John Lyly | Page 5

day is interesting, as
showing how Lyly was drawn into the whirlpool of the Marprelate
controversy. Finally we know that he was elected a member of
Parliament on four separate occasions[12].
[11] Bond, I. p. 38.
[12] I have to thank Dr Ward for pointing out to me the interesting fact
that a large proportion of Elizabeth's M.P.'s were royal officials.
These varied occupations are proof of the energy and versatility of our
author, but not one of them can be described as lucrative. Nor can his
publications have brought him much profit; for, though both Euphues
and its sequel passed through ten editions before his death, an author in
those days received very little of the proceeds of his work. Moreover
the publication of his plays is rather an indication of financial distress
than a sign of prosperity. The two dramas already mentioned were
printed before Lyly's connexion with the Choir School; and, when in
1585 he became "vice-master of Poules and Foolmaster of the Theater,"

he would be careful to keep his plays out of the publisher's hands, in
order to preserve the acting monopoly. It is probable that the tenure of
this Actor-manager-schoolmastership marks the height of Lyly's
prosperity, and the inhibition of the boys' acting rights in 1591 must
have meant a severe financial loss to him. Thus it is only after this date
that he is forced to make what he can by the publication of his other
plays. The fear of poverty was the more urgent, because he had a wife
and family on his hands. And though Mr Bond believes that he found
an occupation after 1591 in writing royal entertainments, and though
the inhibition on the choristers' acting was removed as early as 1599,
yet the last years of Lyly's life were probably full of disappointment.
This indeed is confirmed by the bitter tone of his letter to Elizabeth in
1598 in reference to the mastership of the Revels' Office, which he had
at last despaired of. The letter in question is sad reading. Beginning
with a euphuism and ending in a jest, it tells of a man who still retains,
despite all adversity, a courtly mask and a merry tongue, but beneath
this brave surface there is visible a despair--almost amounting to
anguish--which the forced merriment only renders more pitiable. And
the gloom which surrounded his last years was not only due to the
distress of poverty. Before his death in 1606 he had seen his novel
eclipsed by the new Arcadian fashion, and had watched the rise of a
host of rival dramatists, thrusting him aside while they took advantage
of his methods. Greatest of them all, as he must have realised, was
Shakespeare, the sun of our drama before whom the silver light of his
little moon, which had first illumined our darkness, waned and faded
away and was to be for centuries forgotten.
CHAPTER I.
EUPHUISM.
It was as a novelist that Lyly first came before the world of English
letters. In 1578 he published a volume, bearing the inscription, Euphues:
the anatomy of wyt, to which was subjoined the attractive
advertisement, very pleasant for all gentlemen to reade, and most
necessary to remember. This book, which was to work a revolution in
our literature, was completed in 1580 by a sequel, entitled Euphues and

his England. Euphues, to combine the two parts under one name, the
fruit of Lyly's nonage, seems to have determined the form of his
reputation for the Elizabethans; and even to-day it attracts more
attention than any other of his works. This probably implies a false
estimate of Lyly's comparative merits as a novelist and as a dramatist.
But it is not surprising that critics, living in the century of the novel,
and with their eyes towards the country pre-eminent in its production,
should think and write of Lyly chiefly as the first of English novelists.
The bias of the age is as natural and as dangerous an element in
criticism as the bias of the individual. But it is not with the modern
appraisement of Euphues that we are here concerned. Nor need we
proceed immediately to a consideration of its position in the history of
the English novel. We have first to deal with its Elizabethan reputation.
Had Euphues been a still-born child of Lyly's genius, had it produced
no effect upon the literature of the age, it would possess nothing but a
purely archaeological interest for us to-day. It would still be the first of
English novels: but this claim would lose half its significance, did it not
carry with it the implication that the book was also the origin of
English novel writing. The importance, therefore, of Euphues is not so
much that it was primary, as that it was primordial;