been accustomed to do for ten generations; but they must do so in the rhetorical manner suggested by the study of classical authors. Thus when Lucilla is reflecting by herself on her perfidy to Philautus, Lyly makes her speak thus:

But can Euphues convince me of fleeting, seeing for his sake I break my fidelity? Can he condemn me of disloyalty when he is the only cause of my disliking? May he justly condemn me of treachery who hath this testimony as trial of my good will? Doth he not remember that the broken bone once set together is stronger than ever it was? That the greatest blot is taken off with the pumice? That though the spider poison the fly, she cannot infect the bee? That though I have been light to Philautus, I may be lovely to Euphues?1

But while the new rhetoric was thus based on the old logical foundation of the schools, it derived its real popularity from the great variety of its illustration. The following sonnet of Sydney, who headed the school opposed to the Euphuists, throws a vivid light on the objects aimed at by the latter :

Let dainty wits cry on the Sister's nine,

That, bravely masked, their fancies may be told;
Or, Pindar's apes flaunt they in phrases fine,
Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold;
Or else let them in statelier glory shine,
Ennobling new found tropes with problems old;
Or with strange similes enrich each line,

Of herbs or beasts which Ind or Affrike hold.

For me in sooth no Muse but one I know;

Phrases and problems from my reach do grow

And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites!
How then? even thus,-in Stella's face I read
What Love and Beauty be; then all my deed
But copying is what, in her, Nature writes.2

The metaphorical style in the love - poetry of the Euphuists is a natural growth of the Classical Renaissance; it marks the decay of the allegorical interpretation of Nature which itself largely accounts for the abundant use of metaphor in the poetry of the Middle Ages. In

1 Euphues (Arber), p. 58.

2 Sidney's Poems (Grosart), vol. i. p. 45.

Dante and Petrarch sensible objects are used as the symbols of spiritual ideas; and, contrarily, in the allegorical love-poets of England and France, abstract ideas are personified as living agents; but in Lyly's time the study of the classics had discredited the old scholastic style, while the new ideas of Nature, which were beginning to prevail, tended to turn the imagination from the paths of allegory. The author of Euphues was finely sensitive to the tendencies of his age. His tastes, his training, his learning, were all mediæval, and he goes beyond all his predecessors in his profuse employment of metaphor. Metaphor is, indeed, the mainstay of his manner, but he uses it for merely decorative purposes, or for the display of an erudition which he knew would be acceptable to the Queen. The Physiologi, long established as text-books in the schools, had helped to circulate through society a large amount of mythology about the habits of animals, and Lyly accordingly impressed into the service of his art the great parent source of all these "vulgar errors," the Historia Naturalis of Pliny. When he wishes to prove to the ladies and gentlewomen of England that there is a "medicine for every malady" but love, he proceeds as follows:

The filthy sow when she is sick eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recured: the tortoise having tasted the viper sucketh origanum, and is quickly revived: the bear, ready to pine, licketh up the ants, and is recovered: the hart, being pierced with the dart, runneth out of hand to the herb dictanum, and is healed. And can men by no herb, by no art, by no way, procure a remedy for the impatient disease of love? Ah, well I perceive that Love is not unlike the fig tree whose fruit is sweet, whose root is more bitter than the claw of a bittern: or like the apple in Persia, whose blossom savoureth like honey, whose bud is more sour than gall.1

All this casuistical analysis of the passion of love, illustrated by an inexhaustible fund of metaphorical allusion, was embodied by the author of the new rhetoric in sentences framed on the principles of antithesis and

1 Euphues (Arber's edition), p. 61.

alliteration which, as we have seen, had, since the translation of Guevara's Dial of Princes, been making their way gradually into the texture of English prose composition.

