The history of
the novel had really begun, and, although the term was not, as
yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the
language.
the novel had really begun, and, although the term was not, as
yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the
language.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
He came of a gentile family,'
says Wood, was authorised, in 1593, by a privy council order to
travel through England and Wales, 'to make more perfect de-
scriptions, charts and maps' and was a very deft cartographer, as
## p. 331 (#353) ############################################
Sir Thomas Smith
331
is shown to all in Camden's Britannia. The liveliest of his works,
the Surveyor's Dialogue (1608), may still be read with pleasure.
Therein, Norden deplores, like many another, the luxury which had
come upon the country under the rule of the Tudors; he observes,
with sorrow, the enhanced prices of all commodities, the smoke of
many chimneys, which ‘hinders the heate and light of the Sunne
from earthly creatures, and the many acres of deforested land,
The farmers, he says, are not content unless they are gentry, and
'gentlemen have sunke themselves by rowing in vanities boate. '
In brief, he sees about him the signs of ruin and desolation, and
his treatise may aptly be compared with some passages of
Harrison's Description of England,
What the travellers did for their country, Sir Thomas Smith,
in his Common Wealth of England (written in 1565, printed in
1583), did for its law and government. No treatise ever written
owed less to ornament. As the author himself says, he has
declared summarily as it were in a Chart or Map' the form
and manner of government and the policy of England. His
is no feigned commonwealth such as never was nor shall be,
no vain imagination, no fantasy of philosophers, but England
as she
6
6
standeth and is governed at this day the eight and twentie of March, Anno
1565, in the seventh yeere of the Raigne and Administration thereof by the
most religious, virtuous, and noble Queene Elizabeth.
In style and in substance the book is as concise as a classic. It
wastes no words and betrays few emotions. Only once or twice
does Sir Thomas Smith permit himself a touch of humanity or
a bint of observation. The yeomen of England, the good Archers,
‘the stable troupe of Footmen that affraid all France,' arouse him
to a fitful enthusiasm, and, in the discussion of England's male-
factors, he reveals a flash of real insight, namely that Englishmen,
while they neglect death, will not endure torture. The nature
of our Nation is free, stout, hault, prodigall of life and blood,'
says he, “but contumely, beating, servitude, and servile torment,
and punishment it will not abide. ' The popularity of the book is
easily intelligible. It appealed to a people hungry for knowledge
of itself, but it gives no hint of the erudite Greek professor, the
adroit ambassador, the wise secretary of state, the curious astro-
loger, all whose parts Sir Thomas Smith played with distinction
and success.
An encyclopaedic method claims for John Foxe, the martyro-
logist, a place among the chroniclers. Not that his aim and
## p. 332 (#354) ############################################
332
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
6
purpose resembled theirs. It was not for him to exalt his country,
or to celebrate the triumphs of her past. His was the gloomier
task of recounting the torments suffered by the martyrs of all
ages, and he performed it with so keen a zest that it was not his
fault if one single victim escaped his purview. In other words,
he was content only with universality, and how well he succeeded
let Fuller tell : 'In good earnest, as to the particular subject of
our English martyrs, Mr Foxe hath done everything, leaving
posterity nothing to work upon. ' And so he goes back to the
beginning, describing the martyrdoms of the early church, and of
those who suffered in England under king Lucius. As he passes
by, he pours contempt upon Becket, proving that he, at least,
was no true martyr, being the open and avowed friend of the
pope. But it is when he arrives within measurable distance of
his own time that he finds the best food for his eloquence. The
prowess of Henry VIII, the exploits of Thomas Cromwell, his
prime hero, the magnanimity of Anne Boleyn, who, without
controversy, was a special comforter and aider of all the pro-
fessors of Christ's gospel,' tempt him to enthusiasm, and he rises
to the highest pitch of his frenzy when he recounts the tortures
of those who suffered death in the reign of queen Mary. He is no
sifter of authorities; he is as credulous as the simplest chronicler ;
he gathers his facts where Grafton and Stow gathered theirs, and
he makes no attempt to test their accuracy. His sin is the greater
because he is not writing to amuse or to enlighten his readers,
but to prove a point in controversy. He is, in brief, a violent
partisan. His book is the longest pamphlet ever composed by
the hand of man. It is said to be twice as long as Gibbon's
Decline and Fall, and never for one moment does it waver from
its purpose, which is to expose the wickedness of the persecutors
of God's truth, commonly called Papists. ' It is idle, therefore, to
expect accuracy or a quiet statement from Foxe. If anyone belong
to the other side, Foxe can credit him neither with honesty nor with
intelligence. Those only are martyrs who die for the protestant
The spilt blood of such men as Fisher and More does not
distress him. For the author of Utopia, indeed, he has a profound
contempt. He summarily dismisses him as 'a bitter persecutor
of good men, and a wretched enemy against the truth of the
gospel. ' It follows, therefore, that Foxe's mind also was enchained.
It was not liberty of opinion which seemed good in his eyes, but
the vanquishing of the other side. Though he interceded for
certain anabaptists condemned by queen Elizabeth, it was his
6
cause.
## p. 333 (#355) ############################################
John Foxe
333
object to rescue them not from punishment but from the flames,
which was, he thought, in accord with a Roman rather than with a
Christian custom. However, the success of his Actes and Monu-
ments was immediate. It was universally read, it aroused a storm
of argument, it was ordered to be chained in churches for the
general edification of the people. The temper in which it is
written, the inflexible judgment which, throughout, distorts the
truth with the best motive, have rendered the book less valu-
able in modern than in contemporary eyes. If we read it to-day,
we read it not for its matter or for its good counsel, but for its
design. As a mere performance, the Actes and Monuments is
without parallel. Foxe was an astounding virtuoso, whose move-
ment and energy never flag. With a fever of excitement he
sustains his own interest (and sometimes yours) in his strange
medley of gossip, document and exhortation. The mere style of
the work-homely, quick and appropriate—is sufficient to account
for its favour. The dramatic turn which Foxe gives to his dia-
logues, the vitality of the innumerable men and women, tortured
and torturers, who throng his pages—these are qualities which
do not fade with years. Even the spirit of bitter raillery which
breathes through his pages amazes, while it exasperates, the
reader. From the point of view of presentation, the work's worst
fault is monotony. Page after page, the martyrologist revels in
the terms of suffering. He spares you nothing, neither the
,
creeping flames, nor the chained limb, until you begin to
believe that he himself had a love of blood and fire.
The man was just such a one as you would expect from his
book. Born in 1517, to parents 'reputed of good estate,' sent to
Oxford, in 1533, by friends who approved his “good inclination
and towardness to learning,' and elected fellow of Magdalen
College, he was presently accused of heresy and expelled from
Oxford. He was of those who can neither brook opposition nor
accept argument. Henceforth, though he never stood at the
stake, he suffered the martyrdom of penury and distress. Now
tutor in a gentleman's house, now in flight for the sake of his
opinions, be passed some years at Basel reading for the press,
and, in 1559, he published at Strassburg the first edition of his
masterpiece, in Latin. In 1563, it was printed in English by John
Day, with the title Actes and Monuments of these latter and
perilous times touching matters of the Church. With characteristic
ingenuity, he composed four dedications : to Jesus Christ, to the
queen, to the learned reader and to the persecutors of God's truth,
## p. 334 (#356) ############################################
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
commonly called papists. The last is a fine example of savage
abuse, and, as Foxe wrote in safety and under the protection of
a protestant queen, its purpose is not evident. No more can be
said than that rage and fury are in his heart and on his tongue,
that he possessed a genius of indignation which he had neither
wish nor power to check and that he bequeathed to us a larger
mass of invective than any writer in any age has been able to
achieve.
The most of the writers hitherto discussed have been intent
either to amuse or to inform. They have composed their works,
for the most part, in sound and living English, because they spoke
and wrote a language that had not yet been attenuated by the
formality of pedants and grammarians. Few, if any, of them were
sensible of an artistic impulse. They began at the beginning and
pursued their task patiently unto the end, unconscious of what
the next page would bring forth. But there are three writers,
the author of The history of King Richard the thirde, George
Cavendish and Sir John Hayward, who are separated from the
chroniclers, even from Camden himself, both by ambition and by
talent. Each of them set before him a consistent and harmonious
design ; each of them produced, in his own fashion, a deliberately
artistic effect. The history of Richard the thirde has been gene-
rally ascribed to Sir Thomas More, on hazardous authority. An
incomplete manuscript of the book was found among his papers,
and printed as his both in Hall's Chronicle and in Grafton's
edition of Hardyng. Some have attributed to More no more than
the translation, giving to cardinal Morton the credit of a Latin
original. Sir George Buck, in his History of the Life and Reigne
of Richard III, printed in 1646, but written many years earlier,
declares that ‘Doctor Morton (acting the part of Histiaeus) made
the Booke, and Master Moore like Aristagoras set it forth, amplifying
and glossing it. ' Where the evidence is thus scanty, dogmatism
is inapposite, and no more can be said than that the book itself
does not chime with the character and temper of More. It is
marked throughout by an asperity of tone, an eager partisan-
ship, which belong more obviously to Morton than to the humane
author of Utopia.
From beginning to end, Richard III is painted in the blackest
colours. No gossip is overlooked which may throw a sinister light
upon the actions of the prince. It is hinted, not only that he
slew Henry VI, but that he was privy to Clarence's death. The
most is made of his deformed body and cunning mind, the least
## p. 335 (#357) ############################################
1
The history of King Richard the thirde 335
of his policy. If accuracy be sacrificed, the artistic effect is en-
hanced. The oneness of Richard's character gives a unity and
concentration to the portrait which cannot be overpraised. For the
first time in English literature, we come upon a history which is not
a mere collection of facts, but a deliberately designed and care-
fully finished whole. The author has followed the ancient models.
He knows how fine an effect is produced by the putting of
appropriate speeches in the mouths of his characters. The value
of such maxims as sum up a situation and point a moral does not
escape him. “Slipper youth must be underpropped with elder
counsayle,' says he. And, again : The desire of a kingdome
knoweth no kinred. The brother hath bene the brother's bane. '
Here we have the brevity and the wise commonplace of the Greek
chorus. Above all, he proves the finest economy in preparing his
effects. The great scene in which Richard arrests lord Hastings
opens in a spirit of gentle courtesy. 'My Lord,' says the protector
to the bishop of Ely,
you have very good strawberries at your gardayne in Holberne, I request you
let ns have a messe of them. Gladly my lord, quod he, woulde God I had
some better thing as redy to your pleasure as that.
