The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 5

Authors found this advice excellent, and took good care to relieve themselves of difficult search after the mere truth. The public who imposed these laws, this exacting public of women who read Plutarch and Plato, who judged the merits of great men as learnedly as the cut of a ruff, found at the very moment they most wanted him the author who could please them in the person of a novel writer, the famous Lyly. At twenty-five years of age, John Lyly, a _protege_ of Lord Burghley, who was at this same time busy with his own architectural poem, if one may say 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 not conceal the circ.u.mstance, but he proclaimed it aloud. Their opinion alone interested him, to that of the critics he was indifferent. "It resteth Ladies," he said, "that you take the paines to read it, but at such times, as you spend in playing with your little dogges, and yet will I not pinch you of that pastime, for I am content that your dogges lie in your laps: so 'Euphues' may be in your hands, that when you shall be wearie in reading of the one, you may be ready to sport with the other.... 'Euphues' had rather lye shut in a Ladyes casket, then open in a Schollers studie." Yet after dinner, "Euphues" will still be agreeable to the ladies, adds Lyly, always smiling; if they desire to slumber, it will bring them to sleep which will be far better than beginning to sew and p.r.i.c.king their fingers when they begin to nod.[68]

There is no possibility of error; with Lyly commences in England the literature of the drawing-room, that of which we speak at morning calls, productions which, in spite of vast and many changes, still occupy a favourite place on the little boudoir tables. We must also notice what pains Lyly gives himself to make his innovation a success, and so please his patronesses, and how he ornaments his thoughts and engarlands his speeches, how cunningly he imbues himself with the knowledge of the ancients and of foreigners, and what trouble he gives himself to improve upon the most learned and the most florid of them. His care was not thrown away. He was spoiled, petted, and caressed by the ladies; with an impartial heart they extended to the author the same favour they granted to the book, and to their little dogs. He was proclaimed king of letters by his admirers, and became, in fact, king of the _precieux_. He created a 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, as Dr. Landmann[69] has well demonstrated, was imported from Spain into England, and Lyly was not the first to use it in this country. The works of Guevara, turned into English by five or six different translators, had a considerable vogue and acclimatized this extraordinary style in Great Britain. One of his writings especially, "The golden boke of Marcus Aurelius, emperour," enjoyed a very great popularity; it was translated by Lord Berners in 1532, and by Sir Thomas North in 1557,[70]

and went through many editions. The moral dissertations of which it is full enchanted serious minds; the unusual language of Spain delighted frivolous souls. Before Lyly, English authors had already imitated it; but when Lyly appeared and embellished it even more, enthusiasm ran so high that its foreign progenitor was forgotten, and this exotic style was rebaptized as proof of adoption and naturalization in England.

Since it is not a natural product, but the mere result of ingenious artifices, 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 up ant.i.theses in every limb of the sentence. What is peculiar to the English imitators, is the employment of alliteration, in order to better mark the balance of the sentences written for effect. Finally, the kind of similes even has something peculiar: they are for the most part borrowed from an imaginary ancient history and a fantastical natural history, a sort of mythology of plants and stones to which the most extraordinary virtues are attributed.

In the important parts, when he means to use a n.o.ble style, Lyly cannot relate the most trivial incident without setting up parallels between the sentiments of his characters and the virtues of toads, serpents, unicorns, scorpions, and all the fantastical animals mentioned in Pliny or described in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. His knowledge of zoology resembles that of Richard de Fournival, who, in the thirteenth century, lamented in his "Bestiaire d'Amour,"[71] that he was like the wolf, who, when instead of first noticing the man, allowed the man to see him first, lost all his courage; or like the cricket who loves chirping 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, and all his songs only served to accomplish his ruin. The woman he loves resembles the bird called "Kalander," or again, the animal called "c.o.c.katrice" or "cocodrille," which is often mentioned by Lyly. "Its nature is such that when it finds a man, then it devours him, and when it 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 much beloved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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, for example, in England, the well-known Anglo-Saxon bestiary,[73] or the English bestiary of the thirteenth century, in which we read of the world-famous wickedness of the whale who allows sailors to rest on her back, 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: an example of what may be expected from the devil. There is, too, the elephant that leans against a tree to take his rest. People cunningly cut the tree, and replace it; when the elephant comes the tree falls and so does he, and is caught, an emblem of our father Adam, who also owed his 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 of the fourteenth century, are also full of the most curious comparisons between the properties of animals, plants, and minerals, and the sinful tendencies and frailties of mankind.[75]

