The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 6

This period, however, was filled in a measure with the product of Lyly's brains or that of his imitators. All who prided themselves on elegance spoke his affected language, and studied in his book the mythology of plants. Edward Blount, a bookseller who reprinted Lyly's comedies in the following century, at a time when these courtly dramas were beginning to be forgotten, has well expressed the kindly and sympathetic favour accorded to Lyly by the ladies of Elizabethan days: "These papers of his," says he, "lay like dead lawrels in a churchyard; but I have gathered the scattered branches up, and by a charme, gotten from Apollo, made them greene againe and set them up as epitaphes to his memory. A sinne it were to suffer these rare monuments of wit to lye covered in dust and a shame such conceipted comedies should be acted by none but wormes. Oblivion shall not so trample on a sonne of the Muses; and such a sonne as they called their darling. Our nation are in his debt for a new English which he taught them. 'Euphues and his England' began first that language; all our ladyes were then his schollers; and that beautie in court, which could not parley eupheueisme was as little regarded, as shee which now there speakes not French."[95] It may be appropriately recalled here that this same Blount who thus eulogizes Lyly had published already another set of Elizabethan dramas, and a much more important one, viz., the first folio of Shakespeare in 1623.

Those comedies which Blount thought fit to reprint, considering that in so doing he was presenting to his readers "a Lilly growing in a grove of lawrels," are another proof of the success Lyly had, through his novel, secured for himself at court. His plays are mythological or pseudo-historical dramas, interspersed with some pretty songs and dialogues, and were performed by children before the Queen on holy-days.

Among others were his "Campaspe," "played before the Queenes Majestie, on new yeares day at night, by Her Majesties children and the children of Paules," 1584; his "Sapho and Phao," performed also before the Queen by the same children, on Shrove Tuesday, 1584; his "Endimion, the man in the moone," played before the Queen "at Greenwich on Candlema.s.s day at night, by the chyldren of Paules"; "Gallathea," played on New Year's Day; "Midas," performed on Twelfth Night, also before the Queen, &c.[96]

On love matters and women's affairs, he was considered an authority; the a.n.a.lysis of the pa.s.sions and the knowledge of the deeper moods of the soul, which many consider to be, among novelists, a new-born science, were regarded by his contemporaries as a thing wholly his, a discovery made by himself; not foreseeing his successors, they proclaimed him a master of his newly invented art. Beginners would come to him for advice or for a preface, as they go now to the heirs of his art, especially when love is their theme. In this way Thomas Watson published in 1582 his "Pa.s.sionate Centurie of Love," and prefaced it, as with a certificate of its worth, by a letter from Lyly: "My good friend, I have read your new pa.s.sions, and they have renewed mine old pleasures, the which brought to me no lesse delight, then they have done to yourself commendations.... Such is the nature of persuading pleasure, that it melteth the marrow before it scorch the skin ... not unlike unto the oyle of jeat which rotteth the bone and never rankleth the flesh."[97]

It was useless for wise minds to grumble; Lyly always found women to applaud him. In vain did Nash, twelve years after the appearance of "Euphues," scoff at the enthusiasm with which he had read the book when he was "a little ape in Cambridge";[98] vainly was Euphuism derided on the stage before a Cambridge audience: "There is a beaste in India call'd a polecatt ... and the further she is from you the less you smell her," a piece of information that contains more probability than perhaps any given by Lyly.[99] Vainly, too, Shakespeare showed his opinion of the style in lending it to Falstaff when the worthy knight wishes to admonish Prince Henry in the manner of courts. Grown old in his tavern, Falstaff has no idea that these refinements, fashionable at the time when he was as slender as his page, may be now the jest of the young generation: "There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in pa.s.sion; not in words only, but in woes also."[100]

Many persons to whom the book doubtless recalled the memory of their spring-time, shared Falstaff's ingenuousness, and remained faithful to Lyly; if men or letters, after some years of enthusiasm, ceased to imitate him, his book was for a long time continuously read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the reign of Charles I. It was translated into Dutch in the same century,[101] and was modernized in the following, under the t.i.tle: "The false friend and the inconstant mistress: an instructive novel ... displaying the artifices of the female s.e.x in their amours."[102] High praise is rendered by the editor to Lyly, who "was a great refiner of the English tongue in those days."

