say, that his life extended from about the middle of the sixteenth century to the opening of the seventeenth. It thus covered that remarkable period of English literature and government included in the reign of Elizabeth. We find him in Oxford, in 1571, "always averse to the crabbed studies of logic and philosophy and naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poesie." In 1578, he wrote The Anatomy of Wit, the first part of his Euphues, and, a year or two later, the concluding portion-Euphues and his England. According to the testimony of Collier, he had written, before the year 1589, his nine dramatic pieces. Of this dramatic portion of the writings of Lyly, of which it is important to state that seven-ninths of it was written in prose, it must here suffice us to remark, that while partaking, in the main, of the general tendency of the time to a comparatively low standard of comic representation, it, yet, exalts itself at frequent intervals to something of the dramatic dignity of a Marlowe and a Jonson. If, in his Sappho and Bombie, we mark the rudeness of the clown, we note, as well, the traces of a classical mind, in the pages of Midas and Endymion. Of his Alexander and Campaspe Hazlitt remarks, with some degree of critical pride, that "it is full of sweetness and point, of Attic salt and the honey of Hymettus." He expresses his great surprise at that opinion which has severely condemned the style of such an author to the ridicule of the schools. Such a surprise may again accost us as we pursue the examination of the Euphues of Lyly-a book concerning which the ablest modern historian of our letters hesitates not to affirm that "a fair knowledge of its contents is inseparable from a full understanding of the best English literature." The book as a unit is made up of two separate parts. The first partThe Anatomy of Wit-constitutes, in an important sense, the entire work, while the second portion-Euphues and his England, is intended, apparently, to render the instructions of the first somewhat more palatable to the prevalent tastes of the court. The hero of the narrative is an affluent youth of Athens leaving his native city in great freedom of spirit, to seek in foreign travel the pleasure which was not to be found at home. Arriving at Naples, he entered at once into all the excesses of that dissolute centre. When warned, in a spirit of kindness, by the aged Eubulus-"to fear and love and serve his God," he laughed to scorn the impertinence of the old man, taking it upon him to give suggestions to an Athenian youth. He now came in contact with a more congenial comrade in the person of Philautus, a resident of Naples. Here begins the common history of both Euphues and Philautus as they together ply their efforts for the affections of Lucilla, daughter of Don Ferardo. The result was, that after a vast amount of strategy and intrigue possible only to desperate lovers, and after an endless display of what Lyly calls—" fine phrases, smooth quips, merry taunts, jesting without meane and mirth without measure" in the parlors of the Neapolitan governor, the designs of each of the supplicants were frustrated by the admittance of a third character in the person of Curio. It is, thus, not surprising that in the presence of such betrayal, the indignation of the devoted Euphues should have reached its limit as he declared to Lucilla in his final interview "Farewell Lucilla, the most inconstant that ever was nursed in Naples, farewell Naples, the most accursed town in Italy, and women all, farewell." Stung to the quick in conscience that he had rejected the advice of maturer years and had squandered the vigor of his youth in the frivolities of the drawing room, he resolved henceforth to redeem his character in the eye of his own self respect and to be the useful and good man rather than the anxious wooer. The disappointed lovers then agreed to separate and in the correspondence consequent upon it, we have some of the best and most characteristic portions of the mind of the author, the special feature of it all being, a deep abhorrence of the sins of the past and an honest purpose to make amends. We We may call particular attention, in this respect, to the epistle entitledEuphues and his Ephoebus-a treatise on the education of youth worthy of Roger Ascham or Robert Walpole. "The chiefest way to learning," he says, in true Socratic manner, “is that there be a mutual love and fervent desire between the teacher and him that is taught." In his ardent praise of goodness, he eloquently declares, "Beauty we prefer above all and yet it fadeth; health is that which all desire and yet it is subject to disease; strength is to be wished for and, yet, herein the very beasts excel us. It is virtue that maketh gentlemen; that maketh the poor, rich; the base born, noble; the subject, a sovereign and the deformed, beautiful, which even with years waxeth ever young and when all things are cut away with the sickle of time, flourisheth so high that time cannot reach it." We find the author especially grieved by the evident looseness of the Grecian life among the students and people of Athens. There are not, in the pages of modern prose, passages freighted with more pathos and genuine power than some of these outbursts and protests against the reigning corruption. "Ah, Gentlemen," says Euphues, "what is to be looked for, nay, what is not to be feared, when the temple of Vesta, where virgins should live, is like the stews fraught with strumpets; when the universities of Christendom which should be the eyes, the leaven, the seasoning of the world, have lost their savor by impiety. Is it not become a byword among the common people that they had rather send their children to the gallows than to the university where they become not only spendthrifts of their money but