ers
the highest numbers indicate the output of sermons and theological
works. Then come novels. John Lyly was ingenious; he combined good
advice and storytelling. Not skillfully, hiding the sermon amid lively
talk and adventure, but blazoning the fact that he was going to
moralize as long as he would. He shows no timidity, even declares upon
one of his title-pages that in this volume 'there is small offense by
lightness given to the wise, and less occasion of looseness proffered
to the wanton.' Such courage in this day would be apt seriously to
injure the sale of a novel. Did not Ruskin declare that Miss Edgeworth
had made virtue so obnoxious that since her time one hardly dared
express the slightest bias in favor of the Ten Commandments? Lyly knew
the public for which he acted as literary caterer. They liked sermons,
and sermons they should have. Nearly every character in the book
preaches, and Euphues is the most gifted of them all. Even that old
gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues because his heart bled
to see so noble a youth given to loose living has the tables turned
upon him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher upon the sovereign duty
of resignation to the will of God.

A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency of Lyly's classical
allusions. If the only definition of pedantry be 'vain and
ostentatious display of learning,' I question if we may dismiss Lyly's
wealth of classical lore with the word 'pedantry.' He was fresh from
his university life. If he studied at all when he was at Oxford, he
must have studied Latin and Greek, for after these literatures little
else was studied. Young men and their staid tutors were compelled to
know ancient history and mythology. Like Heine, they may have taken a
'real delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who ran so jolly naked
about the world.' In the first three pages of the _Anatomy of Wit_
there are twenty classical names, ten of them coupled each with an
allusion. Nobody begins a speech without a reference of this nature
within calling distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their talk with
evidences of a classical training. The ladies are provided with apt
remarks drawn from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of Venus, of
Diana, and Vesta. Even the master of the ship which conveyed Euphues
from Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and Julius Caesar. This
naturally destroys all dramatic effect. Everybody speaks Euphuism,
though classical allusion alo