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Updated: May 10, 2025
The curious in literary history will always enjoy such a production. The verdict of that part of the reading world which keeps a book alive by calling for fresh copies of it after the old copies are worn out is against Euphues. It had a vivacious existence between 1579 and 1636, and then went into a literary retirement lasting two hundred and thirty-six years.
In this curious work occurs his famous reference to Shakespeare as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers." Among his other works may be mentioned Euphues' censure to Philautus, Pandosto, the Triumph of Time , from which Shakespeare borrowed the plot of The Winter's Tale, A Notable Discovery of Coosnage, Arbasto, King of Denmark, Penelope's Web, Menaphon , and Coney Catching.
In the "Schoolmaster," Ascham explained how Socrates had described the anatomy of wit in a child, and the first essential quality mentioned by Socrates, and that most fully discussed by Ascham was Euphuês which may be translated of good natural parts, as well of the body as the mind.
Euphues itself was a real and serious if somewhat misdirected effort at making a moralised culture fashionable, and at elevating; the English tongue into a medium of refined and polished expression. If the Euphuists included Armados among them, they numbered also their Birons and Rosalines.
In the section called 'Euphues and his Ephoebus' twenty-nine pages are devoted to the question of the education of youth. It is largely taken from Plutarch.
In the days of Queen Elizabeth there were in England certain writers who were called "Euphuists." They got this name from the title of a book, "Euphues," written by one of them, John Lyly. The chief characteristic of the writings of these Euphuists was the grandiose way in which they wrote of the simplest things. Their writings were full of metaphors and figures of speech.
Blount further says, 'That he sat 'at Apollo's table; that Apollo gave him a wreath of his own bays without snatching; and that the Lyre he played on, had no borrowed strings: He mentions a romance of our author's writing, called Euphues; our nation, says he, are in his debt, for a new English which he taught them; Euphues, and his England began first that language, and all our ladies were then his scholars, and that beauty in court who could not read Euphism, was as little regarded, as she who now speaks not French.
Lucilla is rude at first, but becomes enamored of Euphues's conversational power, and finally of himself. In fact, she unceremoniously throws over her former lover, and tells her father that she will either marry Euphues or else lead apes in hell.
"Age of Chaucer; Age of Elizabeth; Age of Dryden," she reflected; "I'm glad there aren't many more ages. I'm still in the middle of the eighteenth century. Won't you sit down, Miss Vinrace? The chair, though small, is firm. . . . Euphues. The germ of the English novel," she continued, glancing at another page. "Is that the kind of thing that interests you?"
And if this chapter shall seem to any Quixotic and fantastical, let them recollect that the generation who spoke and acted thus in matters of love and honor were, nevertheless, practised and valiant soldiers, and prudent and crafty politicians; that he who wrote the "Arcadia" was at the same time, in spite of his youth, one of the subtlest diplomatists of Europe; that the poet of the "Faerie Queene" was also the author of "The State of Ireland;" and if they shall quote against me with a sneer Lilly's "Euphues" itself, I shall only answer by asking Have they ever read it?
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