And then the storm breaks. In brief, the author's sense of what
is picturesque never slumbers. The sketches of the queen and
Shore's wife are drawn by a master. The persistence with which
Richard tightens his grasp upon the throne is rendered with the
utmost skill. Nor is the sense of proportion ever at fault. You
are given the very essence of the tragedy, and so subtle is the design
that, at the first reading, it may escape you. The style is marked
by a strict economy of words and a constant preference of English
before Latin. From beginning to end, there is no trace of flam-
boyancy or repetition, and, while we applaud the wisdom of the
chroniclers who made this history of Richard their own, we cannot
but wonder that one and all failed to profit by so fine an example
of artistry and restraint.
Few books have had a stranger fate than George Cavendish's
Life and Death of Thomas Woolsey. Written when queen Mary
was on the throne, it achieved a secret and furtive success.
passed in manuscript from hand to hand. Shakespeare knew it
and used it. As I have said, both Stow and Speed leaned upon
its authority. First printed in 1641, it was then so defaced by
interpolations and excisions as to be scarce recognisable, and it
was not until 1657 that a perfect text was given to the world.
And then, for no visible reason, it was ascribed to William, not to
It was
## p. 336 (#358) ############################################
336
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
George, Cavendish. The uncertainty had no other excuse save
that William, the better known of the two, was the founder of
a great family. Speed gives the credit where it was due, to George
-and Speed's word was worth more than surmise. However, all
doubt was long since removed, and to George Cavendish, a simple
gentleman of the cardinal's household, belongs the glory of having
given to English literature the first specimen of artistic biography.
Steadfast in devotion, plain in character, Cavendish left all to
follow the fortunes of the cardinal. He was witness of his master's
pomp and splendour; he was witness of his ruin and his death.
He embellished his narrative with Wolsey's own eloquence; he re-
corded the speech of Cromwell, Northumberland and others; and
he imparts to his pages a sense of reality which only a partaker
of Wolsey's fortunes could impart. But he was not a Boswell,
attempting to produce a large effect by a multiplicity of details.
His book has a definite plan and purpose. Consciously or un-
consciously, Cavendish was an artist. His theme is the theme of
many a Greek tragedy, and he handles it with Greek austerity.
He sets out to show how Nemesis descends upon the haughty and
overbold, how the mighty are suddenly cast down from their seats,
how the hair-shirt lurks ever beneath the scarlet robes of the
cardinal. This is the confessed end and aim of his work. He is
not compiling a life and times. ' He discards as irrelevant many
events which seem important in the eye of history. The famous
words which he puts in the mouth of Wolsey dying might
serve as a text for the whole work: 'If I had served God as
diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me
over in my grey hairs. '
That his readers may feel the full pathos of Wolsey's fall, he
paints the magnificence of his life in glowing colours. Titles are
heaped upon titles. The boy bachelor grows to the man of affairs,
the ambassador, the king's almoner, the chancellor of England, the
archbishop of York, the cardinal. In lavish entertainment, in noble
pageantry, the cardinal surpassed the king. His banquets 'with
monks and mummers it was a heaven to behold. ' The officers of his
chapel and of his household were like the sands in number. He moved
always in a procession. 'He rode like a cardinal, very sumptuously,
on a mule trapped with crimson velvet upon velvet, his stirrups of
copper and gilt; and his spare mule following him with like
apparel. ' Is it any wonder that fortune ‘began to was something
wroth with his prosperous estate'? Almost at the outset, the note
of warning is struck. The sinister influence of Anne Boleyn begins
## p. 337 (#359) ############################################
Cavendish's Life of Woolsey 337
to be felt from the moment that the cardinal comes between her and
the love of lord Percy. In other words, fortune 'procured Venus,
the insatiate goddess, to be her instrument. The king's displeasure
at the slow process of divorce is heightened by the whisperings of
Mistress Anne. And then, at Grafton, the blow falls. The cardinal
is ordered to give up the great seal and to retire to Esher. Hence-
forth, misfortunes are heaped upon him, as they were heaped upon
Job, and he bears them with an equal resignation. He is stripped
of wealth and state. His hopeless journey from town to town
brings him nearer only to death. The omens are bad. A cross
falls upon Bonner's head as he sits at meat. When the earl
of Northumberland, charged to arrest him of high treason, visits
him, 'Ye shall have such cheer,' says the cardinal, with the true
irony of Sophocles, as I am able to make you, with a right good
will. . . hoping hereafter to see you oftener, when I shall be more
able and better provided to receive you with better fare. ' So,
at last, he dies at Leicester, dishonoured and disgraced, stripped
of his splendour, abandoned by his train. And Cavendish, speak-
ing with the voice of the tragic chorus, exhorts his readers
to behold 'the wondrous mutability of vain honours, the brittle
assurance of abundance, the uncertainty of dignities, the flattery
of feigned friends, and the fickle trust to worldly princes. '
Talent and opportunity were given to the simple, unlettered
Cavendish, and he made the fullest use of them. Sir John Hayward
was a historian of another kind. He was not driven by accident
or experience to the practice of his craft. He adopted it as a
profession, and resembled the writers of a later age more nearly
than any of his contemporaries. Born in Suffolk, about 1560, he
was educated at the university of Cambridge, and devoted himself
with a single mind to the study of history. He was in no sense
a mere chronicler. He aimed far higher than the popular history,
digested into annals. His mind was always intent upon the ex-
ample of the ancients. He liked to trick out his narratives with
appropriate speeches after the manner of Livy. He delighted
in the moral generalisations which give an air of solemnity to
the art of history as it was practised by the Greeks and Romans.
His first work, in which are described the fall of Richard II and
the first years of Henry IV, and which was dedicated to the earl
of Essex, incurred the wrath of Elizabeth, and cost him some
years of imprisonment. The queen asked Bacon if he could find
any passages in the book which savoured of treason. 'For treason
surely I find none,' said Bacon, but for felony very many. ' And
22
6
E. L. III.
CH. XV.
## p. 338 (#360) ############################################
338
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
when the queen asked him 'Wherein ? ' he told her that 'the
author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken
most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and translated them
into English, and put them in his text. ' This criticism is as
true as it is witty. Hayward aims at sententiousness with an
admirable success, and did his best to make himself the Tacitus
of England.
In the 'Epistle Dedicatorie' to his Lives of the Three
Normans, Kings of England, he declares that, though he had
written of the past, he ‘did principally bend and binde himself
to the times wherein he should live. ' His performance did not
agree with his bent. Concerning the times near which he lived he
has left but a fragment: The beginning of the Reigne of Queene
Elizabeth, of which beginning he had no more personal knowledge
than of the Life and Reigne of King Edward the Sixt, which,
in some respects, is his masterpiece. But, whatever was the
period of his choice, he treated it with the same knowledge and
impartiality. He made a proper use of unpublished material.
The journal of Edward VI gives an air of authenticity to his
biography of that king, and, in treating of William I, he went
back to sources of information which all the chroniclers had
overlooked. In brief, he was a scholar who took a critical view
of his task, who was more deeply interested in policies and their
result than in the gossip of history and who was always quick to
illustrate modern England by the examples of Greece and Rome.
His pages are packed with literary and historical allusions. He
was, moreover, always watchful of his style, intent ever upon
producing a definite effect, and, if he errs, as he does especially
in his Henry IV, on the side of elaboration, it is a fault of which
he is perfectly conscious, and which he does not disdain. Thus,
at last, with the author of Richard III and Sir John Hayward,
England reverted to the ancient models, and it is from them and
not from the chroniclers that our art of history must date its
beginnings.
>
1
## p. 339 (#361) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION
AMONG the prose compositions of the Elizabethan era are
numerous works which, with many points of difference, have thi
in common, that they all aim at affording entertainment by means
of prose narrative. They are variously styled Phantasticall
treatises, Pleasant histories, Lives, Tales and Pamphlets, and the
methods and material they employ are of corresponding variety;
they are, moreover, obviously written in response to demands
from different classes, and yet their common motive, as well as
a common prose form, unmistakably suggest a single literary
species.
Previous examples of the type will rarely be found in our
literature, for medieval fiction had mostly assumed the form of
verse. The general adoption of prose at this date is, therefore, an
innovation, and, as such, it was due to more than one cause. It
was the outcome, in the first place, of natural development, the
result of that national awakening which led to the overthrow of
Latin as the language of the learned ; with its activities extended
!
in the one direction, the vernacular was not long in recommending
itself for use in another, and so it came about that pros joined
verse in the service of delight. Then, again, Malory, Caxton and
the translators of Boccaccio had shown that narrative might adopt
prose form without disadvantage; through the Bible and the liturgy
the use of vernacular prose was fast becoming familiar; while
further possibilities of prose were being revealed from its place in
the drama. And, lastly, with the departure of the minstrel and the
appearance of the printing press, there ceased, naturally enough,
that exclusive use of verse for narrative purposes, which, under
earlier conditions, alone had made long narrative possible.
Prose fiction, therefore, is one of the gifts of the Elizabethans
to our literature, and the gift is none the less valuable because
unconsciously made. It was no special creation, fashioned upon
22-2
## p. 340 (#362) ############################################
340
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
a definite model, but, rather, the result of a variety of efforts
which, indirectly, converged towards one literary type. Its
elements were of various origin, being borrowed, in part, from
medieval England, in part, from abroad, while much, also, was due
to the initiative of the age. The material with which it dealt,
varied in accordance with the immediate end in view. Its
'treatises' and its pamphlets embodied studies of manners and
character-sketches; it comprised tales of adventure as well as
romance; it dealt with contemporary life and events of the past,
with life at the court, and life in the city ; it was, by turns,
humorous and didactic, realistic and fanciful, in short, it repre-
sented the first rough drafts of the later novel.
The history of
the novel had really begun, and, although the term was not, as
yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the
language.
The two main centres of influence around which Elizabethan
prose fiction revolved were the court and the people. The court
was easily the supreme element in national life, and one great aim
of contemporary letters became that of supplying the courtier's
needs, just as, in Rome, it was the orator, the typical figure of the
classical age, who had won similar attention. At the same time,
à strong and self-conscious middle class was emerging from the
ruins of feudalism, and the commons were becoming alive to the
interests of their class. Hence, now for the first time, they made
their way into literature, and the treatment of their affairs
became the secondary aim of this prose fiction.