These are old, far-off examples, and it might be supposed that people of education in Elizabethan England would have possessed a sounder knowledge of natural history. This was, however, not the case. And if we wish to know what were the current beliefs among well-informed men of the time about animals, we have only to open the two folio volumes penned with greatest care by painstaking Topsell, concerning "Foure-footed beastes" and "Serpents."[76] We shall then willingly set Lyly and his followers free from all blame of exaggeration and improbable inventions. Most often indeed they did not invent; they knew. Topsell's books are nothing but a careful summary of the then generally accepted reports concerning animated creation.

His histories are the more curious as his scruples and earnestness are obvious. His purpose is high, and he means to write only for the Creator's glory, considering his subject to be a "part of Divinity that was never known in English. I take my owne conscience to witness, which is manifest to my Judge and Saviour, I have intended nothing but his glory, that is the creator of all." Secondly, his serious attention to his subject is shown by what he says of accessible animals; the engravings he gives of them, of dogs, for instance, of bulls, a.s.ses, and many others being really excellent. Even rare animals, when by any chance he had secured a glimpse of them, are represented with the utmost care; such, for instance, is his chameleon, of which he gives a very good engraving, not long after careless Robert Greene had been writing of "this byrd, a camelion."[77]

But, then, nature is full of surprises, and so is Topsell's book. His antelopes are very dangerous things: "They have hornes ... which are very long and sharpe; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the sheeldes of his souldiers, and fought with them very irefully: at which time his companions slew as he travelled to India, 8,550; which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and sildome seene to this day." Undoubtedly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HIPPOPOTAMUS TAKING ITS FOOD, 1607.]

The blood of the elephant has a very strange property: "Also it is reported that the blood of an elephant is the coldest blood in the world and that Dragons in the scorching heate of summer cannot get anything to coole them except this blood." The sea-horse, or hippopotamus, "is a most ugly and filthy beast, so called because in his voice and mane he resembleth a horsse, but in his head an oxe or a calfe; in the residue of his body a swine.... It liveth for the most part in rivers; yet it is of a doubtful life, for it brings forth and breedeth on the land."

According to the accompanying engraving he apparently feeds on crocodiles. The rhinoceros is remarkable for his breathing: he "hath a necke like unto a horsse and also the other parts of his body, but it is said to breath out aire which killeth men."

But in this world of animals, which includes the Mantichora, the Sphinga, the Papio, and a monster alive "in the territory of the bishop of Salceburgh," the most interesting is the Lamia. It is of such great interest because its very existence has been disputed, but quite wrongly. Some untrue reports were circulated concerning this animal, and as 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 and opinions there are of Phairies, which in my judgment arise from the praestigious apparitions of Devils, whose delight is to deceive and beguile the minds of men with errour, contrary to the truths of holye scripture which doeth no where make mention of such inchaunting creatures; and therefore if any such be, we will holde them the workes of the Devill and not of G.o.d." But, then, there are true Lamiae, and "we shall take for granted by the testimony of holy scripture that there is such a beast as this." The particulars Topsell was able to gather about them are to the following effect: "The hinde parts of this beast are like unto a goate, his fore legs like a beares, his upper parts to a woman, the body scaled all over like a Dragon, as some have observed, by the observation of their bodies." Their wickedness is so great that it scarcely bears description: "They are the swiftest of foot of all earthly beasts, so as none can escape them by running, for by their celerity, they compa.s.se their prey of beastes, and by their fraud, they overthrow 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, and so having them within their compa.s.se, they devoure and kill them." So much for four-footed beasts.[78]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 all venomous beasts: with their severall poisons and antidotes; their deepe hatred to mankind and the wonderfull worke of G.o.d in their creation and destruction." 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 the boas: "The Latines call it _Boa_ and _Bossa_ of _Bos_ because by sucking cowes milke it so encreaseth that in the end it destroyeth all manner of herdes and cattels." The c.o.c.katrice, above named, "seemeth to be the king of serpents ... because of his stately face and magnanimous mind."

