has killed the topic by making any further treatment of it
+superfluous. This being the case, a description of the euphuistic style
+need not detain us for long. I shall content myself with the briefest
+summary of its characteristics, drawing upon Mr Child for my matter, and
+referring those who are desirous of further details to Mr Child's work
+itself. We shall then be in a position to proceed to the more
+interesting, and as yet unsettled problem, of the origins of euphuism.
+The great value of Mr Child's work lies in the fact that he has at once
+simplified and amplified the conclusions of previous investigators. Dr
+Weymouth[16] was the first to discover that, beneath the "curtizan-like
+painted affectation" of euphuism, there lay a definite theory of style
+and a consistent method of procedure. Dr Landmann carried the analysis
+still further in his now famous paper published in the _New Shakespeare
+Society's Transactions_ (1880-82). But these two, and those who have
+followed them, have erred, on the one hand in implying that euphuism was
+much more complex than it is in reality, and on the other by confining
+their attention to single sentences, and so failing to perceive that the
+euphuistic method was applicable to the paragraph, as a whole, no less
+than to the sentence. And it is upon these two points that Mr Child's
+essay is so specially illuminating. We shall obtain a correct notion of
+the "essential character" of the "euphuistic rhetoric," he writes, "if
+we observe that it employs but one simple principle in practice, and
+that it applies this, not only to the ordering of the single sentence,
+but in every structural relation[17]": and this simple principle is "the
+inducement of artificial emphasis through Antithesis and
+Repetition--Antithesis to give pointed expression to the thought,
+Repetition to enforce it[18]." When Lyly set out to write his novel, it
+seemed that his intention was to produce a most elaborate essay in
+antithesis. The book as a whole, "very pleasant for all gentlemen to
+read and most necessary to remember," was itself an antithesis; the
+discourses it contains were framed upon the same plan; the sentences are
+grouped antithetically; while the antithesis is pointed by an equally
+elaborate repetition of ideas, of vowel sounds and of consonant sounds.
+Letters, syllables, words, sentences, sentence groups, paragraphs, all
+are employed for the purpose of producing the antithetical style now
+known as euphuism. An example will serve to make the matter clearer.
+Philautus, upbraiding his treacherous friend Euphues for robbing him of
+his lady's love, delivers himself of the following speech: "Although
+hitherto Euphues I have shrined thee in my heart for a trusty friend, I
+will shunne thee hereafter as a trothless foe, and although I cannot see
+in thee less wit than I was wont, yet do I find less honesty. I perceive
+at the last (although being deceived it be too late) that musk though
+it be sweet in the smell is sour in the smack, that the leaf of the
+cedar tree though it be fair to be seen, yet the syrup depriveth
+sight--that friendship though it be plighted by the shaking of the hand,
+yet it is shaken by the fraud of the heart. But thou hast not much to
+boast of, for as thou hast won a fickle lady, so hast thou lost a
+faithful friend[19]." It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the
+euphuistic style save in a lengthy quotation, such as the discourse of
+Eubulus selected by Mr Child for that purpose[20]; but, within the
+narrow limits of the passage I have chosen, the main characteristics of
+euphuism are sufficiently obvious. It should be noticed how one part of
+a sentence is balanced by another part, and how this balance or
+"parallelism" is made more pointed by means of alliteration, e.g.
+"shrined thee for a trusty friend," "shun thee as a trothless foe"; musk
+"sweet in the smell," "sour in the smack," and so on. The former of
+these antitheses is an example of transverse alliteration, of which so
+much is made by Dr Landmann, but which, as Mr Child shows, plays a
+subordinate, and an entirely mechanical, part in Lyly's style[21].
+Lyly's most natural and most usual method of emphasizing is by means of
+simple alliteration. On the other hand it must be noticed that he
+employs alliteration for the sake of euphony alone much more frequently
+than he uses it for the purpose of emphasis. So that we may conclude by
+saying that simple alliteration forms the basis of the euphuistic
+diction, just as we have seen antithesis forms the basis of the
+euphuistic construction. This brief survey of the framework of euphuism
+is far from being an exhaustive analysis. All that is here attempted is
+an enumeration of the most obvious marks of euphuism, as a necessary
+step to an investigation of its origin, and to a determination of its
+place in the history of our literature.
+
+  [14] Child, pp. 6-20, for an account of chief writers who have dealt
+  with euphuism.
+
+  [15] _John Lyly and Euphuism._ C. G. Child.
+
+  [16] _On Euphuism_, Phil. Soc. Trans., 1870-2.
+
+  [17] Child, p. 43.
+
+  [18] _id._, p. 44.
+
+  [19] _Euphues_, p. 90.
+
+  [20] Child, p. 39.
+
+  [21] _id._, p. 46.
+
+Before, however, leaving the subject entirely, we must mention two more
+characteristics of Lyly's prose which are very noticeable, but which
+come under the head of ornamental, rather than constructional, devices.
+The first of these is a peculiar use of the rhetorical interrogation.
+Lyly makes use of it when he wishes to portray his characters in
+distress or excitement, and it most frequently occurs in soliloquies.
+Sometimes we find a string of these interrogations, at others they are
+answered by sentences beginning "ay but," and occasionally we have the
+"ay but" sentence with the preceding interrogation missing. I make a
+special mention of this point, as we shall find it has a certain
+connexion with the subject of the origins of euphuism.
+
+The other ornamental device is one which has attracted a considerable
+quantity of attention from critics, and has frequently been taken by
+itself as the distinguishing mark of euphuism. In point of fact,
+however, 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 overwhelming that it is difficult to see how even the
+idlest lady of Elizabeth's court found time or patience to wade through
+them. They consist first of anecdotes and allusions relating to
+historical or mythological persons of the ancient world; some being
+drawn from Plutarch, Pliny, Ovid, Virgil, and other sources, but many
+springing simply from Lyly's exuberant fancy. In the second place
+_Euphues_ is a collection of similes borrowed from "a fantastical
+natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones, to which the
+most extraordinary virtues are attributed[22]." "I have heard," says
+Camilla, bashfully excusing herself for taking up the cudgels of
+argument with the learned Surius, "that the Tortoise in India when the
+sunne shineth, swimmeth above the water wyth hyr back, and being
+delighted with the fine weather, forgetteth her selfe until the heate of
+the sunne so harden her shell, that she cannot sink when she woulde,
+whereby she is caught. And so it may fare with me that in this good
+companye displaying my minde, having more regard to my delight in
+talking, than to the ears of the hearers, I forget what I speake, and so
+be taken in something I would not utter, which happilye the itchyng ears
+of young gentlemen would so canvas that when I would call it in, I
+cannot, and so be caught with the Tortoise, when I would not[23]." And,
+when she had finished her discourse, Surius again employs the simile for
+the purpose of turning a neat compliment, saying, "Lady, if the Tortoise
+you spoke of in India were as cunning in swimming, as you are in
+speaking, she would neither fear the heate of the sunne nor the ginne of
+the Fisher." This is but a mild example of the "unnatural natural
+philosophy" which _Euphues_ has made famous. An unending procession of
+such similes, often of the most extravagant nature, runs throughout the
+book, and sometimes the development of the plot is made dependent on
+them. Thus Lucilla hesitates to forsake Philautus for Euphues, because
+she feels that her new lover will remember "that the glasse once chased
+will with the least clappe be cracked, that the cloth which stayneth
+with milke will soon loose his coulour with Vinegar; that the eagle's
+wing will waste the feather as well as of the Phoenix as of the
+Pheasant: and that she that hath become faithlesse to one, will never
+be faithfull to any[24]." What proof could be more exact, what better
+example could be given of the methods of concomitant variations? It is
+precisely the same logical process which induces the savage to wreak his
+vengeance by melting a waxen image of his enemy, and the farmer to
+predict a change of weather at the new moon.
+
+  [22] Jusserand, p. 107.
+
+  [23] _Euphues_, p. 402.
+
+  [24] _id._, p. 58.
+
+Lyly, however, was not concerned with making philosophical
+generalizations, or scientific laws, about the world in general. His
+natural, or unnatural, phenomena were simply saturated with moral
+significance: not that he saw any connexion between the ethical process
+and the cosmic process, but, like every one of his contemporaries, he
+employed the facts of animal and vegetable life to point a moral or to
+help out a sermon. The arguments he used appear to us puerile in their
+old-world dress, and yet similar ones are to be heard to-day in every
+pulpit where a smattering of science is used to eke out a poverty of
+theology. And, to be fair, such reasoning is not confined to pulpits.
+Even so eminent a writer as Mr Edward Carpenter has been known to
+moralize 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[25]." Moreover the _soi-disant_ founder of the inductive
+method, the great Bacon himself, is, as Liebig[26] shows in his amusing
+and interesting study of the renowned "scientist's" scientific methods,
+tarred with the same mediaeval brush, and should be ranked with Lyly and
+the other Elizabethan "scholastics" rather than with men like Harvey and
+Newton.
+
+  [25] _Euphues_, p. 46.
+
+  [26] _Lord Bacon et les sciences d'observation en moyen age_, par
+  Liebig, traduit par de Tchihatchef.
+
+Lyly's natural history was at any rate the result of learning; many of
+his "facts" were drawn from Pliny, while others were to be found in the
+plentiful crop of mediaeval bestiaries, which, as Professor Raleigh
+remarks, "preceded the biological hand-books." Perhaps also we must
+again allow something for Lyly's invention; for lists of authorities,
+and footnotes indicative of sources, were not demanded of the scientist
+of those days, and one can thoroughly sympathise with an author who
+found an added zest in inventing the facts upon which his theories
+rested. Have not ethical philosophers of all ages been guilty of it?
+Certainly Gabriel Harvey seems to be hinting at Lyly when he slyly
+remarks: "I could name a party, that in comparison of his own
+inventions, termed Pliny a barren wombe[27]."
+
+  [27] Bond, I. p. 131 note.
+
+The affectations we have just enumerated are much less conspicuous in
+the second part of _Euphues_ than in the first, and, though they find a
+place in his earlier plays, Lyly gradually frees himself from their
+influence, owing perhaps to the decline of the euphuistic fashion, but
+more probably to the growth of his dramatic instinct, which saw that
+such forms were a drag upon the action of a play. And yet at times Lyly
+could use his clumsy weapon with great precision and effect. How
+admirably, for example, does he express in his antithetical fashion the
+essence of coquetry. Iffida, speaking to Fidus of one she loved but
+wished to test, is made to say, "I seem straight-laced as one neither
+accustomed to such suites, nor willing to entertain such a servant, yet
+so warily, as putting him from me with my little finger, I drewe him to
+me with my whole hand[28]." Other little delicate turns of phrase may be
+found in the mine of _Euphues_--for the digging. Our author was no
+genius, but he had a full 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. Moreover a certain
+weariness of this sermonizing on the stilts of antithesis is often
+visible; and we may suspect that he half sympathises with the petulant
+exclamation of the sea-sick Philautus to his interminable friend:
+
+"In fayth, Euphues, thou hast told a long tale, the beginning I have
+forgotten, ye middle I understand not, and the end hangeth not well
+together[29]"; and with this piece of self-criticism we may leave Lyly
+for the present and turn to his predecessors.
+
+  [28] _Euphues_, p. 299.
+
+  [29] _Euphues_, p. 248.
+
+
+SECTION II. _The Origins of Euphuism._
+
+When we pass from an analytical to an historical consideration of the
+style which Lyly made his own and stamped for ever with the name of his
+hero, we come upon a problem which is at once the most difficult and the
+most fascinating with which we have to deal. The search for a solution
+will lead us far afield; but, inasmuch as the publication and success of
+_Euphues_ have given euphuism its importance in the history of our
+literature, the digression, which an attempt to trace the origin of
+euphuism will necessitate, can hardly be considered outside the scope of
+this book. Critics have long since decided that the peculiar style,
+which we have just dissolved into its elements, was not the invention of
+Lyly's genius; but on the other hand, no critic, in my opinion, has as
+yet solved the problem of origins with any claim to finality. Perhaps a
+tentative solution is all that is possible in the present stage of our
+knowledge. It is, of course, easy to point to the book or books from
+which Lyly borrowed, and to dismiss the question thus. But this simply
+evades the whole issue; for, though it explains _Euphues_, it by no
+means explains euphuism. Equally unsatisfactory is the theory that
+euphuism was of purely Spanish origin. Such a solution has all the
+fascination, and all the dangers, which usually attend a simple answer
+to a complex question. The idea that euphuism was originally an article
+of foreign production was first set on foot by Dr Landmann. The real
+father of Lyly's style, he tells us, was Antonio de Guevara, bishop of
+Guadix, who published in 1529 a book, the title of which was as follows:
+_The book of the emperor Marcus Aurelius with a Diall for princes_. This
+book was translated into English in 1534 by Lord Berners, and again in
+1557 by Sir Thomas North; in both cases from a French version. The two
+translations are conveniently distinguished by their titles, that of
+Berners being _The Golden Boke_, that of North being _The Diall of
+Princes_. Dr Landmann is very positive with regard to his theory, but
+the fact that both translations come from the French and not from the
+Castilian, seems to me to constitute a serious drawback to its
+acceptance. And moreover this theory does not explain the really
+important crux of the whole matter, namely the reason why a style of
+this kind, whatever its origin, found a ready acceptance in England: for
+fourteen editions of _The Golden Boke_ are known between 1534 and 1588,
+a number for those days quite exceptional and showing the existence of
+an eager public. Two answers are possible to the last question; that
+there existed a large body of men in the England of the Tudors who were
+interested in Spanish literature of all kinds and in Guevara among
+others; and that the euphuistic style was already forming in England,
+and that this was the reason of Guevara's popularity. In both answers I
+think there is truth; and I hope to show that they give us, when
+combined, a fairly adequate explanation of the vogue of euphuism in our
+country. Let us deal with external influences first.
+
+The upholders of the Spanish theory have contented themselves with
+stating that Lyly borrowed from Guevara, and pointing out the parallels
+between the two writers. But it is possible to give their case a greater
+plausibility, by showing that Guevara was no isolated instance of such
+Spanish influence, and by proving that during the Tudor period there was
+a consistent and far-reaching interest in Spanish literature among a
+certain class of Englishmen. Intimacy with Spain dates from Henry VIII.'s
+marriage with Katherine of Aragon, though no Spanish book had actually
+been translated into English before her divorce. But the period from
+then onwards until the accession of James I., a period when Spain looms
+as largely in English politics as does France later, saw the publication
+in London of "some hundred and seventy volumes written either by
+peninsular authors, or in the peninsular tongues[30]." At such a time
+this number represents a very considerable influence; and it is,
+therefore, no wonder that critics have fallen victims to the allurements
+of a theory which would ascribe Spanish origins for all the various
+prose epidemics of Elizabethan literature. To pair Lyly with Guevara,
+Sidney with Montemayor[31], and Nash with Mendoza, and thus to point at
+Spain as the parent, not only of the euphuistic, but also of the
+pastoral and picaresque romance, is to furnish an explanation almost
+irresistible in its symmetry. It must have been with the joy of a
+mathematician, solving an intricate problem, that Dr Landmann formulated
+this theory of literary equations. But without going to such lengths,
+without pressing the connexion between particular writers, one may admit
+that in general Spanish literature must have exercised an influence upon
+the Elizabethans. Mr Underhill, our latest authority on the subject,
+allows this, while at the same time cautioning us against the dangers of
+over-estimating it. Any contact on the side of the lyric and the drama
+was, he declares, very slight[32], and the peninsular writings actually
+circulated in our country at this time, in translations, he divides into
+three classes; occasional literature, that is topical tracts and
+pamphlets on contemporary Spanish affairs; didactic literature,
+comprising scientific treatises, accounts of voyages such as inspired
+Hakluyt, works on military science, and, more important still, the
+religious writings of mystics like Granada; and lastly artistic prose.
+The last item, which alone concerns us, is by far the smallest of the
+three, and by itself amounts to less than half the translations from
+Italian literature; moreover most of the Spanish translations under this
+head came into England after 1580, and could not therefore have
+influenced Lyly's novel. But of course the _Libro Aureo_ had been
+englished long before this, while the _Lazarillo de Tormes_,
+Mendoza's[33] picaresque romance, was given an English garb by Rowland
+in 1576, and, though Montemayor's _Diana_ was not translated until 1596,
+Spanish and French editions of it had existed in England long previous
+to that date. Perhaps most important of all was the famous realistic
+novel _Celestina_, which was well known, in a French translation, to
+Englishmen at the beginning of the 16th century, and was denounced by
+Vives at Oxford. It was actually translated into English as early as
+1530[34]. There was on the whole, therefore, quite an appreciable
+quantity of Spanish artistic literature circulating in England before
+_Euphues_ saw the light.
+
+  [30] Underhill, p. 339.
+
+  [31] _id._, p. 268 note. Mr Underhill writes: "The attempt to connect
+  the style of Sidney with that of Montemayor has failed."
+
+  [32] Underhill, p. 48, but see Martin Hume, ch. IX.
+
+  [33] Some doubt has been thrown upon Mendoza's authorship. See
+  Fitzmaurice-Kelly, p. 158, and Martin Hume, p. 133.
+
+  [34] Martin Hume, p. 126.
+
+This literary invasion will seem perfectly natural if we bear in mind
+the political conditions of the day. Under Mary, England had been all
+but a Spanish dependency, and, though in the next reign, she threw off
+the yoke, the antagonism which existed probably acted as an even greater
+literary stimulus than the former alliance. Throughout the whole of
+Elizabeth's rule, the English were continually coming into contact with
+the Spaniards, either in trade, in ecclesiastical matters, in politics,
+or in actual warfare; and again the magnificence of the great Spanish
+empire, and the glamour which surrounded its connexion with the new
+world, were very attractive to the Englishmen of Elizabeth's day,
+especially as they were desirous of emulating the achievements of Spain.
+And lastly it may be noticed that English and Spanish conditions of
+intellectual life, if we shut our eyes to the religious differences,
+were very similar at this time. Both countries had replaced a shattered
+feudal system by an absolute and united monarchy. Both countries owed an
+immense debt to Italy, and, in both, the Italian influence took a
+similar form, modified on the one hand by humanism, and on the other by
+feelings of patriotism, if not of imperialism. Spain and England took
+the Renaissance fever more coldly, and at the same time more seriously,
+than did Italy. And in both the new movement eventually assumed the
+character of intellectual asceticism moulded by the sombre hand of
+religious fanaticism; for Spain was the cradle of the Counter-Reformation,
+England of Puritanism.
+
+Leaving the general issue, let us now try to establish a partial
+connexion between our author, or at least his surroundings, and Spanish
+influences. And here I think a suggestive, if not a strong case, can be
+made out. Ever since the beginning of the 16th century a Spanish
+tradition had existed at Oxford. Vives, the Spanish humanist, and the
+friend of Erasmus, was in 1517 admitted Fellow of Corpus Christi
+College, and in 1523 became reader in rhetoric; and, though he was
+banished in 1528, at the time of the divorce, it seems that he was
+continually lecturing before the University during the five years of his
+residence there. The circle of his friends, though quite distinct from
+the contemporary Berners-Guevara group, included many interesting men,
+and among others the famous Sir John Cheke. Under Mary we naturally find
+two Spanish professors at Oxford, Pedro de Soto and Juan de Villa
+Garcia. But Elizabeth maintained the tradition; and in 1559 she offered
+a chair at Oxford to a Spanish Protestant, Guerrero. The important name,
+however, in our connexion is Antonio de Corro, who resided as a student
+at Christ Church from 1575 to 1585, thus being a contemporary of Lyly,
+though it is impossible to say whether they were acquainted or not. Lyly
+had, however, another Oxford contemporary who certainly took a keen
+interest in Spanish literature, possessing a knowledge of Castilian,
+though himself an Englishman. This was Hakluyt, who must have been known
+to Lyly; and for the following reason. In 1597 Henry Lok[35] published a
+volume of religious poems to which Lyly contributed commendatory
+verses. On the other hand Hakluyt's first book was supplemented by a
+woodcut map executed by his friend Michael Lok[36], brother of Thomas
+Lok the Spanish merchant, and uncle to the aforesaid Henry. It seems
+highly improbable, therefore, that Lyly and Hakluyt possessing these
+common friends could have remained unknown to each other at Oxford.
+Indeed we may feel justified in supposing that Hakluyt, Sidney, Carew,
+Lyly, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Rogers (the translator of _Estella_) were
+all personally acquainted, if not intimate, at the University. Another
+and very important name may be added to this list, that of Stephen
+Gosson, who, "a Kentish man born" like our hero, and entering Oxford a
+year after him (in 1572), must, I feel sure, have been one of his
+friends. The fact that he was at first interested in acting, and is said
+to have written comedies, goes a long way to confirm this. We are also
+led to suppose that he had devoted some attention to Spanish literature,
+and that he was probably acquainted with Hakluyt and the Loks, from
+certain verses of his, printed at the end of Thomas Nicholas' _Pleasant
+History of the Conquest of West India_, a translation of Cortes' book
+published in 1578[37]. Taking all this into consideration, it is
+extremely interesting to find Gosson publishing in 1579 his famous
+_Schoole of Abuse_, which bears most of the distinguishing marks of
+euphuism already noted, but which can scarcely have been modelled upon
+Lyly's work; for as Professor Saintsbury writes: "the very short
+interval between the appearance of _Euphues_ and the _Schoole of Abuse_,
+shows that he must rather have mastered the Lylian style in the same
+circumstances and situations as Lyly than have directly borrowed it
+from his fellow at Oxford[38]." And moreover Gosson's style does not
+read like an imitation of Lyly. The same tricks and affectations are
+employed, but they are employed differently and perhaps more
+effectively.
+
+  [35] Bond, I. p. 67.
+
+  [36] Underhill, p. 178, to whom I am indebted for nearly all the
+  preceding remarks in connexion with the Spanish atmosphere at Oxford.
+
+  [37] Arber's reprint, _School of Abuse_, p. 97.
+
+  [38] Craik, vol. I.
+
+Lyly is again found in contact with the Spanish atmosphere, as one of
+the dependents of the Earl of Oxford, who patronized Robert Baker,
+George Baker, and Anthony Munday, who were all under the "spell of the
+peninsula[39]." But we cannot be certain when his relations with de Vere
+commenced, and unless we can feel sure that they had begun before the
+writing of _Euphues_, the point is not of importance for our present
+argument.
+
+  [39] Underhill, ch. VIII. Sec. 2.
+
+These facts are of course little more than hints, but I think they are
+sufficient to establish a fairly strong probability that Lyly was one of
+a literary set at Oxford (as I have already suggested in dealing with
+his life) the members of which were especially interested in Spanish
+literature, perhaps through the influence of Corro. It seems extremely
+improbable that Lyly himself possessed any knowledge of Castilian, and
+it is by no means necessary to show that he did, for it is quite
+sufficient to point out that he must have been continually in the
+presence of those who were discussing peninsular writings, and that in
+this way he would have come to a knowledge of the most famous Spanish
+book which had yet received translation, the _Libro Aureo_ of Guevara.
+
+But we are still left with the question on our hands; why was this book
+the most famous peninsular production 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 a reception in England. But the
+special question as to the ascendancy of Guevara obviously requires a
+special answer. Guevara was of course well known all over the continent,
+and it might seem that this was a sufficient explanation of his
+popularity in England. In reality, however, such an explanation is no
+solution at all, it merely widens the issue; for we are still left
+asking for a reason of his continental fame. The problem requires a
+closer investigation than it has at present received. It was undoubtedly
+Guevara's _alto estilo_ which gave his writings their chief attraction;
+and a style so elaborate would only find a reception in a favourable
+atmosphere, that is among those who had already gone some way towards
+the creation of a similar style themselves. _A priori_ therefore the
+answer to our question would be that Guevara was no isolated stylist,
+but only the most famous example of a literary phase, which had its
+independent representatives all over Europe. A consideration 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
+explanation, in terms of internal development, of the origin and sources
+of euphuism.
+
+We have noticed with suspicion that our two translators 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 of Mrs Humphry Ward's article on
+_Euphuism_ in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in which she follows Dr
+Landmann. His criticism, which appeared in the _Athenaeum_, was
+afterwards enlarged in an appendix to his edition of Berners'
+translation of _Huon of Bordeaux_. "Lord Berners' sentences," Mr Lee
+writes, "are euphuistic beyond all question; they are characterized by
+the forced antitheses, alliteration, and the far-fetched illustrations
+from natural phenomena, peculiar to Lyly and his successors[40]." He
+denies, moreover, that Berners was any less euphuistic than North, and
+gives parallel extracts from their translations to prove this. A
+comparison of the two passages in question can leave no doubt that Mr
+Lee's deduction is correct. Mr Bond therefore is in grave error when he
+writes, "North endeavoured what Berners had not aimed at, to reproduce
+in his Diall the characteristics of Guevara's style, with the notable
+addition of an alliteration natural to English but not to Spanish; and
+it is he who must be regarded as the real founder of our euphuistic
+literary fashion[41]." Lyly may indeed have borrowed from North rather
+than from Berners; but, if Berners' English was as euphuistic as
+North's, and if Berners could show fourteen editions to North's two
+before 1580, it is Berners and not North who must be described as "the
+real founder of our euphuistic literary fashion." And as Mr Lee shows,
+his nephew Sir Francis Bryan must share the title with him, for the
+colophon of the _Golden Boke_ states that the translation was undertaken
+"at the instaunt desire of his nevewe Sir Francis Bryan Knyghte." It was
+Bryan also who wrote the passage at the conclusion of the _Boke_
+applauding the "swete style[42]." This Sir Francis Bryan was a
+favourite of Henry VIII., a friend of Surrey and Wyatt, possibly of
+Ascham and of his master Cheke, in fact a very well-known figure at
+court and in the literary circles of his day[43]. Euphuism must,
+therefore, have had a considerable vogue even in the days of Henry VIII.
