CHAPTER III.
LYLY AND HIS "EUPHUES."
I.
The romance which, at this period, received a new life, and was to comenearer to our novels than anything that had gone before, has many traitsin common with the fanciful style of the architecture, costume, andconversation described above. What have we to do, thought men, withthings practical, convenient, or of ordinary use? We wish for nothingbut what is brilliant, unexpected, extraordinary. What is the good ofsetting down in writing the incidents of commonplace lives? Are they notsufficiently known to us? does not their triviality sadden us enoughevery day? If we are told stories of imaginary lives, let them at leastbe dissimilar from our own; let them offer unforeseen incidents; let theauthor be free to turn aside from reality provided that he leaves thetrivial and the ordinary. Let him lead us to Verona, Athens, intoArcadia, where he will, but as far as possible from Fleet Street! And ifby ill-luck he sets foot in Fleet Street, let him at least speak thelanguage of Arcadia!
Authors found this advice excellent, and took good care to relievethemselves of difficult search after the mere truth. The public whoimposed these laws, this exacting public of women who read Plutarch andPlato, who judged the merits of great men as learnedly as the cut of aruff, found at the very moment they most wanted him the author who couldplease them in the person of a novel writer, the famous Lyly. Attwenty-five years of age, John Lyly, a _protege_ of Lord Burghley, whowas at this same time busy with his own architectural poem, if one maysay so, of Burghley House, wrote "Euphues,"[67] a new kind too of"paper-work" with which people were enraptured.
It was written expressly for women, and not only did the author notconceal the circumstance, but he proclaimed it aloud. Their opinionalone interested him, to that of the critics he was indifferent. "Itresteth Ladies," he said, "that you take the paines to read it, but atsuch times, as you spend in playing with your little dogges, and yetwill I not pinch you of that pastime, for I am content that your doggeslie in your laps: so 'Euphues' may be in your hands, that when you shallbe wearie in reading of the one, you may be ready to sport with theother.... 'Euphues' had rather lye shut in a Ladyes casket, then openin a Schollers studie." Yet after dinner, "Euphues" will still beagreeable to the ladies, adds Lyly, always smiling; if they desire toslumber, it will bring them to sleep which will be far better thanbeginning to sew and pricking their fingers when they begin to nod.[68]
There is no possibility of error; with Lyly commences in England theliterature of the drawing-room, that of which we speak at morning calls,productions which, in spite of vast and many changes, still occupy afavourite place on the little boudoir tables. We must also notice whatpains Lyly gives himself to make his innovation a success, and so pleasehis patronesses, and how he ornaments his thoughts and engarlands hisspeeches, how cunningly he imbues himself with the knowledge of theancients and of foreigners, and what trouble he gives himself to improveupon the most learned and the most florid of them. His care was notthrown away. He was spoiled, petted, and caressed by the ladies; with animpartial heart they extended to the author the same favour they grantedto the book, and to their little dogs. He was proclaimed king of lettersby his admirers, and became, in fact, king of the _precieux_. He createda school, and the name of his hero served to baptize a whole literature.This particular form of bad style was called _euphuism_.
II.
Euphuism owes to him its name and its diffusion in England; but not,although it is usually so stated, its birth. This strange language, asDr. Landmann[69] has well demonstrated, was imported from Spain intoEngland, and Lyly was not the first to use it in this country. The worksof Guevara, turned into English by five or six different translators,had a considerable vogue and acclimatized this extraordinary style inGreat Britain. One of his writings especially, "The golden boke ofMarcus Aurelius, emperour," enjoyed a very great popularity; it wastranslated by Lord Berners in 1532, and by Sir Thomas North in 1557,[70]and went through many editions. The moral dissertations of which it isfull enchanted serious minds; the unusual language of Spain delightedfrivolous souls. Before Lyly, English authors had already imitated it;but when Lyly appeared and embellished it even more, enthusiasm ran sohigh that its foreign progenitor was forgotten, and this exotic stylewas rebaptized as proof of adoption and naturalization in England.
Since it is not a natural product, but the mere result of ingeniousartifices, nothing is easier than to reduce it to its component parts,to take it to pieces so to speak. It consists in an immoderate,prodigious, monstrous use of similes, so arranged as to set upantitheses in every limb of the sentence. What is peculiar to theEnglish imitators, is the employment of alliteration, in order to bettermark the balance of the sentences written for effect. Finally, the kindof similes even has something peculiar: they are for the most partborrowed from an imaginary ancient history and a fantastical naturalhistory, a sort of mythology of plants and stones to which the mostextraordinary virtues are attributed.
In the important parts, when he means to use a noble style, Lyly cannotrelate the most trivial incident without setting up parallels betweenthe sentiments of his characters and the virtues of toads, serpents,unicorns, scorpions, and all the fantastical animals mentioned in Plinyor described in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. His knowledge ofzoology resembles that of Richard de Fournival, who, in the thirteenthcentury, lamented in his "Bestiaire d'Amour,"[71] that he was like thewolf, who, when instead of first noticing the man, allowed the man tosee him first, lost all his courage; or like the cricket who loveschirping so much that he forgets to eat and allows himself to be caught.Richard was overcome in like manner by the glances of his mistress, andall his songs only served to accomplish his ruin. The woman he lovesresembles the bird called "Kalander," or again, the animal called"cockatrice" or "cocodrille," which is often mentioned by Lyly. "Itsnature is such that when it finds a man, then it devours him, and whenit has devoured him, then it laments him all the days of its life."[72]Such is the conduct, says Richard, of women too beautiful and too muchbeloved.
