aids to culture,--and were comforted
and edified by the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had made. This
glib command of the matter-of-course, with a ready use of the proverb
and the 'old said saw,' is a marked characteristic of the work. It
emphasizes the youth of its author. We learn what could not have been
new even in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to have a
companion;' that 'a new broom sweepeth clean;' that 'delays breed
dangers;' that 'nothing is so perilous as procrastination;' that 'a
burnt child dreadeth the fire;' that it is well not to make
comparisons 'lest comparisons should seem odious;' that 'it is too
late to shut the stable door when the steed is stolen;' that 'many
things fall between the cup and the lip;' and that 'marriages are made
in heaven, though consummated on earth.' With these old friends come
others, not altogether familiar of countenance, and quaintly archaic
in their dress: 'It must be a wily mouse that shall breed in the cat's
ear;' 'It is a mad hare that will be caught with a tabor, and a
foolish bird that stayeth the laying salt on her tail, and a blind
goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.' Lyly would sometimes translate
a proverb; he does not tell us that fine words butter no parsnips, but
says, 'Fair words fat few,'--which is delightfully alliterative, but
hardly to be accounted an improvement. Expressions that are
surprisingly modern turn up now and then. One American street urchin
taunts another by telling him that he doesn't know enough to come in
when it rains. The saying is at least three hundred years old, for
Lyly says, in a dyspeptic moment, 'So much wit is sufficient for a
woman as when she is in the rain can warn her to come out of it.'

Another cause of the popularity of _Euphues_ is its sermonizing. The
world loves to hear good advice. The world is not nervously anxious to
follow the advice, but it understands the edification that comes by
preaching. With many persons, to have heard a sermon is almost
equivalent to having practiced the virtues taught in the sermon.
Churches are generally accepted as evidences of civilization. A man
who is exploiting the interests of a new Western town will invariably
tell you that it has so many churches. Also, an opera-house. The
English world above all other worlds loves to hear good advice.
England is the natural home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost
with wonder, that in the annual statistics of the London publish