+If it could be shown that Bryan could read Castilian, the Guevara theory
+might still possess some plausibility, for it would be argued that
+Berners learnt his style from his nephew. But, though we know Bryan to
+have entertained a peculiar affection for Guevara's writings, there is
+no evidence to prove that he could read them in the original. Indeed
+when he set himself to translate Guevara's _Dispraise of the life of a
+courtier_, he, like his uncle, had to go to a French translation[44].
+Wherever we turn, in fact, we are met by this French barrier between
+Guevara and his English translators, which seems to preclude the
+possibility of his style having exercised the influence ascribed to it
+by Dr Landmann and those who follow him.
+
+  [40] Huon of Bordeaux, appendix I., _Lord Berners and Euphuism_,
+  p. 786.
+
+  [41] Bond, I. p. 158.
+
+  [42] See _Athenaeum_, July 14, 1883.
+
+  [43] _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, Bryan.
+
+  [44] The 2nd edition of this book, which was published under another
+  title, is thus described in the B. M. Cat.: "_A looking-glass for the
+  court_ ... out of Castilian drawne into French by A. Alaygre; and out
+  of the French into English by Sir F. Briant."
+
+But there is more behind: and we cannot help feeling convinced that the
+facts we are now about to bring forward ought to dispose of the
+Landmann-Guevara theory once and for all. In the article before
+mentioned Mr Lee goes on to say: "The translator's prologue to Lord
+Berners' _Froissart_ written in 1524 and that to be found in other of
+his works show him to have come under Guevara's or a similar influence
+before he translated the _Golden Boke_[45]." Here is an extract from the
+prologue in question. "The most profitable thing in this world for the
+institution of the human life is history. Once the continual reading
+thereof maketh young men equal in prudence to old men, and to old
+fathers striken in age it ministereth experience of things. More it
+yieldeth private persons worthy of dignity, rule and governance: it
+compelleth the emperors, high rulers, and governors to do noble deeds to
+the end they may obtain immortal glory: it exciteth, moveth and stirreth
+the strong, hardy warriors, for the great laud that they have after they
+lie dead, promptly to go in hand with great and hard perils in defence
+of their country: and it prohibiteth reproveable persons to do
+mischievous deeds for fear of infamy and shame. So thus through the
+monuments of writing which is the testimony unto virtue many men have
+been moved, some to build cities, some to devise and establish laws
+right, profitable, necessary and behoveful for the human life, some
+other to find new arts, crafts and sciences, very requisite to the use
+of mankind. But above all things, whereby man's wealth riseth, special
+laud and praise ought to be given to history: it is the keeper of such
+things as have been virtuously done, and the witness of evil deeds, and
+by the benefit of history all noble, high and virtuous acts be immortal.
+What moved the strong and fierce Hercules to enterprise in his life so
+many great incomparable labours and perils? Certainly nought else but
+that for his great merit immortality might be given him of all folk....
+Why moved and stirred Phalerius the King Ptolemy oft and diligently to
+read books? Forsooth for no other cause but that those things are found
+written in books that the friends dare not show to the prince[46]." This
+is of course far from being the full-blown euphuism of Lyly or Pettie,
+yet we cannot but agree with Mr Lee, when he declares that "the
+parallelism of the sentences, the repetition of the same thought
+differently expressed, the rhetorical question, the accumulation of
+synonyms, the classical references, are irrefutable witnesses to the
+presence of euphuism[47]." But Mr Lee appeared to be quite unconscious
+of the full significance of his discovery. _It means that Berners was
+writing euphuism in 1524, five years before Guevara published his book
+in Spain._ No critic, as far as I have been able to discover, has shown
+any consciousness of this significant fact[48], which is of course of
+the utmost importance in this connexion; as, if it is to carry all the
+weight that is at first sight due to it, the theory that euphuism was a
+mere borrowing from the Spanish must be pronounced entirely exploded.
+But it is as well not to be over-confident. Guevara's _Libro Aureo_, his
+earliest work, was undoubtedly first published by his authority in 1529,
+but there seems to be a general feeling that the book had previously
+appeared in pirated form. This feeling is based upon the title of the
+1529 edition[49], which describes the book as "_nueuamente reuisto por
+su senoria_," and upon certain remarks of Hallam in his _Literature of
+Europe_. Though I can find no confirmation for the statements he makes
+upon the authority of a certain Dr West of Dublin, yet the words of so
+well known a writer cannot be ignored. He quotes Dr West in a footnote
+as follows: "There are some circumstances connected with the _Relox_
+(i.e. the sub-title of the _Libro Aureo_) not generally known, which
+satisfactorily account for various erroneous statements that have been
+made on the subject by writers of high authority. The fact is that
+Guevara, about the year 1518, commenced a life and letters of M.
+Aurelius which purported to be a translation of a Greek work found in
+Florence. Having sometime afterwards lent this MS. to the emperor it was
+surreptitiously copied and printed, as he informs us himself, first in
+Seville and afterwards in Portugal.... Guevara himself subsequently
+published it (1529) with considerable additions[50]." From this it
+appears that previous unauthorised editions of Guevara's book had been
+published before 1529. Might not Berners therefore have come under
+Guevara's influence as early as 1524? We must concede that it is
+possible, but, on the other hand, the difficulties in the way of such a
+contingency seem almost insuperable. In the first place, if we are to
+believe Dr West, Guevara did not begin to write his work before 1518,
+and it was not until "some time afterwards" (whatever this may mean)
+that it was "surreptitiously copied and printed." It would require a
+bold man to assert that a book thus published could be influencing the
+style of an English writer as early as 1524. But further it must be
+remembered that Berners almost certainly could not read Castilian[51].
+Now the earliest known French translation of Guevara is one by Rene
+Bertaut in 1531, which Berners himself is known to have used[52].
+Therefore, if Berners was already under Guevara's influence in 1524, he
+must have known of an earlier French pirated translation of an earlier
+pirated edition of the _Libro Aureo_. To sum up; if the euphuistic
+tendency in English prose is to be ascribed entirely, or even mainly, to
+the influence of Guevara's _Libro Aureo_, we must digest four
+improbabilities: (i) that there existed a pirated edition of the book in
+Spain _earlier_ than 1524: (ii) that this had been translated into
+French, also before 1524, although the version of Bertaut in 1531 is the
+earliest French translation we have any trace of: (iii) that Berners
+himself had come across this hypothetical French edition, again before
+1524: and (iv) that the French translation had so faithfully reproduced
+the style of the original, that Berners was able to translate it from
+French into English, for the purpose of his prologue to _Froissart_.
+
+  [45] Huon, p. 787.
+
+  [46] _Froissart_, Globe edition, p. xxviii.
+
+  [47] Huon, p. 788.
+
+  [48] After writing the above I have noticed that Mr G. C. Macaulay, in
+  the Introduction to the Globe _Froissart_, writes as follows (p. xvi):
+  "If nothing else could be adduced to show that the tendency (i.e.
+  euphuism) existed already in English literature, the prefaces to Lord
+  Berners' _Froissart_ written before he could possibly have read
+  Guevara, would be enough to prove it."
+
+  [49] There are two extant editions of 1529, (i) published at
+  Valladolid, from which the words above are quoted, (ii) published at
+  Enueres, which appears to be an earlier edition. Copies of both in the
+  British Museum.
+
+  [50] Hallam, _Lit. of Europe_, ed. 1855, vol. I. p. 403 n. Brunet in
+  his _Manuel de Libraire_ gives Hallam's view without comment, tome II.
+  "Guevara."
+
+  [51] Underhill, p. 69.
+
+  [52] Bond, vol. I. p. 137.
+
+In face of these facts, the Guevara theory is no longer tenable; and in
+consequence the whole situation is reversed, and we approach the problem
+from the natural side, the side from which it should have been
+approached from the first--that is from the English and not the Spanish
+side. I say the natural side, because it seems to me obvious that the
+popularity of a foreign author in any country implies the existence in
+that country, previous to the introduction of the author, of an
+atmosphere (or more concretely a public) favourable to the
+distinguishing characteristics of the author introduced. And so it now
+appears that Guevara found favour in England because his style, or
+something very like it, was already known there; and it was the most
+natural thing in the world that Berners, who shows that style most
+prominently, should have been the channel by which Guevara became known
+to English readers. The whole problem of this 16th century prose is
+analogous to that of 18th century verse. The solution of both was for a
+long time found in foreign influence. It was natural to assume that
+France, the pivot of our foreign policy at the end of the 17th century,
+gave us the classical movement, and that Spain, equally important
+politically in the 16th century, gave us euphuism. Closer investigation
+has disproved both these theories[53], showing that, while foreign
+influence was undoubtedly an immense factor in the _development_ of
+these literary fashions, their real _origin_ was English.
+
+  [53] For 18th century v. Gosse, _From Shakespeare to Pope_.
+
+The proof of this does not rest entirely on the case of Berners. We
+might even concede that he was acquainted with an earlier edition of
+Guevara, and that his style was actually derived from Spanish sources,
+without surrendering our thesis that euphuism was a natural growth.
+Berners' euphuism, whatever its origin, was premature; and, though the
+_Golden Boke_ passed through twelve editions between 1534 and 1560, we
+cannot say that its style influenced English writing until the time of
+Lyly, for its vogue was confined to a small class of readers, designated
+by Mr Underhill as the "Guevara-group." On the other hand, it is
+possible to trace a feeling towards euphuism among writers who were
+quite outside this group.
+
+Latimer, for example, delighted in alliterative turns of speech, though
+the antithetical mannerisms are absent in him. His famous denunciation
+of the unpreaching prelates is an excellent instance:
+
+"But now for the faults of unpreaching prelates, methink I could guess
+what might be said for the excusing 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 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 rudimentary euphuism of balanced and
+alliterative phrases, probably like the alliteration of Anglo-Saxon
+homilies, borrowed from popular poetry[54]." Latimer also employs the
+responsive method so frequently used by Lyly. "But ye say it is new
+learning. Now I tell you it is old learning. Yea, ye say, it is old
+heresy new scoured. Nay, I tell you it is old truth long rusted with
+your canker, and now made new bright and scoured." It is no long step
+from this to the rhetorical question and its formal answer "ay but----."
+Alliteration is not found in Guevara; it was an addition, and a very
+important one, made by his translators. This was at any rate a purely
+native product, and cannot be assigned to Spain. The antithesis and
+parallelism were the fruits of humanism, and they appear, combined with
+Latimer's alliteration, in the writings of Sir John Cheke and his pupil
+Roger Ascham. Cheke's famous criticism of Sallust's style, as being
+"more art than nature and more labour than art," introduces us at once
+to euphuism, and gives us by the way a very excellent comment upon it.
+Again he speaks of "magistrates more ready to tender all justice and
+pitifull 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[55]"; which is a good example of the euphuistic combination
+of alliteration and balance.
+
+  [54] Craik, vol. I. p. 224.
+
+  [55] Craik, p. 258.
+
+In Ascham the style is still more marked. There are, indeed, so many
+examples of euphuism in the _Schoolmaster_ and in the _Toxophilus_,
+that one can only select. As an illustration of transverse alliteration
+quite as complex as any in _Euphues_, we may notice the following: "Hard
+wittes be hard to receive, but sure to keep; painfull without weariness,
+hedefull without wavering, constant without any new fanglednesse;
+bearing heavie things, though not lightlie, yet willinglie; entering
+hard things though not easily, yet depelie[56]." Classical allusions
+abound throughout Ascham's work, and he occasionally indulges in the
+ethics of natural history as follows:
+
+"Young Graftes grow not onlie sonest, but also fairest and bring always
+forth the best and sweetest fruite; young whelps learne easilie to
+carrie; young Popingeis learne quickly to speak; and so, to be short, if
+in all other things though they lacke reason, sense, and life, the
+similitude of youth is fittest to all goodnesse, surelie nature in
+mankinde is more beneficial and effectual in this behalfe[57]."
+
+  [56] Arber, _Schoolmaster_, p. 35.
+
+  [57] _id._, p. 46.
+
+We know that Lyly had read the _Schoolmaster_, as he took the very title
+of his book from its description of /Euphues/ as "he that is apte by
+goodnesse of witte and applicable by readiness of will to learning"--a
+description 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 perhaps the most striking
+characteristics of Ascham's prose; and it is interesting to observe how
+much the structure of the sentence in the more elaborated stages of
+English prose is due to their combination[58]." Here we have the two
+elements of our native-grown euphuism, and their origins, carefully
+distinguished. Of course with euphuism we do not commence English prose;
+that is already centuries old; but we are dealing with the beginnings of
+English prose style, by which we mean a conscious and artistic striving
+after literary effect. That the first stylists should look to the
+rhetoricians for their models was inevitable, and of these there were
+two kinds available; the classical orators and the alliterative homilies
+of the Early English. But, deferring this point for a later treatment,
+let us conclude our study of the evolution of euphuism in England.
+
+  [58] Craik, I. p. 269.
+
+So far we have been dealing with euphuistic tendencies only, since in
+the style of Ascham and his predecessors, alliteration and antithesis
+are not employed consistently, but merely on occasion for the sake of
+emphasis. Other marks of euphuism, such as the fantastic embroidery of
+mythical beasts and flowers, are absent. Even in North's _Diall_
+alliteration is not profuse, and similes from natural history are
+comparatively rare. In George Pettie, however, we find a complete
+euphuist before _Euphues_. This writer again brings us in touch with
+that Oxford atmosphere, which, I maintain, surrounded the birth of the
+full-blown euphuism. A student of Christ Church, he took his B.A. degree
+in 1560[59], and so probably just escaped being a contemporary of Lyly.
+But, as he was a "dear friend" of William Gager, who was a considerably
+younger man than himself, it seems probable that he continued his Oxford
+connexion after his degree. However this may be, he published his
+_Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure_, which so exactly anticipates
+the style of _Euphues_, in 1576, only two years before the later book.
+The _Petite Pallace_ was an imitation of the famous _Palace of Pleasure_
+published in 1566 by William Painter, who, though he had known Guevara's
+writings, drew his material almost entirely from Italian sources. That
+Pettie also possessed a knowledge of Spanish literature, as we should
+expect from the period of his residence at Oxford, is shown by his
+translation of Guazzo's _Civile Conversation_ in 1581, to which he
+affixes a euphuistic preface. This again was only a left-handed
+transcript from the French. Therefore the Spanish elements, though
+undoubtedly present, cannot be insisted upon. We may concede that Pettie
+had read North, or even go so far as to assert with Mr Underhill that he
+was acquainted with "parts of the Gallicized Guevara," without lending
+countenance to Dr Landmann's radical theories. No one, reading the
+_Petite Pleasure_, can doubt that Pettie was the real creator of
+euphuism in its fullest development, and that Lyly was only an imitator.
+Though I have already somewhat overburdened this chapter. I cannot
+refrain from quoting a passage from Pettie, not only as an example of
+his style, but also because the passage is in itself so delightful, that
+it is one's duty to rescue it from oblivion:
+
+"As amongst all the bonds of benevolence and good will, there is none
+more honourable, ancient, or honest than marriage, so in my fancy there
+is none that doth more firmly fasten and inseparably unite us together
+than the same estate doth, or wherein the fruits of true friendship do
+more plenteously appear: in the father is a certain severe love and
+careful goodwill towards the child, the child beareth a fearful
+affection and awful obedience towards the father: the master hath an
+imperious regard of the servant, the servant a servile care of the
+master. The friendship amongst men is grounded upon no love and
+dissolved upon every light occasion: the goodwill of kinsfolk is
+constantly cold, as much of custom as of devotion: but in this stately
+estate of matrimony there is nothing fearful, all things are done
+faithfully without doubting, truly without doubling, willingly without
+constraint, joyfully without complaint: yea there is such a general
+consent and mutual agreement between the man and wife, that they both
+wish and will covet and crave one thing. And as a scion grafted in a
+strange stalk, their natures being united by growth, they become one and
+together bear one fruit: so the love of the wife planted in the breast
+of her husband, their hearts by continuance of love become one, one
+sense and one soul serveth them both. And as the scion severed from the
+stock withereth away, if it be not grafted in some other: so a loving
+wife separated from the society of her husband withereth away in woe and
+leadeth a life no less pleasant than death[60]." Lyly never wrote
+anything to equal this. Indeed it is not unworthy of the lips of one of
+Shakespeare's heroines.
+
+  [59] _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, Pettie.
+
+  [60] I have taken the liberty of modernising the spelling.
+
+The euphuism of the foregoing quotation will be readily detected. The
+sole difference between the styles of Lyly and Pettie is that, while
+Pettie's similes from nature are simple and natural, Lyly, with his
+knowledge of Pliny and of the bestiaries, added his fabulous "unnatural
+natural history." Pettie's book was popular for the time, three editions
+of it being called for in the first year of its publication, but it was
+soon to be thrust aside by the fame of the much more pretentious, and,
+apart from the style, better constructed _Euphues_ of Lyly. In truth, as
+Gabriel Harvey justly but unkindly remarks, "Young Euphues but hatched
+the eggs his elder freendes laid." But the parental responsibility and
+merit must be attributed to him who hatches. It was Lyly who made
+euphuism famous and therefore a power; and, despite the fact that he
+marks the culmination of the movement, he is the most dynamical of all
+the euphuists.
+
+It remains to sum up our conclusions respecting the origin and
+development of this literary phase. Difficult as it is to unravel the
+tangled network of obscure influences which surrounded its birth, I
+venture to think that a sufficiently complete disproof of that extreme
+theory, which would ascribe it entirely to Guevara's influence, has been
+offered. Guevara, in the translation of Berners, undoubtedly took the
+field early, but, as we have seen, Berners was probably feeling towards
+the style before he knew Guevara; and moreover the bishop's _alto
+estilo_ must have suffered considerably while passing through the
+French. Even allowing everything, as we have done, for the close
+connexion between Spain and England, for the Spanish tradition at
+Oxford, and for the interest in peninsular writings shown by Lyly's
+immediate circle of friends, we cannot accord to Dr Landmann's
+explanation anything more than a very modified acceptance. Nor would a
+complete rejection of this solution of the Lyly problem render English
+euphuism inexplicable; for something very like it would naturally have
+resulted from the close application of classical methods to prose
+writing; and in the case of Cheke and Ascham we actually see the process
+at work. And yet Lyly owed a great debt to Guevara. A true solution,
+therefore, must find a place for foreign as well as native influences.
+And to say that the Spanish intervention confirmed and hastened a
+development already at work, of which the original impulse was English,
+is, I think, to give a due allowance to both.
+
+
+SECTION III. _Lyly's Legatees and the relation between Euphuism and the
+Renaissance._
+
+The publication of _Euphues_ was the culmination, rather than the
+origin, of that literary phase to which it gave its name. And the vogue
+of euphuism after 1579 was short, lasting indeed only until about 1590;
+yet during these ten years its influence was far-reaching, and left a
+definite mark upon later English prose. It would be idle, if not
+impossible, to trace its effects upon every individual writer who fell
+under its immediate fascination. Moreover the task has already been
+performed in a great measure by M. Jusserand[61] and Mr Bond[62]. They
+have shown once and for all that Greene, Lodge, Welbanke, Munday,
+Warner, Wilkinson, and above all Shakespeare, were indebted to our
+author for certain mannerisms of style. I shall therefore content 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.
+
+  [61] Jusserand, ch. IV.
+
+  [62] Bond, vol. I. pp. 164-175.
+
+The first of these is the dramatist Kyd, who completed his well-known
+_Spanish Tragedy_ between 1584 and 1589, that is at the height of the
+euphuistic fashion. This play was apparently an inexhaustible joke to
+the Elizabethans; for the references to it in later dramatists are
+innumerable. One passage must have been particularly famous, for we find
+it parodied most elaborately by Field, as late as 1606, in his _A Woman
+is a Weathercock_[63]. The passage in question, which was obviously
+inspired by Lyly, runs as follows:
+
+    "Yet might she love me for my valiance:
+     I, but that's slandered by captivity.
+     Yet might she love me to content her sire:
+     I, but her reason masters her desire.
+     Yet might she love me as her brother's friend:
+     I, but her hopes aim at some other end.
+     Yet might she love me to uprear her state:
+     I, but perhaps she loves some nobler mate.
+     Yet might she love me as her beautie's thrall:
+     I, but I feare she cannot love at all."
+
+  [63] Act I. Sc. II.
+
+Nathaniel Field's parody of this melodramatic nonsense is so amusing
+that I cannot forbear quoting it. This time the despairing lover is Sir
+Abraham Ninny, who quotes Kyd to his companions, and they with the cry
+of "Ha God-a-mercy, old Hieromino!" begin the game of parody, which must
+have been keenly enjoyed by the audience. Field improves on the original
+by putting the alternate lines of despair into the mouths of Ninny's
+jesting friends. It runs, therefore:
+
+    "--Yet might she love me for my lovely eyes.
+     --Ay but, perhaps your nose she does despise.
+     --Yet might she love me for my dimpled chin.
+     --Ay but, she sees your beard is very thin.
+     --Yet might she love me for my proper body.
+     --Ay but, she thinks you are an arrant noddy.
+     --Yet might she love me 'cause I am an heir.
+     --Ay but, perhaps she does not like your ware.
+     --Yet might she love me in despite of all.
+     (the lady herself)--Ay but indeed I cannot love at all."
+
+This parody, apart from any interest it possesses for the student of
+Lyly, is an excellent illustration of the ways of Elizabethan
+playwrights, and of the thorough knowledge of previous plays they
+assumed their audience to have possessed. There are several other
+examples of Kyd's acquaintance with the _Euphues_ in the _Spanish
+Tragedy_[64], in the other dramas[65], and in his prose works[66], which
+it is not necessary to quote. But there is one more passage, again from
+his most famous play, which is so full of interest that it cannot be
+passed over in silence. It is a counsel of hope to the despairing lover,
+and assumes this inspiring form:
+
+    "My Lord, though Belimperia seem thus coy
+     Let reason hold you in your wonted joy;
+     In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke,
+     In time all Haggard Hawkes will stoop to lure,
+     In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake,
+     In time the flint is pearst with softest shower,
+     And she in time will fall from her disdain,
+     And rue the sufferance of your deadly paine[67]."
+
+  [64] _Sp. Trag._, Act IV. 190 (cp. _Euphues_, p. 146).
+
+  [65] _Soliman and Perseda_, Act III. 130 (cp. _Euphues_, p. 100), and
+  Act II. 199.
+
+  [66] _Kyd's Works_ (Boas), p. 288, and ch. IX.
+
+  [67] _Sp. Trag._, Act II. 1-8.
+
+Now these lines are practically a transcript of the opening words of the
+47th sonnet in Watson's _Hekatompathia_ published in 1582. Remembering
+Lyly's penetrating observation that "the soft droppes of rain pearce the
+hard marble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oake[68]," and bearing
+in mind that the high priest of euphuism himself contributed a
+commendatory epistle to the _Hekatompathia_, we should expect that these
+Bulls and Hawkes and Oakes were choice flowers of speech, culled from
+that botanico-zoological "garden of prose"--the _Euphues_. But as a
+matter of fact Watson himself informs us in a note that his sonnet is an
+imitation of the Italian Serafino, from whom he also borrows other
+sonnet-conceits in the same volume, some of which are full of similar
+references to the properties of animals and plants. The conclusion is
+forced upon us therefore that Watson and Lyly went to the same source,
+or, if a knowledge of Italian cannot be granted to our author, that he
+borrowed from Watson. At any rate Watson cannot be placed amongst the
+imitators of _Euphues_. Like Pettie and Gosson he must share with Lyly
+the credit of creation. He was a friend of Lyly's at Oxford; they
+dedicated their books to the same patron, and they employed the same
+publisher. Moreover, the little we have of Watson's prose is highly
+euphuistic, and it is apparent from the epistle above mentioned that he
+was on terms of closest intimacy with the author of _Euphues_. In him we
+have another member of that interesting circle of Oxford euphuists, who
+continued their connexion in London under de Vere's patronage.
+
+  [68] _Euphues_, p. 337.
+
+Watson again was a friend of the well-known poet Richard Barnefield, who
+though too young in 1578 to have been of the University coterie of
+euphuists, shows definite traces of their affectation in his works. The
+conventional illustrations from an "unnatural natural history" abound in
+his _Affectionate Shepherd_[69] (1594), and he repeats the jargon about
+marble and showers[70] which we have seen in Lyly, Watson and Kyd. Again
+in his _Cynthia_ (1594) there is a distinct reference to the opening
+words of _Euphues_ in the lines,
+
+    "Wit without wealth is bad, yet counted good;
+     Wealth wanting wisdom's worse, yet deemed as well[71]."
+
+His prose introduction betrays the same influence.
+
+  [69] _Poems_, Arber, pp. 18 and 19.
+
+  [70] _id._, p. 24.
+
+  [71] _id._, p. 51.
+
+These then are a few among the countless scribblers of those prolific
+times who fell under the spell of the euphuistic fashion. They are
+mentioned, either because their connexion with the movement has been
+overlooked, or because they throw a new and important light upon Lyly
+himself. Of other legatees it is impossible to treat here; and it is
+enough, without tracing it in any detail, to indicate "the slender
+euphuistic thread that runs in iron through Marlowe, in silver through
+Shakespeare, in bronze through Bacon, in more or less inferior metal
+through every writer of that age[72]."