The crocodile is to be carefully avoided, "even the Egyptians themselves account a crocodile a savage and cruell murthering beast, as may appeare by their Hieroglyphicks, for when they will decypher a mad man, they picture a crocodile." And Topsell goes on to relate the particular hatred which existed between crocodiles and the inhabitants of Tentyris, that exquisitely charming Denderah which overlooks the valley of the Nile, and still deserves its old fame as the chief temple of the G.o.ddess Athor, the Egyptian Aphrodite.

The dipsas, the hydra, the dragon, are also endowed with the most remarkable qualities; but they seem to have disappeared since Topsell's day. Not so another very wonderful animal of whom we continue to hear from time to time, I mean the great sea-serpent; this marvellous beast is not only described, but depicted in our naturalist's book. Topsell gives a faithful portrait of it, and we do the same. These animals are so big that "many a time, they overthrow in the waters a laden vessell of great quant.i.tie, with all the wares therein contained." The engraving shows one of them upsetting a three-masted Jacobean s.h.i.+p and swallowing sailors, apparently with great relish and voracity.[79]

Such being the current belief among students of the natural sciences, we may 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 is that his readers had never too much of that. A single erudite or scientific simile never satisfies Lyly; he has always in his hands a long bead-roll of them, which he complacently pays out: "The foul toade hath a faire stone in his head, the fine golde is found in the filthy earth: the sweet kernell lyeth in the hard sh.e.l.l: vertue is harboured in the heart of him that most men esteeme mishapen ... Doe we not commonly see that in painted pottes is hidden the deadlyest poyson? that in the greenest gra.s.se is ye greatest serpent? in the cleerest water the uglyest toade?" and four or five similes still follow. Tormented by examples, overwhelmed with similitudes, the adventurous reader, who to-day risks a reading of "Euphues," feels it impossible to keep his composure. He would like to protest, to defend himself, to say that he has lied, this imperturbable naturalist, that bitter kernels are found indeed in the hardest sh.e.l.ls, that painted pots often contain something other than poison, and that if toads appear less ugly in foul water, it is perhaps because they are the less seen. But what does it matter to Lyly? He writes for a select coterie, and when a man writes for a coterie, the protestations of the discontented, of the envious, alas! of those of good sense, too, are scarcely of any consequence. Let the common herd then shriek themselves hoa.r.s.e at Lyly's door: it is shut fast, he will hear nothing, and is indifferent even if among this common herd Shakespeare figures. He is happy; "Euphues," in company with the little dogs, rumples the silken laps of ladies with the lace-plaited ruffs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOA, AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD, A.D. 1608.]

III.

But however important style may be, it is not everything in a literary work. It must be acknowledged that Lyly's success, if it is no commendation of the taste of his contemporaries, is greatly to the credit of their morality and earnestness. By the form of his sentences Lyly is a Spaniard; he surpa.s.ses the most bombastic, and could give points to that author mentioned by Louis Racine, who, discovering his mistress lying under a tree, cried: "Come and see the sun reclining in the shade!" But the basis of his character is purely English; he is truly of the same country as Richardson, and belongs at heart to that race which Tacitus said did not know how "to laugh at vices," a very high praise that Rousseau rendered later almost in the same terms.[80]

From the time of Lyly until our own day, the English novel, generally speaking, has remained not only moral, but a moralizing agent; the author has recourse to a thousand skilful and fascinating devices, and leads us by the hand through all sorts of flowery paths; but whatever the manner may be, he almost invariably, without saying so, leads us to the sermon. There are sermons in Defoe, who strongly protested against some abbreviations of his "Robinson Crusoe": "They strip it of all those reflections as well religious as moral, which are not only the greatest beauties of the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader."[81] There are sermons in Richardson, so much so that it might rather be said that novels are to be noticed in Richardson's magnificent series of sermons. This is the way he himself would have spoken. Did he not write to Lady Bradsaigh, while forwarding her the last volumes of "Clarissa": "Be pleased ... to honour these volumes with a place with your Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, with your Practice of piety, and Nelson's Fasts and Festivals, not as being worthy of such company, but that they may have a chance of being dipt into thirty years hence. For I persuade myself, they will not be found utterly unworthy of such a chance, since they appear in the humble guise of novel, only by the way of accommodation to the manners and taste of an age overwhelmed with luxury, and abandoned to sound and senselessness."[82] There are some sermons in Fielding, many in d.i.c.kens, not a few in George Eliot, and even in Thackeray. Splendid they are, most eloquent, most admirable in their kind, most beneficial in their way; but there is no denying that sermons they are. Unfortunately for Lyly, what formerly const.i.tuted the attraction of "Euphues," and hid the sermon's bitterness, makes it to-day ridiculous and even odious: it is the style. Let us forget for a moment his unicorns and his scorpions; taken in himself, his hero deserves attention, because he is the ancestor in direct line of Grandison, of Lord Orville, of Lord Colambre, and of all the sermonizing lords, and lords of good example, that England owed to the success of Richardson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT SEA SERPENT, ACCORDING TO TOPSELL, 1608.]

