His nominal subject-the life and sayings of Marcus Aurelius--was selected by him as ground convenient for the display of florid conceits and rhetorical artifices, which he employed with great profusion to disguise the poverty of his thought. From the Latin authors he learned the use of antithesis; the long-established practice of allegorical interpretation suggested to him the mechanical capacities of metaphor. Aiming at a constant variety of verbal tricks, he introduced them not only into his own narrative but into many fictitious speeches and letters which he asserted to be translations from the genuine compositions of Marcus Aurelius. The English writers were caught with the marked features of his style, and did their best to reproduce them. Here, for example, is North's rendering of what the reader will easily perceive to be a caricature by Guevara of the verbal antithesis used in moderation by Cicero:

And afterwards all well considered, all examined, and all proved, I find that the more I eat, the more I die for hunger; the more I drink, the greater thirst I have; the more I rest, the more I am broken; the more I sleep, the drowsier I am; the more I have, the more I covet; the more I desire, the more I am tormented; the more I procure, the less I attain.1

The practice of elaborating a single metaphor, common among the poets of the Middle Ages, and illustrated in Petrarch's sonnet beginning Passa la nave mia, is seen from such a passage as the following to be now affected by the writers of modern European prose :

Truly the young man is but a new knife, the which in process of time cankereth in the edge: for on one day he breaketh the point of understanding, another he loseth the edge of cutting, and to-morrow the rust of diseases taketh him, and afterwards by adversity he is writhen, and by infirmities he is diseased, by riches he is whetted, by poverty he is dulled again: finally oftentimes it chanceth that the more sharp he is whetted, so much the more the life is put in hasard.2

Again the scholastic habit of arguing from physical to moral phenomena reveals itself in imagery like this:

What need is it to blase our virtues and deny our naturalities? Certainly there is not so old a horse but if he see a mare will neigh once or twice: there is no man so young nor old but let him see fair young damosels, either he will give a sigh or a wish. In all voluntary things I deny not that one may be virtuous but in natural things I confess every man to be weak. When you take the wood from the fire it leaveth burning: when summer cometh the cold winter ceaseth: when the sea is calm the waves leave their vehement motions: when the sun is set it lighteneth not the world.

Introduced into England at a time when men's minds were distracted with conflicts of opinion, when the critical sense was just awakening, the question as to the best mode of refining the vulgar tongue being in every one's thoughts, a book like the Dial of Princes, however wanting in weight and substance-and the value of its reflections may be fairly judged from the extracts given above--failed not to exert a powerful influence upon the style of writers both in verse and prose. Those who had been educated in an admiration for the manner of Seneca, admired the sententious balance of its rhetorical commonplaces; it was welcomed with enthusiasm by all who, while desirous of attracting attention by their writing, were conscious of having nothing particular to say. The tricks of Guevara were presently diversified in his English imitators, by the trick of alliteration, encouraged by the reviving popularity of the writings of Langland; and both were largely practised by the poet Churchyard. In the abundance of proverbs and illustrations with which he colours his platitudes, we see the effects of The Dial of Princes; his Davy Dycar is a direct imitation of Piers the Plowman; while the titles of his books Churchyards Charge, Churchyard's Chips, Churchyard's Challenge and the versification of all his later poems are monuments of his plodding persistency in letter-hunting.

Gascoigne, a far better writer, did not escape the

corruptions of the time. His verse indeed is comparatively free from mechanical alliteration, for which in his critical writings he declares a contempt inherited from Chaucer, and expressed in Chaucer's phrase; but his prose, whenever he seeks to be witty and agreeable, anticipates the chief mannerisms of Lyly. In an Address to the Queen prefixed to his Hermit's Tale, we find the following sample of the "lofty style":

These things (liege Lady) I am bold thus rudely to draw in sequence before the skilful eyes of your learned Majesty, finding my youth mispent, my substance impaired, my credit accused, my talent hidden, my follies laughed at, my ruin unpitied, my truth unemployed. All which extremities as they have of long time astonied my understanding, so have they of late openly called me to God's gates. And your Majesty, being of God godly, and on our earth our God, by God appointed, I presume likewise to knock at the gates of your gracious Goodness, hoping that your Highness will set me on work, though it were noon and past before I sought service; for, most gracious Lady, though I have overlong loitered, though I have garishly gadded, and though I tilled the soil of fancy, and reaped the fruit of folly, I may not yet always wander wildly, nor finally conclude to despair cowardly, I may not, like a babe, for one trifle taken from me, throw away the rest which might have been my contentation; I may not so much marvel at other men's good haps, that in the meanwhile I forget mine own defects: for, as fencers, before they be made masters, must challenge and abide all comers, so Magnanimity and true Fortitude must be content to abide all frowns of Fortune before they attain to the height of her wheel; and more commendable is he which in poverty striveth that no man excel him for virtues, than he which in prosperity grudgeth at another man's advancement.1