A period of apprenticeship came first, in which the lines of
translation were closely followed, and then, with skill acquired in
the art of story-telling, a host of writers devoted themselves to the
newly found craft. A series of moral treatises, in narrative form,
were the first to appear. They aimed, for the most part, at courtly
education, and, up to about 1584, instruction, often in sugared
form, became the main concern of a body of writers, of whom Lyly
was chief. Then the business became one of a more cheerful kind:
Greene and Lodge wrote their romances for court entertainment,
while Sidney sought distraction in the quiet shades of Arcadia.
In the last decade of the century came the assertion of the
bourgeois element. As an embodiment of realistic tendencies, it
followed, naturally enough, upon the previous romancing; but
social considerations had, also, made it inevitable. Greene, Nashe
and Deloney laboured to present the dark and the fair side of the
life of the people: they wrote to reform as well as to amuse.
## p. 341 (#363) ############################################
Earlier Native Types 341
Throughout the whole period, England, as is well known, was
singularly sensitive to foreign influence : one foreign work or
another seems to have been continually inspiring Elizabethan pens.
Castiglione and Guevara, Montemayor and Mendoza, each in his
different way, exercised influence, which was certainly stimulative,
and was, to some extent, directive, But, while this is true, it is
equally true that, in most cases, the actual production springs
readily and naturally from English soil; southern influence,
undoubtedly, helped to warm the seed into life, but the seed itself
was of an earlier sowing.
First, with regard to the treatises : the enthusiasm inspired by
North’s translation (1557) of Guevara's El Reloa de Principes,
and Hoby's translation (1561) of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, was as
great as it was undoubted, but it does not altogether account
for Lyly's great work. Courtesy books had been written in English
before those works appeared. The Babees' Boke (1475) 'a lytyl
reporte of how young people should behave,' and Hugh Rhodes's
Boke of Nurture (1450, published 1577), had previously aimed at
inculcating good manners; afterwards came Elyot's Governour
(1531), Ascham’s Scholemaster (published 1570) and Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's Queene Elizabethes Achademy (written after 1562), all of
which treated of instruction, not only in letters, but also in social
and practical life'. Such works as these, together with the numerous
Mirrours, aimed at pointing the way to higher social refinement,
and thus the movement which culminated in Lyly had already
begun in fifteenth century England, and had kept pace with the
national development, of which it is, indeed, the logical outcome.
Secondly, the romance is an obvious continuation of a literary
type familiar to medieval England. Sanazzaro and Montemayor
modified, but did not supply the form, while the French and
Spanish works of chivalry introduced by Paynel and Munday
(1580—90) merely catered for a taste which had then become
jaded. Medieval romances, it is true, had fallen by this time into
a decrepit old age. They were cherished by antiquaries, some-
times reprinted, less frequently reread; they figured mainly with
'blind harpers and. . . taverne minstrels. . . at Christmasse diners
and bride ales, in tavernes and ale-houses and such other places of
base resort? ' But their tradition lived on in the romantic works
1 Note, also, 4 lytle Booke of Good Maners for Chyldren (1554) by Whittinton, R. ,
The Myrrour of Good Maners, translated from the Latin by Alexander Barclay and
printed by Pynson, and R. Peterson's translation of G. della Casa's Galateo (1576).
Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 1811, pp. 36, 69.
## p. 342 (#364) ############################################
342
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Greene, Sidney and Lodge, though in the form of their sur-
vival they owed something to foreign influence. The pastoral
colouring, for instance, is caught from the fashions of Italy and
Spain; but, for the rest, their differences from the earlier English
forms may be fairly put down to changed aspects of national life.
In a general awakening, something of the old wonder and awe
had, naturally, been lost; the world of chivalry and enchantment
had receded, leaving the heroes of romance in a setting less
heroic, just as, in active life, the knight had turned courtier and
castles had become palaces. Moreover, the medley of form which
these romances exhibit corresponds to that medley of past and
present which lingered in men’s minds at masque and pageant.
The Elizabethan romance is, in short, firmly rooted in Elizabethan
life. Modifying influences came from abroad; but the animating
tradition and guiding impulses were forces derived from the
national life.
And, again, the immediate origin of the realistic work which
followed must be sought for in English works of an earlier
date. It is not necessary to ascribe Nashe's Unfortunate
Traveller, any more than the other realistic works of 1590—1600,
entirely to the influence of Lazarillo de Tormes. In part, all
these works represented a reaction against those ‘feyned-no-where
acts' which had proved enchanting in the preceding decade.
But the ultimate causes were yet more deeply rooted, being social
changes, partly national, partly European. Agricultural depres-
,
sion, long years of militarism and the closing of the monasteries,
had done much to reinforce those bands of 'broken men' that
swarmed like plagues over England. Their existence began now
more than ever to force itself upon the notice of their country-
men, while, at the same time, the tendency of the renascence in the
direction of individualism urged attention to these human units,
and the sombre conditions under which they lived. And yet the
realistic literature of 1590—1600 was of no sudden growth.
Humble life had been portrayed in the lay of Havelok, its laments
had been voiced in the vision of Piers the Plowman and alongside
the romances of earlier England had existed coarser fabliaux
which related the tricks and intrigues of the lower reaches of
society. It was only a more specialised form of these tastes and
tendencies which sprang into being in the sixteenth century. To
the popular mind, collections of jests, as we have seen', had
become an acceptable form of literature, while, at the same time,
1 See ante, chap. v.
## p. 343 (#365) ############################################
The Influence of Translators 343
material was being collected for English rogue-studies'; and, while
the jest-collections had aimed at mere amusement, the rogue
pamphlets were prompted by ideas of reform. It is this material
which anticipates the realistic work of Greene, Nashe and Deloney.
The social influences which produced the earlier and cruder type
of work also produced the later.
The probationary period of translation enters but slightly into
the present narrative; and yet, as it marks the first stage in the
development of prose fiction, it must not be entirely forgotten.
Painter and Pettie, Whetstone and Riche are the translators
mainly concerned, and their efforts are characterised by an in-
teresting change from mere translation to bolder and more original
treatment. Painter, in his Palace of Pleasure (1566–7), supplies
versions of a hundred and one tales, some forty of which are
taken from Boccaccio and Bandello; Fenton, in his Tragicall
Discourses (1567), reproduces thirteen tales of Bandello; and both,
for the most part, are content with simple, faithful translation. In
the twelve stories, however, which constitute The Petite Pallace
of Pettie his Pleasure (1576), an advance on the mere process
of translation is plainly visible, and additions of an interesting
kind are occasionally made. Not only has Pettie's style certain
interesting features? , but his narratives are somewhat modi-
fied as compared with his originals. Into the tragical stories
of Tereus and Procne, Scylla and Minos, to mention only a couple,
the translator has skilfully worked an erotic element, while around
his classical figures he has thrown a contemporary colouring in
such a way as to suggest personalities of his day. In Whetstone's
Rock of Regard (1576), which consists, in part, of prose versions
of Italian novels, the method is, once more, one of mere repro-
duction, but it is worthy of note that one story, vaguely credited
to 'an unknowne [Italian] author,' is, in all probability, due to
Whetstone himself. And, again, of the eight stories which make up
Riche his Farewell to the Militarie Profession (1581), while three
are taken from the Italian, the remaining five are frankly. forged
onely for delight,' though the writer is careful to make his
forgeries reminiscent of Italian motives. In this way did mere
translation merge into adaptation, and then into the process of
actual invention? .
6
1 Cf. Awdeley's Fraternitye of vacabones and Harman's Caveat, ante, pp. 102 ff.
? See post, p. 348.
3 See Koeppel, Studien zur Geschichte der ital. Novelle in der engl. Litt. des XVI
Jahrh. (Strassburg, 1892).
## p. 344 (#366) ############################################
344
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
But these pioneers did more than render easy access to
Italian tales, though this was a service of no slight value; the
avenue thus afforded to new and strange realms revealed new
springs of human passion, and opened out on wide vistas of un-
familiar life. And, more than this, the secrets of successful
narrative, its material and its methods, were silently imparted,
while the feature of originality was being implicitly suggested.
They did much, too, in the way of popularising prose as a
medium of narrative. The merits of a simple prose had long been
recognised in France and Italy ; its more modest garb had been
seen to impose no restraint on the progress of the story, while
it was obviously free from that counter-attraction, inevitable in
verse, to the narrative itself. English writers had yet to learn the
charm of a plain and simple prose, devoid of tricks, but, in
employing prose in fiction, they had begun to learn.
This marked development in the methods of narrative soon
led to its employment in one of the main literary businesses of
the time, that of supplying moral treatises for courtly reading.
These works, which aimed at edifying by means of disqui-
sitions on subjects like love and friendship, form a sort of
intellectual counterpart to such works as Vincentio Saviolo his
Practise, which ‘intreated' of the use of rapier and dagger and
was 'most necessarie for all gentlemen that had in regard their
Honors. They were a revival, in some sort, of the medieval
discussions, though scarcely, on the whole, as trivial. Under an
attractive narrative form, they contrived to disseminate southern
culture after the fashion of Castiglione and Guevara.
The great outstanding figure in this line is that of John Lyly,
a native of Kent, and, in his day, a noted son of Oxford. His
career was one of strenuous effort, ill-requited because ill-directed.
His nice, fastidious temperament, which marked him off from the
roaring section of university wits, seems to have rendered him
ineffective in actual life. At Oxford, he missed recognition ; his
ambition to succeed to the Mastership of the Revels was quietly
ignored; while his closing years, passed in penury and neglect,
form a saddening sequel to the efforts of one, who, in his time, had
adorned the stage, had beautified the conversation of exquisites
of learned tendency' and had been the fruitful occasion of much
wit in others.
The work for which he is famous appeared in two instalments.