+
+  [72] Symonds, p. 407.
+
+There is nothing strange in this infatuation, if we remember that
+euphuism was "the English type of an all but universal disease[73]," as
+Symonds puts it. Dr Landmann, we have decided, was wrong in his
+insistence upon foreign influence; but his error was a natural one, and
+points to a fact which no student of Renaissance literature can afford
+to neglect. Matthew Arnold long ago laid down the clarifying principle
+that "the criticism which alone can much help us for the future, is a
+criticism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual and spiritual
+purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working
+to a common result[74]." And the truth of this becomes more and more
+indisputable, the longer we study European history, whether it be from
+the side of Politics, of Religion, or of Art. Landmann ascribes euphuism
+to Spain, Symonds ascribes it to Italy, and an equally good case might
+be made out in favour of France. There is truth in all these hypotheses,
+but each misses the true significance of the matter, which is that
+euphuism must have come, and would have come, without any question of
+borrowing.
+
+  [73] _id._, p. 404.
+
+  [74] _Essays in Criticism_, I. p. 39.
+
+The date 1453 is usually taken as a convenient starting point for the
+Renaissance, though the movement was already at work in Italy, for that
+was the year of Byzantium's fall and of the diffusion of the classics
+over Europe. But, for the countries outside Italy, I think that the date
+1493 is almost as important. Hitherto the new learning had been in a
+great measure confined to Italy, but with the invasion of Charles VIII.,
+which commences a long period of French and Spanish occupation of
+Italian soil, the Renaissance, especially on its artistic side, began to
+find its way into the neighbouring states, and through them into
+England. It is the old story, so familiar to sociologists, of a lower
+civilization falling under the spell of the culture exhibited by a more
+advanced subject population, of a conqueror worshipping the gods of the
+conquered. It is the story of the conquest 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 consciousness of
+the wonders of Italian literature. Thus it was that those beyond the
+Alps drank of water already tainted. That France, Spain, and England
+should be attracted by the affectations of Italy, rather than by what
+was best in her literature, was only to be expected. "It was easier to
+catch the trick of an Aretino, and a Marini, than to emulate the style
+of a Tasso or a Castiglione": and besides they were themselves inventing
+similar extravagances independently of Italy. The purely formal ideal of
+Art had in Spain already found expression among the courtiers of
+Juan II. of Castile. One of them, Baena, writes as follows of poetry:
+"that it cannot be learned or well and properly known, save by the man
+of very deep and subtle invention, and of a very lofty and fine
+discretion, and of a very healthy and unerring judgment, and such a one
+must have seen and heard and read many and diverse books and writings,
+and know all languages and have frequented kings' Courts and associated
+with great men and beheld and taken part in worldly affairs; and finally
+he must be of gentle birth, courteous and sedate, polished, humorous,
+polite, witty, and have in his composition honey, and sugar, and salt,
+and a good presence and a witty manner of reasoning; moreover he must be
+also a lover and ever make a show and pretence of it[75]." Such a
+catalogue of the poet's requisites might have been written by any one of
+our Oxford euphuists; and Watson, at least, among them fulfilled all its
+conditions.
+
+  [75] Butler Clarke, _Spanish Literature_, p. 71.
+
+The Italian influence, therefore, did but hasten a process already at
+work. The reasons for this universal movement are very difficult to
+determine. But among many suggestions of more or less value, a few
+causes of the change may here be hazarded. In the first place, then, the
+Renaissance happened to be contemporaneous with the death of feudalism.
+The ideal of chivalry is dying out all over Europe; and the romances of
+chivalry are everywhere despised. The horizontal class divisions become
+obscured by the newly found perpendicular divisions of nationality; and
+in Italy and England at least the old feudal nobility have almost
+entirely disappeared. A new centre of national life and culture is
+therefore in the process of formation, that of the Court; and thanks to
+this, the ideal of chivalry gives place to the new ideal of the courtier
+or the gentleman. This ideal found literary expression in the moral
+Court treatises, which were so universally popular during the
+Renaissance, and of which Guevara, Castiglione, and 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 Philistine. In the
+Courts of the Renaissance period, where learning was considered so
+admirable, this necessary distinction would naturally take the form of a
+cultured, if not pedantic, diction; and for this it was natural that men
+should go to the classics, and more especially to classical orators, as
+models of good speech. It must not be imagined that this process was a
+conscious one. In many countries the rhetorical style was already formed
+by scholars before it became the speech of the Court. In fact the
+beginnings of modern prose style are to be found in humanism. Ascham
+with his hatred of the "Italianated gentleman," was probably quite
+unconscious of his own affinity to that objectionable type, when
+imitating the style of his favourite Tully in the _Schoolmaster_. The
+classics it must be remembered were not discovered by the humanists,
+they were only rediscovered. The middle ages had used them, as they had
+used the Old Testament, as prophetic books. Virgil's mediaeval
+reputation for example rests for the most part upon the fourth Eclogue.
+The humanists, on the other hand, looked upon the classics as literature
+and valued them for their style. But here again they drank from tainted
+sources; for, with the exception of a few writers such as Cicero and
+Terence, the classics they knew and loved best were the product of the
+silver age of Rome, the characteristics of which are beautifully
+described by the author of _Marius the Epicurean_ in his chapter
+significantly called _Euphuism_. Few of the Renaissance students had the
+critical acumen of Cheke, and they fell therefore an easy prey to the
+stylism of the later Latin writers, with its antithesis and
+extravagance. But, with all this, men could not quite shake off the
+middle ages. There is much of the Scholastic in Lyly, and the exuberance
+of ornament, the fantastic similes from natural history, and the moral
+lessons deduced from them, are quite mediaeval in feeling. We learnt the
+lessons of the classics backward; and it was not until centuries after,
+that men realised that the essence of Hellenism is restraint and
+harmony.
+
+I have spoken of the movement generally, but it passed through many
+phases, such as arcadianism, gongorism, dubartism; and yet of all these
+phases euphuism was, I think, the most important: certainly if we
+confine our attention to English literature this must be admitted. But,
+even if we keep our eyes upon the Continent alone, euphuism would seem
+to be more significant than the movements which succeeded it; for it was
+a definite attempt, seriously undertaken, to force modern languages into
+a classical mould, while the other and later affectations were merely
+passing extravagances, possessing little dynamical importance. In this
+way, short-lived and abortive as it seemed, euphuism anticipated the
+literature of the _ancien regime_.
+
+The movement, moreover, was only one aspect of the Renaissance; it was
+the under-current which in the 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 not of the classics. This we
+call romanticism. As an artistic product it was developed on strictly
+national and traditional lines, born of the fields as it were, free as a
+bird and as sweet, giving birth in England to the drama, in Italy to the
+plastic arts. It is essentially opposed to the classical movement, for
+it represents the idea as distinct from the form. Lyly belongs to both
+movements, for, while he is the protagonist of the romantic drama, in
+his _Euphues_ we may discover the source of the artificial stream which,
+concealed for a while beneath the wild exuberance of the romantic
+growth, appears later in the 18th century embracing the whole current of
+English literature. Before, however, proceeding to fix the position of
+euphuism in the development of English prose, let us sum up the results
+we have obtained from our examination of its relation to the general
+European Renaissance. Originating in that study of classical style we
+find so forcibly advocated by Ascham in his _Schoolmaster_, it was
+essentially a product of humanism. In every country scholars were
+interested as much in the style as in the matter of the newly discovered
+classics. This was due, partly to the lateness of the Latin writers
+chiefly known to them, partly to the mediaeval preference for words
+rather than ideas, and partly to the fact that the times were not yet
+ripe for an appreciation of the spirit as distinct from the letter of
+the classics. In Italy, in France, and in Spain, therefore, we may find
+parallels to euphuism without supposing any international borrowings.
+_Euphues_, in fact, is not so much a reflection of, as a _Glasse for
+Europe_.
+
+
+SECTION IV. _The position of Euphuism in the history of English prose._
+
+A few words remain to be said about this literary curiosity, by way of
+assigning a place to it in the history of our prose. To do so with any
+scientific precision is impossible, but there are many points of no
+small significance in this connexion, which should not be passed over.
+
+English prose at the beginning of the 16th century, that is before the
+new learning had become a power in the land, though it had not yet been
+employed for artistic purposes, was already an important part of our
+literature, and possessed a quality which no national prose had
+exhibited since the days of Greece, the quality of popularity[76]. This
+popularity, which arose from the fact that French and Latin had for so
+long been the language of the ruling section of the community, is still
+the distinction which marks off our prose from that of other nations. In
+Italy, for example, the language of literature is practically
+incomprehensible to the dwellers on the soil. But what English prose has
+gained in breadth and comprehension by representing the tongue of the
+people, it has lost in subtlety. French prose, which developed from the
+speech of the Court, is a delicate instrument, capable of expressing the
+finest shades of meaning, while the styles of George Meredith and of
+Henry James show how difficult it is for a subtle intellect to move
+freely within the limitations of English prose. Indeed, "it is a
+remarkable fact," as Sainte Beuve noticed, "and an inversion of what is
+true of other languages that, in French, prose has always had the
+precedence over poetry." Repeated attempts, however, have been made to
+capture our language, and to transport it into aristocratic atmospheres;
+and of these attempts the first is associated with the name of Lyly.
+
+  [76] Cf. Earle, pp. 422, 423.
+
+We have seen that English euphuism was at first a flower of unconscious
+growth sprung from the soil of humanism. But ultimately, in the hands of
+Pettie, Gosson, Lyly, and Watson, it became the instrument of an Oxford
+coterie deliberately and consciously employed for the purpose of
+altering the form of English prose. These men did not despise their
+native tongue; they used the purest English, carefully avoiding the
+favourite "ink-horn terms" of their contemporaries: they admired it, as
+one admires a wild bird of the fields, which one wishes to capture in
+order to make it hop and sing in a golden cage. The humanists were
+already developing a learned style within the native language; Lyly and
+his friends utilized this learned style for the creation of an
+aristocratic type. Euphuism was no "transient phase of madness[77]," as
+Mr Earle contemptuously calls it, but a brave attempt, and withal a
+first attempt, to assert that prose writing is an art no less than the
+writing of poetry; and this alone should give it a claim upon students
+of English literature.
+
+  [77] Earle, p. 436.
+
+The first point we must notice, therefore, about English euphuism is
+that it represents a tendency to confine literature within the limits of
+the Court--in accordance, one might almost say, with the general
+centralization of politics and religion under the Tudors--and that, as a
+necessary result of this, conscious prose style appears for the first
+time in our language. I say English euphuism, because that is our chief
+concern, and because though euphuism on the Continent was, as we have
+seen, the expression in literature of the new ideal of the courtier, yet
+it was by no means so great an innovation as it was in England, inasmuch
+as the Romance literatures had always represented the aristocracy. The
+form which this style assumed was dependent upon the circumstances which
+gave it birth, and upon the general conditions of the age. Owing to the
+former it became erudite, polished, precise, meet indeed for the
+"parleyings" of courtiers and maids-in-waiting; but it was to the latter
+that it owed its essentials. Hitherto we have contented ourselves with
+indicating the rhetorical aspect of euphuism. We have seen that the
+Latin orators and the writers of our English homilies exercised a
+considerable influence over the new stylists. It was natural that
+rhetoricians should attract those who were desirous of writing
+ornamental and artistic prose, and one feels inclined to believe that it
+was not entirely for spiritual reasons that Lyly frequently attended Dr
+Andrews' sermons[78]. But the euphuistic manner has a wider significance
+than this, for it marks the transition from poetry to prose.
+
+  [78] Bond, I. p. 60.
+
+"The age of Elizabeth is pre-eminently an age of poetry, of which prose
+may be regarded as merely the overflow[79]." It was at once the end of
+the mediaeval, and the beginning of the modern, world, and consequently,
+it displays the qualities of both. But the future lay with the small men
+rather than with the great. Shakespeare and Milton were no innovators.
+With their names the epoch of primitive literature, which finds
+expression 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 18th century poetry was subservient, and so
+became assimilated, to prose, so the prose of the 16th 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 arcadianism and its
+successors, the style of Lyly is transitional in structure as well as in
+ornament. Moreover the alliteration, which is peculiar to English
+euphuism, gives it a musical element which its continental parallels
+lacked. The dividing line between alliteration and rhyme, and between
+antithesis and rhythm, is not a broad one[80]. Indeed Pettie found it so
+narrow that he occasionally lapsed into metrical rhythm. And so, though
+we cannot say that euphuism is verse, we can say that it partakes of the
+nature of verse. In this endeavour to provide an adequate structure for
+the support of the mass of imagery that the taste of the age demanded,
+it showed itself superior to the rival prose fashions. _Euphues_ is a
+model of form beside the tedious prolixity of the _Arcadia_, or the
+chaotic effusions of Nash. The weariness, which the modern reader feels
+for the romance of Lyly, is due rather to the excessive quantity of its
+metaphor, which was the fault of the age, than to its pedantic style.
+
+  [79] Raleigh, p. 45.
+
+  [80] This touches upon the famous dispute between Dr Schwan and Dr
+  Goodlet which is excellently dealt with by Mr Child, p. 77.
+
+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 prominent in the
+prose of Court literature than elsewhere. The precision, the _finesse_,
+the subtlety, of French prose has only been attained by centuries of
+attention to diction. English prose, on the other hand, is singularly
+lacking in this quality; and for this cause it would never have produced
+a Flaubert, despite its splendid achievements in style. Had euphuism
+been more successful, it might have altered the whole aspect of later
+English prose, by giving us in the 16th century that quality of diction
+which did not become prominent in our prose until the days of Pater and
+the purists.
+
+And yet, though it failed in this particular, the influence of the
+general qualities of its style upon later prose must have been
+incalculable. The vogue of euphuism as a craze was brief; but _Euphues_
+received fresh publication about once every three years down to 1636,
+and long after its social popularity had become a thing of the past, it
+probably attracted the careful study of those who wished to write
+artistic prose. The only model of prose form which the age possessed
+could scarcely sink into oblivion, or become out of date, until its
+principal lessons had been so well learnt as to pass into common-places.
+The exaggerations, which first gave it fame, were probably discounted by
+the more sincere appreciation of later critics, to whom its more
+sterling qualities would appeal. For some reason, the musical properties
+of euphuism do not appear to have found favour among those critics, and
+this was probably a loss to our literature. "Alliteration," as Professor
+Raleigh remarks, "is often condemned as a flaw in rhymed verse, and it
+may well be open to question whether Lyly did not give it its true
+position in attempting to invent a place for it in what is called
+prose[81]." 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 beginning of this reaction is visible as
+early as 1589 in the words of Warner's preface to _Albion's England_,
+which display the very affectation they protest against: "onely this
+error may be thought hatching in our English, that to runne on the
+letter we often runne from the matter: and being over prodigall in
+similes we become lesse profitable in sentences and more prolixious to
+sense." But, however this may be, it was the formal rather than the
+musical qualities which gave _Euphues_ its dynamical importance in the
+history of English prose. Subsequent writers had much to learn from a
+book in which the principle of design is for the first time visible.
+With euphuism, antithesis and the use of balanced sentences came to
+stay. We may see them in the style of Johnson and Gibbon, while
+alliterative antithesis reappears to-day in the shape of the epigram.
+Doubtless Lyly abused the antithetical device; but his successors had
+only to discover a means of skilfully concealing the structure, an
+improvement which the early euphuists, with all the enthusiasm of
+inventors, could not have appreciated.
+
+  [81] Raleigh, p. 47.
+
+Moreover, in aiming at elegance and precision, Lyly attained a lucidity
+almost unequalled among his contemporaries. His attention to form saved
+him from the besetting sin of Elizabethan prose,--incoherence by reason
+of an overwhelming display of ornament. His very illustrations were
+subject to the restraint which his style demanded, being sown, to use
+his own metaphor, "here and there lyke Strawberries, not in heapes, lyke
+Hoppes[82]." Arcadianism came as a reaction against euphuism, attempting
+to replace its artificiality by simplicity. But how infinitely more
+preferable is the novel of Lyly, with its artificial precision and
+lucidity, to the conscious artlessness of Sidney's _Arcadia_, with its
+interminable sentences and confused syntax. As a modern euphuist has
+taught us, of all poses the natural pose is the most irritating. In
+accordance with his desire for precision, Lyly made frequent use of the
+short sentence. In this we have another indication of his modernity:
+for the short sentence, which is so characteristic of English prose
+style to-day, occurs more often in his work than in the writings of any
+of his predecessors. And, in reference to the same question of lucidity,
+we may notice that he was the first writer who gave special attention to
+the separation of his prose into paragraphs,--a matter apparently
+trivial, but really of no small importance. Finally, it is a remarkable
+fact that the number of words to be found in _Euphues_ which have since
+become obsolete is a very small one--"at most but a small fraction of
+one per cent.[83]" And this is in itself sufficient to indicate the
+influence which Lyly's novel has exerted upon English prose. As he reads
+it, no one can avoid being struck by the modernity of its language, an
+impression not to be obtained from a perusal of the plays. The
+explanation is simple enough. The plays were not read or absorbed by
+their author's contemporaries and successors; _Euphues_ was. In the
+domain of style, _Euphues_ was dynamical; the plays were not.
+
+  [82] _Euphues_, p. 220.
+
+  [83] Child, p. 41.
+
+But the true value of Lyly's prose lies not so much in what it achieved
+as in what it attempted; for the qualities, which euphuism, by its
+insistence upon design and elegance, really aimed at, were strength,
+brilliancy, and refinement. For the first time in the history of our
+literature, men are found to write prose with the purpose of fascinating
+and enticing the reader, not merely by what is said, but also by the
+manner of saying it. "Lyly" (and, we may add, his associates), writes
+his latest editor, "grasped the fact that in prose no less than in
+poetry, the reader demanded to be led onward by a succession of half
+imperceptible shocks of pleasure in the beauty and vigour of diction, or
+in the ingenuity of phrasing, in sentence after sentence--pleasure
+inseparable from that caused by a perception of the nice adaptation of
+words to thought, pleasure quite other than that derivable from the
+acquisition of fresh knowledge[84]." The direct influence of the man who
+first taught us this lesson, who showed us that a writer, to be
+successful, should seek not merely to express himself, but also to study
+the mind of his reader, must have been something quite beyond
+computation. And that his direct influence was not more lasting was due,
+in the first place, to the fact that he had not grasped the full
+significance of this psychological aspect of style, if we may so call
+it, which he and his friends had been the first to discover. As with
+most first attempts, euphuism, while bestowing immense benefits upon
+those who came after, was itself a failure. The euphuists perceived the
+problem of style, but successfully attacked only one half of it. More
+acute than their contemporaries, they realised the principle of economy,
+but, as with one who makes an entirely new mechanical invention, they
+were themselves unable to appreciate what their discovery would lead to.
+They were right in addressing themselves to the task of attracting, and
+stimulating, the reader by means of precision, pointed antithesis, and
+such like attempts to induce pleasurable mental sensations, but they
+forgot that anyone must eventually grow weary under the influence of
+continuous excitation without variation. The soft drops of rain pierce
+the hard marble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oak, and much
+monotony will tire the readiest reader. Or, to use the phraseology of a
+somewhat more recent scientist, they "considered only those causes of
+force in language which depend upon economy of the mental _energies_,"
+they paid no attention to "those which depend upon the economy of the
+mental _sensibilities_[85]." This is one explanation of the weariness
+with which _Euphues_ fills the modern reader, and of the speed with
+which, in spite of its priceless pioneer work, that book was superseded
+and forgotten in its own days. It is our duty to give it its full meed
+of recognition, but we can understand and forgive the ungratefulness of
+its contemporaries.
+
+  [84] Bond, I. p. 146.
+
+  [85] H. Spencer, Essays, II. _Phil. of Style_.
+
+Another cause of the oblivion which so soon overtook the famous
+Elizabethan novel, has already been suggested. Euphuism was too
+antagonistic to the general current of English prose to be successful.
+Lyly and his Oxford clique were attempting a revolution similar to that
+undertaken, at the same period, by Ronsard and his _Pleiad_. Lyly failed
+in prose, where Ronsard succeeded in poetry, because he endeavoured to
+go back upon tradition, while the Frenchman worked strictly within its
+limits. The attempt to throw Court dress over the plain homespun of our
+English prose might have been attended with success, had our literature
+been younger and more easily led astray. As it was, prose in this
+country, when euphuism invaded it, could already show seven centuries of
+development, and, moreover, development along the broad and national
+lines of common or vulgar speech. Euphuism was after all only part of
+the general tendency of the age to focus everything that was good in
+politics, religion, and art, on the person and immediate surroundings of
+the sovereign; and the history of the eighteenth century, which saw the
+last issue of the series of _Euphues_ reprints, is the history of the
+collapse of this centralization all along the line, ending in the
+complete vindication of the democratic basis of English life and
+literature.
+
+With these general remarks we must leave the subject of euphuism. No
+history of its origin and its influence can be completely satisfactory:
+such questions must of necessity receive a speculative and tentative
+solution, for it is impossible to give them an exact answer which admits
+of no dispute. The age of Lyly was far more complex than ours, with all
+our artistic sects and schisms; the currents of literary influence were
+multitudinous and extremely involved. As Symonds wrote, "The romantic
+art of the modern world did not spring like that of Greece from an
+ungarnered field of flowers. Troubled by reminiscences from the past and
+by reciprocal influences from one another, the literatures of modern
+Europe came into existence with composite dialects and obeyed confused
+canons of taste, exhibited their adolescent vigour with affected graces
+and showed themselves senile in their cradles." In the field of
+literature to-day the standards are more numerous, but more distinctive,
+than those of the Elizabethans. Our ideals are classified with almost
+scientific exactness, and we wear the labels proudly. But the very
+splendour of the Renaissance was due to the fact that in the same group,
+in the same artist, were to be found the most diverse ideals and the
+most opposite methods. They worshipped they knew not what, we know what
+we worship. Yet this difference does not prevent us from seeing curious
+points of similarity between our own and those times. The 16th, like the
+19th century, was a period of revolt from the past: and at such moments
+men feel a supreme contempt for the common-place in literature. The cry
+of art for art's sake is raised, and the result is extravagance,
+euphuism. A wave of intellectual dandyism seems to sweep over the face
+of literature, aristocratic in its aims and sympathies. Then are the
+battle lines drawn up, and the spectators watch, with admiration or
+contempt, the eternally recurrent strife between David and the
+Philistines; and whether the young hero be clad in the knee-breeches of
+aestheticism, or the slashed doublet of the courtier; whether he be
+armed with epigram and sunflower, or with euphuism and camomile;
+variation of costume cannot conceal the identity of his personality--the
+personality of the fop of culture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL.
+
+
+Despite the disproportionate attention given to euphuism by so many of
+Lyly's critics, _Euphues_ is no less important as a novel than as a
+piece of prose. We can, however, dismiss this second branch of our
+subject in fewer words, because the problem of _Euphues_ is much simpler
+and more straightforward than the problem of euphuism. It can scarcely
+be said that Lyly has yet been thoroughly appreciated as a novelist;
+indeed, the whole subject of the Elizabethan novel is very far from
+having received a satisfactory treatment at present. This is not
+surprising when we consider that the last word remains to be said upon
+the Elizabethan drama. The birth of modern literature was so sudden, its
+life, even in the cradle, was so complex that it baffles criticism. Like
+the peal of an organ with a thousand stops, the English Renaissance
+seemed to break the stillness of the great mediaeval church, shaking its
+beautiful sombre walls and filling it from floor to roof with wild,
+pagan music. Indeed, the more we study those 50 or 60 years which
+embrace the so-called Elizabethan period, the more are we struck by the
+fact that, ever since, we have been simply making variations upon the
+themes, which the men of those times gave us. Modern science, modern
+poetry, modern drama, sat like pages at the feet of the Great Queen.
+Among these the novel cut but an insignificant figure, although it was
+the novel which had perhaps the longest future before it. We need not
+wonder therefore that our first English novelist has been treated by
+many with neglect. None I think have done more to make amends in this
+direction than Professor Raleigh and M. Jusserand; the former in his
+graceful, humorous, and penetrating little book, _The English Novel_;
+and the latter in his well-known work on _The English Novel in the time
+of Shakespeare_, which gives one, while reading it, the feeling of being
+present at a fancy-dress ball, so skilfully does he detect the forms and
+faces of present-day fiction behind euphuistic mask and beneath arcadian
+costume. To these two books the present writer owes a debt which all
+must feel who have stood bewildered upon the threshold of Elizabeth's
+Court with its glittering throng of genius and wit.
+
+Sudden, however, as was this crop of warriors wielding pen, it must not
+be forgotten that the dragon's teeth had first been sown in mediaeval
+soil. With Lyly the English novel came into being, but that child of his
+genius was not without ancestry or relations. And so, before discussing
+the character and fortunes of the infant, let us devote a few
+introductory remarks to pedigree. Roughly speaking, the prose narrative
+in England, before _Euphues_, falls into three divisions, the romance of
+chivalry, the _novella_, and the moral Court treatise,--and all three
+are of foreign extraction, that is to say, they are represented in
+England by translations only. Chaucer indeed is a mine of material
+suitable for the novel, but the father of English literature elected to
+write in verse, and his _Canterbury Tales_ have no appreciable influence
+upon the later prose story. For some reason, the mediaeval prose
+narrative seems to have been confined to the so-called Celtic races.