Euphues is a young Athenian, a contemporary not of Pericles, but of Lyly, who goes to Naples, thence to England, to study men and governments. Grave with that gravity peculiar to lay preachers, well-informed on every subject, even on his own merits, a.s.sured by his conscience that in making mankind sharer in his illumination, he will a.s.sure their salvation, he addresses moral epistles to his fellow men to guide them through life. Omniscient like the inheritors of his vein whom we have heard since, he instructs the world in the truth about marriage, travel, religion. He antic.i.p.ates, in his discourses concerning aristocracy, the philosophical ideas of "Milord Edouard," of "Nouvelle Helose" fame; he treats of love with the wisdom of Grandison, and of the bringing up of children with the experience of Pamela.[83]

When women are his subject he is especially earnest and eloquent, and having, as it seems, suffered much at their hands he concludes: "Come to me al ye lovers that have bene deceived by fancy, the gla.s.se of pestilence, or deluded by woemen, the gate to perdition; be as earnest to seeke a medicine, as you were eager to runne into a mischiefe."

Having thus secured, as it seems, a fairly large audience, he begins his sermon, which he is pleased to call, "a cooling carde for Philautus, and all fond lovers."[84] His intention is to give men remedies, which shall cure them of loving. Some of his precepts resemble the wise advice of Rondibilis to Panurge; some do not. Philautus is to avoid solitude, and idleness; he must study. In the same way Panurge is recommended _labeur a.s.sidu_ 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 of divinitie." Study then may be supplemented by contemptuous meditations about women;[86] a remedy which Rabelais, who probably knew more of life than twenty-five-years-old Lyly, refrains from recommending.

This part of the anathema, including as it does a description of the superfluities of Elizabethan dress, is especially worth noticing: "Take from them," cries Euphues, in a burst of eloquence, "their perywigges, their paintings, their jewells, their rowles, their boulstrings, and thou 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 so odious, so ugly, so monstrous, that thou wilt rather think them serpents then saints, and so like hags, that thou wilt feare rather to be enchaunted than enamoured. Looke in their closettes, and there shalt thou finde an appoticaryes shop of sweete confections, a surgions boxe of sundry salves, a pedlers packe of newe fangles. Besides all this their shadows, their spots, their lawnes, their leefekyes, their ruffes, their rings, shew them rather cardinalls curtisans then modest matrons.... If every one of these things severally be not of force to move thee, yet all of them joyntly should mortifie thee." This was, however, by no means the case, and Philautus not so much "cooled" by this "carde" as his friend expected, behaved himself in such a way as to demonstrate that, according to his experience, here was gross exaggeration indeed.

Euphues shows better knowledge of the heart of woman when, continuing his a.n.a.lysis of women's foibles, he comes to give his friend information that teaches him in fact rather how to be loved than how to cease loving: "Yet if thou be so weake being bewitched with their wiles that thou hast neither will to eschue nor wit to avoyd their company ... yet at the hearte dissemble thy griefe ... cary two faces in one hood, cover thy flaming fancie with fained ashes ... let thy hewe be merry when thy heart is melancholy, beare a pleasaunt countenaunce with a pined conscience.... Love creepeth in by stealth, and by stealth slideth away.

If she breake promise with thee in the night, or absent hir selfe in the day, seeme thou carelesse, and and then will she be carefull; if thou languish [_i.e._, becomest slack in thy suit], then wil she be lavish of hir honour, yea and of the other strange beast her honestie."

