John Lyly Part 8

[133] _La Critique Scientifique._

Nash supplies the only piece of contemporary information about his person and habits, and all he tells us is that he was short of stature and that he smoked. But Ben Jonson gives us an unmistakeable caricature of him under the delightfully appropriate name of Fastidious Brisk in _Every Man out of His Humour_. He describes him as a "neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well, and in fashion; practiseth by his gla.s.s how to salute; speaks good remnants notwithstanding his base viol and tobacco; swears tersely and with variety; cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's familiarity: a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man's horse to praise and back him as his own. Or, for a need can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand[134]." Allowing for the exaggeration of satire, we cannot doubt that this portrait is in the main correct. It indicates a man who follows fashion, even in swearing, to the excess of foppery, who delights in scandal, who contracts debts with an easy conscience, and who is withal a merry fellow and a wit. All this is in accordance with what we know of his life. We can picture him at Oxford serenading the Magdalen dons with his "base viol," or perhaps organizing a night party to disturb the slumbers of some insolent tradesman who had dared to insist upon payment; his neat little figure leading a gang of young rascals, and among them the "sea-dog" Hakluyt, the st.u.r.dy and as yet unconverted Gosson, the refined Watson, and perchance George Pettie concealing his thorough enjoyment of the situation by a smile of elderly amus.e.m.e.nt. Or yet again we can see him at the room of some boon companion seriously announcing to a convulsed a.s.sembly his intention of applying for a fellowship, and when the last quip had been hurled at him through clouds of smoke and the laughter had died down, proposing that the house should go into committee for the purpose of concocting the now famous letter to Burleigh. When we next catch a glimpse of him he is no longer the madcap; he walks with such dignity as his stature permits, for he is now author of the much-talked-of _Anatomy of Wit_, and one of the most fashionable young men of the Court. What elaboration of toilet, what adjustment and readjustment of ruffles and lace, what bowing and sc.r.a.ping before the gla.s.s, preceded that great event of his life--his presentation to the Queen--can only be guessed at. But we can well picture him, following his magnificently over-dressed patron up the long reception-room, his heart beating with pleasurable excitement, yet his manners not forgotten in the hour of his pride, as he nods to an acquaintance and bows with sly demureness to some Iffida or Camilla. Those were the days of his success, the happiest period of his life when, as secretary to the Lord Chamberlain and a.s.sociate of the highest in the land, he breathed his native atmosphere, the praises and flattery of a fickle world of fashion. But, time-server as he was, he was no sycophant. Leaving de Vere's service after a sharp quarrel, he was not ashamed to take up the profession of teaching in which he had already had some experience. We see him next, therefore, a master of St Paul's, engrossed in the not unpleasant duties of drilling his pupils for the performance of his plays, accompanying their songs on his instrument, or himself taking his place on the stage, now as Diogenes in his ubiquitous tub, and now as the golden-bearded and long-eared Midas. And last of all he appears as the disappointed, disillusioned man, "infelix academicus ignotus." A wife and children on his hands, his occupation gone, his hopes of the Revels Mastership blasted, he becomes desperate, and writes that last bitter letter to Elizabeth.

[134] From the _Preface_.

The man of fashion out of date, the social success left high and dry by the unheeding current, he died eventually in poverty, not because he had wasted his substance, like Greene, in Bohemia, but because, thinking to take Belgravia by storm, he had forgotten that the foundations of that city are laid on the bodies of her sons. But leaving

"The thrice three muses mourning for the death Of Learning late deceased in beggary,"

let us look more closely into the character of this man, whose brilliant and successful youth was followed by so sad an old age.

In spite of Professor Raleigh and the moralizing of _Euphues_, we may decide that there was nothing of the Puritan about him. His life at Oxford, his attachment to the notorious de Vere, the keen pleasure he took in the things of this world, are, I think, sufficient to prove this. His general att.i.tude towards life was one of vigorous hedonism, not of intellectual asceticism. The ethical element of _Euphues_ links him rather to the already vanishing Humanism than to the rising Puritanism, against which all his sympathies were enlisted, as his contributions to the _Marprelate_ controversy indicate. I have refrained from touching upon these _Mar-Martin_ tracts because they possess neither aesthetic nor dynamical importance, being, as Gabriel Harvey--always ready with the spiteful epigram--describes them, "alehouse and tinkerly stuffe, nothing worthy a scholar or a real gentleman." They are worth mentioning, however, as throwing a light upon the religious prejudices of our author. He was a courtier and he was a churchman, and in lending his aid to crush sectarians he thought no more deeply about the matter than he did in voting as Member of Parliament against measures which conflicted with his social inclinations. There was probably not an ounce of the theological spirit in his whole composition; for his refutation of atheism was a youthful essay in dialectics, a bone thrown to the traditions of the moral Court treatise.