THE "AEGYPTIAN OR LAND CROCODILE," 1608.]
Bestiaries had enjoyed an immense popularity from the earliest times.They were not all, far from it, like Richard de Fournival's,love-bestiaries; most of them had a religious tendency. Such were, forexample, in England, the well-known Anglo-Saxon bestiary,[73] or theEnglish bestiary of the thirteenth century, in which we read of theworld-famous wickedness of the whale who allows sailors to rest on herback, and even to light a fire thereon, in order to warm themselves;but as soon as she feels the heat she dives and drowns them all: anexample of what may be expected from the devil. There is, too, theelephant that leans against a tree to take his rest. People cunninglycut the tree, and replace it; when the elephant comes the tree falls andso does he, and is caught, an emblem of our father Adam, who also owedhis fall to a tree.[74] Again the "Contes Moralises" of Nicole Bozon,written in French by a friar who lived in England in the first half ofthe fourteenth century, are also full of the most curious comparisonsbetween the properties of animals, plants, and minerals, and the sinfultendencies and frailties of mankind.[75]
These are old, far-off examples, and it might be supposed that people ofeducation in Elizabethan England would have possessed a sounderknowledge of natural history. This was, however, not the case. And if wewish to know what were the current beliefs among well-informed men ofthe time about animals, we have only to open the two folio volumespenned with greatest care by painstaking Topsell, concerning"Foure-footed beastes" and "Serpents."[76] We shall then willingly setLyly and his followers free from all blame of exaggeration andimprobable inventions. Most often indeed they did not invent; theyknew. Topsell's books are nothing but a careful summary of the thengenerally accepted reports concerning animated creation.
His histories are the more curious as his scruples and earnestness areobvious. His purpose is high, and he means to write only for theCreator's glory, considering his subject to be a "part of Divinity thatwas never known in English. I take my owne
conscience to witness, whichis manifest to my Judge and Saviour, I have intended nothing but hisglory, that is the creator of all." Secondly, his serious attention tohis subject is shown by what he says of accessible animals; theengravings he gives of them, of dogs, for instance, of bulls, asses, andmany others being really excellent. Even rare animals, when by anychance he had secured a glimpse of them, are represented with the utmostcare; such, for instance, is his chameleon, of which he gives a verygood engraving, not long after careless Robert Greene had been writingof "this byrd, a camelion."[77]
But, then, nature is full of surprises, and so is Topsell's book. Hisantelopes are very dangerous things: "They have hornes ... which arevery long and sharpe; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced throughthe sheeldes of his souldiers, and fought with them very irefully: atwhich time his companions slew as he travelled to India, 8,550; whichgreat slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and sildomeseene to this day." Undoubtedly.
A HIPPOPOTAMUS TAKING ITS FOOD, 1607.]
The blood of the elephant has a very strange property: "Also it isreported that the blood of an elephant is the coldest blood in the worldand that Dragons in the scorching heate of summer cannot get anything tocoole them except this blood." The sea-horse, or hippopotamus, "is amost ugly and filthy beast, so called because in his voice and mane heresembleth a horsse, but in his head an oxe or a calfe; in the residueof his body a swine.... It liveth for the most part in rivers; yet it isof a doubtful life, for it brings forth and breedeth on the land."According to the accompanying engraving he apparently feeds oncrocodiles. The rhinoceros is remarkable for his breathing: he "hath anecke like unto a horsse and also the other parts of his body, but it issaid to breath out aire which killeth men."
But in this world of animals, which includes the Mantichora, theSphinga, the Papio, and a monster alive "in the territory of the bishopof Salceburgh," the most interesting is the Lamia. It is of such greatinterest because its very existence has been disputed, but quitewrongly. Some untrue reports were circulated concerning this animal, andas these accounts were fabulous, people have been found who disbelieved,not only the stories, but even the possibility that Lamiae existed.Topsell wisely takes a middle course: "These and such like stories andopinions there are of Phairies, which in my judgment arise from thepraestigious apparitions of Devils, whose delight is to deceive andbeguile the minds of men with errour, contrary to the truths of holyescripture which doeth no where make mention of such inchauntingcreatures; and therefore if any such be, we will holde them the workesof the Devill and not of God." But, then, there are true Lamiae, and "weshall take for granted by the testimony of holy scripture that there issuch a beast as this." The particulars Topsell was able to gather aboutthem are to the following effect: "The hinde parts of this beast arelike unto a goate, his fore legs like a beares, his upper parts to awoman, the body scaled all over like a Dragon, as some have observed, bythe observation of their bodies." Their wickedness is so great that itscarcely bears description: "They are the swiftest of foot of allearthly beasts, so as none can escape them by running, for by theircelerity, they compasse their prey of beastes, and by their fraud, theyoverthrow men. For when as they see a man, they lay open their breastes,and by the beauty thereof entice them to come neare to conference, andso having them within their compasse, they devoure and kill them." Somuch for four-footed beasts.[78]
THE LAMIA, ACCORDING TO TOPSELL, 1607.]