He continues in this bitter vein, avenging, as it seems, his private wrongs, and vowing never, as far as he is himself concerned to have anything more to do with women. From them, he is naturally led to think of children who form an equally good theme on which to moralise. He does not fail in this duty, and writes for the good of his friend, and of the public at large, a little treatise very much in the style of some of Pamela's letters,[87] where we are taught how "Ephoebus," the child that is to be, should be brought up. Ephoebus is the Emile of this sixteenth-century Rousseau. Always thorough and exact, Lyly is careful to begin at the beginning, informing us at first "that the childe shoulde be true borne and no b.a.s.t.a.r.de."[88]

Then he comes to the bringing up of the boy, and with as much earnestness as Jean-Jacques, and with true and moving eloquence, he beseeches the mother to be the nurse of her own progeny. "It is most necessary and most naturall in mine opinion, that the mother of the childe be also the nurse, both for the entire love she beareth to the babe, and the great desire she hath to have it well nourished: for is there 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 earth called 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, no hearbe commeth out of the ground that is not moystened, and as it were noursed of the moysture and mylke of the earth; the lyonesse nurseth hir whelps, the raven cherisheth hir byrdes, the viper her broode, and shal a woman cast away her babe?

"I accompt it cast away which in the swath clouts is cast aside, and lyttle care can the mother have which can suffer such crueltie: and can it be tearmed with any other t.i.tle then cruelty, the infant yet looking redde of the mother, the mother yet breathing through the torments of hir travaile, the child crying for helpe which is said to move wilde beastes, even in the selfe said moment it is borne, or the nexte minute, to deliver to a straunge nurse, which perhappes is neither wholesome in body, neither honest in manners, whiche esteemeth more thy argent though a trifle, then thy tender infant, thy greatest treasure?" Here Lyly is at his best, and neither Richardson nor Rousseau spoke better on this point, which is one of their favourite subjects.

He goes on to show how his child should be brought up, with what principles he should be imbued; many of these principles again very much resembling those Rousseau was to accept and propagate two hundred years later: "It is good nurture that leadeth to virtue, and discreete demeanour that playneth the path to felicitie.... To be a n.o.ble man it is most excellent, but that is our ancestors ... as for our n.o.bilytie, our stocke, our kindred, and whatsoever we ourselves have not done I scarcely accompt ours.... It is vertue, yea vertue, gentlemen, that maketh gentlemen.... These things [_i.e._, knowledge, reason, good sense], neither the whirling wheele of Fortune can chaunge neither the deceitful cavilling of worldlings separate, neither sickenesse abate, neither age abolish." Then follows a dialogue between Euphues and an atheist,[89] in which I need not say the latter is utterly routed; and the book ends with a collection of letters[90] between Euphues and various 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] Lyly gives a kind of _Lettres persanes_, but _Lettres persanes_ reversed, Montesquieu making use of his foreigner to satirize France, and Lyly of his to eulogize his native land. Euphues comes to England with his friend Philautus, and, since he knows everything, instructs the latter as 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 to be very good tempered and a perfect travelling companion. The two friends are enchanted with the country: its natural products, its commerce, its agriculture, its inhabitants and their manners, its bishops and their flocks, the civil government, the religious government, everything is perfect. English gentlewomen are prodigies of wisdom 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 a matter of fact, he had ever known or even seen), not Englishwomen. These spend their mornings "in devout prayer," and not in bed like the ladies of Italy; they read the Scriptures instead of Ariosto and Petrarch; they are so beautiful that the traveller is enraptured and cannot help crying out: "There is no beauty but in England." To sum up, "they are in prayer devoute, in bravery humble, in beautie chast, in feasting temperate, in affection wise, in mirth modest, in all their actions though courtlye, bicause woemen, yet Aungels, bicause virtuous." As for the women of other countries, they all have lovers and spend their time in painting their faces.[92]

Having verified such important differences, Philautus cannot do less than find a wife in England, and Euphues, whose unsociable humour prevents his doing likewise, carries away with him into his native land the remembrance of "a place, in my opinion (if any such may be on the earth) not inferiour to a paradise," and of a Queen "of singuler beautie and chast.i.tie, excelling in the one Venus, in the other Vesta."