The book appeared not very long before Richardson's "Pamela," a fact worthy of notice, the more so as in this abbreviation of Euphues, the letters contained in the original have been reproduced and look the more conspicuous in the little pamphlet. Quite Richardsonian, too, is the table of contents which is rather a table of good precepts and useful information, a very different table from the one appended by Harington to his "Ariosto." Here we find enumerated the many wise recommendations by which Lyly so long antic.i.p.ated Richardson and Rousseau:

"The mother ought to be her own nurse p. 83.

"The wild beasts more tender of their young than those who nurse not their own children p. 83.

"Children not to be frightened with stories of spirits and bugbears (&c.) p. 86."

So much for the continuation of Lyly's fame. As for the period of imitation proper, the era of euphuism's full glory, it lasted, as we have said, hardly more than twelve or at most fifteen years. But it saw the birth of works that are not without importance in the history of the origin of the novel in this country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIBRA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: KNIGHTLY PASTIMES. HAWKING, 1575.

_Ill.u.s.trative of Gerismond's life in Lodge's "Rosalynd."_]

FOOTNOTES:

[67] "'Euphues' the anatomy of wyt ... wherin are contained the delights that wyt followeth in his youth by the pleasauntnesse of Love, and the happynesse he reapeth in age by the perfectnesse of wisedome"; London [1579], 4to; reprinted by Arber, London, 1869. Lyly was born in 1553 or 1554; he died in 1606.

[68] Dedication of the second part: "To the Ladies and Gentlewoemen of England." There is afterwards a sort of second preface addressed to the "Gentlemen readers," but Lyly puts into it much less animation, and appears to have written it only for conscience' sake in order not to forget any one.

[69] In his excellent work, "Shakspere and Euphuism," _Transactions of the New Shakspere Society_, 1884, Dr. Landmann was the first to break up Lyly's style into its different parts, and point out the true sources where he found not only the elements of his language, but even many of his ideas. The same essay contains very useful information on Gongorism and other kinds of affected styles of the sixteenth century. See also Dr. Landmann's "Der Euphuismus," Giessen, 1881; his edition of part of "Euphues," Heilbronn, 1887; and an article by Mr. S. L. Lee, _Athenaeum_, July 14, 1883.

[70] The "Libro aureo" appeared in 1529; it was translated into French in 1531, and went through a great many editions, ent.i.tled sometimes "Le Livre dore de Marc-Aurele"; sometimes "L'Horloge des princes." North's translation, which followed the French editions, is ent.i.tled, "The Diall of Princes, by Guevara, englyshed out of the Frenche," London, 1557, fol.; it had several editions. It is to the Marcus Aurelius of Guevara that La Fontaine alludes in his "Paysan du Danube"; the story of the peasant was one of the most popular of the "Golden Boke." Guevara's style, with all the supplementary embellishments that Lyly has added, was already to be seen in the collection of short stories by Pettie, 1576 (_supra_, p. 81) of which one of the early editions begins like "Euphues," with an epistle to the "gentlewomen readers."

[71] "Le Bestiaire d'Amour," ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1840, 8vo. Richard de Fournival died about 1260. The MS. followed in this edition is dated 1285.

[72] "Sa nature si est que quand il trouve un homme, si le devore, et quand il l'a devore, si le pleure tous les jours de sa vie."

[73] Fragments of which remain in the "Codex Exoniensis," ed. Thorpe, London, 1842, 8vo. The Panther, p. 355; the Whale, p. 360, &c.

[74] "An old English Miscellany, containing a bestiary," ed. R. Morris, London, Early English Text Society, 1872.

