int what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife
'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the
radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving
from the position that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'[2] but
in taming a wife no violence is to be employed. Wives are to be
subdued with kindness. 'If their husbands with great threatenings,
with jars, with brawls, seek to make them tractable, or bend their
knees, the more stiff they make them in the joints, the oftener they
go about by force to rule them, the more froward they find them; but
using mild words, gentle persuasions, familiar counsel, entreaty,
submission, they shall not only make them to bow their knees, but to
hold up their hands, not only cause them to honor them, but to stand
in awe of them.' By such methods will that supremest good of an
English home be brought about, namely, that the wife shall stand in
awe of her husband.

[2] Lady Burton's Dedication of her husband's
biography,--'To my earthly master,' etc.

The young author admits that some wives have the domineering instinct,
and that way danger lies. A man must look out for himself. If he is
not to make a slave of his wife, he is also not to be too submissive;
'that will cause her to disdain thee.' Moreover, he must have an eye
to the expenditure. She may keep the keys, but he will control the
pocket-book. The model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privileges;
she could not only consider a piece of ground, but she could buy it if
she liked it. Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly's novel. 'Let all
the keys hang at her girdle, but the purse at thine, so shalt thou
know what thou dost spend, and how she can spare.' But in setting
forth his theory for being happy though married, Lyly, methinks,
preaches a dangerous doctrine in this respect: he hints at the
possibility of a man's wanting, in vulgar parlance, to go on a spree,
expresses no question as to the propriety of his so doing, but says
that if a man does let himself loose in this fashion his wife must not
know it. 'Imitate the kings of Persia, who when they were given to
riot kept no company with their wives, but when they used good order
had their queens even at the table.' In short, the wife was to
duplicate the moods of her husband. 'Thou must be a glass to thy wife,
for in thy face must she see her own; for if when thou laughest she
weep, when thou mournest she giggle, the