+Certainly, both the romance of chivalry and the _novella_ are to be
+traced back to French sources. The _novella_, which, at our period, had
+become thoroughly naturalized in Italy, under the auspices of Boccaccio,
+had originally sprung from the _fabliaux_ of 13th century France. Nor
+was the _fabliau_ the only article of French production which found a
+new and more stimulative home across the Alps; for just as it is
+possible to trace the German Reformation back, through Huss, to its
+birth in Wycliff's England, so French critics have delighted to point
+out that the Italian Renaissance itself was but an expansion of an
+earlier Renaissance in France, which, for all the strength and maturity
+it gained under its new conditions, lost much of that indescribable
+flavour of direct simplicity and gracious sweetness which breathes from
+the pages of _Aucassin and Nicolette_ and its companion _Amis and
+Amile_. Under Charles VIII. and his successors this Renaissance was
+carried home, as it were, to die--so subtle is the ebb and flow of
+intellectual influences between country and country. In England the
+_novella_, of which Chaucer had made ample use, first appeared in prose
+dress from the printing-press of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde.
+The Dutch printer had also published Lord Berners' translation of _Huon
+of Bordeaux_, the best romance of chivalry belonging to the Charlemagne
+cycle. But, before the dawn of the 16th century Malory had already given
+us _Morte D'Arthur_, from the Arthurian cycle, printed, as everyone
+knows, by the industrious Caxton himself. Thus, if we neglect, as I
+think we may, translations from the _Gesta Romanorum_, we may say that
+the prose narrative appeared in England simultaneously with the
+printing-press, a fact which is more than coincidence; since the
+multiplication of books, which Caxton began, decreased the necessity for
+remembering tales; and therefore it was now possible to dispense with
+the aid of verse; in fact Caxton deprived the minstrel of his
+occupation.
+
+Of the third form of prose narrative--the moral Court treatise--we have
+already said something. It had appeared in Italy and in Spain, and our
+connexion with it came from the latter country, through Berners'
+translation of the _Golden Boke_ of Guevara. So slight was the thread of
+narrative running through this book, that one would imagine at first
+sight that it could have little to do with the history of our novel. And
+yet in comparison with its importance in this respect the _novella_ and
+the romance of chivalry are quite insignificant. The two latter never
+indeed lost their popularity during the Elizabethan age, but they had
+ceased to be considered respectable--a very different thing--before that
+age began. The first cause of their fall in the social scale was the
+disapprobation of the humanists. Ascham, echoing Plato's condemnation of
+Homer, attacks the romance of chivalry from the moral point of view, at
+the same time cunningly associating it with "Papistrie." But he holds
+the _novella_ even in greater abhorrence, for, after declaring that the
+whole pleasure of the _Morte D'Arthur_ "standeth in two speciall
+poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye," he goes on to say:
+"and yet ten _Morte Arthurs_ do not a tenth part so much harm as one of
+those bookes, made in Italy and translated in England[86]."
+
+  [86] _Schoolmaster_, p. 80.
+
+But there were social as well as moral reasons for the depreciation of
+Malory and Boccaccio. The taste of the age began to find these foreign
+dishes, if not unpalatable, at least not sufficiently delicate. England
+was fortunate in receiving the Reformation and the Renaissance at the
+same time; and the men of those "spacious times" set before their eyes
+that ideal of the courtier, so exquisitely embodied by Sir Philip
+Sidney, in which godliness was not thought incompatible with refinement
+of culture and graciousness of bearing. For the first time our country
+became civilized in the full meaning of that word, and the knight,
+shedding the armour of barbarism, became the gentleman, clothed in
+velvet and silk. The romance of chivalry, therefore, became
+old-fashioned; and it seemed for a time doomed to destruction until it
+received a new lease of life, purged of mediaevalism and modernised by
+the hands of Sidney himself, under the guise of arcadianism. While,
+however, _Arcadia_ remained an undiscovered country, the needs of the
+age were supplied by the "moral Court treatise." It was perhaps not so
+much that the old stories found little response in the new form of
+society, as that they did not reflect that society. We may well believe
+that the taste for mirrors, which now became so fashionable, found its
+psychological parallel in the desire of the Elizabethans to discover
+their own fashions, their own affectations, themselves, in the stories
+they read; and if this indeed be what is meant by realism in literature
+that quality in the novel dates from those days. In this sense if in no
+other, in the sense that he held, for the first time, a polished mirror
+before contemporary life and manners, Lyly must be called the first of
+English novelists.
+
+_The Anatomy of Wit_, which it is most important to distinguish from its
+sequel, was the descendant in the direct line from the "moral Court
+treatise." Something perhaps of the atmosphere of the _novella_ clung
+about its pages, but that was only to be expected: Lyly added incident
+to the bare scheme of discourses, and for that he had no other models
+but the Italians. But Guevara was his real source. Dr Landmann's
+verdict, that "Euphuism is not only adapted from Guevara's _alto
+estilo_, but _Euphues_ itself, as to its contents, is a mere imitation
+of Guevara's enlarged biography of Marcus Aurelius," has certainly been
+shown by Mr Bond to be a gross overstatement; yet there can be no doubt
+that the _Diall of Princes_ was Lyly's model on the side of matter, as
+was Pettie's _Pallace_ on the side of style. Our author's debt to the
+Spaniard is seen in a correspondence between many parts of his book and
+the _Aureo Libro_, in certain of the concluding letters and discourses,
+and in many other ways which Mr Bond has patiently noted[87]. Guevara,
+however, was but one among many previous writers to whom Lyly owed
+obligations. _Euphues_ was justly styled by its author "compiled," being
+in fact a mosaic, pieced together from the classics, and especially
+Plutarch, Pliny, and Ovid, and from previous English writers such as
+Harrison, Heywood, Fortescue, and Gascoigne; names that indicate the
+course of literary "browsing" that Lyly substituted for the ordinary
+curriculum at Oxford. To mention all the authors from whom he borrowed,
+and to point out the portions of his novel which are due to their
+several influences, would only be to repeat a task already accomplished
+by Mr Bond[88].
+
+  [87] Bond, I. pp. 154-156.
+
+  [88] Bond, I. pp. 156-159.
+
+Allowing for all its author's "picking and stealing," _The Anatomy of
+Wit_ was in the highest sense an original book; for, though it is the
+old moral treatise, its form is new, and it is enlivened by a thin
+thread of narrative. The hero Euphues is a young man lately come from
+Athens, which is unmistakeably Oxford, to Naples, which is just as
+unmistakeably London. Here he soon becomes the centre of a convivial
+circle, where he is wise enough to distinguish between friend and
+parasite, to discern the difference between the "faith of Laelius and
+the flattery of Aristippus." The story thus opens bravely, but the words
+of the title-page, "most necessary to remember," are ever present in the
+author's mind, and before we have reached the fourth page the sermon is
+upon us. For "conscience" attired as an old man, Eubulus, now enters the
+stage of this Court _morality_ and proceeds to deliver a long harangue
+upon the folly of youth, concluding with much excellent though obvious
+counsel. We should be in sympathy with the rude answer of Euphues, were
+it but curt at the same time, but, alas, it covers six pages. Having
+thus imprudently crushed the "wisdom of eld" by the weight of his
+utterance, our hero shows his natural preference for the companionship
+and counsel of youth, by forming an ardent friendship with Philautus, of
+so close a nature, that "they used not only one boorde but one bed, one
+booke (if so be that they thought it not one too many)." This alliance,
+however, is not concluded until Euphues has given us his own views,
+together with those of half antiquity, upon the subject of friendship,
+or before he has formally professed his affection in a pompous address,
+beginning "Gentleman and friend," and has been as formally accepted. By
+Philautus he is introduced to Lucilla, the chief female character of the
+book, a lady, if we are to believe the description of her "Lilly cheeks
+dyed with a Vermilion red," of startling if somewhat factitious beauty.
+To say that the plot now thickens would be to use too coarse a word; it
+becomes slightly tinged with incident, inasmuch as Euphues falls in love
+with Lucilla, the destined bride of Philautus. She reciprocates his
+passion, and the double fickleness of mistress and friend forms an
+excellent opportunity, which Lyly does not fail to seize, for infinite
+moralizings in euphuistic strains. Philautus is naturally indignant at
+the turn affairs have taken, and the former friends exchange letters of
+recrimination, in which, however, their embittered feelings are
+concealed beneath a vast display of classical learning. But Nemesis,
+swift and sudden, awaits the faithless Euphues. Lucilla, it turns out,
+is subject to a mild form of erotomania and is constitutionally fickle,
+so that before her new lover has begun to realise his bliss she has
+already contracted a passion for some other young gentleman. Thus,
+struck down in the hour of his pride and passion, Euphues becomes "a
+changed man," and bethinks himself of his soul, which he has so long
+neglected. This is the turning-point of the book, the turning-point of
+half the English novels written since Lyly's day. The remainder of the
+_Anatomy of Wit_ is taken up with what may be described as the private
+papers of Euphues, consisting of letters, essays, and dialogues,
+including _A Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers_, a treatise on
+education, and a refutation of atheism, and so amid the thunders of the
+artillery of platitude the first part of _Euphues_ closes.
+
+Professor Raleigh's explanation of this tedious moralizing is that Lyly,
+wit and euphuist, possessed the Nonconformist conscience: "Beneath the
+courtier's slashed doublet, under his ornate brocade and frills, there
+stood the Puritan." This I believe to be a mistaken view of the case. As
+we shall later see reason to suppose, Lyly never became, as did his
+acquaintance Gosson, a very seriously-minded person. Certainly _Euphues_
+does not prove that Puritanism was latent in him. The moral atmosphere
+which pervades it was not of Lyly's invention; he inherited it from his
+predecessors Guevara and Castiglione, and he employed it because he knew
+that it was expected of him. That he moralized not so much from
+conviction as from convention (to use a euphuism), is, I think,
+sufficiently proved by the fact that in the second part of his novel,
+where he is addressing a new public, the pulpit strain is much less
+frequent, while in his plays it entirely disappears. The _Anatomy of
+Wit_ is essentially the work of an inexperienced writer, feeling his way
+towards a public, and without sufficient skill or courage to dispense
+with the conventions which he has inherited from previous writers. One
+feels, while reading the book, that Lyly was himself conscious that his
+hero was an insufferable coxcomb, and that he only created him because
+he wished to comply with the public taste. It may be, as M. Jusserand
+asserts, that Lyly anticipated Richardson, but, if the light-hearted
+Oxford madcap had any qualities in common with the sedate bookseller,
+artistic sincerity was not one of them.
+
+What has just been said is not entirely applicable to the treatise on
+education which passed under the title of _Euphues and his Ephoebus_.
+Although simply an adaptation of the _De Educatione_ of Plutarch, it was
+not entirely devoid of originality. Here we find the famous attack upon
+Oxford, which was, we fear, prompted by a desire to spite the University
+authorities rather than by any earnest feeling of moral condemnation.
+But in addition to this there are contributions of Lyly's own invention
+to the theory of teaching which are not without merit. He was, as we
+have seen, interested in education. It seems even possible that he had
+actually practised as a master before the _Euphues_ saw light[89]; and,
+therefore, we have every reason to suppose that this little treatise
+was a labour of love. Possibly Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ inspired him with
+the idea of writing it. Certainly, when we have allowed everything for
+Plutarch's work, enough remains over to justify Mr Quick's inclusion of
+John Lyly, side by side with Roger Ascham, in his _Educational
+Reformers_.
+
+  [89] Bond, I. p. 10.
+
+But such excellent work has but little to do with the business of
+novel-writing, and, when we turn to this aspect of the _Anatomy of Wit_,
+there is little to be said for it from the aesthetic point of view.
+Indeed, it cannot strictly be called a novel at all. It is the bridge
+between the moral Court treatise and the novel, and, as such, all its
+aesthetic defects matter little in comparison with its dynamical value.
+It was a great step to hang the chestnuts of discourse upon a string of
+incident. The story is feeble, the plot puerile, but it was something to
+have a story and a plot which dealt with contemporary life. And lastly,
+though characterization is not even attempted, yet now and again these
+euphuistic puppets, distinguishable only by their labels, are inspired
+with something that is almost life by a phrase or a chance word.
+
+I have said that it is very important to distinguish between the two
+parts of _Euphues_. Two years only elapsed between their respective
+publications, but in these two years Lyly, and with him our novel, had
+made great strides. In 1578 he was not yet a novelist, though the
+conception of the novel and the capacity for its creation were, as we
+have just shown, already forming in his brain. In 1580, however, the
+English novel had ceased to be merely potential; for it had come into
+being with the appearance of _Euphues and his England_. Here in the same
+writer, in the same book, and within the space of two years, we may
+observe one of the most momentous changes of modern literature in
+actual process. The _Anatomy of Wit_ is still the moral Court treatise,
+coloured by the influence of the Italian _novella_; _Euphues and his
+England_ is the first English novel. Lyly unconsciously symbolizes the
+change he initiated by laying the scene of his first part in Italy,
+while in the second he brings his hero to England. That sea voyage,
+which provoked the stomach of Philautus sore, was an important one for
+us, since the freight of the vessel was nothing less than our English
+novel.
+
+The difference between the two parts is remarkable in more ways than
+one, and in none more so than in the change of dedication. The _Anatomy
+of Wit_, as was only fitting in a moral Court treatise, was inscribed to
+the gentleman readers; _Euphues and his England_, on the other hand,
+made an appeal to a very different class of readers, and a class which
+had hitherto been neglected by authors--"the ladies and gentlewomen of
+England." With the instinct, almost, of a religious reformer, Lyly saw
+that to succeed he must enlist the ladies on his side. And the
+experiment was so successful that I am inclined to attribute the
+pre-eminence of Lyly among other euphuists to this fact alone. "Hatch
+the egges his friendes had laid" he certainly did, but he fed the chicks
+upon a patent food of his own invention. Mr Bond suggests that the
+general attention which the _Anatomy_ secured by its attacks upon women
+gave Lyly the idea for the second part. But, though this was probably
+the immediate cause of his change of front, something like _Euphues and
+his England_ must have come sooner or later, because all the conditions
+were ripe for its production. Side by side with the ideal of the
+courtier had arisen the ideal of the cultured lady. Ascham, visiting
+Lady Jane Grey, "founde her in her chamber reading _Phaedon Platonis_
+in Greeke and that with as much delite, as some gentlemen would read a
+merie tale in Bocase[90]"; and, when a Queen came to the throne who
+could talk Greek at Cambridge, the fashion of learning for ladies must
+have received an immense impetus. With a "blue stocking" showing on the
+royal footstool, all the ladies of the Court would at least lay claim to
+a certain amount of learning. Dr Landmann has attributed the vogue of
+euphuism, at least in part, to feminine influences, but in so far as
+England shared that affectation with the other Courts of Europe, where
+the fair sex had not yet acquired such freedom as in England, we must
+not press the point too much in this direction. The importance in
+English literature of that "monstrous regiment of women," against which
+John Knox blew his rude trumpet so shamelessly, is seen not so much in
+the style of _Euphues_ as in its contents; indeed, in the second part of
+that work euphuism is much less prominent than in the first. The romance
+of chivalry and the Italian tale would be still more distasteful to the
+new woman than they were to the new courtier. Doubtless Boccaccio may
+have found a place in many a lady's secret bookshelf as Zola and Guy de
+Maupassant do perchance to-day, but he was scarcely suitable for the
+boudoir table or for polite literary discussion. Something was needed
+which would appeal at once to the feminine taste for learning and to the
+desire for delicacy and refinement. This want was only partially
+supplied by the moral Court treatise, which was ostensibly written for
+the courtier and not the maid-in-waiting. What was required was a book
+expressly provided for the eye of ladies--such a book, in fact, as
+_Euphues and his England_. Lyly's discovery of this new literary public
+and its requirements was of great importance, for have not the ladies
+ever since his day been the patrons and purchasers of the novel? What
+would happen to the literary market to-day were our mothers, wives, and
+sisters to deny themselves the pleasure of fiction? The very question
+would send the blood from Mr Mudie's lips. The two thousand and odd
+novels which are published annually in this country show the existence
+of a large leisured class in our community, and this class is
+undoubtedly the feminine one. The novel, therefore, owes not only its
+birth, but its continued existence down to our own day, to the "ladies
+and gentlewomen of England"; and this dedication may be taken as a
+general one for all novels since Lyly's time. "_Euphues_," he writes,
+"had rather lye shut in a Ladye's casket than open in a scholar's
+studie," and he continues, "after dinner you may overlooke him to keepe
+you from sleepe, or if you be heavie, to bring you to sleepe ... it were
+better to hold _Euphues_ in your hands though you let him fall, when you
+be willing to winke, then to sowe in a clout, and pricke your fingers
+when you begin to nod[91]." "With _Euphues_," remarks M. Jusserand,
+"commences in England the literature of the drawing-room[92]"; and the
+literature of the drawing-room is to all intents and purposes the novel.
+
+  [90] _Schoolmaster_, p. 47.
+
+  [91] _Euphues_, p. 220.
+
+  [92] Jusserand, p. 5.
+
+All the faults of its predecessor are present in _Euphues and his
+England_, but they are not so conspicuous. The euphuistic garb and the
+mantle of the prophet Guevara sit more lightly upon our author. In every
+way his movements are freer and bolder; having gained confidence by his
+first success, he now dares to be original. The story becomes at times
+quite interesting, even for a modern reader. At its opening Euphues and
+Philautus, who have come to terms on a basis of common condemnation 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 however notice as a sign of progress that Euphues
+has substituted a moral narrative for his usual discourse. The relations
+between the two friends have become distinctly amusing, and might, in
+abler hands, have resulted in comic situation. Euphues, having learnt
+the lesson of the burnt child, is now a very grave person, proud of his
+own experience and of its fruits in himself. Extremes met,
+
+    "Where pinched ascetic and red sensualist
+     Alternately recurrent freeze and burn,"
+
+and it is interesting to note that Euphues embodies many of the
+characteristics of the Byronic hero--his sententiousness, his misogyny,
+his cynicism born of disillusionment, and his rhetorical flatulency; but
+he is no rebel like Manfred because he finds consolation in his own
+pre-eminence in a world of platitude. Conscious of his dearly bought
+wisdom, he makes it his continuous duty, if not pleasure, to rebuke the
+over-amorous Philautus, who was at least human, and to enlarge upon the
+infidelity of the opposite sex. Lyly failed to realise the possibilities
+of this antagonism of character, because he always appears to be in
+sympathy with his hero, and so misses an opportunity which would have
+delighted the heart of Thackeray. I say "appears," because I consider
+that this sympathy was nothing but a pose which he considered necessary
+for the popularity of his book. It is important however to observe that
+the idea of one character as a foil to another, though undeveloped, is
+here present for the first time in our national prose story.
+
+The tale ended and the voyage over, our friends arrive in England, where
+after stopping at Dover "3 or 4 days, until they had digested ye seas,
+and recovered their healths," they proceeded to Canterbury, at which
+place they fell in with an old man named Fidus, who gave them
+entertainment for body and mind. To those who have conscientiously read
+the whole history of Euphues up to this point, the incident of Fidus
+will appear immensely refreshing. It seems to me, in fact, to mark the
+highest point of Lyly's skill as a novelist, doubtless because he is
+here drawing upon his memory[93] and not his imagination. The old
+gentleman, very different from his prototype Eubulus, moves quite
+humanly among his bees and flowers, and tells the graceful story of his
+love with a charm that is almost natural. And, although he checks the
+action of the story for thirty-three pages, we are sorry to take leave
+of this "fatherlye and friendlye sire"; for he lays for a time the ghost
+of homily, which reappears directly his guests begin to "forme their
+steppes towards London." Having reached the Court, in due time
+Philautus, in accordance with the prophecies of Euphues though much to
+his disgust, falls in love. The lady of his choice, however, has
+unfortunately given her heart to another, by name Surius. The despondent
+lover, after applying in vain to an Italian magician for a love-philtre,
+at length determines to adopt the bolder line of writing to his scornful
+lady. The letter is conveyed in a pomegranate, and the incident of its
+presentation is prettily conceived and displays a certain amount of
+dramatic power. The upshot is that Philautus eventually finds a maiden
+who is unattached and who is ready to return love for love. Her he
+marries, and remains behind with "his Violet" in England, while Euphues,
+less happy than self-satisfied, returns to Athens. The interest of the
+latter half of the book centres round the house of Lady Flavia, where
+the principal characters of both sexes meet together and discuss the
+philosophy of love and the psychology of ladies. Such intellectual
+gatherings were a recognised institution at Florence at this time, being
+an imitation of Plato's symposium, and Lyly had already attempted, not
+so successfully as here, to describe one in the house of Lucilla of the
+_Anatomy of Wit_.
+
+  [93] Mr Bond thinks it a picture of Lyly's father.
+
+In every way _Euphues and his England_ is an improvement upon its
+predecessor. The story and plot are still weak, but the situations are
+often well thought out and treated with dramatic effect. The action
+indeed is slow, but it moves; and in the story of Fidus it moves
+comparatively quickly. Such motion of course can scarcely ruffle the
+mental waters of those accustomed to the breathless whirlwinds which
+form the heart of George Meredith's novels; but these whirlwinds are as
+directly traceable to the gentle but fitful agitation of _Euphues_, as
+was the storm that overtook Ahab's chariot to the little cloud
+undiscerned by the prophet's eye. The figures, again, that move in
+Lyly's second novel are no longer clothes filled with moral sawdust. The
+character of Philautus is especially well drawn, though at times blurred
+and indistinct. Lyly had not yet passed the stage of creating types,
+that is of portraying 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 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 understood 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 _Euphues_ was in its influence, not in its actual
+achievement. And here again we must reassert the significance of Lyly's
+appeal to women. "That noble faculty," as Macaulay expresses it,
+"whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future in the
+distant and in the unreal," is rarely found in the opposite sex. They
+delight in novelty, their minds are of a practical cast, and their
+interests almost invariably lie in the present. The names of Jane
+Austen, George Eliot, and Mrs Humphry Ward are sufficient to show how
+entirely successful a woman may be in delineating the life around her.
+If there is any truth in this generalization, it was no mere coincidence
+that the first English romance dealing with contemporary life was
+written expressly for the ladies of Elizabeth's Court. The alteration in
+the face of social life, brought about by the recognition of the
+feminine claim and hastened no doubt by the fact that England, Scotland,
+and France were at this period under the rule of three ladies of strong
+character, was inevitably attended with great changes in literature.
+This change is first expressed by Lyly in his second novel and later in
+his dramas. The mediaeval conception of women, a masculine conception,
+now underwent feminine correction; and what is perhaps of more
+importance still, the conception of man undergoes transformation also.
+The result is that the centre of gravity of the story is now shifted. Of
+old it had treated of deeds and glorious prowess for the sake of honour,
+or more often for the sake of some anaemic damsel; now it deals with the
+passion itself and not its knightly manifestations,--with the very
+feelings and hearts of the lovers. In other words under the auspices of
+Elizabeth and her maids of honour, the English story becomes subjective,
+feminine, its scene is shifted from the battlefield and the lists to the
+lady's boudoir; it becomes a novel. "We change lance and war-horse, for
+walking-sword and pumps and silk stockings. We forget the filletted
+brows and wind-blown hair, the zone, the flowing robe, the sandalled or
+buskined feet, and feel the dawning empire of the fan, the glove, the
+high-heeled shoe, the bonnet, the petticoat, and the parasol[94]": in
+fact we enter into the modern world. At the first expression of this
+change in literature _Euphues and his England_ is of the very greatest
+interest. Characters in fiction now for the first time move before a
+background of everyday life and discuss matters of everyday importance.
+And, as if Lyly wished to leave no doubt as to his aims and methods, he
+gives at the conclusion of his book that interesting description of
+Elizabethan England entitled _A glasse for Europe_.
+
+  [94] Bond, I. p. 161.
+
+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 hope and despair which agitate the breasts of man and maid, and,
+more important still, we find these emotions at work under the restraint
+of social conditions; the violent torrent of passion checked and
+confined by the demands of etiquette and the conventions of aristocratic
+life. The relation between these unwritten laws of our social
+constitution and the impetuous ardour of the lover, has formed the main
+theme of our modern love stories in the novel and on the stage. In the
+days of chivalry, when love ran wild in the woods, woman was the passive
+object either of hunt or of rescue; but the scene of battle being
+shifted to the boudoir she can demand her own conditions with the result
+that the game becomes infinitely 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 conditioned by this fact inevitably becomes
+subtle, allusive, intense; for it derives its light and shade from the
+flicker of that fire which the company finds such a perilous fascination
+in playing with. Lyly's work does not exhibit quite such modernity as
+this, but we may truthfully say that his _Euphues and his England_ is
+the psychological novel in germ.
