Reginald

Scot

Puttenham's
"Art of
English
Poetry"

Other critical

treatises

herbalist has disputed his pre-eminence, unless from the point of view of medicine.

Another technical writer, having like Gerard given his country the first work she possessed on an important subject, gained an honourable place in literature by labour of quite another kind. REGINALD SCOT (1538?-1599), in spite of his name not a Scotchman but a Kentishman, laudably interested in the staple product of his county, published in 1574 the first practical treatise on the cultivation of hops. Ten years afterwards he produced his Discovery of Witchcraft, a sagacious and courageous, but for long an ineffectual, exposure of the baleful superstition which had destroyed so many innocent victims. Few books of the time do both the head and the heart of the writer more real honour. King James, upon his accession, ordered it to be burned, but, from allusions in Macbeth, Shakespeare seems to have taken the liberty to keep a copy.

Another group of technical writers deserve fuller treatment, those who occupied themselves with the technique of literary composition. The one man of genius among them has already been noticed, but Sidney's Defence of Poetry is an inspiration rather than a treatise, an example of poetry rather than a disquisition upon it. The most serious attempt at a critical judgment of poetry is the anonymous Art of English Poetry, published in 1589, and attributed on by no means conclusive authority to one of two brothers named PUTTENHAM, nephews of Sir Thomas Elyot. If by either, the elder brother, Richard, who travelled much on the Continent, seems the more likely candidate, though it is usually ascribed to George. We must acknowledge grave doubt whether it can be rightly attributed to either. Both appear to have been troublesome characters, continually engaged in broils and contentions, and unlikely to have held such an office about the Queen's person as the author of the treatise is stated to have enjoyed. Richard Puttenham had been banished for many years for a serious offence; and George, in a vindication of Elizabeth's conduct to Mary Stuart, which was certainly written by him, makes no mention of holding any office at Court; nor is such alluded to in the will of either of the brothers. Whoever the author may have been, the treatise possesses considerable merit, and is evidently the work of a well-bred man of wide reading and good taste. It is divided into three books, treating respectively of the essential character of poetry, its "proportion," including metrical law, and the ornaments of trope and figure of speech. The passages most attractive to the modern reader are its allusions to early English poets and its stores of contemporary anecdote.

The Art of English Poetry had been three years anticipated by WILLIAM WEBBE in his Discourse of English Poetrie, written when the author, who seems to have been born about 1552, was a tutor in Essex. His work is not, like The Art, a formal treatise on poetical composition, but a review of the condition of English poetry at his time mainly in its technical aspect, comprising, nevertheless, interesting allusions to living authors, and manifesting a creditable appreciation of the worth of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar.

CRITICISM AND FICTION

89

THE ARTE

OF ENGLISH
POESIE,

Contriued into three Bookes: The first of Poets
and Poefie, the fecond of Proportion,
the third of Ornament.

Without altogether condemning rhyme, Webbe thinks that the condition
of English poetry would be more satisfactory if the classical metres had been
naturalised from the first, and appends versions of two of Virgil's eclogues
by himself as specimens, as well as a transposition of one of Spenser's lyrics
into sapphics. The force of pedantry could no further go, and yet, when
off his hobby, Webbe is a judicious writer. He was greatly influenced by
GABRIEL HARVEY (1545?-1630), long a prominent figure at Cambridge,
a personage of such great authority and so little taste that he actually
persuaded the inventor of the Spenserian stanza to write for a time in hexa-
meters and pentameters. He was un-
questionably a man of much ability, but
is now chiefly remembered by his familiar
letters and his acrimonious controversies
with Greene and Nash, terminated by
the decree that "all Nash's books and
Dr. Harvey's books be taken wheresoever
they may be found, and that none of
the same books be ever printed hereafter."
FRANCIS MERES (1565-1647), clergyman
and schoolmaster, added to his compila-
tion of choice sentences, Palladis Tamia
(1598), "a comparative discourse of our
English poets with the Greek, Latin, and
Italian," which has laid posterity under
everlasting obligation by its notice of
Shakespeare and Marlowe. The attacks.
on the stage made by STEPHEN GOSSON
(1565-1624) are only noteworthy as
having called forth Sidney's Apology and
Lodge's Defence, and as illustrating
Disraeli's apophthegm concerning critics,

AT LONDON

Printed by Richard Field, dwelling in the
black-Friers, neere Ludgate.
1589.

for Gosson had been an unsuccessful author and dramatist before becoming a clergyman.

Among the most remarkable phenomena of literature must be reckoned The Novel the slow development of pure fiction in all nations. In the days of Elizabeth, in England English novelists were still very much at the point reached in the third and fourth Christian centuries by the Greek erotic romancers: their notion of a novel was still that of a love tale crowded with improbable adventures, and setting history and geography at defiance. The vast possibilities of the social novel with a purpose had as yet dawned upon no one, and perhaps could hardly be expected to do so while the field was efficiently occupied by comedy. More's Utopia was perhaps as yet the only example of didactic prose fiction, although the romantic tale had long before been naturalised in verse by Gower, and romances of knight-errantry, transplanted from the domain of poetry, were greatly in vogue. Another kind of fiction which

