The euphuism of the foregoing quotation will be readily detected. The sole difference between the styles of Lyly and Pettie is that, while Pettie's similes from nature are simple and natural, Lyly, with his knowledge of Pliny and of the bestiaries, added his fabulous "unnatural natural history." Pettie's book was popular for the time, three editions of it being called for in the first year of its publication, but it was soon to be thrust aside by the fame of the much more pretentious, and, apart from the style, better constructed Euphues of Lyly. In truth, as Gabriel Harvey justly but unkindly remarks, "Young Euphues but hatched the eggs his elder freendes laid." But the parental responsibility and merit must be attributed to him who hatches. It was Lyly who made euphuism famous and therefore a power; and, despite the fact that he marks the culmination of the movement, he is the most dynamical of all the euphuists.
It remains to sum up our conclusions respecting the origin and development of this literary phase. Difficult as it is to unravel the tangled network of obscure influences which surrounded its birth, I venture to think that a sufficiently complete disproof of that extreme theory, which would ascribe it entirely to Guevara's influence, has been offered. Guevara, in the translation of Berners, undoubtedly took the field early, but, as we have seen, Berners was probably feeling towards the style before he knew Guevara; and moreover the bishop's alto estilo must have suffered considerably while passing through the French. Even allowing everything, as we have done, for the close connexion between Spain and England, for the Spanish tradition at Oxford, and for the interest in peninsular writings shown by Lyly's immediate circle of friends, we cannot accord to Dr Landmann's explanation anything more than a very modified acceptance. Nor would a complete rejection of this solution of the Lyly problem render English euphuism inexplicable; for something very like it would naturally have resulted from the close application of classical methods to prose writing; and in the case of Cheke and Ascham we actually see the process at work. And yet Lyly owed a great debt to Guevara. A true solution, therefore, must find a place for foreign as well as native influences. And to say that the Spanish intervention confirmed and hastened a development already at work, of which the original impulse was English, is, I think, to give a due allowance to both.
[Section III.] Lyly's Legatees and the relation between Euphuism and the Renaissance.
The publication of Euphues was the culmination, rather than the origin, of that literary phase to which it gave its name. And the vogue of euphuism after 1579 was short, lasting indeed only until about 1590; yet during these ten years its influence was far-reaching, and left a definite mark upon later English prose. It would be idle, if not impossible, to trace its effects upon every individual writer who fell under its immediate fascination. Moreover the task has already been performed in a great measure by M. Jusserand[61] and Mr Bond[62]. They have shown once and for all that Greene, Lodge, Welbanke, Munday, Warner, Wilkinson, and above all Shakespeare, were indebted to our author for certain mannerisms of style. I shall therefore content myself with noticing two or three writers, tainted with euphuism, who have been generally overlooked, and who seem to me important enough, either in themselves, or as throwing light upon the subject of the essay, to receive attention.
The first of these is the dramatist Kyd, who completed his well-known Spanish Tragedy between 1584 and 1589, that is at the height of the euphuistic fashion. This play was apparently an inexhaustible joke to the Elizabethans; for the references to it in later dramatists are innumerable. One passage must have been particularly famous, for we find it parodied most elaborately by Field, as late as 1606, in his A Woman is a Weathercock[63]. The passage in question, which was obviously inspired by Lyly, runs as follows:
"Yet might she love me for my valiance:
I, but that's slandered by captivity.
Yet might she love me to content her sire:
I, but her reason masters her desire.
Yet might she love me as her brother's friend:
I, but her hopes aim at some other end.
Yet might she love me to uprear her state:
I, but perhaps she loves some nobler mate.
Yet might she love me as her beautie's thrall:
I, but I feare she cannot love at all."
Nathaniel Field's parody of this melodramatic nonsense is so amusing that I cannot forbear quoting it. This time the despairing lover is Sir Abraham Ninny, who quotes Kyd to his companions, and they with the cry of "Ha God-a-mercy, old Hieromino!" begin the game of parody, which must have been keenly enjoyed by the audience. Field improves on the original by putting the alternate lines of despair into the mouths of Ninny's jesting friends. It runs, therefore:
"—Yet might she love me for my lovely eyes.
—Ay but, perhaps your nose she does despise.
—Yet might she love me for my dimpled chin.
—Ay but, she sees your beard is very thin.
—Yet might she love me for my proper body.
—Ay but, she thinks you are an arrant noddy.
—Yet might she love me 'cause I am an heir.
—Ay but, perhaps she does not like your ware.
—Yet might she love me in despite of all.
(the lady herself)—Ay but indeed I cannot love at all."
This parody, apart from any interest it possesses for the student of Lyly, is an excellent illustration of the ways of Elizabethan playwrights, and of the thorough knowledge of previous plays they assumed their audience to have possessed. There are several other examples of Kyd's acquaintance with the Euphues in the Spanish Tragedy[64], in the other dramas[65], and in his prose works[66], which it is not necessary to quote. But there is one more passage, again from his most famous play, which is so full of interest that it cannot be passed over in silence. It is a counsel of hope to the despairing lover, and assumes this inspiring form:
"My Lord, though Belimperia seem thus coy
Let reason hold you in your wonted joy;
In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke,
In time all Haggard Hawkes will stoop to lure,
In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake,
In time the flint is pearst with softest shower,
And she in time will fall from her disdain,
And rue the sufferance of your deadly paine[67]."