John Lyly | Page 6

and, to be such, it
must have laid its spell in some way or other upon succeeding writers.
Our first task is therefore to enquire what this spell was, and to discover
whether the attraction of Euphues must be ascribed to Lyly's own
invention or to artifices which he borrows from others.
While, as I have said, Lyly's name is associated with the novel by most
modern critics, it has earned a more widespread reputation among the
laity for affectation and mannerisms of style. Indeed, until fifty years
ago, Lyly spelt nothing but euphuism, and euphuism meant simply
nonsense, clothed in bombast. It was a blind acceptance of these loose
ideas which led Sir Walter Scott to create (as a caricature of Lyly) his
Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery--an historical faux pas for which
he has been since sufficiently called to account. Nevertheless Lyly's
reputation had a certain basis of fact, and we may trace the tradition
back to Elizabethan days. It is perhaps worth pointing out that, had we
no other evidence upon the subject, the survival of this tradition would
lead us to suppose that it was Lyly's style more than anything else

which appealed to the men of his day. A contemporary confirmation of
this may be found in the words of William Webbe. Writing in 1586 of
the "great good grace and sweet vogue which Eloquence hath attained
in our Speeche," he declares that the English language has thus
progressed, "because it hath had the helpe of such rare and singular
wits, as from time to time myght still adde some amendment to the
same. Among whom I think there is none that will gainsay, but Master
John Lyly hath deservedly moste high commendations, as he hath stept
one steppe further therein than any either before or since he first began
the wyttie discourse of his Euphues, whose works, surely in respect of
his singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and
sentences, let the learned examine and make tryall thereof, through all
the parts of Rethoricke, in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in galant
tropes, in flowing speeche, in plaine sense, and surely in my judgment,
I think he wyll yeelde him that verdict which Quintillian giveth of both
the best orators Demosthenes and Tully, that from the one, nothing may
be taken away, to the other nothing may be added[13]." After such
eulogy, the description of Lyly by another writer as "alter Tullius
anglorum" will not seem strange. These praises were not the
extravagances of a few uncritical admirers; they echo the verdict of the
age. Lyly's enthronement was of short duration--a matter of some ten
years--but, while it lasted, he reigned supreme. Such literary idolatries
are by no means uncommon, and often hold their ground for a
considerable period. Beside the vogue of Waller, for example, the
duration of Lyly's reputation was comparatively brief. More than a
century after the publication of his poems, Waller was hailed by the
Sidney Lee of the day in the Biographia Britannica of 1766, as "the
most celebrated Lyric Poet that England ever produced." Whence
comes this striking contrast between past glory and present neglect?
How is it that a writer once known as the greatest master of English
prose, and a poet once named the most conspicuous of English lyrists,
are now but names? They have not faded from memory owing to a
mere caprice of fashion. Great artists are subject to an ebb and flow of
popularity, for which as yet no tidal theory has been offered as an
explanation; but like the sea they are ever permanent. The case of our
two writers is different. The wheel of time will never bring Euphues
and Sacharissa "to their own again." They are as dead as the Jacobite

cause. And for that very reason they are all the more interesting for the
literary historian. All writers are conditioned by their environment, but
some concern themselves with the essentials, others with the accidents,
of that internally constant, but externally unstable, phenomenon, known
as humanity. Waller and Lyly were of the latter class. Like jewels
suitable to one costume only, they remained in favour just as long as
the fashion that created them lasted. Waller was probably inferior to
Lyly as an artist, but he happened to strike a vein which was not
exhausted until the end of the 18th century; while the vogue of Euphues,
though at first far-reaching, was soon crossed by new artificialities such
as arcadianism. The secret of Waller's influence was that he stereotyped
a new poetic form, a form which, in its restraint and precision, was
exactly suited to the intellect of the ancien régime with its craving for
form and its contempt for ideas. The mainspring of Lyly's popularity
was that he