If, indeed, he was seriously minded in any respect, it was upon the subject of Art. Himself a novelist and dramatist, he displayed also a keen delight in music, and evinced a considerable, if somewhat superficial, interest in painting. And yet, though he apparently made it his business to know something of every art, he was no sciolist, and, if he went far afield, it was only in order to improve himself in his own particular branch. All the knowledge he acquired in such amateur appreciation was brought to the service of his literary productions. And the same may be said of his extensive excursions into the land of books.

No Elizabethan dramatist but Lyly, with the possible exception of Jonson, could marshal such an array of learning, and few could have turned even what they had with such skill and effect to their own purposes. Lyly had made a thorough study of such cla.s.sics as were available in his day, and we have seen how he employed them in his novel and in his plays. But the cla.s.sics formed only a small section of the books digested by this omnivorous reader. If he could not read Spanish, French, or Italian, he devoured and a.s.similated the numerous translations from those languages into English, Guevara indeed being his chief inspiration. Nor did he neglect the literature of his own land.

Few books we may suppose, which had been published in English previous to 1580, had been unnoticed by him. We have seen what a thorough acquaintance he possessed of English drama before his day, and how he exhibits the influence of the writings of Ascham and perhaps other humanists, how he laid himself under obligation to the bestiaries and the proverb-books for his euphuistic philosophy, and how his lyrics indicate a possible study of the mediaeval scholar song-books. In conclusion, it is interesting to notice that we have clear evidence that he knew Chaucer[135].

[135] Bond, I. p. 401.

Idleness, therefore, cannot be urged against him; nor does this imposing display of learning indicate a pedant. Lyly had nothing in common with the spirit of his old friend Gabriel Harvey, whom indeed he laughed at.

There is a story that Watson and Nash invited a company together to sup at the Nag's Head in Cheapside, and to discuss the pedantries of Harvey, and our euphuist in all probability made one of the party. His erudition sat lightly on him, for it was simply a means to the end of his art.

Moreover, a student's life could have possessed no attraction for one of his temperament. Unlike Marlowe and Greene, he had harvested all his wild oats before he left Oxford; but the process had refined rather than sobered him, for his laugh lost none of its merriment, and his wit improved with experience, so that we may well believe that in the Court he was more Philautus than Euphues. In his writings also his aim was to be graceful rather than erudite; and, ponderous as his _Euphues_ seems to us now, it appealed to its Elizabethan public as a model of elegance.

His art was perhaps only an instrument for the acquisition of social success, but he was nevertheless an artist to the fingertips. Yet he was without the artist's ideals, and this fact, together with his frivolity, vitiated his writings to a considerable extent, or, rather, the superficiality of his art was the result of the superficiality of his soul. Of that "high seriousness," which Aristotle has declared to be the poet's essential, he has nothing. Technique throughout was his chief interest, and it is in technique alone that he can claim to have succeeded. "More art than nature" is a just criticism of everything he wrote, with the exception of his lyrics. He was supremely clever, one of the cleverest writers in our literature when we consider what he accomplished, and how small was the legacy of his predecessors; but he was much too clever to be simple. He excelled in the niceties of art, he revelled in the accomplishment of literary feats, his intellect was akin to the intellect of those who in their humbler fashion find pleasure in the solution of acrostics. And consequently his writings were frequently as finical as his dress was fastidious; for it was the form and not the idea which fascinated him; to his type of mind the letter was everything and the spirit nothing. Indeed, the true spirit of art was quite beyond his comprehension, though he was connoisseur enough to appreciate its presence in others. Artist and man of taste he was, but he was no poet.

Artist he was, I have said, to the fingertips, but his art lay at his fingers' ends, not at his soul. He was facile, ingenious, dexterous, everything but inspired. He had wit, learning, skill, imagination, but none of that pa.s.sionate apprehension of life which makes the poet, and which Marlowe and Shakespeare possessed so fully. And therefore it was his fate to be nothing more than a forerunner, a straightener of the way; and before his death he realised with bitterness that he was only a stepping-stone for young Shakespeare to mount his throne. He was, indeed, the draughtsman of the Elizabethan workshop, planning and designing what others might build. He was the expert mathematician who formulated the laws which enabled Shakespeare to read the stars. Of the heights and depths of pa.s.sion he was unconscious; he was no psychologist, laying bare the human soul with the lancet; and though now and again, as in _Endymion_, he caught a glimpse of the silver beauties of the moon, he had no conception of the glories of the midday sun.