+
+Its latent possibilities were however not perceived by the writers of
+the 16th century. The style which had in part won popularity for it so
+speedily was the cause also of its equally speedy decline. Like a fossil
+in the stratum of euphuism it was soon covered up by the artificial
+layer of arcadianism. The novel of Sidney, though its loose and
+meandering style marked a reaction against euphuism, carried on the
+Lylian tradition in its appeal to ladies. The _Arcadia_, in no way so
+modern as the _Euphues_, lies for that very reason more directly in the
+line of development[95]; for, while the former is linked by the
+heroical romance of the seventeenth century to the romance of this day,
+the latter's influence is not visible until the eighteenth century, if
+we except its immediate Elizabethan imitators. And yet, as we remarked
+of Lyly's prose, a book which received so many editions cannot have been
+entirely without effect upon the minds of its readers and upon the
+literature of the age. This influence, however, could have been little
+more than suggestive and indirect, and it is quite impossible to
+determine its value. Its importance for us lies in the fact that we can
+realise how it anticipated the novel of the 18th 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 _Pamela_. A
+direct literary connexion between Lyly and Richardson seems out of the
+question: and the utmost we can say with certainty is that the novel of
+the latter, in providing moral food for its own generation, relieved the
+18th century reader of the necessity of going back to the Elizabethan
+writer for the entertainment he desired. As a novelist, therefore, Lyly
+was only of secondary dynamical importance, by which I mean that,
+although we can rest assured that he exercised a considerable influence
+upon later writers, we cannot actually trace this influence at work; we
+cannot in fact point to Lyly as the first of a _definite_ series. The
+novel like its style coloured, but did not deflect, the stream of
+English literature. And indeed we may say this not only of _Euphues_
+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, _Euphues_ passed through, for the age, a
+considerable number of editions, the circle of those who appreciated
+Lyly, Sidney, and Nash must have been for the most part confined to the
+Court. And this accounts for the brevity of their popularity and for its
+intensity while it lasted; a phenomenon which is not seen in the drama,
+and which is due to the susceptibility of Court life to sudden changes
+of fashion. Drama was the natural form of literature in an age when most
+people were illiterate and yet when all were eager for literary
+entertainment. Drama was therefore the main current of artistic
+production, the prose novel being quite a minor, almost an
+insignificant, tributary. Realising then the inevitable limitations
+which surrounded our English fiction at its birth we can understand its
+infantile imperfections and the subsequent arrest of its development.
+
+  [95] It was Sidney and Nash who set the fashion for the 17th century.
+
+"The novel held in Elizabeth's time very much the same place as was held
+by the drama at the Restoration; it was an essentially aristocratic
+entertainment, and the same pitfall waylaid both, the pitfall of
+artificiality. Dryden's audiences and the readers of _Euphues_ both
+sought for better bread than is made of wheat; both were supplied with
+what satisfied them in an elaborate confection of husks[96]."
+
+  [96] Raleigh, p. 57. He writes _Arcadia_ for _Euphues_ but the
+  substitution is legitimate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LYLY THE DRAMATIST.
+
+
+So far we have been dealing with those of Lyly's writings, which, though
+they are his most famous, form quite a small section of his work, and
+exerted an influence upon later writers which may have been considerable
+but was certainly indirect. His plays on the other hand, in the
+production of which he spent the better part of his life, greatly
+outweigh his novel both in aesthetic and historical importance. To
+attempt to estimate Lyly's position as a novelist and as a prose writer
+is to chase the will-o'-the-wisp of theory over the morass of
+uncertainty; the task of investigating his comedies is altogether
+simpler and more straightforward. After groping our way through the
+undergrowth of minor literature, we come out upon the great highway of
+Elizabethan art--the drama. Let us first see how Lyly himself came to
+tread this same pathway.
+
+There is a difference of opinion between Mr Bond and Mr Baker, our chief
+authorities, as to the order in which Lyly wrote his plays[97]. But
+though Mr Baker claims priority for _Endymion_, and Mr Bond for
+_Campaspe_, both are convinced that our author was already in 1580
+beginning to look to the stage as a larger arena for his artistic genius
+than the novel. And from what I have said of his life at Oxford and his
+connexion with de Vere, we need not be surprised that this was so. It
+would be well however at this juncture to recapitulate, and in part to
+expand those remarks, in order to show more clearly how Lyly's dramatic
+bent was formed. Seats of learning, as we shall see presently, had long
+before the days of Lyly favoured the comic muse, and Oxford was no
+exception to this rule. Anthony a Wood tells us how Richard Edwardes in
+1566 produced at that University his play _Palamon and Arcite_, and how
+her Majesty "laughed heartily thereat and gave the author great thanks
+for his pains"; a scene which would still be fresh in men's minds five
+years after, when Lyly entered Magdalen College. But it is scarcely
+necessary to stretch a point here since we know from the _Anatomy of
+Wit_ that Lyly was a student of Edwardes' comedies[98]. Again, William
+Gager, Pettie's "dear friend" and Lyly's fellow-student, was a
+dramatist, while Gosson himself tells us of comedies which he had
+written before 1577.
+
+  [97] Baker, p. lxxxviii, places _Endymion_ as early as Sept. 1579.
+  Bond, vol. III. p. 10, attempts to disprove Baker's contention, and in
+  vol. II. p. 309, he maintains chiefly on grounds of style that
+  _Campaspe_ was the earliest of Lyly's plays, being produced at the
+  Christmas of 1580.
+
+  [98] Bond, II. p. 238.
+
+Probably however it was not until he had left Oxford for London that
+Lyly conceived the idea of writing comedy, for we must attribute its
+original suggestion to his friend and employer the Earl of Oxford.
+Edward de Vere, Burleigh's son-in-law, had visited Italy, and affected
+the vices and artificialities of that country, returning home, we are
+told, laden with silks and oriental stuffs for the adornment of his
+chamber and his person. He was frequently in debt and still more
+frequently in disgrace with the Queen and with his father-in-law.
+Dilettante, aesthete, and euphuist, he would naturally attract the
+Oxford fop, and that Lyly attached himself to his clique disposes, in my
+mind at least, of all theories of his puritanical tendencies. Certainly
+a Nonconformist conscience could not have flourished in de Vere's
+household. 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 Shakespeare 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[99]. Now as secretary of
+such a man, and therefore in close intimacy with him, it would be the
+most natural thing in the world for Lyly to try his hand at
+play-writing, and, if his patron approved of his efforts, an
+introduction to Court could be procured, since Oxford was Lord High
+Chamberlain, and the play would be acted. It was to Oxford's patronage,
+therefore, and not to his subsequent connexion with the "children of
+Powles," that Lyly owed his first dramatic impulse, and probably also
+his first dramatic success, for _Campaspe_ and _Sapho_ were produced at
+Court in 1582[100]. His appointment at the choir school of course
+confirmed his resolutions and thus he became the first great Elizabethan
+dramatist.
+
+  [99] _Dict. Of Nat. Biog._, Edward de Vere.
+
+  [100] Bond, II. p. 230 (chronological table).
+
+But a purely circumstantial explanation of an important departure in a
+man's life will only appear satisfactory to fatalists who worship the
+blind god Environment. And without indulging in any abstruse
+psychological discussion, but rather looking at the question from a
+general point of view, we can understand how an intellect of Lyly's
+type, as revealed by the _Euphues_, found its ultimate expression in
+comedy. Comedy, as Meredith tells us, is only possible in a civilized
+society, "where ideas are current and the perceptions quick." We have
+already touched upon this point and later we must return to it again;
+but for the moment let us notice that this idea of comedy, though he
+would have been quite unable to formulate it in words, was in reality at
+the back of Lyly's mind, or rather we should perhaps say that he quite
+unconsciously embodied it. He was _par excellence_ the product of a
+"social" atmosphere; he moved more freely within the Court than without;
+his whole mind was absorbed by the subtleties of language; a brilliant
+conversation, an apt repartee, a well-turned phrase were the very breath
+of his nostrils; his ideal was the intellectual beau. Add to this
+compound the ingredient of literary ambition and the result is a comic
+dramatist. Lyly, Congreve, Sheridan, were all men of fashion first and
+writers of comedy after. In the author of _Lady Windermere's Fan_ we
+have lately seen another example--the example of one whose ambition was
+to be "the first well-dressed philosopher in the history of thought."
+Poems, novels, fairy stories, he gave us, but it was on the stage of
+comedy that he eventually found his true _metier_. "With _Euphues_,"
+writes Mr Bond, "we enter the path which leads to the Restoration
+dramatists ... and in Lucilla and Camilla we are prescient of Millamant
+and Belinda[101]." This is very true, but the statement has a nearer
+application which Mr Bond misses. Camilla is the lady who moves under
+varied names through all Lyly's plays. The second part of _Euphues_ and
+the first of Lyly's comedies are as closely connected psychologically
+and aesthetically, as they were in point of time.
+
+  [101] Bond, I. p. 161.
+
+
+SECTION I. _English Comedy before 1580._
+
+But when Lyly's creations began to walk the boards, the English stage
+was already some centuries old and therefore, in order to appreciate our
+author's position, a few words are necessary upon the development of our
+drama and especially of comedy previous to his time.
+
+Though the _miracle_ play of our forefathers frequently contained a
+species of coarse humour usually put into the mouth of the Devil, who
+appears to have been for the middle ages very much what the "comic muse"
+is for us moderns, it is to the _morality_ not to the _miracle_ that one
+should look for the real beginnings of comedy as distinct from mere
+buffoonery.
+
+The _morality_ was not so much an offshoot as a complement of the
+_miracle_. They stood to each other, as sermon does to service. To say
+therefore that the _morality_ secularized the drama is to go too far; as
+well might we say that Luther secularized Christianity. What it did,
+however, was important enough; it severed the connexion between drama
+and ritual. The _miracle_, treating of the history of mankind from the
+Creation to the days of Christ, unfolded before the eyes of its
+audience the grand scheme of human salvation; the _morality_ on the
+other hand was not concerned with historical so much as practical
+Christianity. Its object was to point a moral: and it did this in two
+ways; either as an affirmative, constructive inculcator of what life
+should be,--as the portrayer of the ideal; or as a negative, critical
+describer of the types of life actually existing,--as the portrayer of
+the real. It approached more nearly to comedy in its latter function,
+but in both aspects it really prepared the way for the comic muse. The
+natural prey of comedy, as our greatest comic writer has taught us, is
+folly, "known to it in all her transformations, in every disguise; and
+it is with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox,
+that it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having
+her, allowing her no rest." Thus it is that characters in comedy,
+symbolizing as they often do some social folly, tend to be rather types
+than personalities. The _morality_, therefore, in substituting typical
+figures, however crude, for the mechanical religious characters of the
+_miracle_, makes an immense advance towards comedy. Moreover, the very
+selection of types requires an appreciation, if not an analysis, of the
+differences of human character, an appreciation for which there was no
+need in the _miracle_. In the _morality_ again the action is no longer
+determined by tradition, and it becomes incumbent on the playwright to
+provide motives for the movements of his puppets. It follows naturally
+from this that situations must be devised to show up the particular
+quality which each type symbolizes. We need not enter the vexed question
+of the origin of plot construction; but we may notice in this connexion
+that the _morality_ certainly gave us that peculiar form of
+plot-movement which is most suitable to comedy. To quote Mr Gayley's
+words: "In tragedy, the movement must be economic of its ups and downs;
+once headed downwards it must plunge, with but one or two vain recovers,
+to the abyss. In comedy, on the other hand, though the movement is
+ultimately upward, the crises are more numerous; the oftener the
+individual stumbles without breaking his neck, and the more varied his
+discomfitures, so long as they are temporary, the better does he enjoy
+his ease in the cool of the day.... Now the novelty of the plot in the
+_moral_ play, lay in the fact that the movement was of this oscillating,
+upward kind--a kind unknown as a rule to the _miracle_, whose conditions
+were less fluid, and to the farce, which was too shallow and
+superficial[102]."
+
+  [102] Gayley, p. lxiv.
+
+If all these claims be justifiable there can be no doubt that the
+_morality_ was of the utmost importance in the history not only of
+comedy but of English drama as a whole. Though it was the cousin, not
+the child of the _miracle_, though it cannot be said to have secularized
+our drama, it is the link between the ritual play and the play of pure
+amusement; it connects the rood gallery with the London theatre. When
+Symonds writes that the _morality_ "can hardly be said to lie in the
+direct line of evolution between the _miracle_ and the legitimate drama"
+we may in part agree with him; but he is quite wrong when he goes on to
+describe it as "an abortive side-effect, which was destined to bear
+barren fruit[103]."
+
+  [103] Symonds, p. 199.
+
+The real secularization of the drama was in the first place probably due
+to classical influences--or, to be more precise, I should perhaps say,
+scholastic influences--and it is not until the 16th century that these
+influences become prominent. I say "become prominent," 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[104], although good examples of Terentian comedy are
+not found until the 16th century. Humanism again comes forward as an
+important literary formative element. The part which the student class
+took in the development of European drama as a whole has as yet scarcely
+been appreciated. It is to scholars that the birth of the secular Drama
+must be attributed. Lyly, as we said, made use of his mastership for the
+production of his plays, but Lyly was by no means the first
+schoolmaster-dramatist. Schools and universities had long before his day
+been productive of drama; our very earliest existing saints' play or
+_marvel_ was produced by a certain Geoffrey at Dunstable, "de
+consuetudine magistrorum et scholarum[105]." And this was only natural,
+seeing that at such places any number of actors is available and all are
+supposed to be interested 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 _morality_, was a choir boy of the Chapel Royal, and
+afterwards in all probability held a post there as master[106].
+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 abstractions[107]." It was not until 1540, a few years
+after Heywood's interlude _The Play of the Wether_, that pure English
+comedy appears, and we must turn to Eton to discover its cradle, for
+Nicholas Udall's _Roister Doister_ has every claim to rank as the first
+completely constructed comedy in our language--the first comedy of flesh
+and blood. Roister smacks of the "miles gloriosus"; Merygreeke combines
+the vice with the Terentian rogue; and yet, when all is said, Udall's
+play remains a remarkably original production, realistic and English.
+
+  [104] Ward, I. p. 7.
+
+  [105] Gayley, p. xiv.
+
+  [106] I put this interpretation upon the account of Heywood's
+  receiving 40 shillings from Queen Mary "for pleying an interlude with
+  his children."
+
+  [107] Ward, _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, Heywood.
+
+Next, in point of time and importance, comes Stevenson's _Gammer
+Gurton's Needle_, still more thoroughly English than the last, though
+quite inferior as a comedy, and indeed scarcely rising above the level
+of farce. Inasmuch, however, as it is a drama of English rustic life, it
+is directly antecedent to _Mother Bombie_, and perhaps also to the
+picaresque novel. Secular dramas now began to multiply apace. But
+keeping our eye upon comedy, and upon Lyly in particular as we near the
+date of his advent, it will be sufficient I think to mention two more
+names to complete the chain of development. From Cambridge, the nurse of
+Stevenson, we must now turn to Oxford; and, as we do so, we seem to be
+drawing very close to the end of our journey. Thus far we have had
+nothing like the romantic comedy--the comedy of sentiment, of love, the
+comedy which is at once serious and witty, and which contains the
+elements of tragedy. This appears, or is at least foreshadowed for the
+first time, about four years after Stevenson's "first-rate screaming
+farce," as Symonds has dubbed it, in the _Damon and Pithias_ of Richard
+Edwardes, a writer with whom, as we have seen, Lyly was thoroughly
+familiar. Indeed, the play in question anticipates our author in many
+ways, for example in the introduction of pages, in the use of English
+proverbs and Latin quotations, and in the insertion of songs[108]. With
+reference to the last point, we may remark that Edwardes like Lyly was
+interested in music, and like him also held a post in a choir school,
+being one of the "gentlemen of the Chapel Royal." In the _Damon and
+Pithias_ the old _morality_ is once and for all discarded. The play is
+entirely free from all allegorical elements, and is only faintly tinged
+with didacticism. But we cannot express the aim of Edwardes better than
+in his own words:
+
+    "In comedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch
+     All thynges to the quick; and eke to frame each person so
+     That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly know."
+
+To touch lightly and yet with penetration, to reveal character by
+dialogue, this is indeed to write modern drama, modern comedy.
+
+  [108] Bond, II. p. 238.
+
+It would seem that between Edwardes and Lyly there was no room for
+another link, so closely does the one follow the other; and yet one more
+play must be mentioned to complete the series. This time we are no
+longer brought into touch with the classics or with the scholastic
+influences, for the play in question is a translation from the Italian,
+being in fact Ariosto's _Suppositi_, englished by George Gascoigne[109].
+Though a translation it was more than a transcript; it was englished in
+the true sense of that word, in sentiment as well as in phrase. Its
+chief importance lies in the fact that it is written in prose, and is
+therefore the first prose comedy in our language. But Mr Gayley would go
+further than this, for he describes it as "the first English comedy in
+every way worthy of the name." It was written entirely for amusement,
+and for the amusement of adults, not of children; and if it were the
+only product of Gascoigne's pen it would justify the remark of an early
+17th century critic, who says of this writer that he "brake the ice for
+our quainter poets who now write, that they may more safely swim through
+the main ocean of sweet poesy"; for, to quote a modern writer, "with the
+blood of the New comedy, the Latin comedy, the Renaissance in its veins,
+it is far ahead of its English contemporaries, if not of its time[110]."
+The play was well known and popular among the Elizabethans, being
+revived at Oxford in 1582[111]. Shakespeare used it for the construction
+of his _Taming of the Shrew_: and altogether it is difficult to say how
+much Elizabethan drama probably owed to this one comedy, which though
+Italian in origin was carefully adapted to English taste by its
+translator. There can be no doubt that Lyly studied this among other of
+Gascoigne's works, and that he must have learnt many lessons from it,
+though the fact does not appear to have been sufficiently appreciated by
+Lylian students; for even Mr Bond fails, I think, to realise its
+importance.
+
+  [109] 1566.
+
+  [110] Gayley, p. lxxxv.
+
+  [111] _Dict. of Nat. Biog._, Gascoigne, George.
+
+This, in brief outline, is the history of our comedy down to the time
+when Lyly took it in hand; or should we not rather say "an introduction
+to the history of our comedy"? For true English comedy is not to be
+found in any of the plays we have mentioned. Heywood, Udall, Stevenson,
+Edwardes, are the names that convey "broken lights" of comedy, hints of
+the dawn, nothing more; and Gascoigne was a translator. The supreme
+importance of a writer, who at this juncture produced eight comedies of
+sustained merit, and of varying types, is something which is quite
+beyond computation. But if we are to attempt to realise the greatness
+of our debt to Lyly, let us estimate exactly how much these previous
+efforts had done in the way of pioneer work, and how far also they fell
+short of comedy in the strict sense of that word.
+
+The fifty years which lie between Heywood and Lyly saw considerable
+progress, but progress of a negative rather than a constructive nature,
+and moreover progress which came in fits and starts, and not
+continuously. It was in fact a period of transition and of individual
+and disconnected experiments. Each of the writers above mentioned
+contributed something towards the common development, but not one of
+them, except Ariosto's translator, gave us comedy which may be
+considered complete in every way. They all display a very elementary
+knowledge of plot construction. Udall is perhaps the most successful in
+this respect; his plot is trivial but, well versed as he is in Terence,
+he manages to give it an ordered and natural development. But the other
+pre-Lylian dramatists quite failed to realise the vital importance of
+plot, which is indeed the very essence of comedy; and, in expending
+energies upon the development of an argument, as in _Jacke Jugeler_,
+which was a parody of transubstantiation, or upon the construction of
+disconnected humorous situations, as in _Gammer Gurton'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 Merygreeke's nature is due to inconsistency, not to
+evolution. Moreover, stage conventions had not yet become a matter of
+fixed tradition. "We have a perpetual conflict between what spectators
+actually see and what they are supposed to see, between the time
+actually passed and that supposed to have elapsed; an outrageous demand
+on the imagination in one place, a refusal to exercise or allow us to
+exercise it in another[112]." Further, English comedy before 1580 was
+marked, on the one hand, by its poetic literary form and, on the other,
+by its almost complete absence of poetic ideas. Lyly, with the instinct
+of a born conversationalist, realised that prose was the only possible
+dress for comedy that should seek to represent contemporary life. But
+even in their use of verse his predecessors were unsuccessful. Udall
+seemed to have thought that his unequal dogtail lines would wag if he
+struck a rhyme at the end, and even Edwardes was little better. The use
+of blank verse had yet to be discovered, and Lyly was to have a hand in
+this matter also[113]. As for poetical treatment of comedy, Edwardes is
+the only one who even approaches it. He does so, because he sees that
+the comic muse only ceases to be a mask when sentiment is allowed to
+play over her features. And even he only half perceives it; for the
+sentiment of friendship is not strong enough for complete animation, the
+muse's eyes may twinkle, but passion alone will give them depth and let
+the soul shine through. But, in order that passion should fill comedy
+with the breath of life, it was necessary that both sexes should walk
+the stage on an equal footing. That which comedy before 1580 lacked,
+that which alone could round it off into a poetic whole, was the female
+element. "Comedy," writes George Meredith, "lifts women to a station
+offering them free play for their wit, as they usually show it, when
+they have it, on the side of sound sense. The higher the comedy, the
+more prominent the part they enjoy in it." But the dramatist cannot lift
+them far; the civilized plane must lie only just beneath the comic
+plane; the stage cannot be lighted by woman's wit if the audience have
+not yet realised that brain forms a part of the feminine organism. In
+the days of Elizabeth this realisation began to dawn in men's minds; but
+it was Lyly who first expressed it in literature, in his novel and then
+in his dramas. Those who preceded him were only dimly conscious of it,
+and therefore they failed to seize upon it as material for art. It was
+at Court, the Court of a great virgin Queen, that the equality of social
+privileges for women was first established; it was a courtier who
+introduced heroines into our drama.
+
+  [112] Bond, II. p. 237.
+
+  [113] George Gascoigne, whose importance does not seem to have been
+  realised by Elizabethan students, also produced a drama in blank
+  verse.
+
+
+SECTION II. _The Eight Plays._
+
+Concerning the order of Lyly's plays there is, as we have seen, some
+difference of opinion. The discussion between Mr Bond and Mr Baker in
+reality turns upon the interpretation of the allegory of _Endymion_, and
+it is therefore one of those questions of literary probability which can
+never hope to receive a satisfactory answer. Both critics, however, are
+in agreement as to the proper method of classification. They divide the
+dramas into four categories: historical, of which _Campaspe_ is the sole
+example; allegorical, which includes _Sapho and Phao_, _Endymion_, and
+_Midas_; pastoral, which includes _Gallathea_, _The Woman in the Moon_,
+and _Love's Metamorphosis_; and lastly realistic, of which again there
+is only one example, _Mother Bombie_. The fault which may be found with
+this classification is that the so-called pastoral plays have much of
+the allegorical about them, and it is perhaps better, therefore, to
+consider them rather as a subdivision of class two than as a distinct
+species.
+
+For the moment putting on one side all questions of the allegory of
+_Endymion_, there are two reasons which seem to go a long way towards
+justifying Mr Bond for placing _Campaspe_ as the earliest of Lyly's
+plays. In the first place the atmosphere of _Euphues_, which becomes
+weaker in the other plays, is so unmistakeable in this historical drama
+as to force the conclusion upon us that they belong to the same period.
+The painter Apelles, whose name seemed almost to obsess Lyly in his
+novel, is one of the chief characters of _Campaspe_, and the dialogue is
+more decidedly euphuistic than any other play. The second point we may
+notice is one which can leave very little doubt as to the correctness of
+Mr Bond's chronology. _Campaspe_ and _Sapho_ were published before 1585,
+that is, before Lyly accepted the mastership at the St Paul's choir
+school, whereas none of his other plays came into the printer's hands
+until after the inhibition of the boys' acting rights in 1591; the
+obvious inference being that Lyly printed his plays only when he had no
+interest in preserving the acting rights.
+
+But whatever date we assign to _Campaspe_, there can be little doubt
+that it was one of the first dramas in our language with an historical
+background. Indeed, _Kynge Johan_ is the only play before 1580 which can
+claim to rival it in this respect. But _Kynge Johan_ was written solely
+for the purpose of religious satire, being an attack upon the priesthood
+and Church abuses. It must, therefore, be classed among those political
+_moralities_, of which so many examples appeared during the early part
+of the 16th century. _Campaspe_, on the other hand, is entirely devoid
+of any ethical or satirical motive. Allegory, which Lyly was able to
+put to his own peculiar uses, is here quite absent. The sole aim of its
+author was to provide amusement, and in this respect it must have been
+entirely successful. The play is interesting, and at times amusing, even
+to a modern reader; but to those who witnessed its performance at
+Blackfriars, and, two years later, at the Court, it would appear as a
+marvel of wit and dramatic power after the crude material which had
+hitherto been offered to them. In the choice of his subject Lyly shows
+at once that he is an artist with a feeling for beauty, even if he
+seldom rises to its sublimities. The story of the play, taken from
+Pliny, is that of Alexander's love for his Theban captive Campaspe, and
+of his subsequent self-sacrifice in giving her up to her lover Apelles.
+The social change, which I have sought to indicate in the preceding
+pages, is at once evident in this play. "We calling Alexander from his
+grave," says its Prologue[114], "seeke only who was his love"; and the
+remark is a sweep of the hat to the ladies of the Court, whose
+importance, as an integral part of the audience, is now for the first
+time openly acknowledged. "Alexander, the great conqueror of the world,"
+says Lyly with his hand upon his heart, "only interests me as a lover."
+The whole motive of the play, which would have been meaningless to a
+mediaeval audience, is a compliment to the ladies. It is as if our
+author nets Mars with Venus, and presents the shamefaced god as an
+offering of flattery to the Queen and her Court. _Campaspe_ is, in fact,
+the first romantic drama, not only the forerunner of Shakespeare, but a
+remote ancestor of _Hernani_ and the 19th century French theatre. "The
+play's defect," says Mr Bond, "is one of passion"--a criticism which is
+applicable to all Lyly's dramas; and yet we must not forget that Lyly
+was the earliest to deal with passion dramatically. The love of
+Alexander is certainly unemotional, not to say callous; but possibly the
+great monarch's equanimity was a veiled tribute to the supposed
+indifference of the virgin Queen to all matters of Cupid's trade.