The "Historie of serpents" is not less instructive, for it contains,"with their lively figures: names, conditions, kindes and natures of allvenomous beasts: with their severall poisons and antidotes; their deepehatred to mankind and the wonderfull worke of God in their creation anddestruction." Among serpents are included: bees, drones, wasps, hornets,frogs, toads, tortoises, spiders, earthworms, and many other unexpected"venomous beasts." There is in this book information concerning theboas: "The Latines call it _Boa_ and _Bossa_ of _Bos_ because by suckingcowes milke it so encreaseth that in the end it destroyeth all manner ofherdes and cattels." The cockatrice, above named, "seemeth to be theking of serpents ... because of his stately face and magnanimous mind."The crocodile is to be carefully avoided, "even the Egyptians themselvesaccount a crocodile a savage and cruell murthering beast, as may appeareby their Hieroglyphicks, for when they will decypher a mad man, theypicture a crocodile." And Topsell goes on to relate the particularhatred which existed between crocodiles and the inhabitants of Tentyris,that exquisitely charming Denderah which overlooks the valley of theNile, and still deserves its old fame as the chief temple of the GoddessAthor, the Egyptian Aphrodite.
The dipsas, the hydra, the dragon, are also endowed with the mostremarkable qualities; but they seem to have disappeared since Topsell'sday. Not so another very wonderful animal of whom we continue to hearfrom time to time, I mean the great sea-serpent; this marvellous beastis not only described, but depicted in our naturalist's book. Topsellgives a faithful portrait of it, and we do the same. These animals areso big that "many a time, they overthrow in the waters a laden vessellof great quantitie, with all the wares therein contained." The engravingshows one of them upsetting a three-masted Jacobean ship and swallowingsailors, apparently with great relish and voracity.[79]
Such being the current belief among students of the natural sciences, wemay be the better prepared to excuse some eccentricities in a novelist.Lyly, who was well versed in the legendary lore of plants and animals,is never tired of making a display of his knowledge, but the wonder isthat his readers had never too much of that. A single erudite orscientific simile never satisfies Lyly; he has always in his hands along bead-roll of them, which he complacently pays out: "The foul toadehath a faire stone in his head, the fine golde is found in the filthyearth: the sweet kernell lyeth in the hard shell: vertue is harboured inthe heart of him that most men esteeme mishapen ... Doe we not commonlysee that in painted pottes is hidden the deadlyest poyson? that in thegreenest grasse is ye greatest serpent? in the cleerest water theuglyest toade?" and four or five similes still follow. Tormented byexamples, overwhelmed with similitudes, the adventurous reader, whoto-day risks a reading of "Euphues," feels it impossible to keep hiscomposure. He would like to protest, to defend himself, to say that hehas lied, this imperturbable naturalist, that bitter kernels are foundindeed in the hardest shells, that painted pots often contain somethingother than poison, and that if toads appear less ugly in foul water, itis perhaps because they are the less seen. But what does it matter toLyly? He writes for a select coterie, and when a man writes for acoterie, the protestations of the discontented, of the envious, alas! ofthose of good sense, too, are scarcely of any consequence. Let thecommon herd then shriek themselves hoarse at Lyly's door: it is shutfast, he will hear nothing, and is indifferent even if among this commonherd Shakespeare figures. He is happy; "Euphues," in company with thelittle dogs, rumples the silken laps of ladies with the lace-plaitedruffs.
THE BOA, AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD, A.D. 1608.]
III.
But however important style may be, it is not everything in a literarywork. It must be acknowledged that Lyly's success, if it is nocommendation of the taste of his contemporaries, is greatly to thecredit of their morality and earnestness. By the form of his sentencesLyly is a Spaniard; he surpasses the most bombastic, and could givepoints to that author mentioned by Louis Racine, who, discovering hismistress lying under a tree, cried: "Come and see the sun reclining inthe shade!" But the basis of his character is purely English; he istruly of the same country as Richardson, and belongs at heart to thatrace which Tacitus said did not know how "to laugh at vices," a veryhigh praise that Rousseau rendered later almost in the same terms.[80]From the time of Lyly until our own day, the English novel, generallyspeaking, has remained not only moral, but a moralizing agent; theauthor has recourse to a thousand skilful and fascinating devices, andleads us by the hand through all sorts of flowery paths; but whateverthe manner may be, he almost invariably, without saying so, leads us tothe sermon. There are sermons in
Defoe, who strongly protested againstsome abbreviations of his "Robinson Crusoe": "They strip it of allthose reflections as well religious as moral, which are not only thegreatest beauties of the work, but are calculated for the infiniteadvantage of the reader."[81] There are sermons in Richardson, so muchso that it might rather be said that novels are to be noticed inRichardson's magnificent series of sermons. This is the way he himselfwould have spoken. Did he not write to Lady Bradsaigh, while forwardingher the last volumes of "Clarissa": "Be pleased ... to honour thesevolumes with a place with your Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, with yourPractice of piety, and Nelson's Fasts and Festivals, not as being worthyof such company, but that they may have a chance of being dipt intothirty years hence. For I persuade myself, they will not be foundutterly unworthy of such a chance, since they appear in the humble guiseof novel, only by the way of accommodation to the manners and taste ofan age overwhelmed with luxury, and abandoned to sound andsenselessness."[82] There are some sermons in Fielding, many in Dickens,not a few in George Eliot, and even in Thackeray. Splendid they are,most eloquent, most admirable in their kind, most beneficial in theirway; but there is no denying that sermons they are. Unfortunately forLyly, what formerly constituted the attraction of "Euphues," and hid thesermon's bitterness, makes it to-day ridiculous and even odious: it isthe style. Let us forget for a moment his unicorns and his scorpions;taken in himself, his hero deserves attention, because he is theancestor in direct line of Grandison, of Lord Orville, of Lord Colambre,and of all the sermonizing lords, and lords of good example, thatEngland owed to the success of Richardson.
