and at last is married to a lady whom he calls his Violet. Euphues leaves him happily settled in England, and concludes with a neatly worded panegyric of Elizabeth and her Court, entitled 'Euphues' Glass for Europe.'

II.

Such is the slender thread of narrative on which Lyly strung his multitudinous reflections-some commonplace, some wise, some whimsical, some quaint, but all relating to the inexhaustibly attractive themes of love and conduct. The story lacks definite outline and strong colouring, but it was of a kind which won acceptance in that age. The popularity of Greene's novels and Sidney's Arcadia' is not less inexplicable to a modern reader than the fascination exercised by 'Euphues.' The thought-except, perhaps, in one tractate upon education, entitled Euphues and his Ephœbus'—is rarely pregnant or profound. Yet Lyly's facile handling of grave topics, his casuistry of motives and criticism of life, exactly suited the audience he had in view. He tells us that he meant his Euphues' for gentlewomen in their hours of recreation. I am content that your dogs lie in your laps, so " Euphues" may be in your hands; that when you shall be weary in reading of the one, you may be ready to sport with the other.' And again: "Euphues" had rather lie shut in a lady's casket than open in a scholar's study.' In days when there were no circulating libraries and magazines, Euphues' passed for pleasant and instructive reading. The ladies, for whom it was written, had

LITERARY AIM OF EUPHUES?

503

few books except romances of the Round Table and the Twelve Peers; and these, though stimulating to the imagination, failed to exercise the wit and understanding. The loves of Lancelot and Tristram were antiquated and immoral. The doughty deeds of Paladins suited a soldier's rather than a damsel's fancy. Lyly supplied matter light enough to entertain an idle moment, yet sensible and wholesome. He presented in an English dress the miscellaneous literature of the Italians, combining Alberti's ethical disquisitions with Sannazzaro's narratives, but avoiding the licentiousness which made Painter's translations from the Novellieri an object of just suspicion. Furthermore, he popularised some already celebrated writings of a meritorious but affected Spanish author, and succeeded in presenting all this miscellaneous matter in a piquant form, which passed for originality of style. The love tales of Euphues, Philautus, and Fidus, served for polite fiction. The discourses on marriage, education, politics, and manners, conveyed some such diluted philosophy as ladies of the present day imbibe from magazines and newspapers. The inartistic blending of these divers elements in a prolix, languidly conducted romance, did not offend against the taste of Lyly's age.

III.

The success of this book was sudden and astounding. Two editions of the first part were exhausted in 1579, a third in 1580, a fourth in 1581. Between that date and 1636 it was nine times reprinted. The second part enjoyed a similar run of luck. How greedily its

pages were devoured, is proved by the extreme rarity of the earliest editions. After 1636 this gale of popularity suddenly dropped. The Euphues' of 'eloquent · and witty John Lyly,' as Meres styled its author; the Euphues,' which Webbe had praised for singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and sentences,' for 'fit phrases, pithy sentences, gallant tropes, flowing speech, plain sense;' the 'Euphues,' which won for Lyly from John Eliot the epithet of 'raffineur de l'Anglais;' the Euphues,' which, in the words of Edward Blount, had taught our nation a new English, and so enthralled society that 'that Beauty in Court which could not parley Euphuism, was as little regarded as she which now there speaks not French;' this 'Euphues,' the delight of ladies and the school of poets, passed suddenly out of fashion, and became a byword for false taste and obsolete absurdity. Historians of literature joined in condemning without reading it. Sir Walter Scott essayed a parody, which proved his ignorance of the original. At length in 1868, nearly three centuries after its first appearance and sudden triumph, nearly two centuries and a half after its last issue and no less sudden loss of popularity, English students received a scholarly reprint from the hands of Professor Arber.

Those who peruse this volume will be inclined to moralise on fashion; to wonder how a work so signally devoid of vivid interest excited such enthusiasm, or became the object of such vehement abuse. The truth is that, besides the novelty of his performance, on which I have already dwelt, Lyly owed his great success to what we recognise as the defects of his

style. When literary popularity is based on faults accepted by the bad taste of an epoch for transcendent merits, it is foredoomed to a decline as rapid as its uprise, and to reaction as powerful as the forces which promoted it. Euphues entranced society in the sixteenth century, because our literature, in common with that of Italy and Spain and France, was passing through a phase of affectation, for which Euphuism was the national expression. It corresponded to something in the manners and the modes of thinking which prevailed in Europe at that period. It was the English type of an all but universal disease. There would have been Euphuism, in some form or other, without Euphues; just as the so-called æsthetic movement of to-day might have dispensed with its Bunthorne, and yet have flourished. Lyly had the fortune to become the hero of his epoch's follies, to fix the form of fashionable affectation, and to find the phrases he had coined in his study, current on the lips of gentlemen and ladies.

Euphuism not only coloured the manners of polite society, but it also penetrated literature. We trace it, or something very like it, in the serious work of Sidney and of Shakspere; in the satires of Nash and the conceits of Donne; in the theological lucubrations of Puritan divines and the philosophical rhapsodies of Sir Thomas Browne. The specific affectations of the Court might be satirised by Shakspere or by Jonson; yet neither Jonson nor Shakspere was free from mannerisms, of which Lyly's style was only symptomatic. Sidney is praised for avoiding its salient blemishes; but Sidney revelled in conceits and disser

tations on romantic topics, which a modern student scarcely thinks it worth his while to separate from Euphuism. Perched on the pinnacle of history and criticism, at the distance of three centuries, we are able to confound Lyly with his censors, and to perceive clearly that the purest among his contemporaries were tarred with the same pitch. It is only the mediocrity of his genius, combined with his good or evil luck in producing an eponymous work of fiction, which renders him conspicuous. He helped to 'fish the murex up,' and dyed the courtly wardrobe with its purple. This gives Euphuism real importance, and forces us to ask ourselves exactly what it was.

IV.

The medieval mind delighted in allegories, symbolism, scholastic distinctions. Science was unknown. Men ascribed strange potencies to plants and minerals and living creatures. The Bestiaries of the convents set forth a system of zoology, invented for edification. No one cared to ascertain what a thing really was. It sufficed to discover some supposed virtue in the thing, or to extract from it some spiritual lesson. When the Revival of Learning began in Italy, students transferred their attention from theology and scholastic logic to classical literature; but they could not shake off the medieval modes of thinking. The critical faculty was still dormant. Every ancient author had equal value in their eyes. A habit was formed of citing the Greeks and Romans upon all occasions, parading a facile knowledge of