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit was 'lying bound on the stacioners
stall’ by the Christmas of 1578; Euphues and his England, the
## p. 345 (#367) ############################################
Lyly's Euphues
345
second part, appeared in 1580. Together, they form an extensive
moral treatise, and, incidentally, our first English novel. The
whole hangs together by the thinnest of plots, which is, indeed,
more a means to an end than an end in itself. Each incident and
situation is merely an opportunity for expounding some point of
philosophy. Euphues, a young man of Athens, arrives at Naples,
where he forms a friendship with young Philautus. He falls
in love with Lucilla, the betrothed of Philautus, and is duly
jilted by that fickle mistress. This is all the action of The
Anatomy of Wit: but the moralising element is something more
considerable. The ancient Eubulus discourses on the follies of
youth; Euphues, himself, on the subject of friendship. The com-
plications brought about by the action of Lucilla lead to much
bitter moralising upon fickleness in general, while Euphues, jilted,
discusses his soul and indites 'a Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers. '
Over and above all this, the work contains the hero's private
papers, his essays and letters; and opportunities are seized for
inveighing against dress, and for discoursing upon such diverse
subjects as marriage and travel, education and atheism. In
Euphues and his England, the scene changes from Italy to
England. The two friends, now reconciled, proceed to Canterbury,
where they are entertained by one Fidus, a pastoral figure of
considerable attractiveness ; Philautus soon becomes involved
in the toils of love, while Euphues plays the part of a philo-
sophical spectator. The former lays siege to the heart of one
whose affections are already bestowed, and so, with philosophy
for his comfort, he enters upon the wooing of another, with more
auspicious result. This brings the action to a close, and Euphues
leaves England, eulogising the country and the women it contains,
and returns forthwith to nurse his melancholy within his cell at
Silexedra.
The significance of the structure is best appreciated by re-
membering that the work is really a compilation, and is, in fact,
entered as such in the Stationers' register. Reminiscences of
Cicero occur, particularly of his De Amicitia and his De Natura
Deorum : but the body of the work is drawn from North's Diall
of Princes (1557), the English translation of Guevara's great
treatise. Euphues, in short, is little more than a re-ordering of
this material, and Lyly betrays his source when he introduces
certain details which, in his work, are obvious anachronisms, but
which, in the pages of Guevara, were in perfect keeping. Apart
from this, the adaptation has been consistently made, and the
works coincide in much of their detail. Dissertations on the
## p. 346 (#368) ############################################
346
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
same subjects-on love and ladies, on friendship and God, occur in
each. Both have letters appended to their close, which letters
treat of identical subjects ; Lyly's names of Lucilla, Livia and
Camilla are taken over from Guevara, while the 'Cooling Carde'
of Euphues finds its counterpart in that letter of Marcus Aurelius
against the frailty of women which is embodied in Guevara's
work? . It is only in a few instances that Lyly, while obtaining his
idea from the Spanish work, goes elsewhere for fuller details.
This is, however, the case in his remarks on education, in the
section Euphues and his Ephoebus (1, 264). Guevara, it is true,
embodies this material but Lyly's rendering is more nearly
suggestive of Plutarch's De Educatione Puerorum, though his
indebtedness is but indirect, the actual source being Erasmus's
Colloquia Familiaria (Puerpera).
The character of these sources indicates, clearly enough, Lyly's
didactic aim, in undertaking his Euphues. But, in projecting a
moral treatise, he stumbled on the novel, and, considered as such,
the work, though with many defects, has, also, abundant merit.
It foretells the day of the novel of manners, of the novel involv-
ing a detailed analysis of love. It moves away from the fanciful
idealism of the medieval romance and suggests an interest in con- .
temporary life. Love is no longer the medieval pastime of knights
and ladies ; its subtleties are analysed, its romance and glamour
are seen to lurk within contemporary walls and beneath velvet
doublets. The defects of Euphues, on the other hand, are those of
a writer unconscious of his art. There is a want of action, for the
story is, after all, of but secondary interest. A poverty of inven-
tion is apparent in the parallelism which exists between the action
of the two parts. Again, proportion is wanting; important events
are hurriedly treated; the characterisation is but slight; the
attempt at realism unconvincing. And yet the writer acquires
skill as he proceeds. In the second part, he shows a distinct
advance in artistic conception; there is more action, less moralis-
ing; characters multiply, characterisation improves and variety is
introduced by changes of scene? .
Not the least striking feature of the work, however, is the
peculiar style in which it is written. The style, known as
Euphuistic, won a following in its day, and has since become one
of the most familiar of literary phenomena. It is the least elusive
of styles, being deliberately compounded and, therefore, easily
1 See Landmann, Transactions of the New Shak. Soc. (1885), pp. 255 ff.
? See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
## p. 347 (#369) ############################################
Euphuism
347
6
analysed; but, while its grotesque exaggerations have met with
more than appreciation, justice has not always been done to its
real aims and effects. With all its flowers of fancy, it is nothing
more than the ‘painful'expression of a sober calculating scholar,
and is the outcome of a desire to write with clearness and precision,
with ornament and culture, at a time when Englishmen desired
'to heare finer speach then the language would allow. Lyly aimed
at precision and emphasis, in the first place, by carefully balancing
his words and phrases, by using rhetorical questions and by
repeating the same idea in different and striking forms. Allitera-
tion, puns and further word-play were other devices employed to
the same end. For ornament, in the second place, he looked
mainly to allusions and similes of various kinds. He alludes to
historical personages, found in Plutarch and Pliny, to mythological
figures taken from Ovid and Vergil. But his most daring orna-
mentation lies in his wholesale introduction of recondite knowledge;
he draws similes from folklore, medicine and magic, above all from
the Natural History of Pliny, and this mixture of quaint device
and naïve science resulted in a style which appealed irresistibly
to his contemporaries? . It should here be added, however, that
the acquaintance with Plutarch and Pliny, which the elements of
Lyly's style suggest, was not, necessarily, first hand. On the
contrary, it was, almost certainly, obtained through the writings
of Erasmus, which were in the hands of most sixteenth century
scholars and which had already penetrated into the schools. In
them, Erasmus had presented the fruit of his classical reading. His
Similia Colloquia, Apophthegmata and Adagia offered in a clear,
coherent form much that was best in antiquity and they repre-
sented a storehouse of learning which would save Lyly much
seeking in his quest for learned material. In some cases, where
Erasmus reproduces Pliny or Plutarch verbatim, Lyly's indebted-
ness to the great humanist might be doubted; but when Erasmus
takes over his classical material in a somewhat altered form, when
he expands or explains a thought, or falls into slight error or
confusion, the fact that these variations from the original are
faithfully reproduced in Lyly makes the latter's source undoubted.
And if this indebtedness be proved in the case of variations, a
further debt may be inferred even where identity of expression
appears in the classical writers, in Erasmus and Lyly? .
But this elaborated style, this 'curtizan-like painted affectation'
1 See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
2 See De Vocht, H. , De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche Tooneelliteratuur der
aviº en xviie eeuwen (eerste deel), 1908.
## p. 348 (#370) ############################################
348
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Euphuism, did not originate with Lyly himself; he only
‘hatched the egges that his elder friendes laide. ' Its immediate
origin lay in a certain stylistic tendency then fashionable in
England. An almost identical craze had existed, a little earlier,
in Spain, namely, in Guevara's alto estilo, which, however, had
lacked the English device of alliteration. But the English fashion
did not come from Spain, though North’s Diall of Princes has
often been credited with having effected the introduction : while
this translation may have increased the vogue, it cannot have set
the fashion. In the first place, North had employed a French
version of Guevara's work for the purposes of translation, and
this was a medium likely to dissolve any peculiarities of style in
the original. And, secondly, many of the features of Euphuism,
its parallelism and repetitions, its rhetorical questions and classical
allusions, had already appeared in Lord Berners's Froissart (1524),
not only before North, but before Guevara had written! This
fashion, of which Berners is thus the first English representa-
tive, can, subsequently, be traced to some extent in Cheke and
Ascham; while, in Pettie's Petite Pallace, already mentioned, all
the structural, and most of the ornamental, characteristics of
Euphuism are present. It only remained for Lyly to expand the
recognised methods of simile-manufacture by adding to Pettie's
collection, based on fact and personal observation, others invented
by himself, and based on fancy.
The ultimate origin of the fashion lay yet further afield, and
is to be traced to that widespread movement for improving the
vernacular which left its mark on almost every European litera-
ture. The coincidence of its effects in the literary styles of
England and Spain must be ascribed to the prevalence of similar
national conditions in both those countries. In each case, it was
the outcome of a perverted classical enthusiasm, which led to the
imitation of late Latin stylists with their many extravagances.
It was due, also, in part, to the necessity for a courtly diction
which arose simultaneously in both countries, in consequence of
the growing interest which centred round the person and court
of the monarch. As a movement, it was by no means isolated ;
nor did its results assume merely one form. Arcadianism and
Gongorism, the conceits of seventeenth century France, and the
pedantic mannerisms of Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein in
Germany, are merely the outcome of the same influences, working
at different times on different soils.
Nor are the results of Euphuism on English prose style by any
1 See Wilson, J. D. , John Lyly, chap. L
## p. 349 (#371) ############################################
6
Lyly's Influence
349
means a negligible quantity, though its 'cunning courtship of
faire words,' its tedious redundancies and mass of ornaments,
led to its abandonment, generally speaking, about 1590. Sidney,
by that time, had lamented the fact that his contemporaries
enamelled 'with py'd flowers their thoughts of gold,' and Warner
perceived that in running on the letter we often runne from the
matter. ' But some good came of it all. An attempt had defi-
nitely been made to introduce design into prose; and balance and
harmony were the fitting contributions of an age of poetry to the
development of prose style. Prose diction, moreover, was en-
couraged to free itself from obsolescent words; and further
devices for obtaining lucidity, such as the use of short sentences
and paragraph divisions, were, henceforth, to be generally adopted
by English writers.
Apart from its prose style, the Euphues of Lyly exercised
considerable influence upon its author's contemporaries. On
Shakespeare, to mention only one, its effect is marked. Some of
the dramatist's characters, such as his pairs of friends, the senten-
tious old man Polonius and the melancholy philosopher Jacques,
recall Euphues in different ways. Verbal resemblances also exist:
Shakespeare's utterances on friendship, and his famous bee-
passage, place his indebtedness beyond all doubt, even supposing
his numerous similes drawn from actual or supposed natural
history to be but drafts made upon the common possessions of
the age
Lyly's success with Euphues was not slow in inspiring a number
of followers, and, up to about 1584, works of the moral treatise
kind were constantly appearing. But their authors, as a rule,
were painful imitators, who seemed incapable of original effort.
Some affected his style, others worked 'Euphues' into their title-
page, while the majority wrote, as Lyly had claimed to write, for
'the onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen. ' Anthony
Munday's Zelauto (1580) is the first of this school ; it is a
delicate disputation. . . given for a friendly entertainment of
Euphues,' in which Zelauto's praise of England is in emulation
of that of Euphues. In Barnabe Riche's Don Simonides (1581)
Philautus reappears and English manners, once again, form part
of the topics discussed. Melbancke's Philotimus (1583) is made
up of philosophical discussions on the warre betwixt nature and
>
1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, sc.
says Wood, was authorised, in 1593, by a privy council order to
travel through England and Wales, 'to make more perfect de-
scriptions, charts and maps' and was a very deft cartographer, as
## p. 331 (#353) ############################################
Sir Thomas Smith
331
is shown to all in Camden's Britannia. The liveliest of his works,
the Surveyor's Dialogue (1608), may still be read with pleasure.