THE GREAT SEA SERPENT, ACCORDING TO TOPSELL, 1608.]
Euphues is a young Athenian, a contemporary not of Pericles, but ofLyly, who goes to Naples, thence to England, to study men andgovernments. Grave with that gravity peculiar to lay preachers,well-informed on every subject, even on his own merits, assured by hisconscience that in making mankind sharer in his illumination, he willassure their salvation, he addresses moral epistles to his fellow men toguide them through life. Omniscient like the inheritors of his vein whomwe have heard since, he instructs the world in the truth about marriage,travel, religion. He anticipates, in his discourses concerningaristocracy, the philosophical ideas of "Milord Edouard," of "NouvelleHeloise" fame; he treats of love with the wisdom of Grandison, and ofthe bringing up of children with the experience of Pamela.[83]
When women are his subject he is especially earnest and eloquent, andhaving, as it seems, suffered much at their hands he concludes: "Come tome al ye lovers that have bene deceived by fancy, the glasse ofpestilence, or deluded by woemen, the gate to perdition; be as earnestto seeke a medicine, as you were eager to runne into a mischiefe."Having thus secured, as it seems, a fairly large audience, he begins hissermon, which he is pleased to call, "a cooling carde for Philautus, andall fond lovers."[84] His intention is to give men remedies, which shallcure them of loving. Some of his precepts resemble the wise advice ofRondibilis to Panurge; some do not. Philautus is to avoid solitude, andidleness; he must study. In the same way Panurge is recommended _labeurassidu_ and _fervente estude_.[85] Philautus is advised to try law,"whereby thou mayest have understanding of olde and auntient customes;"if law proves of no avail, there is "Physicke," and if this again fails,then there is "the atteining of ye sacred and sincere knowledge ofdivinitie." Study then may be supplemented by contemptuous meditationsabout women;[86] a remedy which Rabelais, who probably knew more of lifethan twenty-five-years-old Lyly, refrains from recommending.
This part of the anathema, including as it does a description of thesuperfluities of Elizabethan dress, is especially worth noticing: "Takefrom them," cries Euphues, in a burst of eloquence, "their perywigges,their paintings, their jewells, their rowles, their boulstrings, andthou shalt soone perceive that a woman is the least part of hir selfe.When they be once robbed of their robes, then wil they appeare soodious, so ugly, so monstrous, that thou wilt rather think them serpentsthen saints, and so like hags, that thou wilt feare rather to beenchaunted than enamoured. Looke in their closettes, and there shaltthou finde an appoticaryes shop of sweete confections, a surgions boxeof sundry salves, a pedlers packe of newe fangles. Besides all thistheir shadows, their spots, their lawnes, their leefekyes, their ruffes,their rings, shew them rather cardinalls curtisans then modestmatrons.... If every one of these things severally be not of force tomove thee, yet all of them joyntly should mortifie thee." This was,however, by no means the case, and Philautus not so much "cooled" bythis "carde" as his friend expected, behaved himself in such a way as todemonstrate that, according to his experience, here was grossexaggeration indeed.
Euphues shows better knowledge of the heart of woman when, continuinghis analysis of women's foibles, he comes to give his friend informationthat teaches him in fact rather how to be loved than how to ceaseloving: "Yet if thou be so weake being bewitched with their wiles thatthou hast neither will to eschue nor wit to avoyd their company ... yetat the hearte dissemble thy griefe ... cary two faces in one hood, coverthy flaming fancie with fained ashes ... let thy hewe be merry when thyheart is melancholy, beare a pleasaunt countenaunce with a pinedconscience.... Love creepeth in by stealth, and by stealth slideth away.If she breake promise with thee in the night, or absent hir selfe in theday, seeme thou carelesse, and and then will she be carefull; if thoulanguish [_i.e._, becomest slack in thy suit], then wil she be lavish ofhir honour, yea and of the other strange beast her honestie."