[75] Recently published by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith and M. Paul Meyer, Paris, Societe des anciens textes Francais, 1889, 8vo.

[76] "The historie of Foure-footed beastes, describing the true and lively figure of every beast," London, 1607, fol. "The historie of Serpents or the second book of living creatures," London, 1608, fol.

[77] "Alcida. Greenes metamorphosis," licensed 1588; earliest known edition, 1617.

[78] "Foure-footed beastes," _ut supra_, pp. 1, 199, 328, 453.

[79] "Historie of serpents," _ut supra_, pp. 111, 140, 236, &c.

[80] It should not, however, be thence concluded that Lyly is original in all his moral dissertations; as Dr. Landmann has pointed out (see _supra_, p. 106) he often borrows large pa.s.sages from Plutarch and Guevara; but what is remarkable is the intense and persistent conviction, and also the success, at least success in so far that it was read, with which this young man of twenty-five, who was of the world and not of the church, preaches good morals to all cla.s.ses of society.

[81] Preface to Part II.

[82] "Correspondence of Samuel Richardson," ed. Barbauld, London, 1804, 6 vols. 12mo.

[83] The meaning of his name is thus given by Ascham in his "Scholemaster" (1570): "[Greek: Euphues] is he that is apte by goodnes of witte and appliable by readines of will, to learning, having all other qualities of the minde and partes of the bodie that must an other day serve learning, not troubled, mangled or halfed, but sounde, whole, full, and hable to do their office." So was Grandison.

[84] Arber's reprint, pp. 106 _et seq._

[85] "Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. x.x.xi.

[86] Compare the meditations of the same sort of the Pedant in the "Pedant joue," of Cyrano de Bergerac.

[87] For instance, the letter on the nursing of children by their mothers (vol. iii. of the original edition, letter 56), and the long letter where Pamela takes to pieces Locke's "Treatise on Education," and remodels it according to her own ideas (vol. iv. letters 48 _et seq._).

[88] Arber's reprint, _ut supra_, "Euphues and his Ephoebus," pp. 123 _et seq._

[89] "Euphues and Atheos," Arber's reprint, _ut supra_, pp. 160, _et seq._

[90] "Certeine Letters writ by Euphues to his friends," _ibid._, pp. 178 _et seq._

[91] "Euphues and his England. Containing his voyage and adventures, myxed with sundry pretie discourses of honest love, the description of the countrey, the court and the manner of that Isle.... by John Lyly, Maister of Arte, London 1580," reprinted by Arber, _ut supra_.

[92] "Euphues and his England," _ut supra_, p. 442.

[93] Preface to the "Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophres," 1477.

[94] Antwerp, Nov. 14, 1579, "Correspondence of Sir Ph. Sidney and Hubert Languet," ed. Pears, London, 1845, 8vo, p. 167.

[95] Preface "to the Reader" in "Six Court Comedies ... by the onely rare poet of that time, the wittie, comicall, facetiously-quicke and unparalelld John Lilly," London, 1632, 12mo.

[96] "Dramatic Works," ed. Fairholt, London, 1858, two vols. 8vo.

[97] Watson was then about twenty-five years old. "Poems," reprinted by Arber, London, 1870, 4to.

[98] "'Euphues' I read when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and I then thought it was _ipse ille_; it may be excellent still for ought I know, but I lookt not on it this ten yeare" ("Strange Newes," 1592).

[99] "The Pilgrimage to Parna.s.sus," ed. Macray, Oxford, 1886, 8vo. "The Returne," part i. act v. sc. 2. This part was performed in 1600.

[100] "1 Henry IV.," act ii. sc. 4 (A.D. 1597-8, Furnivall).

[101] "De vermakelijke historie Zee-een Landreize van Euphues,"

Rotterdam, 1671, 12mo. Another edition of the same, 1682.

[102] London, 1718, 16mo. "Price 2s." (on t.i.tle-page). Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" appeared the next year; Richardson's "Pamela" was published in 1740.