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If as much attention were devoted in England to poetry as to oratory, he thinks, poetry would be in as good state as her sister "Rhetoricall Eloquution, as they were by byrth Twyns, by kinde the same, by original of one descent." As an example of the high degree of excellence attained by eloquence, he cites Lyly's Euphues.
The writings of R. are among the classics of his subject. Novelist, was ed. at Camb., and studied law, from which he drifted into literature. Writer of romances, b. in Essex, saw military service in the Low Countries. He began to write in 1574, and took Lyly's Euphues as his model.
She makes similes too, though somewhat savouring of her condition. Had she but read Euphues, and forgotten that accursed mill and shieling-hill, it is my thought that her converse would be broidered with as many and as choice pearls of compliment, as that of the most rhetorical lady in the court of Feliciana. I trust she means to return to bear me company."
For he who first said that it takes all sorts of people to make a world was markedly impressed with the differences between those people and himself. He had in mind eccentric folk, types which deviate from the normal and the sane. So Euphues is a very Malvolio among books, cross-gartered and wreathed as to its countenance with set smiles.
Shakespeare read Holinshed, North, Greene, Sidney, and Lodge and turned some of their suggestions into poetry, which we very much prefer to their prose. We are nearly certain that Shakespeare studied Lyly's Euphues, because we can trace the influence of that work in his style. It was the misfortune of Elizabethan prose to be almost completely overshadowed by the poetry.
Lyly's Euphues suffers from overwrought conceits and forced antitheses, but it influenced writers to pay more attention to the manner in which thought was expressed. The flowery prose of Sidney's Arcadia presents a pastoral world of romance. His Apologie for Poetrie is a meritorious piece of early criticism.
Many a reader of Euphues, who cared but little for its elaborated style, who was not moved by its orthodoxy, who didn't read books simply because they were fashionable, must have felt his pulse stirred by Lyly's chant of England's greatness. For Euphues is John Lyly, and John Lyly's creed was substantially that of the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic opera, 'I am an Englishman.
In Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse, a tract directed against the stage and published about four months later than the first part of Euphues, the language is directly Euphuistic. The dramatist, Robert Greene, published, in 1587, his Menaphon; Camilla's Alarum to Slumbering Euphues, and his Euphues's Censure to Philautus.
The manners of the Cannibal fit not the Englishman; and this thy poison is unlike Love, which maimeth every part before it kill the Liver, whereas tobacco doth vex the Liver before it harmeth any other part. Excuse this my boldness, and forswear thy weed, an thou lovest From Sir Amyas Leigh to Euphues.
They quarrel violently, and Euphues becomes so irritated that he must needs go and rent new lodgings, 'which by good friends he quickly got, and there fell to his Pater noster, where awhile, says Lyly innocently, 'I will not trouble him in his prayers. They are reconciled later, and Philautus obtains permission to love; but he has discovered in the mean time that the lady will not have him.
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