John Lyly | Page 2

the
Renaissance 43
Section IV. The position of Euphuism in the history of English Prose
52
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL 64
The rise of the Novel--the characteristics of The Anatomy of Wit and
Euphues and his England--the Elizabethan Novel.

CHAPTER III.
LYLY THE DRAMATIST 85
Section I. English Comedy before 1580 89
Section II. The Eight Plays 98
Section III. Lyly's advance and subsequent influence 119
CHAPTER IV.
CONCLUSION 132
Lyly's Character--Summary.
INDEX 143

INTRODUCTION.
Since the day when Taine established a scientific basis for the historical
study of Art, criticism has tended gradually but naturally to fall into
two divisions, as distinct from each other as the functions they
respectively perform are distinct. The one, which we may call aesthetic
criticism, deals with the artist and his works solely for the purpose of
interpretation and appreciation, judging them according to some artistic
standard, which, as often as not, derives its only sanction from the
prejudices of the critic himself. It is of course obvious that, until all
critics are agreed upon some common principles of artistic valuation,
aesthetic criticism can lay no claim to scientific precision, but must be
classed as a department of Art itself. The other, an application of the
Darwinian hypothesis to literature, which owes its existence almost
entirely to the great French critic before mentioned, but which has since
rejected as unscientific many of the laws he formulated, may be called
historical or sociological criticism. It judges a work of art, an artist, or
an artistic period, on its dynamic and not its intrinsic merits. Its

standard is influence, not power or beauty. It is concerned with the
artistic qualities of a given artist only in so far as he exerts influence
over his successors by those qualities. It is essentially scientific, for it
treats the artist as science treats any other natural phenomenon, that is,
as the effect of previous causes and the cause of subsequent effects. Its
function is one of classification, and with interpretation or appreciation
it has nothing to do.
Before undertaking the study of an artist, the critic should carefully
distinguish between these two critical methods. A complete study must
of course comprehend both; and in the case of Shakespeare, shall we
say, each should be exhaustive. On the other hand, there are artists
whose dynamical value is far greater than their intrinsic value, and vice
versa; and in such instances the critic must be guided in his action by
the relative importance of these values in any particular example. This
is so in the case of John Lyly. In the course of the following treatise we
shall have occasion to pass many aesthetic judgments upon his work;
but it will be from the historical side that we shall view him in the main,
because his importance for the readers of the twentieth century is
almost entirely dynamical. His work is by no means devoid of aesthetic
merit. He was, like so many of the Elizabethans, a writer of beautiful
lyrics which are well known to this day; but, though the rest of his
work is undoubtedly that of an artist of no mean ability, the beauty it
possesses is the beauty of a fossil in which few but students would
profess any interest. Moreover, even could we claim more for John
Lyly than this, any aesthetic criticism would of necessity become a
secondary matter in comparison with his importance in other directions,
for to the scientific critic he is or should be one of the most significant
figures in English literature. This claim I hope to justify in the
following pages; but it will be well, by way of obtaining a broad
general view of our subject, to call attention to a few points upon which
our justification must ultimately rest.
In the first place John Lyly, inasmuch as he was one of the earliest
writers who considered prose as an artistic end in itself, and not simply
as a medium of expression, may be justly described as a founder, if not
the founder, of English prose style.

In the second place he was the author of the first novel of manners in
the language.
And in the third place, and from the point of view of Elizabethan
literature most important of all, he was one of our very earliest
dramatists, and without doubt merits the title of Father of English
Comedy.
It is almost impossible to over-estimate his historical importance in
these three departments, and this not because he was a great genius or
possessed of any magnificent artistic gifts, but for the simple reason
that he happened to stand upon the threshold of modern English
literature and at the very entrance to its splendid Elizabethan ante-room,
and therefore all who came after felt something of his influence.