We could not pass John Lyly by without mention. He seems to have been more respectable in manners Born 1553. and social position than most of this group of play- Died 1601. writers, and he wrote one book, fashionable beyond all others in its day, which gave a new word to the language. This is the romance of Euphues, from which the word euphuism is derived. One hardly knows how to define euphuism. The dictionary says it is "a fastidious delicacy of language," but that does not fully express it. It was a style of speaking and writing full of stilted and affected phrases, redundant in comparisons, crowded with foreign and classical allusions a simple meaning wrapped up in a mass of words. We wonder that it could have been popular with people of sturdy English common sense at any time. Yet in the court of Elizabeth euphuism was so fashionable that all the lords and ladies talked in this affected way, and one of the historians says "That beauty in court which could not parley euphuism was as little regarded as she which now there speaks not French.”

Yet, in spite of its absurdities, Lyly's book has merit, and does not deserve the abuse that has been thrown upon it by critics who seem to believe it as absurd as the speech of those who imitated it. It is full of good sense, although sometimes expressed in such roundabout manner; and better advice than he gives for the rearing and education of youth has rarely been written. And the book is full of noble sentences, like this:

"It is not descent of birth that maketh gentlemen; not great manors, but good manners, that express the image of dignity. There is copper coin of the same stamp that gold is, yet is it not current.” "The wise man liveth as well in a far country as in his own home. It is not the nature of the place, but the disposition of the person, that maketh life pleasant.'

66

The greatest harm you can do to the envious is to do well."

"It

you

will be cherished when you be old, be courteous when you be young."

These sentences, gleaned at random from Euphues, show

how much there is fine in it, and when I hear it spoken of as a book "which did incalculable mischief by vitiating the taste and corrupting the language," I feel like saying, in the words of a modern writer,* "Have these critics ever read it ? If they have, I pity them if they have not found it, in spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as a man need look into."

Euphues must be classed among works of fiction, although it hardly meets any of our ideas of a novel. The chief character in the book is Euphues, a young gentleman of Athens, who writes long letters and keeps up interminable conversations with the other characters, but chiefly with the heroine, Lucilla, with whom he is in love. Bye-and-bye, Lucilla jilts him, which gives him an opportunity to inveigh in the following style against women, in one of his letters to his friend Philautus:

"It is a world to see how commonly we are blinded by the collusions of women, and more enticed by their ornaments being artificial than their proportions being natural. I loathe almost to think on their ornaments and apothecary drugs, the sleeking of their faces and all their slibber sauces, which bring queasiness to the stomach and disquiet to the mind.

"Take from them their periwigs, their paintings, their jewels, their rolls, their boulstrings, and thou shalt soon perceive a woman is the least part of herself. When they once be robbed of their robes, then will they appear so odious, so ugly, so monstrous, that thou wilt rather think them serpents than saints, and so like hags that thou wilt fear rather to be enchanted than enamored. Look in their closets and thou wilt find there an apothecary's shop of sweet confections, a surgeon's box of sundry salves, a pedlar's pack of new-fangles. Besides all this, their shadows, their spots, their lawns, their ruffs, their rings. If one of these things severally be not of force to move thee, yet all of them jointly should mortify thee. And yet, Philautus, I would not that all women should take pepper in the nose, in that I have disclosed the legerdemain of a few, for well I know none will wince unless she be galled, neither any be offended unless she be guilty."

*

*

Although Euphues is the most famous of Lyly's works, yet

Charles Kingsley.

he was noted in his time as a writer of plays. Several of these had appeared before Shakspeare began to be known as a dramatist. The best of his plays is Campaspe. Its principal characters are Alexander of Macedon and the painter Apelles. Alexander is in love with a beautiful young girl, Campaspe, whom he has taken captive in war, and employs Apelles to paint her portrait. The artist also loves Campaspe, and when the monarch discovers this he hesitates for a moment between jealousy and generosity, but at last resigns her to Apelles. It is a very pretty plot, although simple and without strong dramatic interest. It is written, not in blank verse, but in prose, in sentences that remind one of Euphues, but Lyly proved that he was a poet by the beautiful lyrics found in his plays. One of the most perfect of these is the song of Cupid and Campaspe, sung by the painter Apelles as he works at his easel on the portrait of Campaspe :

66

Cupid and my Campaspe played

At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.

He staked his quiver, bow and arrows,
His mother's doves and team of sparrows;

Loses them, too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how).
With these the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple in his chin—
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he staked her both his eyes-
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O, Love, has she done this to thee?
What will alas! become of me?"

TALK XXII.

ON CHRISTOPHer Marlowe, tHE GREAT PREDECESSOR OF SHAKSPEARE.

THE greatest of all the dramatic poets who wrote before Born 1564, Shakspeare, was Christopher Marlowe, whom his Died 1593. friends familiarly called “Kit." He was a boon companion of Greene and Peele, a little younger than either, born, indeed, in the very year with our great Shakspeare. But he began to write much earlier, and when he died only three or four of Shakspeare's works had appeared.

As soon as Marlowe left college he went to London and began to write for the theater; very likely he acted too, as most of the play-writers did when they failed to earn a livelihood by the pen alone. He must have begun to write early, for he was the author of at least six plays, and took part, probably, in the writing of several others, yet he was only twenty-nine when his life came to a disreputable and tragic end. A quarrel arose between himself and a boon companion named Francis Archer, in a tavern which they frequented, and, as Marlowe angrily drew his dagger, Archer seized his hand and stabbed him in the head, so that, according to an old rhyme which tells the story,

"He groaned, and word spake never more;
Pierced through both eye and brain."

Marlowe has a bad reputation, although whether it was entirely deserved it would be difficult now to tell. The Puritans had begun in his time to wage a fierce war against the stage and all dramatic writings, and they lost no opportunity to hold up to horror all persons who were concerned

in plays or play-writing. The manner of Marlowe's death added to the bad odor in which he was held by his enemies, but we must remember that this was an age in which tavern quarrels and street broils were not infrequent, and better men than Marlowe were quick to draw daggers, and to use them. Although he was no better, he may have been no worse than many other men whose names have not been so roughly handled. However this may be, a strong moral was drawn from Marlowe's death by the opposers of the drama, and a ballad on the subject, called The Atheist's Tragedy, in which Marlowe is called Wormall, ends with this stanza:

"Take warning, ye that plays do make,

And ye that them do act.

Desist in time, for Wormall's sake,

And think upon his fact.'

any know

The first play by Marlowe, of which we have ledge, is The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great. It is claimed by the most careful students that this is the first play in which blank verse was used in a public theater. Before this, the plays had been either in prose or rhyme, blank verse having been used only in private performances at court, or before college societies. You will be interested, therefore, to read a little of this verse, which is thus claimed to be the beginning of English dramatic

poetry.

Tamburlaine, the hero of the play, is a shepherd, who has arms with design to become King of Persia. He

taken

up

is, like all Marlowe's heroes, a man of boundless ambition

and

courage. These lines which I quote are from his speech to Theridamos, one of the captains of the King of Persia, who has been sent to take Tamburlaine prisoner, and the great warrior thus persuades the envoy of the King to desert his master and follow the fortunes of the great Tamburlaine:

"Tamburlaine. In thee, thou valiant man of Persia,

I see the folly of thy emperor;

Art thou but captain of a thousand horse,
That by characters graven in thy brows,