He continues in this bitter vein, avenging, as it seems, his privatewrongs, and vowing never, as far as he is himself concerned to haveanything more to do with women. From them, he is naturally led to thinkof children who form an equally good theme on which to moralise. He doesnot fail in this duty, and writes for the good of his friend, and of thepublic at large, a little treatise very much in the style of some ofPamela's letters,[87] where we are taught how "Ephoebus," the child thatis to be, should be brought up. Ephoebus is the Emile of thissixteenth-century Rousseau. Always thorough and exact, Lyly is carefulto begin at the beginning, informing us at first "that the childeshoulde be true borne and no bastarde."[88]
Then he comes to the bringing up of the boy, and with as muchearnestness as Jean-Jacques, and with true and moving eloquence, hebeseeches the mother to be the nurse of her own progeny. "It is mostnecessary and most naturall in mine opinion, that the mother of thechilde be also the nurse, both for the entire love she beareth to thebabe, and the great desire she hath to have it well nourished: for isthere any one more meete to bring up the infant than she that bore it?or will any be carefull for it, as she that bredde it?... Is the earthcalled the mother of all things onely bicause it bringeth forth? No,but bicause it nourisheth those things that springe out of it.Whatsoever is bred in ye sea is fed in the sea; no plant, no tree, nohearbe commeth out of the ground that is not moystened, and as it werenoursed of the moysture and mylke of the earth; the lyonesse nurseth hirwhelps, the raven cherisheth hir byrdes, the viper her broode, and shala woman cast away her babe?
"I accompt it cast away which in the swath clouts is cast aside, andlyttle care can the mother have which can suffer such crueltie: and canit be tearmed with any other title then cruelty, the infant yet lookingredde of the mother, the mother yet breathing through the torments ofhir travaile, the child crying for helpe which is said to move wildebeastes, even in the selfe said moment it is borne, or the nexte minute,to deliver to a straunge nurse, which perhappes is neither wholesome inbody, neither honest in manners, whiche esteemeth more thy argent thougha trifle, then thy tender infant, thy greatest treasure?" Here Lyly isat his best, and neither Richardson nor Rousseau spoke better on thispoint, which is one of their favourite subjects.
He goes on to show how his child should be brought up, with whatprinciples he should be imbued; many of these principles again very muchresembling those Rousseau was to accept and propagate two hundred yearslater: "It is good nurture that leadeth to virtue, and discreetedemeanour that playneth the path to felicitie.... To b
e a noble man itis most excellent, but that is our ancestors ... as for our nobilytie,our stocke, our kindred, and whatsoever we ourselves have not done Iscarcely accompt ours.... It is vertue, yea vertue, gentlemen, thatmaketh gentlemen.... These things [_i.e._, knowledge, reason, goodsense], neither the whirling wheele of Fortune can chaunge neither thedeceitful cavilling of worldlings separate, neither sickenesse abate,neither age abolish." Then follows a dialogue between Euphues and anatheist,[89] in which I need not say the latter is utterly routed; andthe book ends with a collection of letters[90] between Euphues andvarious people who ask and get his advice on their difficulties,oracle-wise, Pamela-wise too.
In the second part of his romance, which appeared in 1580,[91] Lylygives a kind of _Lettres persanes_, but _Lettres persanes_ reversed,Montesquieu making use of his foreigner to satirize France, and Lyly ofhis to eulogize his native land. Euphues comes to England with hisfriend Philautus, and, since he knows everything, instructs the latteras they go along. He warns him against wine, gambling, and debauchery,teaches him geography, and points out to him what is worth seeing.Philautus does not retort that Euphues is a pedant, which proves him tobe very good tempered and a perfect travelling companion. The twofriends are enchanted with the country: its natural products, itscommerce, its agriculture, its inhabitants and their manners, itsbishops and their flocks, the civil government, the religiousgovernment, everything is perfect. English gentlewomen are prodigies ofwisdom and beauty; and indeed that is the least Lyly can say of them,since it is for them that he is writing. When he spoke, as we have seen,disparagingly of women, he meant Italian women (none of whom, as amatter of fact, he had ever known or even seen), not Englishwomen. Thesespend their mornings "in devout prayer," and not in bed like the ladiesof Italy; they read the Scriptures instead of Ariosto and Petrarch; theyare so beautiful that the traveller is enraptured and cannot help cryingout: "There is no beauty but in England." To sum up, "they are in prayerdevoute, in bravery humble, in beautie chast, in feasting temperate, inaffection wise, in mirth modest, in all their actions though courtlye,bicause woemen, yet Aungels, bicause virtuous." As for the women ofother countries, they all have lovers and spend their time in paintingtheir faces.[92]
Having verified such important differences, Philautus cannot do lessthan find a wife in England, and Euphues, whose unsociable humourprevents his doing likewise, carries away with him into his native landthe remembrance of "a place, in my opinion (if any such may be on theearth) not inferiour to a paradise," and of a Queen "of singuler beautieand chastitie, excelling in the one Venus, in the other Vesta."
It is, however, appropriate to recollect that at the time of theRenaissance, before the blossoming in England of this literature forladies, Caxton too had enumerated the chief qualities of the women ofhis country. They are the same as in Lyly, only, as we shall see, thehonest printer closes his remarks with a slight reservation. In thepreface placed at the beginning of a work translated from the French byLord Rivers, he states that in the translation, several passagesreflecting on the female sex were suppressed; that is easily understood;they would have no application in England; "for I wote wel," says he,"of whatsomever condicion women ben in Grece, the women of this contreben right good, wyse, playsant, humble, discrete, sobre, chast, obedientto their husbandis, trewe, secrete, stedfast, ever besy and never ydle,attemperat in speking and vertuous in all their werkis"--"or," he isfain to add, "atte leste sholde be soo."[93] And thereupon, Caxton, onhis own authority, restores the suppressed passages.