Therein, Norden deplores, like many another, the luxury which had
come upon the country under the rule of the Tudors; he observes,
with sorrow, the enhanced prices of all commodities, the smoke of
many chimneys, which ‘hinders the heate and light of the Sunne
from earthly creatures, and the many acres of deforested land,
The farmers, he says, are not content unless they are gentry, and
'gentlemen have sunke themselves by rowing in vanities boate. '
In brief, he sees about him the signs of ruin and desolation, and
his treatise may aptly be compared with some passages of
Harrison's Description of England,
What the travellers did for their country, Sir Thomas Smith,
in his Common Wealth of England (written in 1565, printed in
1583), did for its law and government. No treatise ever written
owed less to ornament. As the author himself says, he has
declared summarily as it were in a Chart or Map' the form
and manner of government and the policy of England. His
is no feigned commonwealth such as never was nor shall be,
no vain imagination, no fantasy of philosophers, but England
as she
6
6
standeth and is governed at this day the eight and twentie of March, Anno
1565, in the seventh yeere of the Raigne and Administration thereof by the
most religious, virtuous, and noble Queene Elizabeth.
In style and in substance the book is as concise as a classic. It
wastes no words and betrays few emotions. Only once or twice
does Sir Thomas Smith permit himself a touch of humanity or
a bint of observation. The yeomen of England, the good Archers,
‘the stable troupe of Footmen that affraid all France,' arouse him
to a fitful enthusiasm, and, in the discussion of England's male-
factors, he reveals a flash of real insight, namely that Englishmen,
while they neglect death, will not endure torture. The nature
of our Nation is free, stout, hault, prodigall of life and blood,'
says he, “but contumely, beating, servitude, and servile torment,
and punishment it will not abide. ' The popularity of the book is
easily intelligible. It appealed to a people hungry for knowledge
of itself, but it gives no hint of the erudite Greek professor, the
adroit ambassador, the wise secretary of state, the curious astro-
loger, all whose parts Sir Thomas Smith played with distinction
and success.
An encyclopaedic method claims for John Foxe, the martyro-
logist, a place among the chroniclers. Not that his aim and
## p. 332 (#354) ############################################
332
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
6
purpose resembled theirs. It was not for him to exalt his country,
or to celebrate the triumphs of her past. His was the gloomier
task of recounting the torments suffered by the martyrs of all
ages, and he performed it with so keen a zest that it was not his
fault if one single victim escaped his purview. In other words,
he was content only with universality, and how well he succeeded
let Fuller tell : 'In good earnest, as to the particular subject of
our English martyrs, Mr Foxe hath done everything, leaving
posterity nothing to work upon. ' And so he goes back to the
beginning, describing the martyrdoms of the early church, and of
those who suffered in England under king Lucius. As he passes
by, he pours contempt upon Becket, proving that he, at least,
was no true martyr, being the open and avowed friend of the
pope. But it is when he arrives within measurable distance of
his own time that he finds the best food for his eloquence. The
prowess of Henry VIII, the exploits of Thomas Cromwell, his
prime hero, the magnanimity of Anne Boleyn, who, without
controversy, was a special comforter and aider of all the pro-
fessors of Christ's gospel,' tempt him to enthusiasm, and he rises
to the highest pitch of his frenzy when he recounts the tortures
of those who suffered death in the reign of queen Mary. He is no
sifter of authorities; he is as credulous as the simplest chronicler ;
he gathers his facts where Grafton and Stow gathered theirs, and
he makes no attempt to test their accuracy. His sin is the greater
because he is not writing to amuse or to enlighten his readers,
but to prove a point in controversy. He is, in brief, a violent
partisan. His book is the longest pamphlet ever composed by
the hand of man. It is said to be twice as long as Gibbon's
Decline and Fall, and never for one moment does it waver from
its purpose, which is to expose the wickedness of the persecutors
of God's truth, commonly called Papists. ' It is idle, therefore, to
expect accuracy or a quiet statement from Foxe. If anyone belong
to the other side, Foxe can credit him neither with honesty nor with
intelligence. Those only are martyrs who die for the protestant
The spilt blood of such men as Fisher and More does not
distress him. For the author of Utopia, indeed, he has a profound
contempt. He summarily dismisses him as 'a bitter persecutor
of good men, and a wretched enemy against the truth of the
gospel. ' It follows, therefore, that Foxe's mind also was enchained.
It was not liberty of opinion which seemed good in his eyes, but
the vanquishing of the other side. Though he interceded for
certain anabaptists condemned by queen Elizabeth, it was his
6
cause.
## p. 333 (#355) ############################################
John Foxe
333
object to rescue them not from punishment but from the flames,
which was, he thought, in accord with a Roman rather than with a
Christian custom. However, the success of his Actes and Monu-
ments was immediate. It was universally read, it aroused a storm
of argument, it was ordered to be chained in churches for the
general edification of the people. The temper in which it is
written, the inflexible judgment which, throughout, distorts the
truth with the best motive, have rendered the book less valu-
able in modern than in contemporary eyes. If we read it to-day,
we read it not for its matter or for its good counsel, but for its
design. As a mere performance, the Actes and Monuments is
without parallel. Foxe was an astounding virtuoso, whose move-
ment and energy never flag. With a fever of excitement he
sustains his own interest (and sometimes yours) in his strange
medley of gossip, document and exhortation. The mere style of
the work-homely, quick and appropriate—is sufficient to account
for its favour. The dramatic turn which Foxe gives to his dia-
logues, the vitality of the innumerable men and women, tortured
and torturers, who throng his pages—these are qualities which
do not fade with years. Even the spirit of bitter raillery which
breathes through his pages amazes, while it exasperates, the
reader. From the point of view of presentation, the work's worst
fault is monotony. Page after page, the martyrologist revels in
the terms of suffering. He spares you nothing, neither the
,
creeping flames, nor the chained limb, until you begin to
believe that he himself had a love of blood and fire.
The man was just such a one as you would expect from his
book. Born in 1517, to parents 'reputed of good estate,' sent to
Oxford, in 1533, by friends who approved his “good inclination
and towardness to learning,' and elected fellow of Magdalen
College, he was presently accused of heresy and expelled from
Oxford. He was of those who can neither brook opposition nor
accept argument. Henceforth, though he never stood at the
stake, he suffered the martyrdom of penury and distress. Now
tutor in a gentleman's house, now in flight for the sake of his
opinions, be passed some years at Basel reading for the press,
and, in 1559, he published at Strassburg the first edition of his
masterpiece, in Latin. In 1563, it was printed in English by John
Day, with the title Actes and Monuments of these latter and
perilous times touching matters of the Church. With characteristic
ingenuity, he composed four dedications : to Jesus Christ, to the
queen, to the learned reader and to the persecutors of God's truth,
## p. 334 (#356) ############################################
334
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
commonly called papists. The last is a fine example of savage
abuse, and, as Foxe wrote in safety and under the protection of
a protestant queen, its purpose is not evident. No more can be
said than that rage and fury are in his heart and on his tongue,
that he possessed a genius of indignation which he had neither
wish nor power to check and that he bequeathed to us a larger
mass of invective than any writer in any age has been able to
achieve.
The most of the writers hitherto discussed have been intent
either to amuse or to inform. They have composed their works,
for the most part, in sound and living English, because they spoke
and wrote a language that had not yet been attenuated by the
formality of pedants and grammarians. Few, if any, of them were
sensible of an artistic impulse. They began at the beginning and
pursued their task patiently unto the end, unconscious of what
the next page would bring forth. But there are three writers,
the author of The history of King Richard the thirde, George
Cavendish and Sir John Hayward, who are separated from the
chroniclers, even from Camden himself, both by ambition and by
talent. Each of them set before him a consistent and harmonious
design ; each of them produced, in his own fashion, a deliberately
artistic effect. The history of Richard the thirde has been gene-
rally ascribed to Sir Thomas More, on hazardous authority. An
incomplete manuscript of the book was found among his papers,
and printed as his both in Hall's Chronicle and in Grafton's
edition of Hardyng. Some have attributed to More no more than
the translation, giving to cardinal Morton the credit of a Latin
original. Sir George Buck, in his History of the Life and Reigne
of Richard III, printed in 1646, but written many years earlier,
declares that ‘Doctor Morton (acting the part of Histiaeus) made
the Booke, and Master Moore like Aristagoras set it forth, amplifying
and glossing it. ' Where the evidence is thus scanty, dogmatism
is inapposite, and no more can be said than that the book itself
does not chime with the character and temper of More. It is
marked throughout by an asperity of tone, an eager partisan-
ship, which belong more obviously to Morton than to the humane
author of Utopia.
From beginning to end, Richard III is painted in the blackest
colours. No gossip is overlooked which may throw a sinister light
upon the actions of the prince. It is hinted, not only that he
slew Henry VI, but that he was privy to Clarence's death. The
most is made of his deformed body and cunning mind, the least
## p. 335 (#357) ############################################
1
The history of King Richard the thirde 335
of his policy. If accuracy be sacrificed, the artistic effect is en-
hanced. The oneness of Richard's character gives a unity and
concentration to the portrait which cannot be overpraised. For the
first time in English literature, we come upon a history which is not
a mere collection of facts, but a deliberately designed and care-
fully finished whole. The author has followed the ancient models.
He knows how fine an effect is produced by the putting of
appropriate speeches in the mouths of his characters. The value
of such maxims as sum up a situation and point a moral does not
escape him. “Slipper youth must be underpropped with elder
counsayle,' says he. And, again : The desire of a kingdome
knoweth no kinred. The brother hath bene the brother's bane. '
Here we have the brevity and the wise commonplace of the Greek
chorus. Above all, he proves the finest economy in preparing his
effects. The great scene in which Richard arrests lord Hastings
opens in a spirit of gentle courtesy. 'My Lord,' says the protector
to the bishop of Ely,
you have very good strawberries at your gardayne in Holberne, I request you
let ns have a messe of them. Gladly my lord, quod he, woulde God I had
some better thing as redy to your pleasure as that.