The new mannerism in prose composition reached its climax in Euphues, which was first published two years after the death of Gascoigne. John Lyly, the author of this famous book, was born in the Weald of Kent in 1553 or 1554. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1571, with the entry against his name plebeii filius, and proceeded to his B.A. degree in 1573. In 1574 he petitioned Lord Burghley, Gascoigne's Complete Poems (Hazlitt), vol. ii. p. 138.

but without success, for letters from the Queen to procure him admission as Fellow of the College. He became M.A. in 1575. Euphues, or The Anatomy of Wit, after being licensed for publication in December 1578, was published in the spring of the following year, and the author was shortly afterwards incorporated as M.A. in the University of Cambridge. His book at once attracted attention in the highest quarters, and hopes, as it appears, were held out to him that on the next vacancy he would be appointed Master of the Revels.1 No such advancement, however, came to him, though he seems to have been employed as an official writer of "Court Comedies," nine of which he produced before 1589, seven being written in prose, one in rhyme, and one in blank verse.2 These will have to be noticed in a future chapter. In 1589 a book called Pappe with an Hatchet was published in the "Martin Marprelate Controversy," and in defence of the Bishops. Lyly was charged by his literary enemies with being the author.3 As he never denied the imputation, it is likely enough that he joined in the fray with the hope of preferment; if so his pamphleteering was not more successful than his plays. The latter seem to have ceased after 1589, perhaps in consequence of the suppression of the Comedies in St. Paul's, where all his dramas had been previously presented by the "Children of Her Majesty's Chapel," and "The Children of Paul's." Nothing more is recorded of his literary performances or of his life; but we know that he lived in the parish of St. Bartholomew, where three children were born to him, and where he himself was buried on November 30, 1606.

Euphues is a didactic novel in which the moral prevails enormously over the action, and the rhetoric bears a similar proportion to the moral. The title is derived

1 66

I was entertained your Majesty's servant by your own gracious favour, strengthened with conditions that I should aim all my courses at the Revels (I dare not say with the promise but a hopeful Item of the Reversion) for which these ten years I have attended with an unwearied patience."—A Petition of John Lillie to the Queen's Majesty, 1590.

2 Arber's edition of Euphues, p. 6.

3 Gabriel Harvey's Pierce's Supererogation.

from a passage in Ascham's Schoolmaster, which defines the qualities required in a well-educated man :—

Eupus is he that is apt by wit and appliable by readiness of will to learning, having all other qualities of the mind and parts of the body that must serve learning, not troubled, mangled, and halfed, but sound, whole, full, and liable to do their office : as a tongue, not stammering, or over hardly drawing forth words, but plain and ready to deliver the meaning of the mind: a voice, not soft, weak, piping, womanish, but audible, strong, and manlike a countenance, not werish and crabbed, but fair and comely a personage, not wretched and deformed, but tall and goodly for surely a comely countenance with a goodly stature giveth credit to learning and authority to the person otherwise commonly either open contempt or privy disfavour doth hurt or hinder both person and learning.1

From this hint Lyly constructed his leading character, a young gentleman of Athens of great wealth and extraordinary parts, who, wishing to see the world, establishes himself at Naples, where, falling in with another young gentleman, named Philautus, of nearly equal accomplishments, he proposes that they shall be to each other as Damon to Pythias, Pylades to Orestes, Titus to Gysippus, etc. Unfortunately his virtue proves unequal to these heroic examples. Philautus is betrothed to a certain fair but fickle Lucilla, who, in the absence of her father, Don Ferardo, invites her lover and his friend to supper with her, maiden propriety being guarded by the presence of a respectable chaperone, Livia. When the meal is ended, Lucilla, who has received Euphues with reasonable coldness, proposes that the gentlemen, after the Neapolitan fashion, shall treat them to "some discourse either concerning love or learning," whereupon Euphues, while choosing the former subject, contrives, with much art, and with a view to securing the good graces of Lucilla, to illustrate it with a vast amount of erudition. Logic, Rhetoric, Natural History, and Moral Philosophy are all pressed into his service, but, as becomes a scientific student in the Courts of Love, he breaks off in the midst

1 Schoolmaster (Mayor's edition), book i. p. 21.