From the particular point of view of the historian of the English novel,Lyly with all his absurdities had yet one merit which must be taken intoaccount. With him we leave epic and chivalrous stories and approach thenovel of manners. There is no longer question of Arthur and hismarvellous knights, but rather of contemporary men, who, in spite ofexcessive oratorical gew-gaws, possess some resemblance to reality.Conversations are reported in which we find the tone of well-bornpersons of the period. Lyly takes care also to be very exact in hisdates. Having announced at the end of his first volume that Euphues wasabout to set out for England, he informs us in the beginning of thesecond, which appeared in 1580, that the embarkation took place onDecember 1, 1579. He would, for anything, have gone so far as to give anengraved portrait of his hero, just as we were to see later, at thebeginning of a book destined to make some noise in the world, theportrait of "Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff." Undoubtedly hisopinions on men and life, his analysis of sentiment, are rather clumsilyblended with the story and savour of the awkwardness of a first attempt;but there was however merit in making the attempt, and it is notimpossible at distant intervals to discover under the crust of pedantrysome well-turned passage, possessing eloquence, as we have seen, or,more rarely, a sort of humour. It is thus that a tolerably good lessonmay be drawn from the adventures of Philautus in London, who, deeplysmitten with the charms of a young English lady, consults a sorcerer inorder to obtain a philtre that will inspire love. Here was an excellentopportunity, which the magician does not fail to seize, of talking aboutserpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration of the bones, stones,and livers of animals that cause love, the alchemist, urged byPhilautus, ends by confessing that the best sorcery of all to gain theloving regard of a woman, is to be handsome, witty, and charming.
IV.
By his defects and his merits, his wisdom, his gracefulness and also hisbad style, Lyly could not fail to please. His public was ready when hebegan writing, a public with many frivolous tastes and many seriousinstincts. The lightness of tone and of behaviour which struck aforeigner coming for the first time to the English court or aprofessional censor who by trade is meant to see nothing else, wasmisleading as showing only the surface of the sort of mankind that wasflourishing there at that time. This lightness of tone, however, didexist nevertheless, and those who assumed it were not slow to embellishtheir speeches with flowers from Lyly's paper garden. The austere FrenchHuguenot, Hubert Languet, the friend and adviser of Sir Philip Sidney,who visited England in the very year "Euphues" was published, was verymuch astonished to see how English courtiers behaved themselves;accustomed as he was to the grave talk he enjoyed with his young friend,he had imagined, it seems, that no other was relished by him or byanybody in Queen Elizabeth's palaces. When he left the country he wroteto Sidney his opinion of the manners he had observed. It is simply aconfirmation of what Ascham had stated sometime before, when he wrote ofhis travelled compatriots: neither of them did justice to the moreserious qualities hidden under all this courtly trifling: "It was adelight to me last winter," says Languet, "to see you high in favour andenjoying the esteem of all your countrymen; but to speak plainly, thehabits of your court seemed to me somewhat less manly than I could havewished, and most of your noblemen appeared to me to seek for areputation more by a kind of affected courtesy than by those virtueswhich are wholesome to the State, and which are most becoming togenerous spirits and to men of high birth. I was sorry therefore, and sowere other friends of yours, to see you wasting the flower of your lifeon such things, and I feared lest that noble nature of yours should bebrought to take pleasure in pursuits which only enervate the mind."[94]
Lyly's book proved well suited to this public; it went through numerouseditions; it was printed five times during the first six years of itspublication, and new editions were issued from time to time till 1636.It gave birth, as we shall see, to many imitations; the name of Euphueson the title-page of a novel was for years considered a safe conduct tothe public, if not to posterity; books purporting to be Euphues'legacies or copies of Euphues' papers, or bearing in some way or otherthe stamp of his supposed approbation, multiplied accordingly. Themovement increased rapidly, but it was not to last long; in fact, it didnot continue beyond ten or twelve years; after this time the monumentsof the euphuistic literature were still reprinted, but no addition wasmade to their number.
This period, however, was filled in a measure with the product of Lyly'sbrains or that of his imitators. All who prided themsel
ves on elegancespoke his affected language, and studied in his book the mythology ofplants. Edward Blount, a bookseller who reprinted Lyly's comedies in thefollowing century, at a time when these courtly dramas were beginning tobe forgotten, has well expressed the kindly and sympathetic favouraccorded to Lyly by the ladies of Elizabethan days: "These papers ofhis," says he, "lay like dead lawrels in a churchyard; but I havegathered the scattered branches up, and by a charme, gotten from Apollo,made them greene againe and set them up as epitaphes to his memory. Asinne it were to suffer these rare monuments of wit to lye covered indust and a shame such conceipted comedies should be acted by none butwormes. Oblivion shall not so trample on a sonne of the Muses; and sucha sonne as they called their darling. Our nation are in his debt for anew English which he taught them. 'Euphues and his England' began firstthat language; all our ladyes were then his schollers; and that beautiein court, which could not parley eupheueisme was as little regarded, asshee which now there speakes not French."[95] It may be appropriatelyrecalled here that this same Blount who thus eulogizes Lyly hadpublished already another set of Elizabethan dramas, and a much moreimportant one, viz., the first folio of Shakespeare in 1623.
