JOHN LYLY, EUPHUISM*
THE study of origins differs in this from that of mature works of art, that in many cases interest attaches to peculiarities, which may in themselves be of the nature of blemishes, rather than to the positive artistic merits of the work. Now the-writings of John Lyly, whatever the partiality of an editor may find to say in their favour, are of the nature of " origins." Their interest does not lie in their individual merit, but in the position which they occupy with respect to other and more important creations, and to the general literary evolution of the time.
From this point of view Lyly 'may lay claim to considera- tion on two grounds : as a prose writer, and as a dramatist. On the score of his claim to be considered as the first English novelist, his name has long figured in literary text-books ; and though perhaps more commended than read, he has received a good deal of attention. His claim, however, is not a very good one. There is no first English novelist; for no funda- mental form of art has a definite beginning or is the creation of a single man, even of a single generation. Moreover, quite apart from the romances of chivalry, which belong to a some. what different species of art, the prose tale was not unknown in England before the time of Lyly, for the Italian novelle had long been familiar, and had not only been translated but imitated likewise. Nor does Euphues bear any very close resemblance to the modern novel, for the story forms but the flimsiest thread on which to string together lengthy dis- quisitions in a vein of drawing-room philosophy upon any. thing or nothing, as the chance of conversation or caprice may decide, love and education being perhaps the favourite topics of these moral discourses. It must be admitted that this characteristic has not always been absent from the work of later novelists, but it can hardly be held fundamental in the art, while few, if any, of later examples are to the same degree marked by this sententious dilatation.
Lyly's claim to importance as a stylist is far better founded, though this does not mean that the positive merits of his style are such as to recommend it for study or imitation to-day, or even that he was the actual inventor of the mode of composition which he popularised, and which took its name from his chief literary effort. That style, mannerism, or whatever else it may be called, may be traced to two main causes, one of which rendered the appearance of something of the kind inevitable, while the other determined its individual peculiarities. At the beginning of the last quarter of the sixteenth century English prose was in a state of chaos which it is difficult for us to realise to-day. It is perfectly true that isolated writers had at an earlier date pro- duced by the mere force of their genius works which remain
* The Complete Works of John Lyly. Edited by B. Warwick Bond, MA 3 vols. Oxford : ClarendOn Press. [42s. net.1
as monuments of English prose style; but the language yet required drilling before any general standard of composition could be attained, such as might serve the purpose of the common journey-work of literature. Precisely the same phenomenon had appeared some half-century earlier in the case of verse. Such poems as the "Nut Brown Maid" amply prove the perfection to which writers could on occasion attain at the very beginning of the sixteenth century; but it is none the less true that it was the Italianising poets, with Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey at their head, who rescued English prosody from the shapelessness of Hawaii and Barclay and the barbarisms of Skelton. The possibility, then, of such a style as Euphnism—a style which by its elaborate intrica- cies seems to belong rather to the domain of verse than of prose—was due to the gradually awakening consciousness of the claims of form as a curb upon the amorphous flow of thought. The particular form which this attempt at the creation of a prose style assumed was due to other causes. In this aspect Euphuism may, and often has been, paralleled with the manifestation of a peculiar fashion of writing which obtained in almost every country of Europe sufficiently advanced in matters of literary aesthetics to enter into such movements at all. The conventional in- sipidities of the Petrarchisti and the formalism of the Rheto- riqueurs in verse ; and in prose the outrageous conceits of Aretino, the intricate verbal efflorescence known as Gongorism, the Euphuism of Lyly, and, we may add, Sidney's style in the Arcadia, are all alike the literary aberrations of men to whom form and matter were distinct and separable ideas. Yet it was just these rather ghastly experiments which drilled the language and gave it flexibility and strength, and thereby made a common and conveniently adaptable standard of style possible. Herein lies the importance of Euphuism. As to its intrinsic qualities, they were adequately summed up by Michael Drayton when he jibed at the prevalent fashion set by Lyly- "Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, Playing with words and idle similies "-
though he showed less critical taste in extolling by comparison the language of the Arcadia.
The other achievement in right of which John Lyly claims abiding recognition in the annals of English letters is the advance he accomplished in the art of the stage. His importance in this connection has been recognised in no small degree by modern critics such as J. A. Symonds and Dr. A. W. Ward, but the pretension put forward on his behalf by his present editor appears to us extravagant. Lyly's courtly talents formed but one factor, and his writings but an accident, in the general advance, which was making itself equally felt in channels wholly unaffected by him. To assume that it is to Lyly alone that we must look for the bridging of the gulf which in comedy separates the productions of the middle of the century from the early work of Shakespeare is, to say the least, unnecessary. If it is true that at the outset of his career as a dramatist, say in 1580, Lyly was distinctly ahead of his contemporaries, it is also true that at the end, say in 1600, he was immeasurably behind them. His own art, indeed, hardly. shows any appreciable advance. Nevertheless it is easy, in the light of later accomplishments, to underestimate both his historical importance and his actual achievement. Fully to understand the importance of Lyly's position it is necessary to make. the considerable mental effort required to transport oneself to a period when the moat notable, though not, it is true, the most recent, achievements of the English drama were Royster Doyster in comedy and Gorboduc in tragedy. For these rude and frigid specimens of dramatic art the vehicle had been, in the one case, a rough, accentual, rhymed measure of no particular metrical structure, and, in the other, a singularly wooden and monotonous attempt at blank verse. It is certainly among Lyly's most substantial claims to the regard of posterity that it was he who first used prose as a vehicle of original dramatic composition in English. He no doubt also effected an advance in matters of dramatic construction, particularly in that interweaving of several plots which is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Elizabethan drama. In this, as well as in matters of style and expression, his influence can be traced in no equivocal manner in a large portion of the early work of Shakespeare, and thus it is that among " origins " the position occupied by the works of John Lyly is neither inconspicuous nor un. honourable.
With regard to the present edition there are, it is true, a good many points on which we differ from the views ex- pressed by the editor in the rather discursive essays which accompany the text. It appears to us that not only has he gone rather further than could be justified in the way of special pleading in favour of his author, but that his reason- ing is frequently forced, obscure, and inconclusive. Into matters of detail it is here, of course, impossible to enter. The text, however, which is obviously the result of enormous labour, appears to be judiciously handled, and places students under a debt of gratitude to Mr. Bond. An adequate reprint of Euphues has, indeed, long been obtainable in Professor Arber's "English Reprints," but no attempt at an annotated edition has been previously adventured, while the only edition of the plays hitherto available has for some time past been felt to be rather a disgrace to English scholar. ship.
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