It is, however, appropriate to recollect that at the time of the Renaissance, before the blossoming in England of this literature for ladies, Caxton too had enumerated the chief qualities of the women of his country. They are the same as in Lyly, only, as we shall see, the honest printer closes his remarks with a slight reservation. In the preface placed at the beginning of a work translated from the French by Lord Rivers, he states that in the translation, several pa.s.sages reflecting on the female s.e.x 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 contre ben right good, wyse, playsant, humble, discrete, sobre, chast, obedient to their husbandis, trewe, secrete, stedfast, ever besy and never ydle, attemperat in speking and vertuous in all their werkis"--"or," he is fain to add, "atte leste sholde be soo."[93] And thereupon, Caxton, on his own authority, restores the suppressed pa.s.sages.

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 into account. With him we leave epic and chivalrous stories and approach the novel of manners. There is no longer question of Arthur and his marvellous knights, but rather of contemporary men, who, in spite of excessive oratorical gew-gaws, possess some resemblance to reality.

Conversations are reported in which we find the tone of well-born persons of the period. Lyly takes care also to be very exact in his dates. Having announced at the end of his first volume that Euphues was about to set out for England, he informs us in the beginning of the second, which appeared in 1580, that the embarkation took place on December 1, 1579. He would, for anything, have gone so far as to give an engraved portrait of his hero, just as we were to see later, at the beginning of a book destined to make some noise in the world, the portrait of "Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff." Undoubtedly his opinions on men and life, his a.n.a.lysis of sentiment, are rather clumsily blended with the story and savour of the awkwardness of a first attempt; but there was however merit in making the attempt, and it is not impossible at distant intervals to discover under the crust of pedantry some well-turned pa.s.sage, possessing eloquence, as we have seen, or, more rarely, a sort of humour. It is thus that a tolerably good lesson may be drawn from the adventures of Philautus in London, who, deeply smitten with the charms of a young English lady, consults a sorcerer in order to obtain a philtre that will inspire love. Here was an excellent opportunity, which the magician does not fail to seize, of talking about serpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration of the bones, stones, and livers of animals that cause love, the alchemist, urged by Philautus, ends by confessing that the best sorcery of all to gain the loving regard of a woman, is to be handsome, witty, and charming.

IV.

By his defects and his merits, his wisdom, his gracefulness and also his bad style, Lyly could not fail to please. His public was ready when he began writing, a public with many frivolous tastes and many serious instincts. The lightness of tone and of behaviour which struck a foreigner coming for the first time to the English court or a professional censor who by trade is meant to see nothing else, was misleading as showing only the surface of the sort of mankind that was flouris.h.i.+ng there at that time. This lightness of tone, however, did exist nevertheless, and those who a.s.sumed it were not slow to embellish their speeches with flowers from Lyly's paper garden. The austere French Huguenot, Hubert Languet, the friend and adviser of Sir Philip Sidney, who visited England in the very year "Euphues" was published, was very much 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 by anybody in Queen Elizabeth's palaces. When he left the country he wrote to Sidney his opinion of the manners he had observed. It is simply a confirmation of what Ascham had stated sometime before, when he wrote of his travelled compatriots: neither of them did justice to the more serious qualities hidden under all this courtly trifling: "It was a delight to me last winter," says Languet, "to see you high in favour and enjoying the esteem of all your countrymen; but to speak plainly, the habits of your court seemed to me somewhat less manly than I could have wished, and most of your n.o.blemen appeared to me to seek for a reputation more by a kind of affected courtesy than by those virtues which are wholesome to the State, and which are most becoming to generous spirits and to men of high birth. I was sorry therefore, and so were other friends of yours, to see you wasting the flower of your life on such things, and I feared lest that n.o.ble nature of yours should be brought to take pleasure in pursuits which only enervate the mind."[94]

Lyly's book proved well suited to this public; it went through numerous editions; it was printed five times during the first six years of its publication, and new editions were issued from time to time till 1636.

It gave birth, as we shall see, to many imitations; the name of Euphues on the t.i.tle-page of a novel was for years considered a safe conduct to the public, if not to posterity; books purporting to be Euphues'

legacies or copies of Euphues' papers, or bearing in some way or other the stamp of his supposed approbation, multiplied accordingly. The movement increased rapidly, but it was not to last long; in fact, it did not continue beyond ten or twelve years; after this time the monuments of the euphuistic literature were still reprinted, but no addition was made to their number.