Those comedies which Blount thought fit to reprint, considering that inso doing he was presenting to his readers "a Lilly growing in a grove oflawrels," are another proof of the success Lyly had, through his novel,secured for himself at court. His plays are mythological orpseudo-historical dramas, interspersed with some pretty songs anddialogues, and were performed by children before the Queen on holy-days.Among others were his "Campaspe," "played before the Queenes Majestie,on new yeares day at night, by Her Majesties children and the childrenof Paules," 1584; his "Sapho and Phao," performed also before the Queenby the same children, on Shrove Tuesday, 1584; his "Endimion, the man inthe moone," played before the Queen "at Greenwich on Candlemass day atnight, by the chyldren of Paules"; "Gallathea," played on New Year'sDay; "Midas," performed on Twelfth Night, also before the Queen, &c.[96]
On love matters and women's affairs, he was considered an authority; theanalysis of the passions and the knowledge of the deeper moods of thesoul, which many consider to be, among novelists, a new-born science,were regarded by his contemporaries as a thing wholly his, a discoverymade by himself; not foreseeing his successors, they proclaimed him amaster of his newly invented art. Beginners would come to him for adviceor for a preface, as they go now to the heirs of his art, especiallywhen love is their theme. In this way Thomas Watson published in 1582his "Passionate Centurie of Love," and prefaced it, as with acertificate of its worth, by a letter from Lyly: "My good friend, I haveread your new passions, and they have renewed mine old pleasures, thewhich brought to me no lesse delight, then they have done to yourselfcommendations.... Such is the nature of persuading pleasure, that itmelteth the marrow before it scorch the skin ... not unlike unto theoyle of jeat which rotteth the bone and never rankleth the flesh."[97]
It was useless for wise minds to grumble; Lyly always found women toapplaud him. In vain did Nash, twelve years after the appearance of"Euphues," scoff at the enthusiasm with which he had read the book whenhe was "a little ape in Cambridge";[98] vainly was Euphuism derided onthe stage before a Cambridge audience: "There is a beaste in Indiacall'd a polecatt ... and the further she is from you the less you smellher," a piece of information that contains more probability than perhapsany given by Lyly.[99] Vainly, too, Shakespeare showed his opinion ofthe style in lending it to Falstaff when the worthy knight wishes toadmonish Prince Henry in the manner of courts. Grown old in his tavern,Falstaff has no idea that these refinements, fashionable at the timewhen he was as slender as his page, may be now the jest of the younggeneration: "There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of,and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, asancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thoukeepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears;not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woesalso."[100]
Many persons to whom the book doubtless recalled the memory of theirspring-time, shared Falstaff's ingenuousness, and remained faithful toLyly; if men or letters, after some years of enthusiasm, ceased toimitate him, his book was for a long time continuously read, and it wasreprinted again and again even in the reign of Charles I. It wastranslated into Dutch in the same century,[101] and was modernized inthe following, under the title: "The false friend and the inconstantmistress: an instructive novel ... displaying the artifices of thefemale sex in their amours."[102] High praise is rendered by the editorto Lyly, who "was a great refiner of the English tongue in those days."The book appeared not very long before Richardson's "Pamela," a factworthy of notice, the more so as in this abbreviation of Euphues, theletters contained in the original have been reproduced and look the moreconspicuous in the little pamphlet. Quite Richardsonian, too, is thetable of contents which is rather a table of good precepts and usefulinformation, a very different table from the one appended by Haringtonto his "Ariosto." Here we find enumerated the many wise recommendationsby which Lyly so long anticipated Richardson and Rousseau:
"The mother ought to be her own nurse p. 83.
"The wild beasts more tender of their young than those who nurse not their own children p. 83.
"Children not to be frightened with stories of spirits and bugbears (&c.) p. 86."
So much for the continuation of Lyly's fame. As for the period ofimitation proper, the era of euphuism's full glory, it lasted, as wehave said, hardly more than twelve or at most fifteen years. But it sawthe birth of works that are not without importance in the history of theorigin of the novel in this country.
LIBRA.]
KNIGHTLY PASTIMES. HAWKING, 1575.
_Illustrative of Gerismond's life in Lodge's "Rosalynd."_]
FOOTNOTES:
[67] "'Euphues' the anatomy of wyt ... wherin are contained the delightsthat wyt followeth in his youth by the pleasauntnesse of Love, and thehappynesse he reapeth in age by the perfectnesse of wisedome"; London[1579], 4to; reprinted by Arber, London, 1869. Lyly was born in 1553 or1554; he died in 1606.
[68] Dedication of the second part: "To the Ladies and Gentlewoemen ofEngland." There is afterwards a sort of second preface addressed to the"Gentlemen readers," but Lyly puts into it much less animation, andappears to have written it only for conscience' sake in order not toforget any one.
[69] In his excellent work, "Shakspere and Euphuism," _Transactions ofthe New Shakspere Society_, 1884, Dr. Landmann was the first to break upLyly's style into its different parts, and point out the true sourceswhere he found not only the elements of his language, but even many ofhis ideas. The same essay contains very useful information on Gongorismand other kinds of affected styles of the sixteenth century. See alsoDr. Landmann's "Der Euphuismus," Giessen, 1881; his edition of part of"Euphues," Heilbronn, 1887; and an article by Mr. S. L. Lee, _Athenaeum_,July 14, 1883.
