A very different writer was John Lyly, the Euphuist (b. 1553, d. 1601). Lyly was a poet and dramatist of repute; but in 1579 he published "Euphues; or, Anatomy of Wit," which was followed, in 1581, by a second part, called "Euphues and his England." In this he invented a style and phraseology of his own, which seized the fancy of the public like a mania, and set the Court, the ladies, the dandies, and dilettanti of the day speaking and writing in a most affected, piebald, and fantastic style. Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Arcadia," ridiculed it, not without being in a considerable degree affected by it himself. Shakespeare, in "Love's Labour's Lost," and Sir Walter Scott, in his Sir Piercie Shafton, in "The Monastery," have made the modern public familiar with it. Yet, after all, probably Lyly was only laughing in his sleeve at the follies of others, and was, as has been asserted, aiming at the purification of the language; for in his dramas his diction is simple enough, considering the taste of the age.
Among the rising writers was also Sir Walter Raleigh; but his literary reputation belongs rather to the age that was coming. On the whole, the period from the reign of Henry VII. to the end of that of Elizabeth was a period more kindred to our own than any which had gone before it. It produced prose writers whose minds still hold communion with and influence those of to-day. Its philosophy had assumed a more practical stamp, and was full of the elements of change and progress. Its poetry, which we have now to consider, reached the very highest pitch of human genius.
The earliest poet who has left any name of note is Stephen Hawes, whose principal work was "The Pastime of Pleasure," which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517. Hawes was a native of Suffolk, had travelled much, and by his proficiency in French and French literature acquired the favour of Henry VII. Another poem, "The Temple of Glass," has been ascribed to Hawes, but is most probably Lydgate's, who, Hawes tells us, composed such a poem.
Next to Hawes comes Alexander Barclay, the author of numerous works in prose and poetry, as "The Castell of Labour," wherein is "Rychesse, Vertue, and Honour," an allegorical poem, translated from the French; "The Shyp of Foles of the Worlde," translated from Sebastian Brandt's German poem, "Das Narren Schiff;" "Egloges; or, the Miseries of Courts and Courtiers;" a treatise against Skelton the poet; a translation of Livy's "Wars of Jugurtha;" "Life of St. George," &c. &c. The work, however, which has handed down his name to posterity is the "Ship of Fools," which, by interspersing it with original touches on the follies of his countrymen, he made in some degree his own. But the chief merit of the poem in our time is the evidence of the polish which the English language had acquired, and to which Barclay probably contributed, for he had travelled through Germany, Holland, France, and Italy, studying diligently the best authors of those countries. He was successively a prebendary of the college of Ottery St. Mary, a Benedictine monk, Vicar of Great Barlow, in Essex, of Wokey, in Somersetshire, and Rector of All Hallows, London, terminating his life at Croydon. A stanza or two will suffice to show the state of the language at the close of the reign of Henry VII. A man in orders is speaking:—
"Eche is not lettred that nowe is made a lorde,
Nor eche a clerke that hath a benefice:
They are not all lawyers that plees do recorde,
All that are promoted are not fully wise.
On such chaunce nowe fortune throwes her dice
That, though one knowe but the Yrishe game,