With Greek and Latin, and did first reduce
Our tongue from Lilly's writing then in use;
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words, and idle similies,
As th' English apes, and very zanies be
Of every thing, that they do hear and see,
So imitating his ridiculous tricks,
They speak and write, all like mere lunatics."[443:A]
Yet the most correct description of the merits and defects of this once celebrated author has been given by Oldys, in his Librarian, who remarks that "Lilly was a man of great reading, good memory, ready faculty of application, and uncommon eloquence; but he ran into a vast excess of allusion; in sentence and conformity of style he seldom speaks directly to the purpose, but is continually carried away by one odd allusion or simile or other (out of natural history, that is yet fabulous and not true in nature), and that still overborne by more, thick upon the back of one another; and through an eternal affectation of sententiousness keeps to such a formal measure of his periods as soon grows tiresome; and so, by confining himself to shape his sense so frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious or harmonious, abridges that variety which the style should be admired for."[443:B]
So greatly was the style of Euphues admired in the court of Elizabeth, and, indeed, throughout the kingdom, that it became a proof of refined manners to adopt its phraseology. Edward Blount, who republished six of Lilly's plays, in 1632, under the title of Sixe Court Comedies, declares that "Our nation are in his debt for a new English which hee taught them. Euphues and his England," he adds, "began first that language. All our ladies were then his scollers; and that beautie in court who could not parley Euphuesme, was as little regarded as shee which now there speakes not French;" a representation certainly not exaggerated; for Ben Jonson, describing, a fashionable lady, makes her address her gallant in the following terms:—"O master Brisk, (as it is in Euphues) hard is the choice when one is compell'd, either by silence to die with grief, or by speaking, to live with shame:" upon which Mr. Whalley observes, that the court ladies in Elizabeth's time had all the phrases of Euphues by heart.[443:C]