bankrupts in good manners!" "Our life is long" he adds, "if we know how to use it." As he draws near the close of this epistle, his mind is absorbed in the religious aspects of his life, and it is in his suggestions to Euphoebus on this matter that we find some of the best specimens of English prose. "Is Aristotle more dear to thee with his books," he asks, "than Christ with his blood? What comfort canst thou finde in Philosophy for thy guiltie conscience? What hope of the resurrection? What glad tidings of the Gospel? Farewell therefore, the fine and filed phrases of Cicero, the pleasant Eligues of Ovid. Farewell, Rhethoricke; farewell, Philosophie; farewell, all learning which is not sprung from the bowells of the Holy Bible!" Then follows, in his letter to Athens, an exposition of the Christian faith worthy of an Erasmus. In the second division of the volume, he passes most naturally from these more exalted themes to the practical interest of the court and the country. As to hasty matrimony, he argues, that it is "better to have one plough going than two cradles, and more profit to have a barn filled than a bed." As to the best mode of traveling, he suggests "so to travel as alltho ye purse be weakened, ye mind may be strengthened," and always to prefer "godliness to gold." How such selections as these impress the mind of the casual reader we know not, but as for ourselves, the more we read them, the less willing are we to endorse modern criticism as to them. If such be in general the character of the work called Euphues, what is to be said of Euphuism? How is it to be defined? We notice, first of all, a great excess of ornament, allusion and unnatural composition drawn from sources bordering too closely upon the fabulous and mythological. This was the special charge made against Lyly by Drayton in his defense of Sidney, who, as he says, redeemed our tongue from such "Talking of stones, stars, plants, fishes, flies, The large amount of antithesis, so condensed as to be abrupt, is, perhaps, the most prominent error, lending to the style the appearance of affectation and impairing the natural variety of the sentiment. This is Euphuism and the whole of it. It is, thus, evident that, while the faults of the style are such as to exclude it, as a whole, from becoming a safe example for English students, there is, yet, quite enough of literary excellence in it to commend it to our regard. If the sentences of Lyly are far too curt and crisp, many of the periods of Hooker, of Bacon and of Milton are far too long. Each is an error and it is scarcely competent to us to assert which is the greater. It is this fact which calls for the exercise of critical candor and personal charity. Far be it from us to place Euphues or the drama of Lyly in the hands of the student as we would the writings of our classic authors. We simply contend that Lyly has his merits and to a far higher degree than common criticism would allow. It will not do for us to echo without reflection the sweeping charge of Berkenhert that "it is a most contemptible piece of affectation and nonsense," nor yet, indeed, the equally unguarded assertion of Webbe, that it is a style so perfect "that nothing may be omitted or added" with safety. Here, as in so many similar cases, it is the part of the critic to mediate between excessive flattery and censure. It is upon this middle table land that our author must be placed. > A question of interest arises here as to the true origin of what is termed the Euphuistic style. It has been accepted without debate as beginning with Lyly. The object of our discussion, here, will be to show that Lyly instead of being an originator simply adopted a method already established and became its most prominent exponent in the age of Elizabeth. Such a discussion carries us over the channel to the Continent and to Italy in the fourteenth century, among a host of servile imitators of her best poets. The question at once arises as to the true relation of the England of that day to the Italy of that day, in a social and literary point of view. We are not to forget, here, that Italy is the mother of modern European Literature, the source of that intellectual light which was in turn reflected upon the different nations of Europe and beyond the straits. To her, first, Chaucer himself was largely indebted, as were our authors in the days of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. So long as England was enjoying her Golden Age, such influence upon the Continental and English Literature was stimulating and salutary, but when that brilliant period was over and the character of social and political life had changed, English students in Italy were met by a countless number of third-rate followers of Dante and Petrarch, whose only aspiration was to manufacture poetry as best they might according to the manner of the MeisterSänger of Germany. Here then was the basis laid in the very home of song for all that deserves the name of the artificial in literature. It is just at the point where the formative minds of Northern Europe and of Great Britain came in contact with the Italian mind of the sixteenth century that we may trace back the so-called Euphuism of England and of Lyly to its only historic source in the degenerate bards of Italy. Collateral testimony is abundant as to the strong desires of Englishmen from the very first, to visit the land of Dante and Petrarch. Spoken of by the Italians at this early era as barbarians, we find it stated by an Italian after his return from England that "in dress, they are like the Italians for they are glad to boast themselves nearly allied to them." "These be the enchantments of Circe," says Ascham, "brought out of Italie to mar men's manners in England, much by example of ill life but more by precepts of bad books, of late |