And yet though he lacked the poet's sense, his wit did something to repair the defect, and even if it has a musty flavour for our pampered palates, it saves his writings from becoming unbearably wearisome; and moreover his fun was without that element of coa.r.s.eness which mars the comic scenes of later dramatists who appealed to more popular audiences.

But it is quite impossible for us to realise how brilliant his wit seemed to the Elizabethans before it was eclipsed by the genius of Shakespeare. Even as late as 1632 Blount exclaims, "This poet sat at the sunne's table," words referring perhaps more especially to Lyly's poetical faculty, but much truer if interpreted as an allusion to his wit. The genius of our hero played like a dancing sunbeam over the early Elizabethan stage. Never before had England seen anything like it, and we cannot wonder that his public hailed him in their delight as one of the greatest writers of all time. How could they know that he was only the first voice in a choir of singers which, bursting forth before his notes had died away, would shake the very arch of heaven with the pa.s.sion and the beauty of their song? But for us who have heard the chorus first, the recitative seems poor and thin. The magic has long pa.s.sed from _Euphues_, once a name to conjure with, and even the plays seem dull and lifeless. That it should be so was inevitable, for the wit which illuminated these works was of the time, temporary, the earliest beam of the rising sun. This sunbeam it is impossible to recover, and with all our efforts we catch little but dust.

And yet for the scientific critic Lyly's work is still alive with significance. Worthless as much of it is from the aesthetic point of view, from the dynamical, the historical aspect few English writers are of greater interest. Waller was rescued from oblivion and labelled as the first of the cla.s.sical poets. But we can claim more for Lyly than this. Extravagant as it may sound, he was one of the great founders of our literature. His experiments in prose first taught men that style was a matter worthy of careful study, he was among the earliest of those who realised the utility of blank verse for dramatic purposes, he wrote the first English novel in our language, and finally he is not only deservedly recognised as the father of English comedy, but by his mastery of dramatic technique he laid such a burden of obligation upon future playwrights that he placed English drama upon a completely new basis. Of the three main branches of our literature, therefore, two--the novel and the drama--were practically of his creation, and though his work suffered because it lacked the quality of poetry, for the historian of literature it is none the less important on that account.

LIST OF CHIEF AUTHORITIES.

ARBER. The Martin Marprelate Controversy. Scholar's Library.

ASCHAM, ROGER. The Schoolmaster. Arber's English Reprints.

ASCHAM, ROGER. Toxophilus. Arber's English Reprints.

BAKER, G. P. Lyly's Endymion.

BARNEFIELD, RICHARD. Poems. Arber's Scholar's Library.

BERNERS, LORD. The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius.

BERNERS, LORD. Froissart's Chronicles. Globe Edition.

BOAS. Works of Kyd. Clarendon Press.

BOND, R. W. John Lyly. Clarendon Press. 3 Vols.

BRUNET. Manuel de Libraire.

BUTLER CLARKE. Spanish Literature.

CHILD, C. G. John Lyly and Euphuism. _Munchener Beitrage_ VII.

CRAIK, SIR H. Specimens of English Prose.

DICTIONARY of National Biography.

EARLE. History of English Prose.

FIELD, NATHANIEL. A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k.

FITZMAURICE-KELLY. Spanish Literature. Heinemann.

GAYLEY. Representative English Comedies.

GOSSE. From Shakespeare to Pope.

GOSSON. School of Abuse. Arber's English Reprints.

GUEVARA, ANTONIO DE. Libro Aureo del emperado Marco Aurelio.

HALLAM. Introduction to the Literature of Europe.

HENNEQUIN. La Critique Scientifique.

HUME, MARTIN. Spanish Influence on English Literature.

JUSSERAND. The English Novel in the time of Shakespeare.

LANDMANN, DR. Shakespeare and Euphuism. _New Shak. Soc. Trans._ 1880-2.

LANDMANN, DR. Introduction to Euphues. Sprache und Literatur.

LATIMER. Sermons. Arber's English Reprints.

LEE, SIDNEY. Athenaeum, July 14, 1883.

LEE, SIDNEY. Huon of Bordeaux (Berners'). Early Eng. Text Soc. Extra Series XL., XLI.

LEE, SIDNEY. Life of Shakespeare.

LIEBIG. Lord Bacon et les sciences d'observation en moyen age.