John Lyly

had arisen in Italy, the short story exhibiting manners and sometimes ridiculing follies or vices, had found its way into English literature through Chaucer, and was about to influence the drama by supplying playwrights with plots, but had rarely effected an entrance into prose literature until, in 1566, sixty translated novelettes were published under the title of The Palace of Pleasure by WILLIAM PAINTER (1540?-1594), clerk of the ordnance in the Tower of London. Subsequent continuations brought the number up to one hundred and one. In one portion of his work Painter may be regarded as a sort of prose Gower, about thirty of his stories being taken from the classics. The larger and more important portion, however, come from modern Italian or French writers, especially from Bandello, who contributes no fewer than twenty-six. Boccaccio and Queen Margaret of Navarre are also liberally represented. The work became a great storehouse of plots for dramatists, and in this point of view exerted much influence, but it did. not encourage Englishmen to the composition of original fiction on the scale. of the Italian short story. The numerous imitations to which its success gave rise, by Sir GEOFFREY FENTON (1567), George Pettie (1576), George TURBERVILLE (1587), and GEORGE WHETSTONE (1582), are all made up of translations. Turberville and Whetstone will claim notice among poets and dramatists respectively, and Pettie's Petite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure is noteworthy as an anticipation of the euphuistic style of Lyly. Painter produced nothing original. Before obtaining his appointment at the Ordnance he had been a clergyman and a schoolmaster. He grew rich in office, and did not escape charges of malversation, but retained his post.

Not many writers of the period, till nearly the end of the sixteenth century, exercised a greater influence over cultivated literary taste than JOHN LYLY, "the Euphuist," one of the first examples of an English author attracting attention simultaneously in fiction, poetry, and drama. He was born, probably in 1554, either at Maidstone or at Boxley in Kent; studied at Oxford, where he obtained more reputation as a wit than as a schoiar, and about 1575 came to Court in search of a place. The first part of his Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, appeared in 1579, and at once made him celebrated. Euphues and his England was published in 1580. Soon afterwards he began to write for the children trained as choristers in the Savoy Chapel and St. Paul's Cathedral that series of plays for which he is at the present day chiefly indebted for his literary distinction and celebrity, though not for his significance in the history of culture. This is entirely grounded upon his "euphuism," which tinged the style of many writers of the day, and is ridiculed by, or perhaps we should rather say good-naturedly quizzed by, Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost and The Winter's Tale. It is probably best known to the modern reader by the exaggerated parody of Sir Walter Scott in The Monastery. In fact, no age will ever be free from euphuism, which may be defined as the endeavour to gain attention for ordinary matter by extraordinary manner. This perfectly succeeded with Lyly, who, though a forcible writer on occasion, would never have impressed the age

as he did if his style had been unambitious. Neither, it may be said, would
Carlyle; but Carlyle's style was natural to him, and suited the complexion
of his thought; Lyly affected one which, except for the immediate reputation
which it gained him, he had better have been without. It has been ascribed
to the influence of the Spaniard Guevara, as translated by Sir Thomas North,
and there is sufficient internal evidence of Lyly's careful study of Guevara's

Dial of Princes, but it has in fact had precedents in all ages of literature,
especially the effete ages, and in the Elizabethan age is mainly remarkable
for having been the harbinger of strength instead of the token of decay.
This may be explained in some measure by the fact that Euphues was to a
great extent written for the Court, and that, in comparison with the nation,
the Court of Elizabeth, brilliant as it was, was but a coterie, with no such.
influence as the Court of Louis XIV. afterwards exerted over France. Plain
men went on writing and talking as of old, profiting perhaps by that increased
attention to the structure of the period which was Lyly's one important service
to English prose literature.

Lyly has been unfortunate with posterity, his excellent plays and charming

lyrics have until lately been undeservedly neglected, and the best-remembered portion of his work has gained him a bad name. Euphuism will always connote bad taste and affectation; and indeed it cannot be denied that Lyly would have conducted English prose upon a road which must have ended in the emulation of the worst extravagances of the worst foreign writers of the succeeding century. Happily, however, his example, so far as it was evil, soon ceased to be influential, while from another point of view he laid our language under obligations which have as yet been imperfectly recognised. Though with no pretensions to the eloquence and impressiveness of some

A
Whip for an Ape:

От

Martin difplaied.

Ordo Sacerdotum fatuo turbatur ab omni,
Labitur paffim Religionis bonos.

Title-page of Lyly's "Whip for an Ape"

of his predecessors, and (singular in one
whose lyrics are so often models of
graceful simplicity) going out of his way
to avoid the artless elegance of others,
he is yet one of the first conscious artists
in English prose. Like the objects of his
imitation, Guevara and Pettie, he, as re-
marked by Mr. Warwick Bond, conceives
of the sentence as "a piece of literary
architecture, whose end is foreseen in the
beginning, and whose parts are calculated
to minister to the total effect." This was
a very important step forward. After
all, the repellent feature of "euphuism
is not so much absolute bad taste as the
continual effort to refine upon ordinary
expression. The saying is not amiss in
itself, but the constant succession of
sparkling trifles becomes fatiguing. Turpe
est difficiles habere nugas. The following
extract from a letter of Philautus to
his false friend is a fair specimen of Lyly's
style:

Could'st thou, Euphues, for the love of a fruitless pleasure, violate the league of faithful friendship? Did'st thou weigh more the enticing looks of a lewd wench than the entire love of a loyal friend? If thou didst determine with thyself at the first to be false, why didst thou swear to be true? If to be true, why art thou false ? If thou wast minded both falsely and forgedly to deceive me, why didst thou flutter and dissemble with me at the first? If to love me, why dost thou flinch at the last ? If the sacred bands of amity did delight thee, why didst thou break them? if dislike thee, why didst thou praise them? Dost thou not know that a perfect friend should be like the glow-worm, which shineth most bright in the dark? or like the pure frankincense which smelleth more sweet when it is in the fire? or at the least not unlike the damask rose which is sweeter in the still than on the stalk? But thou, Euphues, dost rather resemble the swallow which in the summer creepeth under the eaves of every house, and in the winter leaveth nothing but dirt behind, or the bumble-bee which having sucked honey out of the fair flower, doth leave it and loath it, or the spider which in the finest web doth hang the fairest fly.