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Updated: May 10, 2025
His plays, all pub. posthumously, include Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Alphonsus, King of Aragon, and George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield. His tales are written under the influence of Lyly, whence he received from Gabriel Harvey the nickname of "Euphues' Ape." His works are included in Grosart's "Huth Library."
It is impossible to doubt that people were similarly affected to the fiction of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, at least in its longer examples for the smaller novelle could amuse in their own way sometimes, though they could hardly absorb. It is equally impossible to imagine any one being "enthralled" by Euphues. Admiration, of a kind, must have been the only passion excited by it.
We assume this, for he was very rich; it is not difficult to be a hermit on a large income. The book closes with a section called 'Euphues Glasse for Europe, a thirty-page panegyric on England and the Queen. They say that this novel was very popular, and certain causes of its popularity are not difficult to come at.
While the story is meant to attract readers, the essays and digressions introduced into the work are intended to inculcate the methods of education which Lyly taught in common with Ascham. It was, however, the manner rather than the matter which gave to "Euphues" its prominence and popularity. The story is but a slender thread.
Euphues is very much sui generis: failure as it may be from some points of view, it deserves the highest respect for this, and like most other things sui generis it was destined to propagate the genus, if only after many days. But the scheme retained on the other hand the variety of incident and appeal of this latter: and especially assigned to Love the high place which Romance had given it.
A large measure of the success that Euphues had is due to the commonplaceness of its observations. It abounds in proverbs and copy-book wisdom. In this respect it is as homely as an almanac. John Lyly had a great store of 'miscellany thoughts, and he cheerfully parted with them. His book succeeded as Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy and Watts' On the Mind succeeded.
Philautus, inflamed with love of Camilla, goes to his room and pronounces a ten-minute discourse on the pangs of love, having only himself for auditor. They are amazingly patient under the verbal inflictions of one another. Euphues, angry with Philautus for having allowed himself to fall in love, takes him to task in a single speech containing four thousand words.
The popularity of "Euphues" excited much imitation, and its influence is strongly marked in the works of Robert Greene. Born in Norfolk in 1560, Greene studied at Cambridge and received the degree of Master of Arts. After wasting his property in Italy and Spain, he returned to London to earn his bread by the pen.
Nobody begins a speech without a reference of this nature within calling distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their talk with evidences of a classical training. The ladies are provided with apt remarks drawn from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of Venus, of Diana, and Vesta. Even the master of the ship which conveyed Euphues from Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and Julius Cæsar.
We read a dozen or two of pages, and say, 'This is very fantastical humours. We read further, and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the extent of declaring, 'This is lunatics. One may venture the not profound remark that it takes all sorts of books to make a literature. Euphues is one of the books that would prompt to that very remark.
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