[70] The "Libro aureo" appeared in 1529; it was translated into Frenchin 1531, and went through a great many editions, entitled sometimes "LeLivre dore de Marc-Aurele"; sometimes "L'Horloge des princes." North'stranslation, which followed the French editions, is entitled, "The Diallof Princes, by Guevara, englyshed out of the Frenche," London, 1557,fol.; it had several editions. It is to the Marcus Aurelius of Guevarathat La Fontaine alludes in his "Paysan du Danube"; the story of thepeasant was one of the most popular of the "Golden Boke." Guevara'sstyle, with all the supplementary embellishments that Lyly has added,was already to be seen in the collection of short stories by Pettie,1576 (_supra_, p. 81) of which one of the early editions begins like"Euphues," with an epistle to the "gentlewomen readers."
[71] "Le Bestiaire d'Amour," ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1840, 8vo. Richard deFournival died about 1260. The MS. followed in this edition is dated1285.
[72] "Sa nature si est que quand il trouve un homme, si le devore, etquand il l'a devore, si le pleure tous les jours de sa vie."
<
br /> [73] Fragments of which remain in the "Codex Exoniensis," ed. Thorpe,London, 1842, 8vo. The Panther, p. 355; the Whale, p. 360, &c.
[74] "An old English Miscellany, containing a bestiary," ed. R. Morris,London, Early English Text Society, 1872.
[75] Recently published by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith and M. Paul Meyer,Paris, Societe des anciens textes Francais, 1889, 8vo.
[76] "The historie of Foure-footed beastes, describing the true andlively figure of every beast," London, 1607, fol. "The historie ofSerpents or the second book of living creatures," London, 1608, fol.
[77] "Alcida. Greenes metamorphosis," licensed 1588; earliest knownedition, 1617.
[78] "Foure-footed beastes," _ut supra_, pp. 1, 199, 328, 453.
[79] "Historie of serpents," _ut supra_, pp. 111, 140, 236, &c.
[80] It should not, however, be thence concluded that Lyly is originalin all his moral dissertations; as Dr. Landmann has pointed out (see_supra_, p. 106) he often borrows large passages from Plutarch andGuevara; but what is remarkable is the intense and persistentconviction, and also the success, at least success in so far that it wasread, with which this young man of twenty-five, who was of the world andnot of the church, preaches good morals to all classes of society.
[81] Preface to Part II.
[82] "Correspondence of Samuel Richardson," ed. Barbauld, London, 1804,6 vols. 12mo.
[83] The meaning of his name is thus given by Ascham in his"Scholemaster" (1570): "[Greek: Euphues] is he that is apte by goodnesof witte and appliable by readines of will, to learning, having allother qualities of the minde and partes of the bodie that must an otherday serve learning, not troubled, mangled or halfed, but sounde, whole,full, and hable to do their office." So was Grandison.
[84] Arber's reprint, pp. 106 _et seq._
[85] "Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. xxxi.
[86] Compare the meditations of the same sort of the Pedant in the"Pedant joue," of Cyrano de Bergerac.
[87] For instance, the letter on the nursing of children by theirmothers (vol. iii. of the original edition, letter 56), and the longletter where Pamela takes to pieces Locke's "Treatise on Education," andremodels it according to her own ideas (vol. iv. letters 48 _et seq._).
[88] Arber's reprint, _ut supra_, "Euphues and his Ephoebus," pp. 123_et seq._
[89] "Euphues and Atheos," Arber's reprint, _ut supra_, pp. 160, _etseq._
[90] "Certeine Letters writ by Euphues to his friends," _ibid._, pp. 178_et seq._
[91] "Euphues and his England. Containing his voyage and adventures,myxed with sundry pretie discourses of honest love, the description ofthe countrey, the court and the manner of that Isle.... by John Lyly,Maister of Arte, London 1580," reprinted by Arber, _ut supra_.
[92] "Euphues and his England," _ut supra_, p. 442.
[93] Preface to the "Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophres," 1477.
[94] Antwerp, Nov. 14, 1579, "Correspondence of Sir Ph. Sidney andHubert Languet," ed. Pears, London, 1845, 8vo, p. 167.
[95] Preface "to the Reader" in "Six Court Comedies ... by the onelyrare poet of that time, the wittie, comicall, facetiously-quicke andunparalelld John Lilly," London, 1632, 12mo.
[96] "Dramatic Works," ed. Fairholt, London, 1858, two vols. 8vo.
[97] Watson was then about twenty-five years old. "Poems," reprinted byArber, London, 1870, 4to.
[98] "'Euphues' I read when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and I thenthought it was _ipse ille_; it may be excellent still for ought I know,but I lookt not on it this ten yeare" ("Strange Newes," 1592).
[99] "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," ed. Macray, Oxford, 1886, 8vo. "TheReturne," part i. act v. sc. 2. This part was performed in 1600.
[100] "1 Henry IV.," act ii. sc. 4 (A.D. 1597-8, Furnivall).
[101] "De vermakelijke historie Zee-een Landreize van Euphues,"Rotterdam, 1671, 12mo. Another edition of the same, 1682.
[102] London, 1718, 16mo. "Price 2s." (on title-page). Defoe's "RobinsonCrusoe" appeared the next year; Richardson's "Pamela" was published in1740.
ANOTHER DRAGON, 1608.]