And then the storm breaks. In brief, the author's sense of what
is picturesque never slumbers. The sketches of the queen and
Shore's wife are drawn by a master. The persistence with which
Richard tightens his grasp upon the throne is rendered with the
utmost skill. Nor is the sense of proportion ever at fault. You
are given the very essence of the tragedy, and so subtle is the design
that, at the first reading, it may escape you. The style is marked
by a strict economy of words and a constant preference of English
before Latin. From beginning to end, there is no trace of flam-
boyancy or repetition, and, while we applaud the wisdom of the
chroniclers who made this history of Richard their own, we cannot
but wonder that one and all failed to profit by so fine an example
of artistry and restraint.
Few books have had a stranger fate than George Cavendish's
Life and Death of Thomas Woolsey. Written when queen Mary
was on the throne, it achieved a secret and furtive success.
passed in manuscript from hand to hand. Shakespeare knew it
and used it. As I have said, both Stow and Speed leaned upon
its authority. First printed in 1641, it was then so defaced by
interpolations and excisions as to be scarce recognisable, and it
was not until 1657 that a perfect text was given to the world.
And then, for no visible reason, it was ascribed to William, not to
It was
## p. 336 (#358) ############################################
336
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
George, Cavendish. The uncertainty had no other excuse save
that William, the better known of the two, was the founder of
a great family. Speed gives the credit where it was due, to George
-and Speed's word was worth more than surmise. However, all
doubt was long since removed, and to George Cavendish, a simple
gentleman of the cardinal's household, belongs the glory of having
given to English literature the first specimen of artistic biography.
Steadfast in devotion, plain in character, Cavendish left all to
follow the fortunes of the cardinal. He was witness of his master's
pomp and splendour; he was witness of his ruin and his death.
He embellished his narrative with Wolsey's own eloquence; he re-
corded the speech of Cromwell, Northumberland and others; and
he imparts to his pages a sense of reality which only a partaker
of Wolsey's fortunes could impart. But he was not a Boswell,
attempting to produce a large effect by a multiplicity of details.
His book has a definite plan and purpose. Consciously or un-
consciously, Cavendish was an artist. His theme is the theme of
many a Greek tragedy, and he handles it with Greek austerity.
He sets out to show how Nemesis descends upon the haughty and
overbold, how the mighty are suddenly cast down from their seats,
how the hair-shirt lurks ever beneath the scarlet robes of the
cardinal. This is the confessed end and aim of his work. He is
not compiling a life and times. ' He discards as irrelevant many
events which seem important in the eye of history. The famous
words which he puts in the mouth of Wolsey dying might
serve as a text for the whole work: 'If I had served God as
diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me
over in my grey hairs. '
That his readers may feel the full pathos of Wolsey's fall, he
paints the magnificence of his life in glowing colours. Titles are
heaped upon titles. The boy bachelor grows to the man of affairs,
the ambassador, the king's almoner, the chancellor of England, the
archbishop of York, the cardinal. In lavish entertainment, in noble
pageantry, the cardinal surpassed the king. His banquets 'with
monks and mummers it was a heaven to behold. ' The officers of his
chapel and of his household were like the sands in number. He moved
always in a procession. 'He rode like a cardinal, very sumptuously,
on a mule trapped with crimson velvet upon velvet, his stirrups of
copper and gilt; and his spare mule following him with like
apparel. ' Is it any wonder that fortune ‘began to was something
wroth with his prosperous estate'? Almost at the outset, the note
of warning is struck. The sinister influence of Anne Boleyn begins
## p. 337 (#359) ############################################
Cavendish's Life of Woolsey 337
to be felt from the moment that the cardinal comes between her and
the love of lord Percy. In other words, fortune 'procured Venus,
the insatiate goddess, to be her instrument. The king's displeasure
at the slow process of divorce is heightened by the whisperings of
Mistress Anne. And then, at Grafton, the blow falls. The cardinal
is ordered to give up the great seal and to retire to Esher. Hence-
forth, misfortunes are heaped upon him, as they were heaped upon
Job, and he bears them with an equal resignation. He is stripped
of wealth and state. His hopeless journey from town to town
brings him nearer only to death. The omens are bad. A cross
falls upon Bonner's head as he sits at meat. When the earl
of Northumberland, charged to arrest him of high treason, visits
him, 'Ye shall have such cheer,' says the cardinal, with the true
irony of Sophocles, as I am able to make you, with a right good
will. . . hoping hereafter to see you oftener, when I shall be more
able and better provided to receive you with better fare. ' So,
at last, he dies at Leicester, dishonoured and disgraced, stripped
of his splendour, abandoned by his train. And Cavendish, speak-
ing with the voice of the tragic chorus, exhorts his readers
to behold 'the wondrous mutability of vain honours, the brittle
assurance of abundance, the uncertainty of dignities, the flattery
of feigned friends, and the fickle trust to worldly princes. '
Talent and opportunity were given to the simple, unlettered
Cavendish, and he made the fullest use of them. Sir John Hayward
was a historian of another kind. He was not driven by accident
or experience to the practice of his craft. He adopted it as a
profession, and resembled the writers of a later age more nearly
than any of his contemporaries. Born in Suffolk, about 1560, he
was educated at the university of Cambridge, and devoted himself
with a single mind to the study of history. He was in no sense
a mere chronicler. He aimed far higher than the popular history,
digested into annals. His mind was always intent upon the ex-
ample of the ancients. He liked to trick out his narratives with
appropriate speeches after the manner of Livy. He delighted
in the moral generalisations which give an air of solemnity to
the art of history as it was practised by the Greeks and Romans.
His first work, in which are described the fall of Richard II and
the first years of Henry IV, and which was dedicated to the earl
of Essex, incurred the wrath of Elizabeth, and cost him some
years of imprisonment. The queen asked Bacon if he could find
any passages in the book which savoured of treason. 'For treason
surely I find none,' said Bacon, but for felony very many. ' And
22
6
E. L. III.
CH. XV.
## p. 338 (#360) ############################################
338
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
when the queen asked him 'Wherein ? ' he told her that 'the
author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken
most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and translated them
into English, and put them in his text. ' This criticism is as
true as it is witty. Hayward aims at sententiousness with an
admirable success, and did his best to make himself the Tacitus
of England.
In the 'Epistle Dedicatorie' to his Lives of the Three
Normans, Kings of England, he declares that, though he had
written of the past, he ‘did principally bend and binde himself
to the times wherein he should live. ' His performance did not
agree with his bent. Concerning the times near which he lived he
has left but a fragment: The beginning of the Reigne of Queene
Elizabeth, of which beginning he had no more personal knowledge
than of the Life and Reigne of King Edward the Sixt, which,
in some respects, is his masterpiece. But, whatever was the
period of his choice, he treated it with the same knowledge and
impartiality. He made a proper use of unpublished material.
The journal of Edward VI gives an air of authenticity to his
biography of that king, and, in treating of William I, he went
back to sources of information which all the chroniclers had
overlooked. In brief, he was a scholar who took a critical view
of his task, who was more deeply interested in policies and their
result than in the gossip of history and who was always quick to
illustrate modern England by the examples of Greece and Rome.
His pages are packed with literary and historical allusions. He
was, moreover, always watchful of his style, intent ever upon
producing a definite effect, and, if he errs, as he does especially
in his Henry IV, on the side of elaboration, it is a fault of which
he is perfectly conscious, and which he does not disdain. Thus,
at last, with the author of Richard III and Sir John Hayward,
England reverted to the ancient models, and it is from them and
not from the chroniclers that our art of history must date its
beginnings.
>
1
## p. 339 (#361) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION
AMONG the prose compositions of the Elizabethan era are
numerous works which, with many points of difference, have thi
in common, that they all aim at affording entertainment by means
of prose narrative. They are variously styled Phantasticall
treatises, Pleasant histories, Lives, Tales and Pamphlets, and the
methods and material they employ are of corresponding variety;
they are, moreover, obviously written in response to demands
from different classes, and yet their common motive, as well as
a common prose form, unmistakably suggest a single literary
species.
Previous examples of the type will rarely be found in our
literature, for medieval fiction had mostly assumed the form of
verse. The general adoption of prose at this date is, therefore, an
innovation, and, as such, it was due to more than one cause. It
was the outcome, in the first place, of natural development, the
result of that national awakening which led to the overthrow of
Latin as the language of the learned ; with its activities extended
!
in the one direction, the vernacular was not long in recommending
itself for use in another, and so it came about that pros joined
verse in the service of delight. Then, again, Malory, Caxton and
the translators of Boccaccio had shown that narrative might adopt
prose form without disadvantage; through the Bible and the liturgy
the use of vernacular prose was fast becoming familiar; while
further possibilities of prose were being revealed from its place in
the drama. And, lastly, with the departure of the minstrel and the
appearance of the printing press, there ceased, naturally enough,
that exclusive use of verse for narrative purposes, which, under
earlier conditions, alone had made long narrative possible.
Prose fiction, therefore, is one of the gifts of the Elizabethans
to our literature, and the gift is none the less valuable because
unconsciously made. It was no special creation, fashioned upon
22-2
## p. 340 (#362) ############################################
340
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
a definite model, but, rather, the result of a variety of efforts
which, indirectly, converged towards one literary type. Its
elements were of various origin, being borrowed, in part, from
medieval England, in part, from abroad, while much, also, was due
to the initiative of the age. The material with which it dealt,
varied in accordance with the immediate end in view. Its
'treatises' and its pamphlets embodied studies of manners and
character-sketches; it comprised tales of adventure as well as
romance; it dealt with contemporary life and events of the past,
with life at the court, and life in the city ; it was, by turns,
humorous and didactic, realistic and fanciful, in short, it repre-
sented the first rough drafts of the later novel.
The history of
the novel had really begun, and, although the term was not, as
yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the
language.
The two main centres of influence around which Elizabethan
prose fiction revolved were the court and the people. The court
was easily the supreme element in national life, and one great aim
of contemporary letters became that of supplying the courtier's
needs, just as, in Rome, it was the orator, the typical figure of the
classical age, who had won similar attention. At the same time,
à strong and self-conscious middle class was emerging from the
ruins of feudalism, and the commons were becoming alive to the
interests of their class. Hence, now for the first time, they made
their way into literature, and the treatment of their affairs
became the secondary aim of this prose fiction.