+Between Campaspe and Apelles, however, we have scenes which are imbued,
+if not vitalized, by passion. Lyly was a beginner, and his fault lay in
+attempting too much. Caring more for brilliancy of dialogue than for
+anything else, he was no more likely to be successful here, in
+portraying passion through conversation weighted by euphuism, than he
+had been in his novel. Yet his endeavour to depict the conflict of
+masculine 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 Campaspe, and, though she exhibits few signs of it, yet in
+his very idea of endowing women with wit Lyly leads us on to the
+high-road of comedy leading to Congreve.
+
+  [114] From _Prologue_ at the Court.
+
+In addition to the romantic elements above described, we have here also
+that page-prattle which is so characteristic of all Lyly's plays. These
+urchins, full of mischief and delighting in quips, were probably
+borrowed from Edwardes, but Lyly made them all his own; and one can
+understand how naturally their parts would be played by his boy-actors.
+Their repartee, when it is not pulling to pieces some Latin quotation
+familiar to them at school, or ridiculing a point of logic, is often
+really witty. One of them, overhearing the hungry Manes at strife with
+Diogenes over the matter of an overdue dinner, exclaims to his friend,
+"This is their use, nowe do they dine one upon another." Diogenes again,
+in whom we may see the prototype of Shakespeare's Timon, is amusing
+enough 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 substratum.
+
+Leaving the question of dramatic construction and characterization for a
+more general treatment later, we now pass on to the consideration of
+Lyly's allegorical plays. The absence of all allegory from _Campaspe_
+shows that Lyly had broken with the _morality_: and we seem therefore to
+be going back, when two years later we have an allegorical play from his
+pen. But in reality there is no retrogression; for with Lyly allegory is
+not an ethical instrument. I have mentioned examples of plays before his
+day which employed the machinery of the _morality_, for the purposes of
+political and religious satire. The old form of drama seems to have
+developed a keen sensibility to _double entendre_ among theatre-goers.
+Nothing indeed is so remarkable about the Elizabethan stage as the
+secret understanding which almost invariably existed between the
+dramatist and his audience. We have already had occasion to notice it in
+connexion with Field's parody of Kyd. The spectators were always on the
+alert to detect some veiled reference to prominent political figures or
+to current affairs. Often in fact, as was natural, they would discover
+hints where nothing was implied; and for one Mrs Gallup in modern
+America there must have been a dozen in every auditorium of Elizabethan
+England. Such over-clever busybodies would readily twist an innocent
+remark into treason or sacrilege, and therefore, long before Lyly's
+time, it was customary for a playwright to defend himself in the
+prologue against such treatment, by denying any ambiguity in his
+dialogue. In an audience thus susceptible to innuendo Lyly saw his
+opportunity. He was a courtier writing for the Court, he was also, let
+us add, anxious to obtain a certain coveted post at the Revels' Office.
+He was an artist not entirely without ideals, yet ever ready to curry
+favour and to aim at material advantages by his literary facility. The
+idea therefore of writing dramas which should be, from beginning to end,
+nothing but an ingenious compliment to his royal mistress would not be
+in the least distasteful to him. But we must not attribute too much to
+motives of personal ambition. Spenser's _Faery Queen_ was not published
+until 1590; but Lyly had known Spenser before the latter's departure for
+Ireland, and, even if the scheme of that poet's masterpiece had not been
+confided to him, the ideas which it contained were in the air. The cult
+of Elizabeth, which was far from being a piece of insincere adulation,
+had for some time past been growing into a kind of literary religion.
+Even to us, there is something magical about the great Queen, and we can
+hardly be surprised that the pagans of those days hailed her as half
+divine. When Lyly commenced his career, she had been on the throne for
+twenty years, in itself a wonderful fact to those who could remember the
+gloom which had surrounded her accession. Through a period of infinite
+danger both at home and abroad she had guided England with intrepidity
+and success; and furthermore she had done all this single-handed,
+refusing to share her throne with a partner even for the sake of
+protection, and yet improving upon the Habsburg policy[115] by making
+coquetry the pivot of her diplomacy. It was no wonder therefore that,
+
+    "As the imperial votaress passed on
+     In maiden meditation fancy free,"
+
+the courtiers she fondled, and the artists she patronized, should half
+in fancy, half in earnest, think of her as something more than human,
+and search the fables of their newly discovered classics for examples of
+enthroned chastity and unconquerable virgin queens.
+
+  [115] "Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube."
+
+All Lyly's plays except _Campaspe_ and _Mother Bombie_ are written in
+this vein; each, as Symonds beautifully puts it, is "a censer of
+exquisitely chased silver, full of incense to be tossed before Elizabeth
+upon her throne." In the three plays _Sapho and Phao_, _Endymion_, and
+_Midas_ this element of flattery is more prominent than in the others,
+inasmuch as they are not only full of compliments unmistakeably directed
+towards the Queen, but they actually seek to depict incidents from her
+reign under the guise of classical mythology. It is for this reason that
+they have been classified under the label of allegory. It is quite
+possible, however, to read and enjoy these plays without a suspicion of
+any inner meaning; nor does the absence of such suspicion render the
+action of the play in any way unintelligible, so skilfully does Lyly
+manipulate his story. With a view, therefore, to his position in the
+history of Elizabethan drama, and to the lessons which he taught those
+who came after him, the superficial interpretation of each play is all
+that need engage our attention, and we shall content ourselves with
+briefly indicating the actual incident which it symbolizes.
+
+The story of _Sapho and 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 all poetical attributes and becomes simply a
+great Queen of Sicily, sees him and instantly falls in love with him.
+To conceal her passion, she pretends to her ladies that she has a fever,
+at the same time sending for Phao, who is rumoured to have herbs for
+such complaints. Meanwhile Venus herself falls a victim to the charms
+she has bestowed upon the ferryman. Cupid is therefore called in to
+remedy matters on her behalf. The boy, who plays a part which no one can
+fail to compare with that of Puck in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_,
+succeeds in curing Sapho's passion, but, much to his mother's disgust,
+won over by the Queen's attractions, refuses to go further, and even
+inspires Phao with a loathing for the goddess. The play ends with Phao's
+departure from Sicily in despair, and Cupid's definite rebellion from
+the rule of Venus, resulting in his remaining with Sapho. In this story,
+which is practically a creation of Lyly's brain, though of course it is
+founded upon the classical tale of Sapho's love for Phao, our playwright
+presents under the form of allegory the history of Alencon's courtship
+of Elizabeth. Sapho, Queen of Sicily, is of course Elizabeth, Queen of
+England. The difficulty of Alencon's (that is Phao's) ugliness is
+overcome by the device of making it love's task to confer beauty upon
+him. Phao like Alencon quits the island and its Queen in despair; while
+the play is rounded off by the pretty compliment of representing love as
+a willing captive in Elizabeth's Court.
+
+As a play _Sapho and Phao_ shows a distinct advance upon _Campaspe_. The
+dialogue is less euphuistic, and therefore much more effective. The
+conversation between Sapho and Phao, in the scene where the latter comes
+with his herbs to cure the Queen, is very charming, and well expresses
+the passion which the one is too humble and the other too proud to
+show.
+
+    PHAO. I know no hearb to make lovers sleepe but Heartesease, which
+             because it groweth so high, I cannot reach: for--
+
+    SAPHO. For whom?
+
+    PHAO. For such as love.
+
+    SAPHO. It groweth very low, and I can never stoop to it, that--
+
+    PHAO. That what?
+
+    SAPHO. That I may gather it: but why doe you sigh so, Phao?
+
+    PHAO. It is mine use Madame.
+
+    SAPHO. It will doe you harme and mee too: for I never heare one
+             sighe, but I must sigh't also.
+
+    PHAO. It were best then that your Ladyship give me leave to be gone:
+             for I can but sigh.
+
+    SAPHO. Nay stay: for now I beginne to sighe, I shall not leave
+             though you be gone. But what do you thinke best for your
+             sighing to take it away?
+
+    PHAO. Yew, Madame.
+
+    SAPHO. Mee?
+
+    PHAO. No, Madame, yewe of the tree.
+
+    SAPHO. Then will I love yewe the better, and indeed I think it
+             should make me sleepe too, therefore all other simples set
+             aside, I will simply use onely yewe.
+
+    PHAO. Doe Madame: for I think nothing in the world so good as
+             yewe[116].
+
+  [116] _Sapho and Phao_, Act III. Sc. IV. 60-85.
+
+Altogether there is a great increase in general vitality in this play.
+Lyly draws nearer to the conception of ideal comedy. "Our interest," he
+tells us in his Prologue, "was at this time to move inward delight not
+outward lightnesse, and to breede (if it might be) soft smiling, not
+loud laughing"; and to this end he tends to minimize the purely farcical
+element. The pages are still present, but they are balanced by a group
+of Sapho's maids-in-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,
+all come from the same mould: in Pandion we may discover Euphues under a
+new name, and the surly Vulcan is only another edition of the "crabbed
+Diogenes." And yet each of these types becomes more life-like as he
+proceeds, and if the puppets that he left to his successors were not yet
+human, they had learnt to walk the stage without that angularity of
+movement and jerkiness of speech which betray the machine.
+
+Departing for a moment from the strictly chronological order, and
+leaving _Gallathea_ for later treatment, we pass on to _Endymion_, the
+second of the allegorical dramas, and, without doubt, the boldest in
+conception and the most beautiful in execution of all Lyly's plays. The
+story is founded upon the classical fable of Diana's kiss to the
+sleeping boy, but its arrangement and development are for the most part
+of Lyly's invention: indeed, he was obliged to frame it in accordance
+with the facts which he sought to allegorize. All critics are agreed in
+identifying Cynthia with Elizabeth and Endymion with Leicester, but they
+part company upon the interpretation of the play as a whole. The story
+is briefly as follows. Endymion, forsaking his former love Tellus,
+contracts an ardent passion for Cynthia, who, in accordance with her
+character as moon-goddess, meets his advances with coolness. Tellus
+determines to be revenged, and, by the aid of a sorceress Dipsas, sends
+the youth into a deep sleep from which no one can awaken him. Cynthia
+learns what has befallen, and although she does not suspect Tellus, she
+orders the latter to be shut up in a castle for speaking maliciously of
+Endymion. She then sends Eumenides, the young man's great friend, to
+seek out a remedy. This man is deeply in love with Semele, who scorns
+his passion, and therefore, when he reaches a magic fountain which will
+answer any question put to it, he is so absorbed with his own troubles
+as almost to forget those of his friend. A carefully thought-out piece
+of writing follows, for he debates with himself whether to use his one
+question for an enquiry about his love or his sleeping friend.
+Friendship and duty conquer at length, and, looking into the well, he
+discovers that the remedy for Endymion's sickness is a kiss from
+Cynthia's lips. He returns with his message, the kiss is given,
+Endymion, grown old after 40 years' sleep, is restored to youth, the
+treachery of Tellus is discovered and eventually forgiven, and the play
+ends amid a peal of marriage bells. Endymion, however, is left
+unmarried, knowing as he does that lowly and distant worship is all he
+can be allowed to offer the virgin goddess. The play, of course, has a
+farcical underplot which is only connected very slightly with the main
+story by Sir Tophas' ridiculous passion for Dipsas. His love in fact is
+presented as a kind of caricature of Endymion's, and he is the
+laughing-stock of a number of pages who gambol and play pranks after the
+usual manner of Lyly's boys. The solution of the allegory lies mainly in
+the interpretation of Tellus' character, and I cannot but agree with Mr
+Bond when 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[117]. But the whole question is one of such obscurity, and of so
+little importance from the point of view of my argument, that I shall
+not attempt to enter further into it.
+
+  [117] Halpin, _Oberon's Vision_, Shakespeare Society, 1843.
+
+In _Endymion_ Lyly shows that his mastership of St Paul's has increased
+his knowledge of stage-craft. For example, while _Campaspe_ contains at
+least four imaginary transfers in space in the middle of a scene,
+_Endymion_ has only one: and it is a transfer which requires a much
+smaller stretch of imagination than the constant appearance of Diogenes'
+tub upon the stage whenever and wherever comic relief was considered
+necessary. There is improvement moreover in characterization. But the
+interesting thing about this play is Shakespeare's intimate knowledge of
+it, visible chiefly in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_. The well-known
+speech of Oberon to Puck, directing him to gather the "little western
+flower," is to all intents and purposes a beautiful condensation of
+Lyly's allegory. One would like, indeed, to think that there was
+something more than fancy in Mr Gollancz's suggestion that Shakespeare
+when a boy had seen this play of Lyly's acted at Kenilworth, where
+Leicester entertained Elizabeth; 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 underplot. Tophas' enumeration of the charms
+of Dipsas[118] foreshadows Thisbe's speech over the fallen Pyramus[119],
+while, did we not know Lyly's play to be the earlier, we might suspect
+the page's song near the sleeping knight to be a clumsy caricature of
+the graceful songs of the fairies guarding Titania's dreams. Again there
+are parallels in Shakespeare's earliest comedy _Love's Labour's Lost_.
+Sir Tophas, who is undoubtedly modelled upon Roister Doister, reappears
+with his page, as Armado with his attendant Moth. And I have no doubt
+that many other resemblances might be discovered by careful
+investigation. We cannot wonder that _Endymion_ attracted Shakespeare,
+for it is the most "romantic" of all Lyly's plays. Indistinctness of
+character seems to be in keeping with an allegory of moonshine; and even
+the mechanical action cannot spoil the poetical atmosphere which
+pervades the whole. Here if anywhere Lyly reached the poetical plane. He
+speaks of "thoughts stitched to the starres," of "time that treadeth all
+things down but truth," of the "ivy which, though it climb up by the
+elme, can never get hold of the beames of the sunne," and the play is
+full of many other quaint poetical conceits.
+
+  [118] _Endymion_, Act III. Sc. II. ll. 30-60.
+
+  [119] Cp. also Shakespeare, _Sonnet_ CXXX.
+
+From the point of view of drama, however, it cannot be considered equal
+to the third of the allegorical plays. As a man of fashion Lyly was
+nothing if not up to date. In August 1588 the great Armada had made its
+abortive attack upon Cynthia's kingdom, and twelve months were scarcely
+gone before the industrious Court dramatist had written and produced on
+the stage an allegorical satire upon his Catholic Majesty Philip, King
+of Spain. Though it contains compliments to Elizabeth, _Midas_ is more
+of a patriotic than a purely Court play. The story, with but a few
+necessary alterations, comes from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_[120]. It is the
+old tale of the three wishes. Love, power, and wealth are offered, and
+Midas chooses the last. But he soon finds that the gift of turning
+everything to gold has its drawbacks. Even his beard accidentally
+becomes bullion. He eventually gets rid of his obnoxious power by
+bathing in a river. The fault of the play is that there are, as it were,
+two sections; for now we are introduced to an entirely new situation.
+The King chances upon Apollo and Pan engaged in a musical contest, and,
+asked to decide between them, gives his verdict for the goat-foot god.
+Apollo, in revenge, endows him with a pair of ass's ears. For some time
+he manages to conceal them; but "murder will out," for the reeds breathe
+the secret to the wind. Midas in the end seeks pardon at Apollo's
+shrine, and is relieved of his ears. At the same time he abandons his
+project of invading the neighbouring island of Lesbos, to which
+continual references are made throughout the play. This island is of
+course England; the golden touch refers to the wealth of Spanish
+America, while, if Halpin be correct, Pan and Apollo signify the
+Catholic and the Protestant faith respectively. We may also notice, in
+passing, that the ears obviously gave Shakespeare the idea of Bottom's
+"transfiguration."
+
+  [120] XI. 85-193.
+
+The weakness of the play, as I have said, lies in its duality of action.
+In other respects, however, it is certainly a great advance on its
+predecessors, especially in its underplot, which is for the first time
+connected satisfactorily 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 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
+embroidered with incident and is, in every way, better arranged than in
+the earlier plays.
+
+We must now turn to the pastoral plays, _Gallathea_, _The Woman in the
+Moon_, and _Love's Metamorphosis_, which we may consider together since
+their stories, uninspired by any allegorical purpose beyond general
+compliments to the Queen, do not require any detailed consideration. And
+yet it should be pointed out that this distinction between Lyly's
+allegorical and pastoral plays is more apparent than real. There are
+shepherds in _Midas_, the Queen appears under the mythological title of
+Ceres in _Love's Metamorphosis_. Such overlapping however is only to be
+expected, and the division is at least very convenient for purposes of
+classification. Lyly's pastoral plays form, as it were, a link between
+the drama and the masque; indeed, when we consider that all the
+Elizabethan dramatists were students of Lyly, it is possible that comedy
+and masque may have been evolved from the Lylian mythological play by a
+process of differentiation. It may be that our author increased the
+pastoral element as the arcadian fashion came into vogue, but this
+argument does not hold of _Gallathea_, while we are uncertain as to the
+date of _Love's Metamorphosis_. None of these plays are worth
+considering 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 use the convenient
+dramatic device of disguise. How effective a trick it was, is proved by
+the manner in which later dramatists, and in particular Shakespeare,
+adopted it. Its full significance cannot be appreciated by us to-day,
+for the whole point of it was that the actors, who appeared as girls
+dressed up as boys, were, as the audience knew, really boys themselves;
+a fact which doubtless increased the funniness of the situation. _The
+Woman in the Moon_ gives us a man disguised in his wife's clothes, which
+is a variation of the same trick. But the importance of _The Woman_ lies
+in its poetical form. Most Elizabethan scholars have decided that this
+play was Lyly's first dramatic effort, on the authority of the Prologue,
+which bids the audience
+
+    "Remember all is but a poet's dream,
+     The first he had in Phoebus' holy bower,
+     But not the last, unless the first displease."
+
+But the maturity and strength of the drama argue a fairly considerable
+experience in its author, and we shall therefore be probably more
+correct if we place it last instead 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
+Lost_[121]. But, whatever its date, _The Woman in the Moon_ must rank
+among the earliest examples of blank verse in our language, and, as
+such, its importance is very great. In _Love's Metamorphosis_ there is
+nothing of interest equal to those points we have noticed in the other
+two plays of the same class. The only remarkable thing, indeed, about it
+is the absence of that farcical under-current which appears in all his
+other plays. Mr Bond suggests, with great plausibility, that such an
+element had originally appeared, but that, because it dealt with
+dangerous questions of the time, perhaps with the _Marprelate_
+controversy, it was expunged.
+
+  [121] Bond, III. p. 234.
+
+It now remains to say a few words upon _Mother Bombie_, which forms the
+fourth division of Lyly's dramatic writings. Though it presents many
+points of similarity in detail to his other plays, its general
+atmosphere is so different (displaying, indeed, at times distinct errors
+of taste) that I should be inclined to assign it to a friend or pupil of
+Lyly, were it not bound up with Blount's _Sixe Court Comedies_[122], and
+therein said to be written by "the onely Rare Poet of that time, the
+wittie, comical, facetiously quicke, and unparalleled John Lilly master
+of arts." It is clever in construction, but undeniably tedious. It shows
+that Lyly had learnt much from Udall, Stevenson, and Gascoigne, and
+perhaps its chief point of interest is that it links these writers to
+the later realists, Ben Jonson, and that student of London life, who is
+surely one of the most charming of all the Elizabethan dramatists,
+whimsical and delightful Thomas Dekker. _Mother Bombie_ was an
+experiment in the drama of realism, the realism that Nash was employing
+so successfully in his novels. It has been labelled as our earliest pure
+farce of well-constructed plot and literary form, but, though it is
+certainly on a much higher plane than _Roister Doister_, it would only
+create confusion if we denied that title to Udall's play. Yet, despite
+its comparative unimportance, and although it is evident that Lyly is
+here out of his natural element, _Mother Bombie_ is interesting as
+showing the (to our ideas) extraordinary confusion of artistic ideals
+which, as I have already noticed, is the remarkable thing about the
+Renaissance in England. Here we have a courtier, a writer of allegories,
+of dream-plays, the first of our mighty line of romanticists, producing
+a somewhat vulgar realistic play of rustic life. There is nothing
+anomalous in this. "Violence and variation," which someone has described
+as the two essentials of the ideal life, were certainly the
+distinguishing marks of the New Birth; and the men of that age demanded
+it in their literature. The drama of horror, the drama of insanity, the
+drama of blood, all were found on the Elizabethan stage, and all
+attracted large audiences. People delighted to read accounts of
+contemporary crime; often these choice morsels were dished up for them
+by some famous writer, as Kyd did in _The Murder of John Brewer_. The
+taste for realism is by no means a purely 19th century product.
+Moreover, the Elizabethans soon wearied of sameness; only a writer of
+the greatest versatility, such as Shakespeare, could hope for success,
+or at least financial success; and it was, perhaps, in order to revive
+his waning popularity that Lyly took to realism. But the child of
+fashion is always the earliest to become out of date, and we cannot
+think that _Mother Bombie_ did much towards improving our author's
+reputation.
+
+  [122] For title-page, Bond, III. p. 1, date 1632.
+
+At this point of our enquiry it will be as well to say a few words upon
+the lyrics which Lyly sprinkled broadcast over his plays. From an
+aesthetic point of view these are superior to anything else he wrote.
+"Foreshortened in the tract of time," his novel, his plays, have become
+forgotten, and it is as the author of _Cupid and my Campaspe played_
+that he is alone known to the lover of literature. There is no need to
+enter into an investigation of the numerous anonymous poems which Mr
+Bond has claimed for him[123]; even if we knew for certain that he was
+their author, they are so mediocre in themselves as to be unworthy of
+notice, scarcely I think of recovery. But let us turn to the songs of
+his dramas, of which there are 32 in all. These are, of course, unequal
+in merit, but the best are worthy to be ranked with Shakespeare's
+lyrics, and our greatest dramatist was only following Lyly's example
+when he introduced lyrics into his plays. I have already pointed out
+that music was an important element in our early comedy. Udall had
+introduced songs into his _Roister Doister_, and we have them also in
+_Gammer Gurton_ and _Damon and Pithias_, but never, before Lyly's day,
+had they taken so prominent a part in drama, for no previous dramatist
+had possessed a tithe of Lyly's lyrical genius. Every condition favoured
+our author in this introduction of songs into his plays. He had
+tradition at his back; he was intensely interested in music, and
+probably composed the airs himself; and lastly he was master of a choir
+school, and would therefore use every opportunity for displaying his
+pupils' voices on the stage. Too much stress, however, must not be laid
+upon this last condition, because Lyly had already written three songs
+for _Campaspe_ and four for _Sapho and Phao_ before he became connected
+with St Paul's, a fact which points again to de Vere, himself a lyrist
+of considerable powers, as Lyly's adviser and master. Doubts, indeed,
+have been cast upon Lyly's authorship of these lyrics on the ground that
+they are omitted from the first edition of the plays. But we need, I
+think, have no hesitation in accepting Lyly as their creator, since the
+omission in question is fully accounted for by the fact that they were
+probably written separately from the plays, and handed round amongst the
+boys together with the musical score[124]. These songs are of various
+kinds and of widely different value. We have, for example, the purely
+comic poem, probably accompanied by gesture and pantomime, such as the
+song of Petulus from _Midas_, beginning, "O my Teeth! deare Barber ease
+me," with interruptions and refrains supplied by his companion and the
+scornful Motto. Many of these songs, indeed, are cast into dialogue
+form, sometimes each page singing a verse by himself, as in "O for a
+Bowle of fatt canary." This last is the earliest of Lyly's wine-songs,
+which for swing and vigour are among some of the best in our language,
+reminding us irresistibly of those pagan chants of the mediaeval
+wandering scholar which the late Mr Symonds has collected for us in his
+_Wine, Women, and Song_. The drinking song, "Io Bacchus," which occurs
+in _Mother Bombie_, is undoubtedly, I think, modelled on one of these
+earlier student compositions; the reference to the practice of throwing
+hats into the fire is alone sufficient to suggest it. But it is as a
+writer of the lyric proper that Lyly is best known. No one but Herrick,
+perhaps, has given us more graceful love trifles woven about some
+classical conceit. Mr Palgrave has familiarized us with the best, _Cupid
+and my Campaspe played_, but there are others only less charming than
+this. The same theme is employed in the following:
+
+    "O Cupid! Monarch over Kings!
+     Wherefore hast thou feet and wings?
+     Is it to show how swift thou art,
+     When thou would'st wound a tender heart?
+     Thy wings being clipped, and feet held still,
+     Thy bow so many would not kill.
+     It is all one in Venus' wanton school
+     Who highest sits, the wise man or the fool!
+         Fools in love's college
+         Have far more knowledge
+     To read a woman over,
+     Than a neat prating lover.
+         Nay, 'tis confessed
+     That fools please women best[125]!"
+
+  [123] Bond, III. p. 433.
+
+  [124] Bond, I. p. 36, II. p. 265.
+
+  [125] _Mother Bombie_, Act III. Sc. III. 1-14.
+
+Another quotation must be permitted. This time it is no embroidered
+conceit, but one of those lyrics of pure nature music, of which the
+Renaissance poets were so lavish, touched with the fire of Spring, with
+the light of hope, bird-notes untroubled by doubt, unconscious of
+pessimism, which are therefore all the more charming for us who dwell
+amid sunsets of intense colouring, who can see nothing but the hectic
+splendours of autumn. For the melancholy nightingale the poet has
+surprise and admiration, no sympathy:
+
+    "What Bird so sings, yet so does wail?
+     O 'tis the ravished Nightingale.
+     Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu, she cries,
+     And still her woes at Midnight rise.
+     Brave prick song! who is't now we hear?
+     None but the lark so shrill and clear;
+     Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
+     The Morn not waking till she sings.
+     Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat
+     Poor Robin-red-breast tunes his note.