As to antithesis, the structure of Lyly's sentences is framed upon well-defined principles. His aim is to arrest attention by a comparison, or rather a contrast, between different objects and different actions; and he effects it by means of a number of clauses, linked to each other by corresponding conjunctions, and containing each the same number of substantives, adjectives, and verbs. To avoid monotony he makes his subordinate clauses of unequal length, and varies the manner of sequence, comparison, and conjunction, by such alternative forms as "sothat," "so-as," "rather-than," "more or less-than," "neither-nor," "either-or," "not only--but also." His sentences are always characterised by a great show of logic and descriptive rhetoric, these effects being produced either by the balance of alternative clauses, or by an accumulation of contrasted words. Here is an example of the former manner :—

Gentlemen, if I should ask you whether, in the making of a good sword, iron were more to be required or steel, sure I am you would answer that both were necessary. Or if I should be so curious to demand whether, in a tale told to your Lady, disposition or invention be most convenient, I cannot but think that you would find them both expedient; for as one metal is to be tempered with another in fashioning a good blade, lest either, being all of steel it quickly break, or all of iron it never cut, so fareth it in speech which, if it be not seasoned as well with wit to move delight, as with art to manifest cunning, there is no eloquence; and in no other manner standeth it with love, for to be secret and not constant, or constant and not secret, were to build a house of mortar without stones, or a wall of stones without mortar.1

The ladies of England, on the other hand, are thus described

There did I behold them of pure complexion exceeding the

1 Euphues (Arber's edition), p. 417.

lily and the rose, of favour (wherein the chiefest beauty consisteth) surpassing the pictures that were feigned, or the Magician that could feign, their eyes piercing like the sunbeams, yet chaste, their speech pleasant and sweet, yet modest and courteous, their gait comely, their bodies straight, their hands white, all things that men could wish, or women would have, which how much it is none can set down, when as the one desireth as much as may be, the other more.1

Alliteration, which in Gascoigne is mainly used to produce a cumulative effect of sound, is employed by Lyly for the same purpose, and also to punctuate the antithetical form of the sentence.

Were it not, Gentlewomen, that your lust stands for law, I would borrow so much leave as to resign my office to one of you, whose experience in love hath made you learned, and whose learning hath made you so lovely; for me to intreat of the one being a novice, or to discourse of the other being a truant, I may well make you weary, but never the wiser, and give you occasion rather to laugh at my rashness than to like my reasons. care the less to excuse my boldness to you who were the cause of my blindness. And since I am at my own choice, either to talk of love or of learning, I had rather for this time be deemed an unthrift in rejecting profit, than a Stoic in renouncing pleasure.2

Yet I

A style of this kind was, of course, easy to imitate, and was fitted in every respect to meet the demands of fashionable taste. Euphuism established itself as the dialect of the Court, and thence radiated into every department of literature over which the Court exercised an influence. When Lyly had once pointed out the way, it became necessary for writers of all kinds to show their "wit." Wit of the kind exhibited in Euphues was looked for in the dialogue of the drama; in the narrative style of fiction; in the dedications of books to noble patrons. Wit was the main motive in the compositions of the Metaphysical School of Poetry which flourished so widely in England through the first half of the seventeenth 2 Ibid. p. 53.

1 Euphues, p. 444.

century. All who in the higher grade of society sought to show their superiority by the outward signs of dress, behaviour, and language, went to John Lyly's school to study the first principles of affectation.

With the downfall of the old hereditary dynasty, and the disappearance of the scholastic system, after 1688, the Euphuistic manner soon vanished. The Tatler and The Spectator, addressing themselves to the task of forming a public opinion in the nation at large, dealt with themes of common interest and human experience. For the expression of natural truth, Lyly's metaphorical style, drawn from fabulous stories about "Stones, Stars, Plants, Fishes, Flies," was as little qualified, as was his antithesis and alliteration to produce lasting pleasure, when the trick of its mechanism was once understood. His reputation shared the fate which must ultimately overtake all those who think of style before substance, and whose art is produced by means contrary to the course of nature. Euphuism was an ingenious attempt to give an appearance of organic life to a structure formed out of a medley of exhausted systems-Scholasticism, Feudalism, Ciceronianism, Petrarchism; and, like the parallel movement of the "Précieuses" in France, it failed to stand the analysis of reason and good sense.

Nevertheless Lyly had made a discovery which was of permanent value, and for which he ought to receive full credit. While the language of philosophy and criticism was still in a fluid state, he had perceived the advantage of clearness, correctness, and precision, in the arrangement of words. It was not altogether his fault if his age was more favourable to the development of language than to the expression of thought. He at least showed the nation the possibilities of balance and harmony in English prose composition; and the form which he established in the structure of the English sentence has never been entirely lost sight of by his successors. Addison and Steele, while they aimed at something much beyond the "fit phrases, pithy sentences, and gallant tropes," which gratified the taste of Webbe, learned from Lyly how to