A period of apprenticeship came first, in which the lines of
translation were closely followed, and then, with skill acquired in
the art of story-telling, a host of writers devoted themselves to the
newly found craft. A series of moral treatises, in narrative form,
were the first to appear. They aimed, for the most part, at courtly
education, and, up to about 1584, instruction, often in sugared
form, became the main concern of a body of writers, of whom Lyly
was chief. Then the business became one of a more cheerful kind:
Greene and Lodge wrote their romances for court entertainment,
while Sidney sought distraction in the quiet shades of Arcadia.
In the last decade of the century came the assertion of the
bourgeois element. As an embodiment of realistic tendencies, it
followed, naturally enough, upon the previous romancing; but
social considerations had, also, made it inevitable. Greene, Nashe
and Deloney laboured to present the dark and the fair side of the
life of the people: they wrote to reform as well as to amuse.
## p. 341 (#363) ############################################
Earlier Native Types 341
Throughout the whole period, England, as is well known, was
singularly sensitive to foreign influence : one foreign work or
another seems to have been continually inspiring Elizabethan pens.
Castiglione and Guevara, Montemayor and Mendoza, each in his
different way, exercised influence, which was certainly stimulative,
and was, to some extent, directive, But, while this is true, it is
equally true that, in most cases, the actual production springs
readily and naturally from English soil; southern influence,
undoubtedly, helped to warm the seed into life, but the seed itself
was of an earlier sowing.
First, with regard to the treatises : the enthusiasm inspired by
North’s translation (1557) of Guevara's El Reloa de Principes,
and Hoby's translation (1561) of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, was as
great as it was undoubted, but it does not altogether account
for Lyly's great work. Courtesy books had been written in English
before those works appeared. The Babees' Boke (1475) 'a lytyl
reporte of how young people should behave,' and Hugh Rhodes's
Boke of Nurture (1450, published 1577), had previously aimed at
inculcating good manners; afterwards came Elyot's Governour
(1531), Ascham’s Scholemaster (published 1570) and Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's Queene Elizabethes Achademy (written after 1562), all of
which treated of instruction, not only in letters, but also in social
and practical life'. Such works as these, together with the numerous
Mirrours, aimed at pointing the way to higher social refinement,
and thus the movement which culminated in Lyly had already
begun in fifteenth century England, and had kept pace with the
national development, of which it is, indeed, the logical outcome.
Secondly, the romance is an obvious continuation of a literary
type familiar to medieval England. Sanazzaro and Montemayor
modified, but did not supply the form, while the French and
Spanish works of chivalry introduced by Paynel and Munday
(1580—90) merely catered for a taste which had then become
jaded. Medieval romances, it is true, had fallen by this time into
a decrepit old age. They were cherished by antiquaries, some-
times reprinted, less frequently reread; they figured mainly with
'blind harpers and. . . taverne minstrels. . . at Christmasse diners
and bride ales, in tavernes and ale-houses and such other places of
base resort? ' But their tradition lived on in the romantic works
1 Note, also, 4 lytle Booke of Good Maners for Chyldren (1554) by Whittinton, R. ,
The Myrrour of Good Maners, translated from the Latin by Alexander Barclay and
printed by Pynson, and R. Peterson's translation of G. della Casa's Galateo (1576).
Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 1811, pp. 36, 69.
## p. 342 (#364) ############################################
342
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Greene, Sidney and Lodge, though in the form of their sur-
vival they owed something to foreign influence. The pastoral
colouring, for instance, is caught from the fashions of Italy and
Spain; but, for the rest, their differences from the earlier English
forms may be fairly put down to changed aspects of national life.
In a general awakening, something of the old wonder and awe
had, naturally, been lost; the world of chivalry and enchantment
had receded, leaving the heroes of romance in a setting less
heroic, just as, in active life, the knight had turned courtier and
castles had become palaces. Moreover, the medley of form which
these romances exhibit corresponds to that medley of past and
present which lingered in men’s minds at masque and pageant.
The Elizabethan romance is, in short, firmly rooted in Elizabethan
life. Modifying influences came from abroad; but the animating
tradition and guiding impulses were forces derived from the
national life.
And, again, the immediate origin of the realistic work which
followed must be sought for in English works of an earlier
date. It is not necessary to ascribe Nashe's Unfortunate
Traveller, any more than the other realistic works of 1590—1600,
entirely to the influence of Lazarillo de Tormes. In part, all
these works represented a reaction against those ‘feyned-no-where
acts' which had proved enchanting in the preceding decade.
But the ultimate causes were yet more deeply rooted, being social
changes, partly national, partly European. Agricultural depres-
,
sion, long years of militarism and the closing of the monasteries,
had done much to reinforce those bands of 'broken men' that
swarmed like plagues over England. Their existence began now
more than ever to force itself upon the notice of their country-
men, while, at the same time, the tendency of the renascence in the
direction of individualism urged attention to these human units,
and the sombre conditions under which they lived. And yet the
realistic literature of 1590—1600 was of no sudden growth.
Humble life had been portrayed in the lay of Havelok, its laments
had been voiced in the vision of Piers the Plowman and alongside
the romances of earlier England had existed coarser fabliaux
which related the tricks and intrigues of the lower reaches of
society. It was only a more specialised form of these tastes and
tendencies which sprang into being in the sixteenth century. To
the popular mind, collections of jests, as we have seen', had
become an acceptable form of literature, while, at the same time,
1 See ante, chap. v.
## p. 343 (#365) ############################################
The Influence of Translators 343
material was being collected for English rogue-studies'; and, while
the jest-collections had aimed at mere amusement, the rogue
pamphlets were prompted by ideas of reform. It is this material
which anticipates the realistic work of Greene, Nashe and Deloney.
The social influences which produced the earlier and cruder type
of work also produced the later.
The probationary period of translation enters but slightly into
the present narrative; and yet, as it marks the first stage in the
development of prose fiction, it must not be entirely forgotten.
Painter and Pettie, Whetstone and Riche are the translators
mainly concerned, and their efforts are characterised by an in-
teresting change from mere translation to bolder and more original
treatment. Painter, in his Palace of Pleasure (1566–7), supplies
versions of a hundred and one tales, some forty of which are
taken from Boccaccio and Bandello; Fenton, in his Tragicall
Discourses (1567), reproduces thirteen tales of Bandello; and both,
for the most part, are content with simple, faithful translation. In
the twelve stories, however, which constitute The Petite Pallace
of Pettie his Pleasure (1576), an advance on the mere process
of translation is plainly visible, and additions of an interesting
kind are occasionally made. Not only has Pettie's style certain
interesting features? , but his narratives are somewhat modi-
fied as compared with his originals. Into the tragical stories
of Tereus and Procne, Scylla and Minos, to mention only a couple,
the translator has skilfully worked an erotic element, while around
his classical figures he has thrown a contemporary colouring in
such a way as to suggest personalities of his day. In Whetstone's
Rock of Regard (1576), which consists, in part, of prose versions
of Italian novels, the method is, once more, one of mere repro-
duction, but it is worthy of note that one story, vaguely credited
to 'an unknowne [Italian] author,' is, in all probability, due to
Whetstone himself. And, again, of the eight stories which make up
Riche his Farewell to the Militarie Profession (1581), while three
are taken from the Italian, the remaining five are frankly. forged
onely for delight,' though the writer is careful to make his
forgeries reminiscent of Italian motives. In this way did mere
translation merge into adaptation, and then into the process of
actual invention? .
6
1 Cf. Awdeley's Fraternitye of vacabones and Harman's Caveat, ante, pp. 102 ff.
? See post, p. 348.
3 See Koeppel, Studien zur Geschichte der ital. Novelle in der engl. Litt. des XVI
Jahrh. (Strassburg, 1892).
## p. 344 (#366) ############################################
344
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
But these pioneers did more than render easy access to
Italian tales, though this was a service of no slight value; the
avenue thus afforded to new and strange realms revealed new
springs of human passion, and opened out on wide vistas of un-
familiar life. And, more than this, the secrets of successful
narrative, its material and its methods, were silently imparted,
while the feature of originality was being implicitly suggested.
They did much, too, in the way of popularising prose as a
medium of narrative. The merits of a simple prose had long been
recognised in France and Italy ; its more modest garb had been
seen to impose no restraint on the progress of the story, while
it was obviously free from that counter-attraction, inevitable in
verse, to the narrative itself. English writers had yet to learn the
charm of a plain and simple prose, devoid of tricks, but, in
employing prose in fiction, they had begun to learn.
This marked development in the methods of narrative soon
led to its employment in one of the main literary businesses of
the time, that of supplying moral treatises for courtly reading.
These works, which aimed at edifying by means of disqui-
sitions on subjects like love and friendship, form a sort of
intellectual counterpart to such works as Vincentio Saviolo his
Practise, which ‘intreated' of the use of rapier and dagger and
was 'most necessarie for all gentlemen that had in regard their
Honors. They were a revival, in some sort, of the medieval
discussions, though scarcely, on the whole, as trivial. Under an
attractive narrative form, they contrived to disseminate southern
culture after the fashion of Castiglione and Guevara.
The great outstanding figure in this line is that of John Lyly,
a native of Kent, and, in his day, a noted son of Oxford. His
career was one of strenuous effort, ill-requited because ill-directed.
His nice, fastidious temperament, which marked him off from the
roaring section of university wits, seems to have rendered him
ineffective in actual life. At Oxford, he missed recognition ; his
ambition to succeed to the Mastership of the Revels was quietly
ignored; while his closing years, passed in penury and neglect,
form a saddening sequel to the efforts of one, who, in his time, had
adorned the stage, had beautified the conversation of exquisites
of learned tendency' and had been the fruitful occasion of much
wit in others.
The work for which he is famous appeared in two instalments.