+     Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing
+     'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring,
+     'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring[126]."
+
+  [126] _Campaspe_, Act V. Sc. I. 32-44. I have modernised the spelling.
+
+This delightful song comes from the first of Lyly's dramas, and few even
+of Shakespeare's lyrics can equal it. Indeed, coming as it does at the
+dawn of the Elizabethan era, it seems like the cuckoo herself "to
+welcome in the spring."
+
+
+SECTION III. _Lyly's dramatic Genius and Influence._
+
+Having thus very briefly passed in review the various plays that Lyly
+bequeathed to posterity[127], 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.
+
+  [127] I have said nothing of the _Mayde's Metamorphosis_, as most
+  critics are agreed in assigning it to some unknown author.
+
+In Lyly, it is worth noticing, England has her first professional
+dramatist. Unlike those who had gone before him he was no amateur, he
+wrote for his living, and he wrote as one interested in the technical
+side of the theatre. They had played with drama, producing indeed
+interesting experiments, but accomplishing only what one would expect
+from men who merely took a lay interest in the theatre, and who
+possessed a certain knowledge, scholastic rather than technical, of the
+methods of the classical playwrights. He, having probably learnt at
+Oxford all there was to be known concerning the drama of the ancient
+world, came to London, and, definitely deciding to embark upon the
+dramatist's career, saw and studied such _moralities_ and plays as were
+to be seen, aided and directed by the experience and knowledge of his
+patron: finding in the _moralities_, allegory; in the plays of Udall and
+Stevenson, farce; in _Damon and Pithias_, a romantic play upon a
+classical theme; and in Gascoigne's _Supposes_, brilliant prose
+dialogue. That he was induced to make such a study, and that he was
+enabled to carry it out so thoroughly, was due partly, I think, to his
+peculiar financial position. As secretary of de Vere, and later as
+Vice-master of St Paul's School, he was independent of the actual
+necessity of bread-winning, which forced even Shakespeare to pander to
+the garlic-eating multitude he loathed, and wrung from him the cry,
+
+    "Alas, 'tis true I have been here and there
+     And made myself a motley to the view,
+     Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear" ...
+
+But, on the other hand, neither post was sufficiently remunerative to
+secure for him the comforts, still less the luxuries, of life. His
+income required supplementing, if only for the sake of meeting his
+tobacco bill, though I have a strong suspicion that the bills sent in to
+him served no more useful purpose than to light his pipe. But, however,
+adopting the theatre as his profession, he would naturally make a
+serious study of dramatic art, and, having no need for constantly
+filling the maw of present necessity, he could undertake such a study
+thoroughly and at his leisure. And to this cause his peculiar importance
+in the history of the Elizabethan stage is mainly due. Next to Jonson,
+the most learned of all the dramatists, yet possessing little of their
+poetical capacity, he set them the most conspicuous example in technique
+and stage-craft, in the science of play-writing, which they would
+probably have been far too busy to acquire for themselves. Lyly's eight
+dramas formed the rough-hewn but indispensable foundation-stone of the
+Elizabethan edifice. Spenser has been called the poet's poet, Lyly was
+in his own days the playwright's dramatist.
+
+Of his dramatic construction we have already spoken. We have noticed
+that he introduced the art of disguise; that he varied his action by
+songs, accompanied perhaps with pantomime. Mr Bond suggests further that
+he probably did much to extend the use of stage properties and
+scenery[128]. But the real importance of his plays lies in their plot
+construction and character drawing, points which as yet we have only
+touched upon. The way in which he manages the action of his plays shows
+a skill quite unapproached by anything that had gone before, and more
+pronounced than that of many which came after. Too often indeed we have
+dialogues, scenes, and characters which have no connexion with the
+development of the story; but when we consider how frequently
+Shakespeare sinned in this respect, we cannot blame Lyly for introducing
+a philosophical discussion between Plato and Aristotle, as in
+_Campaspe_, or those merry altercations between his pages which added so
+much colour and variety to his plays. However many interruptions there
+were, he never allowed his audience to forget the main business, as
+Dekker, for example, so frequently did. Nowhere, again, in Lyly's plays
+are the motives inadequate to support the action, as they were in the
+majority of dramas previous to 1580. Even Alexander's somewhat tame
+surrender of Campaspe is quite in accordance with his royal dignity and
+magnanimity; and, moreover, we are warned in the third act that the
+King's love is slight and will fade away at the first blast of the war
+trumpet, for as he tells us he is "not so far in love with Campaspe as
+with Bucephalus, if occasion serve either of conflict or of
+conquest[129]." In _Endymion_ the motives are perhaps most skilfully
+displayed, and lead most naturally on to the action, and in this play,
+also, Lyly is perhaps most successful in creating that dramatic
+excitement which is caused by working up to an apparent deadlock (due to
+the intrigues of Tellus), and which is made to resolve itself and
+disappear in the final act. Closely allied with the development of
+action by the presentation of motives is the weaving of the plot. And
+in this Lyly is not so satisfactory, though, of course, far in advance
+of his predecessors. A steady improvement, however, is discernible as he
+proceeds. In the earlier plays the page element does little more than
+afford comic relief: the encounters between Manes and his friends, and
+between Manes and his master, can hardly be dignified by the name of
+plot. It is in _Midas_, as I have already suggested, that this farcical
+under-current displays incident and action of its own, turning as it
+does upon the relations of the pages with Motto and the theft of the
+beard. Here again the comic scenes, now connected together for the first
+time, are also united with the main story. But the page element by no
+means represents Lyly's only attempt at creating an underplot. It will
+be seen from the story of _Endymion_ related above that in that play our
+author is not contented with a single passion-nexus, if the expression
+may be allowed, that of Tellus, Cynthia, and Endymion, but he gives us
+another, that of Eumenides and Semele, which has no real connexion with
+the action, but which seriously threatens to interrupt it at one point.
+Other interests are hinted at, rather than developed, by the infatuation
+of Sir Tophas for Dipsas, and by the history of the latter's husband.
+Though _Midas_ is more advanced in other ways, it displays nothing like
+the complexity of _Endymion_, and it is moreover, as I have said, cut in
+two by the want of connexion between the incident of the golden touch
+and that of the ass's ears. Lastly, in _Love's Metamorphosis_, which is
+without the element of farce, the relations between the nymphs and the
+shepherds complete that underplot of passion which is hinted at in
+_Sapho_, in the evident fancy which Mileta shows for Phao, and developed
+as we have just noticed in _Endymion_.
+
+  [128] Bond, II. pp. 265-266.
+
+  [129] _Campaspe_, Act III. Sc. IV. 31.
+
+In this plot construction and interweaving, Lyly had no models except
+the classics, and we may, therefore, say that his work in this direction
+was almost entirely original. The last-mentioned play was produced at
+Court some time before 1590, and we cannot doubt, was attended by our
+greatest dramatist. At any rate the lessons which Shakespeare learnt
+from Lyly in the matter of plot complication are visible in the
+_Midsummer Night's Dream_, which was produced in 1595[130]. The
+intricate mechanism of this play, reminding us with its four plots (the
+Duke and Hippolyta, the lovers, the mechanics, and the fairies) of the
+_miracle_ with its imposing but unimportant divinities in the Rood
+gallery, its main stage whereon moved human characters, its Crypt
+supplying the rude comic element in the shape of devils, and its angels
+who moved from one level to another welding the whole together, was far
+beyond Lyly's powers, but it was only possible even for Shakespeare
+after a thorough study of Lyly's methods.
+
+  [130] Sidney Lee, _Life_, p. 151.
+
+As I have previously pointed out, Lyly was not very successful in the
+matter of character drawing. Never, even for a moment, is passion
+allowed to disturb the cultured placidity of the dialogue. The
+conditions under which his plays were produced may in part account for
+this. The children of Paul's could hardly be expected to display much
+light and shade of emotion in their acting, certainly depth of passion
+was beyond their scope. But the fault, I think, lies rather in the
+dramatist than in the actors. Lyly's mind was in all probability
+altogether of too superficial a nature for a sympathetic analysis of the
+human soul. That at least is how I interpret his character. All his work
+was more "art than nature," some of it was "more labour than art." On
+the technical side his dramatic advance is immense, but we may look in
+vain in his dramas for any of that appreciation of the elemental facts
+of human nature which can alone create enduring art. In their
+characterization, Lyly's plays do little more than form a link between
+Shakespeare and the old _morality_. This comes out most strongly in
+their peculiar method of character grouping. By a very natural process
+the _moral_ type is split up with the intention of giving it life and
+variety. Thus we have those groups of pages, of maids-in-waiting, of
+shepherds, of deities, etc., which are so characteristic of Lyly's
+plays. There is no real distinction between page and page, and between
+nymph and nymph; but their merry conversations give a piquancy and
+colour to the drama which make up for, and in part conceal, the absence
+of character. All that was necessary for the creation of character was
+to fit these pieces of the _moral_ type together again in a different
+way, and to breathe the spirit of genius into the new creation. We can
+see Lyly feeling towards this solution of the problem in his portrayal
+of Gunophilus, the clown of _The Woman in the Moon_. This character,
+which anticipates the immortal clowns of Shakespeare, is formed by an
+amalgamation of the pages in the previous plays into one comic figure.
+But Lyly also attempts to create single figures, in addition to these
+group characters which for the most part have little to do with the
+action. Often he helps out his poverty of invention by placing
+descriptions of one character in the mouth of another. "How stately she
+passeth bye, yet how soberly!" exclaims Alexander watching Campaspe at a
+distance, "a sweet consent in her countenance with a chaste disdaine,
+desire mingled with coyness, and I cannot tell how to tearme it, a curst
+yeelding modestie!"--an excellent piece of description, and one which is
+very necessary for the animation of the shadowy Campaspe. At times
+however Lyly can dispense with such adventitious aids. Pipenetta, the
+fascinating little wench in _Midas_ and one of our dramatist's most
+successful creations, 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[131] that Tellus is the best. She is a character
+which exhibits considerable development, and she is also Lyly's only
+attempt to embody the evil principle in woman--a hint for the
+construction of that marvellous portrait of another Scottish queen, the
+Lady Macbeth, which Lyly just before his death in 1606 may have seen
+upon the stage.
+
+  [131] Bond, II. p. 284.
+
+On the whole Lyly is most successful when he is drawing women, which was
+only as it should be, if we allow that the feminine element is the very
+pivot of true comedy. This he saw, and it is because he was the first to
+realise it and to grapple with the difficulties it entailed that the
+title of father of English comedy may be given him without the least
+reserve or hesitation. Sapho the haughty but amorous queen, Mileta the
+mocking but tender Court lady, Gallathea the shy provincial lass, and
+Pipenetta the saucy little maid-servant, fill our stage for the first
+time in history with their tears and their laughter, their scorn of the
+mere male and their "curst yeelding modestie," their bold sallies and
+their bashful blushes. Nothing like this had as yet been seen in English
+literature. I have already pointed out why it was that woman asserted
+her place in art at this juncture. Yet, although the revolution would
+have come about in any case, all honour must be paid to the man who saw
+it coming, anticipated it, and determined its fortunes by the creation
+of such a number of feminine characters from every class in the social
+scale. And if it be true that he only gave us "their outward husk of wit
+and raillery and flirtation," if it be true that his interpretation of
+woman was superficial, that he had no understanding for the soul behind
+the social mask, for the emotional and passionate current, now a quiet
+stream, now a raging torrent, beneath the layer of etiquette, his work
+was none the less important for that.
+
+    "Blood and brain and spirit, three
+     Join for true felicity."
+
+Blood his girls had and brain, but his genius was not divine enough to
+bestow upon them the third essential. Yet they were alive, they were
+flesh, they had wit, and in this they are undoubtedly the forerunners
+not only of Shakespeare's heroines but of Congreve's and of
+Meredith'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 suitable than verse. Gascoigne's _Supposes_ was his model in both
+these innovations, and yet he would undoubtedly have adopted them of his
+own accord without any outside suggestion. And since _The Supposes_ was
+a translation, _Campaspe_ deserves the title of the first purely English
+comedy in prose. The _Euphues_ had given him a reputation for sprightly
+and witty dialogue, he himself was possibly known at Court as a
+brilliant conversationalist, and therefore when he came to write plays
+he would naturally do all in his power to maintain and to improve his
+fame in this respect. With his acute sense of form he would recognise
+how clumsy had been the efforts of previous dramatists, and he knew also
+how impossible it would be, in verse form, to write witty dialogue, up
+to date in the subjects it handled. He therefore determined to use
+prose, and, though he manipulates 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 succeeds in creating a thoroughly
+serviceable dramatic instrument. This departure was a great event in
+English literature. Shakespeare was too much of a poet ever to dispense
+altogether with verse, but he appreciated the virtue of prose as a
+vehicle of comic dialogue, and he uses it occasionally even in his
+earliest comedy, _Love's Labour's Lost_. Ben Jonson on the other
+hand--perhaps more than any other Lyly's spiritual heir--wrote nearly
+all his comedies in prose. And it is not fanciful I think to see in
+Lyly's pointed dialogue, tinged with euphuism, the forerunner of
+Congreve's sparkling conversation and of the epigrammatic writing of our
+modern English playwrights.
+
+Such are the main characteristics of Lyly's dramatic genius. To attempt
+to trace his influence upon later writers would be to write a history of
+the Elizabethan stage. In the foregoing remarks I have continually
+indicated Shakespeare's debt to him in matters of detail. _The Midsummer
+Night's Dream_ is from beginning to end full of reminiscences from the
+plays of the earlier dramatist, transmuted, vitalized, and beautified by
+the genius of our greatest poet. It is as if he had witnessed in one
+day a representation of all Lyly's dramatic work, and wearied by the
+effort of attention had fallen asleep and dreamt this _Dream_. _Love's
+Labour's Lost_ is only less indebted to Lyly; indeed nearly all
+Shakespeare's plays, certainly all his comedies, exhibit the same
+influence: for he knew his Lyly through and through, and his
+assimilative power was unequalled. Shakespeare might almost be said to
+be a combination of Marlowe and Lyly plus that indefinable something
+which made him the greatest writer of all time. Marlowe, his master in
+tragedy, was also his master in poetry, in that strength of conception
+and beauty of execution which together make up the soul of drama. Lyly,
+besides the lesson he taught him in comedy, was also his model for
+dramatic construction, brilliancy of dialogue, technical skill, and all
+that comprises the science of play-making--things which were perhaps of
+more moment to him, with his scanty classical knowledge, than Marlowe's
+lesson which he had little need of learning. And what we have said of
+Shakespeare may be said of Elizabethan drama as a whole. "Marlowe's
+place," writes Mr Havelock Ellis, "is at the heart of English poetry";
+his "high, astounding terms" took the world of his day by storm, his
+gift to English literature was the gift of sublime beauty, of
+imagination, and passion. Lyly could lay claim to none of these, but his
+contribution was perhaps of more importance still. He did the
+spade-work, and did it once and for all. With his knowledge of the
+Classics and of previous English experiments he wrote plays that,
+compared with what had gone before, were models of plot construction, of
+the development of action, and even of characterization. Moreover he was
+before Marlowe by some nine years in the production of true romantic
+drama, and in his treatment of women. In spite, therefore, of Marlowe's
+immense superiority to him on the aesthetic side, Lyly must be placed
+above the author of _Edward II._ in dynamical importance.
+
+In connexion with Lyly's influence the question of the exact nature of
+his dramatic productions is worth a moment's consideration. Are they
+masques or dramas? and if the latter are they strictly speaking
+classical or romantic in form? As I have already suggested, the answer
+to the first half of this question is that they were neither and both.
+In Lyly's day drama had not yet been differentiated from masque, and his
+plays, therefore, partook of the nature of both. Produced as they were
+for the Court, it was natural that they should possess something of that
+atmosphere of pageantry, music, and pantomime which we now associate
+with the word masque. But Elizabeth was economical and preferred plain
+drama to the expensive masque displays, though she was ready to enjoy
+the latter, if they were provided for her by Leicester or some other
+favourite. Lyly's work therefore never advanced very far in the
+direction of the masque, though in its complimentary allegories it had
+much in common with it. The question as to whether it should be
+described as classical rather than as romantic is not one which need
+detain us long. It is interesting however as it again brings out the
+peculiarity of Lyly's position. It may indeed be claimed for him that
+all sections of Elizabethan drama, except perhaps tragedy, are to be
+found in embryo in his plays. I have said that he was the first of the
+romanticists, but he was no less the first important writer of classical
+drama. _Gorbuduc_ and its like had been tedious and clumsy imitations,
+and, moreover, they had imitated Seneca, who was a late classic. Lyly,
+though the Greek dramatists were unknown to him, had probably studied
+Aristotle's _Poetics_, and was certainly acquainted with Horace's _Ars
+Poetica_, and with the comedies of Terence and Plautus. He was,
+therefore, an authority on matters dramatic, and could boast of a
+learning on the subject of technique which few of his contemporaries or
+his successors could lay claim to, and which they were only too ready to
+glean second-hand. And yet, though he was wise enough to appreciate all
+that the classics could teach him, he was a romanticist at heart, or
+perhaps it would be better to say that he threw the beautiful and
+loosely fitting garment of romanticism over the classical frame of his
+dramas. And even in the matter of this frame he was not always orthodox.
+He bowed to the tradition of the unities: but he frequently broke with
+it; in _The Woman_ alone does he confine the action to one day; and,
+though he is more careful to observe unity of place, imaginary transfers
+occurring in the middle of scenes indicate his rebellion against this
+restriction. Nevertheless, when all is said, he remains, with the
+exception of Jonson, the most classical of all Elizabethan playwrights,
+and just as he anticipates the 17th and 18th 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[132]"
+that constitutes his supreme importance, 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
+nothing to check, and which was eventually to lay its dead hand upon the
+art of the 18th century. May we not say more than this? Is he not the
+first name in a continuous series from 1580 to our own day, the first
+link in the chain of dramatic development, which binds the "singing room
+of Powles" to the Lyceum of Irving? And it is interesting to notice that
+the principle which he was the first to express shows at the present
+moment evident signs of exhaustion; for its future developments seem to
+be limited to that narrow strip of social melodrama, which lies between
+the devil of the comic opera and the deep sea of the Ibsenic problem
+play. Indeed it would not be altogether fanciful, I think, to say that
+_The Importance of being Earnest_ finishes the process that _Campaspe_
+started; and to view that process as a circle begun in euphuism, and
+completed in aestheticism.
+
+  [132] Bond, II. p. 266.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+At the beginning of this essay I gave a short account of the main facts
+of our author's life, reserving my judgment 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 advocated by M. Hennequin[133]. But
+though this essay cannot claim to have exhausted the subject of the ways
+and means of Lyly's art, yet in the course of our survey we have had
+occasion to notice several interesting points in reference to his mind
+and character, which it will be well to bring together now in order to
+give a portrait, however inadequate, of the man who played so important
+a part in English literature.
+
+  [133] _La Critique Scientifique._
+
+Nash supplies the only piece of contemporary information about his
+person and habits, and all he tells us is that he was short of stature
+and that he smoked. But Ben Jonson gives us an unmistakeable caricature
+of him under the delightfully appropriate name of Fastidious Brisk in
+_Every Man out of His Humour_. He describes him as a "neat, spruce,
+affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well, and in fashion;
+practiseth by his glass how to salute; speaks good remnants
+notwithstanding his base viol and tobacco; swears tersely and with
+variety; cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's
+familiarity: a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will
+borrow another man's horse to praise and back him as his own. Or, for a
+need can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the
+gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand[134]." Allowing for the
+exaggeration of satire, we cannot doubt that this portrait is in the
+main correct. It indicates a man who follows fashion, even in swearing,
+to the excess of foppery, who delights in scandal, who contracts debts
+with an easy conscience, and who is withal a merry fellow and a wit. All
+this is in accordance with what we know of his life. We can picture him
+at Oxford serenading the Magdalen dons with his "base viol," or perhaps
+organizing a night party to disturb the slumbers of some insolent
+tradesman who had dared to insist upon payment; his neat little figure
+leading a gang of young rascals, and among them the "sea-dog" Hakluyt,
+the sturdy and as yet unconverted Gosson, the refined Watson, and
+perchance George Pettie concealing his thorough enjoyment of the
+situation by a smile of elderly amusement. Or yet again we can see him
+at the room of some boon companion seriously announcing to a convulsed
+assembly his intention 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 permits, for he is now author of the
+much-talked-of _Anatomy of Wit_, and one of the most fashionable young
+men of the Court. What elaboration of toilet, what adjustment and
+readjustment of ruffles and lace, what bowing and scraping before the
+glass, preceded that great event of his life--his presentation to the
+Queen--can only be guessed at. But we can well picture him, following
+his magnificently over-dressed patron up the long reception-room, his
+heart beating with pleasurable excitement, yet his manners not forgotten
+in the hour of his pride, as he nods to an acquaintance and bows with
+sly demureness to some Iffida or Camilla. Those were the days of his
+success, the happiest period of his life when, as secretary to the Lord
+Chamberlain and associate of the highest in the land, he breathed his
+native atmosphere, the praises and flattery of a fickle world of
+fashion. But, time-server as he was, he was no sycophant. Leaving de
+Vere's service after a sharp quarrel, he was not ashamed to take up the
+profession of teaching in which he had already had some experience. We
+see him next, therefore, a master of St Paul's, engrossed in the not
+unpleasant duties of drilling his pupils for the performance of his
+plays, accompanying their songs on his instrument, or himself taking his
+place on the stage, now as Diogenes in his ubiquitous tub, and now as
+the golden-bearded and long-eared Midas. And last of all he appears as
+the disappointed, disillusioned man, "infelix academicus ignotus." A
+wife and children on his hands, his occupation gone, his hopes of the
+Revels Mastership blasted, he becomes desperate, and writes that last
+bitter letter to Elizabeth.
+
+  [134] From the _Preface_.
+
+The man of fashion out of date, the social success left high and dry by
+the unheeding current, he died eventually in poverty, not because he had
+wasted his substance, like Greene, in Bohemia, but because, thinking to
+take Belgravia by storm, he had forgotten that the foundations of that
+city are laid on the bodies of her sons. But leaving
+
+    "The thrice three muses mourning for the death
+     Of Learning late deceased in beggary,"
+
+let us look more closely into the character of this man, whose brilliant
+and successful youth was followed by so sad an old age.
+
+In spite of Professor Raleigh and the moralizing of _Euphues_, we may
+decide that there was nothing of the Puritan about him. His life at
+Oxford, his attachment to the notorious de Vere, the keen pleasure he
+took in the things of this world, are, I think, sufficient to prove
+this. His general attitude towards life was one of vigorous hedonism,
+not of intellectual asceticism. The ethical element of _Euphues_ links
+him rather to the already vanishing Humanism than to the rising
+Puritanism, against which all his sympathies were enlisted, as his
+contributions to the _Marprelate_ controversy indicate. I have refrained
+from touching upon these _Mar-Martin_ tracts because they possess
+neither aesthetic nor dynamical importance, being, as Gabriel
+Harvey--always ready with the spiteful epigram--describes them,
+"alehouse and tinkerly stuffe, nothing worthy a scholar or a real
+gentleman." They are worth mentioning, however, as throwing a light upon
+the religious prejudices of our author. He was a courtier and he was a
+churchman, and in lending his aid to crush sectarians he thought no more
+deeply about the matter than he did in voting as Member of Parliament
+against measures which conflicted with his social inclinations. There
+was probably not an ounce of the theological spirit in his whole
+composition; for his refutation of atheism was a youthful essay in
+dialectics, a bone thrown to the traditions of the moral Court
+treatise.
+
+If, indeed, he was seriously minded in any respect, it was upon the
+subject of Art. Himself a novelist and dramatist, he displayed also a
+keen delight in music, and evinced a considerable, if somewhat
+superficial, interest in painting. And yet, though he apparently made it
+his business to know something of every art, he was no sciolist, and, if
+he went far afield, it was only in order to improve himself in his own
+particular branch. All the knowledge he acquired in such amateur
+appreciation was brought to the service of his literary productions. And
+the same may be said of his extensive excursions into the land of books.
+No Elizabethan dramatist but Lyly, with the possible exception of
+Jonson, could marshal such an array of learning, and few could have
+turned even what they had with such skill and effect to their own
+purposes. Lyly had made a thorough study of such classics as were
+available in his day, and we have seen how he employed them in his novel
+and in his plays. But the classics formed only a small section of the
+books digested by this omnivorous reader. If he could not read Spanish,
+French, or Italian, he devoured and assimilated the numerous
+translations from those languages into English, Guevara indeed being his
+chief inspiration. Nor did he neglect the literature of his own land.
+Few books we may suppose, which had been published in English previous
+to 1580, had been unnoticed by him. We have seen what a thorough
+acquaintance he possessed of English drama before his day, and how he
+exhibits the influence of the writings of Ascham and perhaps other
+humanists, how he laid himself under obligation to the bestiaries and
+the proverb-books for his euphuistic philosophy, and how his lyrics
+indicate a possible study of the mediaeval scholar song-books. In
+conclusion, it is interesting to notice that we have clear evidence that
+he knew Chaucer[135].
+
+  [135] Bond, I. p. 401.
+
+Idleness, therefore, cannot be urged against him; nor does this imposing
+display of learning indicate a pedant. Lyly had nothing in common with
+the spirit of his old friend Gabriel Harvey, whom indeed he laughed at.
+There is a story that Watson and Nash invited a company together to sup
+at the Nag's Head in Cheapside, and to discuss the pedantries of Harvey,
+and our euphuist in all probability made one of the party. His erudition
+sat lightly on him, for it was simply a means to the end of his art.
