Or Amurath of the East ? Harry of Monmouth, Better to sink Thy fleurs-de-lys in slime again, and fling Within a few months of this, on Christmas Day 1417, the real Oldcastle was executed for treason and for heresy. We know him at last in his old true name, as the "Good Lord Cobham ". God's great gift of speech abused Made his memory confused. Let them rave! Shakspeare has done him no wrong-he has built up indeed a character on the false conception of a noble Englishman-but he has committed no treason against the eternal truths of the human conscience. "Oldcastle died a martyr, and this (Falstaff) is not the man." This was true, and needed saying in vindication of the great Lollard, but "fat" Jack witnessed also in his death to certain truths as to "conduct being four-fifths of life," of which the world will never cease to need Shakspeare's imperishable reminder. EUPHUISM-PAST AND PRESENT THE last quarter of a century has witnessed an extraordinary revival of interest in the writers. of the Elizabethan Age. Every author known, and some hitherto unknown, have been reissued, re-edited, and recriticised, almost ad nauseam. And there should accordingly be little left me to say that is new about a writer who was very famous in his own day, and left a name in more senses than one, for he added a most expressive word, found useful up to the present moment, to our literary vocabulary. But, notwithstanding, I so often hear persons in conversation mixing up euphuism with euphemism, and otherwise showing a certain confusion of mind as to what John Lyly really contributed, in the way of benefit or injury, to the literary progress of his time, that I will ask the kind indulgence of the many experts present, if I tell over again an often-told story (I will do it briefly), and just explain what is Lyly's precise significance in English literature, in connection with that book of his that gave us the word "euphuism." For he was something besides the author of this book, as you all know. Lyly was a poet and wit and scholar-a writer of plays-one of that remarkable group who moulded the drama into the shape in which it came into the hands of Shakspeare. He first wrote comedy in prose, and thereby prepared the way for many better things that followed: for the witcombats of Benedick and Beatrice, and the sweet prattle of Hermione and Mamillius; and for that we bless his name, and can forgive him much. But though the good he did was not "interred with his bones," yet it is sadly true that the evil he did, or helped to do, "lived after him," and has not lost all its poison yet. John Lyly was a Kentish gentleman, born just about the middle of the sixteenth century, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1579, when he was about six-and-twenty, he published his famous Romance in Prose, which, for short, we call Euphues (from the name of its hero), but of which the full title was as follows: 'Euphues. The Anatomy of Wit. Very pleasant for all gentlemen to read, and most necessary to remember. Wherein are contained the delights that Wit followeth in his youth, by the pleasantness of love; and the happiness he reapeth in age, by the perfectness of Wisdom. By John Lylly, Master of Art." We call the work a romance, in default of a better word, but it has little of the quality we associate with modern romances, or even with those of his contemporaries. It was not a romance of passion or adventure, like Sidney's Arcadia, or Lodge's Rosalynde. The story in it is indeed reduced to a vanishing point; and though a few gentlemen and ladies form the dramatis persona, the action is devised singly and solely as the means of bringing in long conversations on the subject of love and friendship, and religion and education, and the moralities generally. These form the staple of the book, and for the sake of these Lyly wrote The book was specially commended to the attention of ladies. It was for the drawingroom, so Lyly expressly said. His aim was to bring morality and true philosophy into favour and into fashion. Like Steele and Addison, a hundred and fifty years later, Lyly wished to bring philosophy down from the "sphery climes and domesticate it in the lady's boudoir. This dominant feature of the book is naturally unknown to the modern reader, for the simple fact that its peculiar style forms an absolute barrier to its being read, and that it is the style which has determined the book's reputation. Indeed, since Lyly's own day, I suppose no one had troubled to point out the real secret of the book's original popularity, until the late Charles Kingsley wrote some perfectly true words about it in Westward Ho! To persons who would sneer at Lyly's Euphues, he retorted: "Have they read it? For if they have done so, I pity them if they have not found it, in spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as man need look into." For the subject-matter of the book this praise is not too high. Its tone is unexception able, and its moral elevation throughout quite remarkable. Euphues belongs to a class of writing that has always been popular, and always will be. The moral essay, slightly concealed in the disguise of a novel, or a drama, or a dialogue among friends, just sufficiently adorned to distinguish it from a homily or a sermon proper, with a slight admixture of humour and sentiment, and perhaps a gently indicated background of some love-making, will always appeal to an immense public. And we may well be thankful that this is so, and that so much real goodness, tenderness, resignation, and religious feeling are sown in this way broadcast over society. Every generation produces its own crop of these works. Sometimes the genius of their writers constitutes them literature, as with the essays of Addison and Johnson. More often they serve their purpose with a certain class of readers, and then die away, like the "Proverbial Philosophy" of the late Mr. Tupper, and the "Gentle Life" of the late Mr. Hain Friswell. Well, it is to this class of literature that Lyly's Euphues belongs. It is difficult to fix its exact place and degree of merit in the catalogue. No doubt there is not much that is novel |