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit was 'lying bound on the stacioners
stall’ by the Christmas of 1578; Euphues and his England, the
## p. 345 (#367) ############################################
Lyly's Euphues
345
second part, appeared in 1580. Together, they form an extensive
moral treatise, and, incidentally, our first English novel. The
whole hangs together by the thinnest of plots, which is, indeed,
more a means to an end than an end in itself. Each incident and
situation is merely an opportunity for expounding some point of
philosophy. Euphues, a young man of Athens, arrives at Naples,
where he forms a friendship with young Philautus. He falls
in love with Lucilla, the betrothed of Philautus, and is duly
jilted by that fickle mistress. This is all the action of The
Anatomy of Wit: but the moralising element is something more
considerable. The ancient Eubulus discourses on the follies of
youth; Euphues, himself, on the subject of friendship. The com-
plications brought about by the action of Lucilla lead to much
bitter moralising upon fickleness in general, while Euphues, jilted,
discusses his soul and indites 'a Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers. '
Over and above all this, the work contains the hero's private
papers, his essays and letters; and opportunities are seized for
inveighing against dress, and for discoursing upon such diverse
subjects as marriage and travel, education and atheism. In
Euphues and his England, the scene changes from Italy to
England. The two friends, now reconciled, proceed to Canterbury,
where they are entertained by one Fidus, a pastoral figure of
considerable attractiveness ; Philautus soon becomes involved
in the toils of love, while Euphues plays the part of a philo-
sophical spectator. The former lays siege to the heart of one
whose affections are already bestowed, and so, with philosophy
for his comfort, he enters upon the wooing of another, with more
auspicious result. This brings the action to a close, and Euphues
leaves England, eulogising the country and the women it contains,
and returns forthwith to nurse his melancholy within his cell at
Silexedra.
The significance of the structure is best appreciated by re-
membering that the work is really a compilation, and is, in fact,
entered as such in the Stationers' register. Reminiscences of
Cicero occur, particularly of his De Amicitia and his De Natura
Deorum : but the body of the work is drawn from North's Diall
of Princes (1557), the English translation of Guevara's great
treatise. Euphues, in short, is little more than a re-ordering of
this material, and Lyly betrays his source when he introduces
certain details which, in his work, are obvious anachronisms, but
which, in the pages of Guevara, were in perfect keeping. Apart
from this, the adaptation has been consistently made, and the
works coincide in much of their detail. Dissertations on the
## p. 346 (#368) ############################################
346
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
same subjects-on love and ladies, on friendship and God, occur in
each. Both have letters appended to their close, which letters
treat of identical subjects ; Lyly's names of Lucilla, Livia and
Camilla are taken over from Guevara, while the 'Cooling Carde'
of Euphues finds its counterpart in that letter of Marcus Aurelius
against the frailty of women which is embodied in Guevara's
work? . It is only in a few instances that Lyly, while obtaining his
idea from the Spanish work, goes elsewhere for fuller details.
This is, however, the case in his remarks on education, in the
section Euphues and his Ephoebus (1, 264). Guevara, it is true,
embodies this material but Lyly's rendering is more nearly
suggestive of Plutarch's De Educatione Puerorum, though his
indebtedness is but indirect, the actual source being Erasmus's
Colloquia Familiaria (Puerpera).
The character of these sources indicates, clearly enough, Lyly's
didactic aim, in undertaking his Euphues. But, in projecting a
moral treatise, he stumbled on the novel, and, considered as such,
the work, though with many defects, has, also, abundant merit.
It foretells the day of the novel of manners, of the novel involv-
ing a detailed analysis of love. It moves away from the fanciful
idealism of the medieval romance and suggests an interest in con- .
temporary life. Love is no longer the medieval pastime of knights
and ladies ; its subtleties are analysed, its romance and glamour
are seen to lurk within contemporary walls and beneath velvet
doublets. The defects of Euphues, on the other hand, are those of
a writer unconscious of his art. There is a want of action, for the
story is, after all, of but secondary interest. A poverty of inven-
tion is apparent in the parallelism which exists between the action
of the two parts. Again, proportion is wanting; important events
are hurriedly treated; the characterisation is but slight; the
attempt at realism unconvincing. And yet the writer acquires
skill as he proceeds. In the second part, he shows a distinct
advance in artistic conception; there is more action, less moralis-
ing; characters multiply, characterisation improves and variety is
introduced by changes of scene? .
Not the least striking feature of the work, however, is the
peculiar style in which it is written. The style, known as
Euphuistic, won a following in its day, and has since become one
of the most familiar of literary phenomena. It is the least elusive
of styles, being deliberately compounded and, therefore, easily
1 See Landmann, Transactions of the New Shak. Soc. (1885), pp. 255 ff.
? See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
## p. 347 (#369) ############################################
Euphuism
347
6
analysed; but, while its grotesque exaggerations have met with
more than appreciation, justice has not always been done to its
real aims and effects. With all its flowers of fancy, it is nothing
more than the ‘painful'expression of a sober calculating scholar,
and is the outcome of a desire to write with clearness and precision,
with ornament and culture, at a time when Englishmen desired
'to heare finer speach then the language would allow. Lyly aimed
at precision and emphasis, in the first place, by carefully balancing
his words and phrases, by using rhetorical questions and by
repeating the same idea in different and striking forms. Allitera-
tion, puns and further word-play were other devices employed to
the same end. For ornament, in the second place, he looked
mainly to allusions and similes of various kinds. He alludes to
historical personages, found in Plutarch and Pliny, to mythological
figures taken from Ovid and Vergil. But his most daring orna-
mentation lies in his wholesale introduction of recondite knowledge;
he draws similes from folklore, medicine and magic, above all from
the Natural History of Pliny, and this mixture of quaint device
and naïve science resulted in a style which appealed irresistibly
to his contemporaries? . It should here be added, however, that
the acquaintance with Plutarch and Pliny, which the elements of
Lyly's style suggest, was not, necessarily, first hand. On the
contrary, it was, almost certainly, obtained through the writings
of Erasmus, which were in the hands of most sixteenth century
scholars and which had already penetrated into the schools. In
them, Erasmus had presented the fruit of his classical reading. His
Similia Colloquia, Apophthegmata and Adagia offered in a clear,
coherent form much that was best in antiquity and they repre-
sented a storehouse of learning which would save Lyly much
seeking in his quest for learned material. In some cases, where
Erasmus reproduces Pliny or Plutarch verbatim, Lyly's indebted-
ness to the great humanist might be doubted; but when Erasmus
takes over his classical material in a somewhat altered form, when
he expands or explains a thought, or falls into slight error or
confusion, the fact that these variations from the original are
faithfully reproduced in Lyly makes the latter's source undoubted.
And if this indebtedness be proved in the case of variations, a
further debt may be inferred even where identity of expression
appears in the classical writers, in Erasmus and Lyly? .
But this elaborated style, this 'curtizan-like painted affectation'
1 See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
2 See De Vocht, H. , De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche Tooneelliteratuur der
aviº en xviie eeuwen (eerste deel), 1908.
## p. 348 (#370) ############################################
348
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Euphuism, did not originate with Lyly himself; he only
‘hatched the egges that his elder friendes laide. ' Its immediate
origin lay in a certain stylistic tendency then fashionable in
England. An almost identical craze had existed, a little earlier,
in Spain, namely, in Guevara's alto estilo, which, however, had
lacked the English device of alliteration. But the English fashion
did not come from Spain, though North’s Diall of Princes has
often been credited with having effected the introduction : while
this translation may have increased the vogue, it cannot have set
the fashion. In the first place, North had employed a French
version of Guevara's work for the purposes of translation, and
this was a medium likely to dissolve any peculiarities of style in
the original. And, secondly, many of the features of Euphuism,
its parallelism and repetitions, its rhetorical questions and classical
allusions, had already appeared in Lord Berners's Froissart (1524),
not only before North, but before Guevara had written! This
fashion, of which Berners is thus the first English representa-
tive, can, subsequently, be traced to some extent in Cheke and
Ascham; while, in Pettie's Petite Pallace, already mentioned, all
the structural, and most of the ornamental, characteristics of
Euphuism are present. It only remained for Lyly to expand the
recognised methods of simile-manufacture by adding to Pettie's
collection, based on fact and personal observation, others invented
by himself, and based on fancy.
The ultimate origin of the fashion lay yet further afield, and
is to be traced to that widespread movement for improving the
vernacular which left its mark on almost every European litera-
ture. The coincidence of its effects in the literary styles of
England and Spain must be ascribed to the prevalence of similar
national conditions in both those countries. In each case, it was
the outcome of a perverted classical enthusiasm, which led to the
imitation of late Latin stylists with their many extravagances.
It was due, also, in part, to the necessity for a courtly diction
which arose simultaneously in both countries, in consequence of
the growing interest which centred round the person and court
of the monarch. As a movement, it was by no means isolated ;
nor did its results assume merely one form. Arcadianism and
Gongorism, the conceits of seventeenth century France, and the
pedantic mannerisms of Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein in
Germany, are merely the outcome of the same influences, working
at different times on different soils.
Nor are the results of Euphuism on English prose style by any
1 See Wilson, J. D. , John Lyly, chap. L
## p. 349 (#371) ############################################
6
Lyly's Influence
349
means a negligible quantity, though its 'cunning courtship of
faire words,' its tedious redundancies and mass of ornaments,
led to its abandonment, generally speaking, about 1590. Sidney,
by that time, had lamented the fact that his contemporaries
enamelled 'with py'd flowers their thoughts of gold,' and Warner
perceived that in running on the letter we often runne from the
matter. ' But some good came of it all. An attempt had defi-
nitely been made to introduce design into prose; and balance and
harmony were the fitting contributions of an age of poetry to the
development of prose style. Prose diction, moreover, was en-
couraged to free itself from obsolescent words; and further
devices for obtaining lucidity, such as the use of short sentences
and paragraph divisions, were, henceforth, to be generally adopted
by English writers.
Apart from its prose style, the Euphues of Lyly exercised
considerable influence upon its author's contemporaries. On
Shakespeare, to mention only one, its effect is marked. Some of
the dramatist's characters, such as his pairs of friends, the senten-
tious old man Polonius and the melancholy philosopher Jacques,
recall Euphues in different ways. Verbal resemblances also exist:
Shakespeare's utterances on friendship, and his famous bee-
passage, place his indebtedness beyond all doubt, even supposing
his numerous similes drawn from actual or supposed natural
history to be but drafts made upon the common possessions of
the age
Lyly's success with Euphues was not slow in inspiring a number
of followers, and, up to about 1584, works of the moral treatise
kind were constantly appearing. But their authors, as a rule,
were painful imitators, who seemed incapable of original effort.
Some affected his style, others worked 'Euphues' into their title-
page, while the majority wrote, as Lyly had claimed to write, for
'the onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen. ' Anthony
Munday's Zelauto (1580) is the first of this school ; it is a
delicate disputation. . . given for a friendly entertainment of
Euphues,' in which Zelauto's praise of England is in emulation
of that of Euphues. In Barnabe Riche's Don Simonides (1581)
Philautus reappears and English manners, once again, form part
of the topics discussed. Melbancke's Philotimus (1583) is made
up of philosophical discussions on the warre betwixt nature and
>
1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, sc.