+Moreover, a student's life could have possessed no attraction for one of
+his temperament. Unlike Marlowe 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 merriment, and his wit
+improved with experience, so that we may well believe that in the Court
+he was more Philautus than Euphues. In his writings also his aim was to
+be graceful rather than erudite; and, ponderous as his _Euphues_ 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 fingertips. Yet he was
+without the artist's ideals, and this fact, together with his frivolity,
+vitiated his writings to a considerable extent, or, rather, the
+superficiality of his art was the result of the superficiality of his
+soul. Of that "high seriousness," which Aristotle has declared to be the
+poet's essential, he has nothing. Technique throughout was his chief
+interest, and it is in technique alone that he can claim to have
+succeeded. "More art than nature" is a just criticism of everything he
+wrote, with the exception of his lyrics. He was supremely clever, one of
+the cleverest writers in our literature when we consider what he
+accomplished, and how small was the legacy of his predecessors; but he
+was much too clever to be simple. He excelled in the niceties of art, he
+revelled in the accomplishment of literary feats, his intellect was akin
+to the intellect of those who in their humbler fashion find pleasure in
+the solution of acrostics. And consequently his writings were frequently
+as finical as his dress was fastidious; for it was the form and not the
+idea which fascinated him; to his type of mind the letter was everything
+and the spirit nothing. Indeed, the true spirit of art was quite beyond
+his comprehension, though he was connoisseur enough to appreciate its
+presence in others. Artist and man of taste he was, but he was no poet.
+Artist he was, I have said, to the fingertips, but his art lay at his
+fingers' ends, not at his soul. He was facile, ingenious, dexterous,
+everything but inspired. He had wit, learning, skill, imagination, but
+none of that passionate apprehension of life which makes the poet, and
+which Marlowe and Shakespeare possessed so fully. And therefore it was
+his fate to be nothing more than a forerunner, a straightener of the
+way; and before his death he realised with bitterness that he was only a
+stepping-stone for young Shakespeare to mount his throne. He was,
+indeed, the draughtsman of the Elizabethan workshop, planning and
+designing what others might build. He was the expert mathematician who
+formulated the laws which enabled Shakespeare to read the stars. Of the
+heights and depths of passion he was unconscious; he was no
+psychologist, laying bare the human soul with the lancet; and though now
+and again, as in _Endymion_, he caught a glimpse of the silver beauties
+of the moon, he had no conception of the glories of the midday sun.
+
+And yet though he lacked the poet's sense, his wit did something to
+repair the defect, and even if it has a musty flavour for our pampered
+palates, it saves his writings from becoming unbearably wearisome; and
+moreover his fun was without that element of coarseness which mars the
+comic scenes of later dramatists who appealed to more popular audiences.
+But it is quite impossible for us to realise how brilliant his wit
+seemed to the Elizabethans before it was eclipsed by the genius of
+Shakespeare. Even as late as 1632 Blount exclaims, "This poet sat at the
+sunne's table," words referring perhaps more especially to Lyly's
+poetical faculty, but much truer if interpreted as an allusion to his
+wit. The genius of our hero played like a dancing sunbeam over the early
+Elizabethan stage. Never before had England seen anything like it, and
+we cannot wonder that his public hailed him in their delight as one of
+the greatest writers of all time. How could they know that he was only
+the first voice in a choir of singers which, bursting forth before his
+notes had died away, would shake the very arch of heaven with the
+passion and the beauty of their song? But for us who have heard the
+chorus first, the recitative seems poor and thin. The magic has long
+passed from _Euphues_, once a name to conjure with, and even the plays
+seem dull and lifeless. That it should be so was inevitable, for the wit
+which illuminated these works was of the time, temporary, the earliest
+beam of the rising sun. This sunbeam it is impossible to recover, and
+with all our efforts we catch little but dust.
+
+And yet for the scientific critic Lyly's work is still alive with
+significance. Worthless as much of it is from the aesthetic point of
+view, from the dynamical, the historical aspect few English writers are
+of greater interest. Waller was rescued from oblivion and labelled as
+the first of the classical poets. But we can claim more for Lyly than
+this. Extravagant as it may sound, he was one of the great founders of
+our literature. His experiments in prose first taught men that style was
+a matter worthy of careful study, he was among the earliest of those who
+realised the utility of blank verse for dramatic purposes, he wrote the
+first English novel in our language, and finally he is not only
+deservedly recognised as the father of English comedy, but by his
+mastery of dramatic technique he laid such a burden of obligation upon
+future playwrights that he placed English drama upon a completely new
+basis. Of the three main branches of our literature, therefore, two--the
+novel and the drama--were practically of his creation, and though his
+work suffered because it lacked the quality of poetry, for the historian
+of literature it is none the less important on that account.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF CHIEF AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+ARBER. The Martin Marprelate Controversy. Scholar's Library.
+
+ASCHAM, ROGER. The Schoolmaster. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+ASCHAM, ROGER. Toxophilus. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+BAKER, G. P. Lyly's Endymion.
+
+BARNEFIELD, RICHARD. Poems. Arber's Scholar's Library.
+
+BERNERS, LORD. The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius.
+
+BERNERS, LORD. Froissart's Chronicles. Globe Edition.
+
+BOAS. Works of Kyd. Clarendon Press.
+
+BOND, R. W. John Lyly. Clarendon Press. 3 Vols.
+
+BRUNET. Manuel de Libraire.
+
+BUTLER CLARKE. Spanish Literature.
+
+CHILD, C. G. John Lyly and Euphuism. _Muenchener Beitraege_ VII.
+
+CRAIK, SIR H. Specimens of English Prose.
+
+DICTIONARY of National Biography.
+
+EARLE. History of English Prose.
+
+FIELD, NATHANIEL. A Woman is a Weathercock.
+
+FITZMAURICE-KELLY. Spanish Literature. Heinemann.
+
+GAYLEY. Representative English Comedies.
+
+GOSSE. From Shakespeare to Pope.
+
+GOSSON. School of Abuse. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+GUEVARA, ANTONIO DE. Libro Aureo del emperado Marco Aurelio.
+
+HALLAM. Introduction to the Literature of Europe.
+
+HENNEQUIN. La Critique Scientifique.
+
+HUME, MARTIN. Spanish Influence on English Literature.
+
+JUSSERAND. The English Novel in the time of Shakespeare.
+
+LANDMANN, DR. Shakespeare and Euphuism. _New Shak. Soc. Trans._ 1880-2.
+
+LANDMANN, DR. Introduction to Euphues. Sprache und Literatur.
+
+LATIMER. Sermons. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+LEE, SIDNEY. Athenaeum, July 14, 1883.
+
+LEE, SIDNEY. Huon of Bordeaux (Berners'). Early Eng. Text Soc. Extra
+Series XL., XLI.
+
+LEE, SIDNEY. Life of Shakespeare.
+
+LIEBIG. Lord Bacon et les sciences d'observation en moyen age.
+
+LYLY. Euphues. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+MACAULAY, G. G. Introd. to Froissart's Chronicles. Globe Edition.
+
+MEREDITH, GEORGE. Essay on Comedy.
+
+MEZIERES. Predecesseurs et contemporains de Shakespeare.
+
+MINTO. Manual of English Prose Literature.
+
+NORTH, THOMAS. Diall of Princes.
+
+PEARSON, KARL. Chances of Death. Vol. II. _German Passion Play._
+
+PETTIE, GEORGE. Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure.
+
+RALEIGH, PROF. W. The English Novel.
+
+RETURN FROM PARNASSUS. Arber's Scholar's Library.
+
+SAINTSBURY. Specimens of English Prose.
+
+SPENCER, HERBERT. Essays--Philosophy of Style.
+
+SYMONDS, J. A. Shakespeare's Predecessors.
+
+UDALL, NICHOLAS. Ralph Roister Doister. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+UNDERHILL. Spanish Literature in Tudor England.
+
+WARD, DR A. W. English Dramatic Literature. 3 Vols.
+
+WARD, MRS H. "John Lyly," Article in _Enc. Brit._
+
+WATSON, THOMAS. Poems. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+WEBBE. Discourses of English Poetry. Arber's English Reprints.
+
+WEYMOUTH, DR R. F. On Euphuism. _Phil. Soc. Trans._ 1870-2.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+_Affectionate Shepherd_, 46
+
+_Albion's England_, 57
+
+Alencon, Duc d', 105
+
+_Amis and Amile_, 66
+
+_Anatomy of Wit_ (v. _Euphues_)
+
+Andrews, Dr, 55
+
+Arber (reprints), 12, 27, 38, 46
+
+_Arcadia_, 9, 51, 56, 58, 68, 82, 84
+
+Aretino, 48
+
+Ariosto, 94, 96
+
+Aristotle, 121, 129, 137
+
+Armada, Spanish, 110
+
+Arnold, Matthew, 47
+
+_Ars Poetica_ (of Horace), 130
+
+Ascham, 31, 37, 38, 39, 42, 50, 52, 67, 73, 74, 136
+
+_Athenae Oxonienses_, 4, 5
+
+_Athenaeum_, 30
+
+Athens, 69, 79
+
+_Aucassin and Nicolette_, 66
+
+Aurelius, Marcus, 22, 34, 69
+
+Austen, Jane, 80
+
+
+Bacon, Lord, 19, 47
+
+Baena, 48
+
+Baker, G. P., 4, 5, 7, 85, 98
+
+Baker, George, 28
+
+Baker, Robert, 28
+
+Barnefield, Richard, 46
+
+Berners, Lord, 22, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 66, 67
+
+Bertaut, Rene, 34, 35
+
+bestiaries, 20, 41, 136
+
+_Biographia Britannica_, 12
+
+Blackfriars, 100
+
+blank verse, 3, 97, 113
+
+Blount, 114, 139
+
+Boas, 45
+
+Boccaccio, 66, 67, 75
+
+Bond, R. W., 4, 5, 8, 9, 26, 30, 34, 43, 55, 60, 69, 72, 74, 78, 81, 85,
+  86, 87, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 108, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,
+  120, 125, 130, 137
+
+Brunet, 34
+
+Bryan, Sir Francis, 30, 31
+
+Burleigh, 4, 6, 7, 86, 133
+
+Butler Clarke, 49
+
+Byron (anticipated by Lyly), 77
+
+
+Cambridge, 7, 75, 87, 93
+
+_Campaspe_, 7, 85, 87, 98-102, 104, 105, 109, 116, 121, 124, 126
+
+_Canterbury Tales_, 65
+
+Carew, 27
+
+Carpenter, Edward, 19
+
+Castiglione, 48, 49, 72
+
+Caxton, 66, 67
+
+Cecil, 8
+
+_Celestina_, 24
+
+Charles VIII., 48, 66
+
+Chaucer, 65, 66, 137
+
+Cheke, Sir John, 26, 31, 37, 42, 50
+
+Child, C. G., 14, 15, 16, 56, 59
+
+choristers, 7, 8, 87, 92, 94, 116
+
+Christ Church, 26, 39
+
+Cicero, 12, 50
+
+_Civile Conversation_, 40
+
+comedy
+  before Lyly, 89-98
+  and folly, 90
+  and masque, 112
+  and music, 87, 92, 94, 116
+  and society, 88
+  and woman, 97-98, 100-101, 125-126
+
+Congreve, 88, 101, 126, 127
+
+_Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers, A_, 71
+
+Corpus Christi College (Oxford), 26
+
+Corro, Antonio de, 26, 28
+
+Cortes, 27
+
+Craik, Sir H., 28, 37, 38, 39
+
+_Cupid and my Campaspe played_, 115, 117
+
+_Cynthia_, 46
+
+
+_Damon and Pithias_, 93, 116, 119
+
+_De Educatione_ (of Plutarch), 72
+
+Dekker, Thomas, 114, 121
+
+Demosthenes, 12
+
+Devereux, Penelope, 109
+
+_Diall of Princes_, 22, 30, 39, 69
+
+_Diana_, 24
+
+Dickens, 79
+
+_Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier_, 31
+
+Doni, 48
+
+Dryden, 84
+
+dubartism, 51
+
+
+Earle, 53, 54
+
+education (Lyly's views on), 72-73
+
+_Edward II._, 129
+
+Edwardes, Richard, 86, 87, 93, 94, 95, 97, 101
+
+Eliot, George, 80
+
+Elizabeth, Queen, 3, 6, 8, 9, 17, 25, 26, 65, 75, 80, 81, 86, 98, 100,
+  101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 112, 129, 134
+
+Ellis, Havelock, 128
+
+_Endymion_, 85, 98, 99, 104, 107-110, 121, 122, 138
+
+_English Novel, The_ (v. Raleigh)
+
+_English Novel in the time of Shakespeare, The_ (v. Jusserand)
+
+Erasmus, 26
+
+_Estella_, 27
+
+Eton, 93
+
+_Euphues_
+  antecedents of, 65-69
+  criticism and description of
+    (i) _Anatomy of Wit_, 69-73
+    (ii) _Euphues and his England_, 76-80
+  dedication of, 74-76
+  distinction between the two parts, 73-74
+  Elizabethan reputation of, 10-13, 43-47, 57, 61, 84, 137
+  first English novel, 3, 10-11, 74, 140
+  moral tone of, 5, 71-72
+  publication and editions of, 6, 7, 8, 10, 43, 57, 61, 73, 83, 84
+  quoted, 4, 10, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 45, 58, 70, 76, 78
+
+_Euphues and his England_ (v. _Euphues_)
+
+_Euphues and his Ephoebus_, 72-73
+
+Euphuism
+  analysis of, 13-21
+  an aristocratic fashion, 3, 49, 54, 56, 61, 62
+  diction and, 56
+  humanism and, 36-39, 50-53
+  imitators of, 43-46
+  origins of, 21-43
+  Oxford and, 26-28, 39-42, 45-46, 54, 60, 61
+  poetry and, 55-56
+  Renaissance and, 47-52, 62
+  Scott's misapprehension of, 11
+  secret of Lyly's influence, 11-13
+  Spain and, 22-36
+
+_Every Man out of His Humour_, 132
+
+
+fabliau, the, 66
+
+_Faery Queen, The_, 103
+
+Field, Nathaniel, 44, 102
+
+Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 24
+
+Flaubert, 56
+
+Florence, 79
+
+Fortescue, 69
+
+France (and French), 22, 23, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 40, 42, 47, 48, 52, 53,
+  56, 61, 66, 80, 136
+
+_Froissart_, 31, 33, 35
+
+
+Gager, William, 39, 86
+
+_Gallathea_, 98, 107, 112
+
+_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, 93, 96, 116
+
+Gascoigne, George, 69, 94, 95, 97, 114, 119, 126
+
+Gayley, 91, 92, 94, 95
+
+Geoffrey of Dunstable, 92
+
+_Gesta Romanorum_, 66
+
+Gibbon, 58
+
+_Glasse for Europe, A_, 52, 81
+
+Goethe, 130
+
+_Golden Boke, The_, 22, 30, 31, 36, 37
+
+Gollancz, 109
+
+gongorism, 51
+
+Goodlet, Dr, 56
+
+_Gorbuduc_, 129
+
+Gosse, 36
+
+Gosson, Stephen, 4, 27, 28, 46, 53, 71, 86, 109, 133
+
+Granada, 24
+
+Greek, 48, 62
+
+Greene, 43, 135, 137
+
+Grey, Lady Jane, 74
+
+Guazzo, 40
+
+Guerrero, 26
+
+Guevara, Antonio de, 22-24, 28-31, 33-38, 40, 42, 49, 69, 72, 76, 136
+
+
+Habsburgs, 103
+
+Hakluyt, 24, 26, 27, 133
+
+Hallam, 33, 34
+
+Halpin, 109, 111
+
+Harrison, 69
+
+Harvey, Dr, 19
+
+Harvey, Gabriel, 6, 20, 42, 109, 135, 137
+
+_Hekatompathia_, 7, 45, 46
+
+Hennequin, 4, 132
+
+Henry VIII., 23, 31
+
+_Hernani_, 100
+
+Herrick, 117
+
+Heywood, 69, 92, 95, 96
+
+Homer, 67
+
+Horace, 130
+
+Hugo, Victor, 130
+
+humanism, 25, 26, 37, 50, 52, 53, 54, 67, 92, 135
+
+Hume, Martin, 24, 25
+
+_Huon of Bordeaux_, 30, 66
+
+Huss, John, 66
+
+
+_Importance of being Earnest, The_, 131
+
+Italy (and Italian), 24, 25, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 66, 67, 69, 74, 75, 78,
+  86, 94, 95, 136
+
+
+_Jacke Jugelar_, 96
+
+James I., 23
+
+James, Henry, 53
+
+Johnson, Dr, 58
+
+Jonson, Ben, 114, 120, 127, 130, 132, 136
+
+Jusserand, 18, 43, 65, 72, 76
+
+
+Katherine of Aragon, 23
+
+Kenilworth, 109
+
+Knox, John, 75
+
+Kyd, 43-46, 102, 115
+
+_Kynge Johan_, 99
+
+
+_Lady Windermere's Fan_, 88
+
+Landmann, Dr, 14, 16, 22, 24, 29, 30, 31, 40, 42, 47, 69, 75
+
+Latimer, 36
+
+_Lazarillo de Tormes_, 24
+
+Lee, Sidney, 12, 29-33, 123
+
+Leicester, Earl of, 107, 109, 129
+
+_Libro Aureo_ (v. Guevara)
+
+Liebig, 19
+
+_Literature of Europe_, 33, 34
+
+Lodge, Thomas, 27, 43
+
+Lok, Henry, Thomas, and Michael, 26, 27
+
+London, 7, 71, 78, 91, 114, 119
+
+London, Bishop of, 8
+
+_Love's Labour's Lost_, 110, 113, 127, 128
+
+_Love's Metamorphosis_, 98, 112, 113, 122
+
+Luther, 89
+
+Lyly, John:
+  character and genius, 3, 51, 62, 63, 123, 137-139
+  compared with Marlowe, 128-129
+  courtier and man of fashion, 63, 87, 88, 98, 103, 110, 134, 135
+  dramatist, 7, 8, 9, 85-131
+  forerunner of Shakespeare, 43, 47, 95, 100, 101, 102, 105, 109-111,
+    116, 123, 124, 127-128, 130, 138-139
+  friends of, 26-28, 39, 42, 46, 53, 54, 61, 133, 135, 137
+  Jonson's caricature of, 132-133
+  learning, 17, 20, 38, 69, 86, 95, 119-120, 130, 136-137
+  life, 4-9, 86-88, 119-120, 132-135
+  novelist, 10, 64-84
+  poet, 3, 110, 113, 115-118, 138, 139
+  position in English literature, 2-3, 10-13, 51, 52-63, 65-69, 73-84,
+    98-131, 138-140
+  prose, 3, 11-21, 52-63, 97, 126-127
+  reputation, 9, 11-13, 43, 57, 58, 60, 61
+
+lyrics, 115-118
+
+
+Macaulay, G. C., 33
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 80
+
+_Macbeth_, 125
+
+Magdalen College (Oxford), 4, 6, 86, 133
+
+Malory, 66, 67
+
+Marini, 48
+
+_Marius the Epicurean_, 50
+
+Marlowe, 3, 47, 113, 128-129, 137, 138
+
+_Martin Marprelate_, 3, 8, 114, 135-136
+
+Mary (Tudor), 25, 26
+
+Mary (of Scots), 109
+
+masque, 112, 129
+
+Maupassant, Guy de, 75
+
+_Mayde's Metamorphosis_, 119
+
+Mendoza, 23, 24
+
+Meredith, George, 53, 79, 88, 97, 126
+
+_Midas_, 98, 104, 110-112, 117, 122, 125
+
+_Midsummer Night's Dream_ (anticipated by Lyly), 105, 109-111, 123, 127
+
+Milton, 55
+
+miracle-play, the, 89-91, 123
+
+_Monastery, The_, 11
+
+Montemayor, 23, 24
+
+moral court treatise, the, 49, 65, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75
+
+morality-play, the, 70, 89-92, 94, 99, 102, 119, 124
+
+_Morte d'Arthur_, 66, 67
+
+_Mother Bombie_, 98, 105, 114-117
+
+Munday, Anthony, 28, 43
+
+_Murder of John Brewer, The_, 115
+
+
+Naples, 69
+
+Nash, 23, 55, 56, 84, 114, 137
+
+Newton, 19
+
+Nicholas, Thomas, 27
+
+North, Sir Thomas, 22, 29, 30, 39
+
+novella, the, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74, 75
+
+
+Ovid, 17, 69, 111
+
+Oxford, 4-7, 25-28, 39, 42, 46, 49, 53, 61, 69, 72, 86, 87, 93, 95, 119,
+  133, 137
+
+Oxford, Earl of (v. Vere, Edward de)
+
+
+Painter, William, 40
+
+Palgrave, 117
+
+_Palamon and Arcite_, 86
+
+_Pallace of Pleasure_, 40
+
+_Pamela_, 83
+
+pastoral romance, 23, 68
+
+Petrarchisti, 48
+
+Pettie, George, 32, 39, 40, 41, 46, 53, 56, 69, 86, 133
+
+_Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure_, 40, 69
+
+Philip II. of Spain (caricatured by Lyly), 110
+
+picaresque romance, 23
+
+Plato, 67, 75, 79, 121
+
+Plautus, 92
+
+_Play of the Wether, The_, 93
+
+_Pleasant History of the Conquest of West India_, 27
+
+Pliny, 17, 20, 41, 69, 100
+
+Plutarch, 17, 69, 72, 73
+
+_Poetics of Aristotle, The_, 130
+
+puritanism, 3, 26, 57, 71, 135
+
+Puttenham, 87
+
+
+Quick, 73
+
+Quintilian, 12
+
+
+Raleigh, Prof. W., 20, 55, 57, 65, 71, 84, 135
+
+_Ralph Roister Doister_, 93, 110, 114, 116
+
+Renaissance, the, 25, 47-52, 62, 64, 66, 68, 95, 115, 118
+
+Revels' Office, the, 8, 9, 103, 134
+
+Richardson, 72, 83
+
+Rogers, Thomas, 27
+
+romance of chivalry, 65-68, 75
+
+Ronsard, 61
+
+Rowland, 24
+
+
+_Sacharissa_, 13
+
+Sainte Beuve, 53
+
+St Paul's Choir School, 7, 8, 87, 99, 109, 116, 119, 123, 131, 134
+
+Saintsbury, Prof., 27
+
+Sallust, 37
+
+_Sapho and Phao_, 7, 87, 98, 99, 104-107, 116, 122
+
+Savoy Hospital, the, 7
+
+_School of Abuse, The_, 27
+
+_Schoolmaster, The_, 38, 50, 52, 67, 73, 75
+
+Schwan, Dr, 56
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 11
+
+Seneca, 129
+
+Shakespeare, 2, 9, 43, 47, 55, 95, 100, 101, 102, 105, 109, 110, 111,
+  113, 115, 116, 118, 120-124, 127, 128, 130, 138, 139
+
+Sheridan, 88
+
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 23, 27, 55, 58, 68, 82, 84
+
+_Sixe Court Comedies_, 114
+
+_Soliman and Perseda_, 45
+
+Soto, Pedro de, 26
+
+Spain (and Spanish), 22-28, 30, 31, 33-36, 40, 42, 47, 48, 52, 66, 69,
+  136
+
+_Spanish Tragedy, The_, 43, 44, 45
+
+Spencer, Herbert, 61
+
+Spenser, 103, 120
+
+_Stella_, 109
+
+Stevenson, 93, 95, 114, 119
+
+Stratford, 109
+
+_Suppositi_ (_Supposes_), 94, 119, 126
+
+Surrey, 31
+
+Symonds, J. A., 47, 62, 91, 93, 104, 117
+
+
+Taine, 1
+
+_Tamburlaine_, 113
+
+_Taming of the Shrew, The_, 93
+
+Tasso, 48
+
+Tents and Toils (office of), 8
+
+Terence, 50, 92, 96
+
+Thackeray, 77
+
+_Timon of Athens_ (anticipated by Lyly), 101
+
+_Toxophilus_, 38
+
+Tully (v. Cicero)
+
+
+Udall, Nicholas, 87, 93, 95, 96, 97, 114, 116, 119
+
+Underhill, 23, 24, 27, 28, 34, 36, 40
+
+
+Vere, Edward de, 7, 28, 46, 86, 87, 116, 119, 134
+
+Villa Garcia, 26
+
+Virgil, 17, 50
+
+Vives, 25, 26
+
+
+Waller, 12, 140
+
+Ward, Dr, 8, 92, 93
+
+Ward, Mrs H., 30, 80
+
+Warner, 43, 57
+
+Watson, Thomas, 7, 45, 46, 49, 53, 133, 137
+
+Webbe, William, 11
+
+Welbanke, 43
+
+West, Dr, 33, 34
+
+Weymouth, Dr, 14
+
+Wilkinson, 43
+
+_Wine, Women and Song_, 117
+
+_Woman in the Moon, The_, 98, 112, 113, 124, 130
+
+_Woman is a Weathercock, A_, 44
+
+women, importance of, in the Elizabethan age, 74-76, 80-82, 97-98,
+  100-101, 125-126, 128
+
+Wood, Anthony a, 4, 5, 86
+
+Wyatt, 31
+
+Wycliff, 66
+
+Wynkyn de Worde, 66
+
+
+Zola, 75
+
+
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of John Lyly, by John Dover Wilson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN LYLY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 22525.txt or 22525.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/5/2/22525/
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jana Srna and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.