wisdom has sprouted in every soul into the tree of meditation, bearing
the flowers of eloquence, and in due time the fruit of valiant action."
With which quaint fact (for fact it is, in spite of the bombast) I end
the present chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

HOW THE NOBLE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE WAS FOUNDED

"It is virtue, yea virtue, gentlemen, that maketh gentlemen; that
maketh the poor rich, the base-born noble, the subject a sovereign,
the deformed beautiful, the sick whole, the weak strong, the most
miserable most happy. There are two principal and peculiar gifts
in the nature of man, knowledge and reason; the one commandeth, and
the other obeyeth: these things neither the whirling wheel of
fortune can change, neither the deceitful cavillings of worldlings
separate, neither sickness abate, neither age abolish."--LILLY's
Euphues, 1586.

It now falls to my lot to write of the foundation of that most
chivalrous brotherhood of the Rose, which after a few years made itself
not only famous in its native country of Devon, but formidable, as will
be related hereafter, both in Ireland and in the Netherlands, in the
Spanish Main and the heart of South America. 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? For if they have done so, I pity them if they have not found it, in
spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and
pious a book as man need look into: and wish for no better proof of
the nobleness and virtue of the Elizabethan age, than the fact that
"Euphues" and the "Arcadia" were the two popular romances of the day. It
may have suited the purposes of Sir Walter Scott, in his cleverly drawn
Sir Piercie Shafton, to ridicule the Euphuists, and that affectatam
comitatem of the travelled English of which Languet complains; but over
and above the anachronism of the whole character (for, to give but one
instance, the Euphuist knight ta