peak with
uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly gives Euphues a story to tell in
which the chief character describes the effect of traveling upon
himself. 'There was no crime so barbarous, no murder so bloody, no
oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readily
recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the peculiar crime of
every particular country, city, town, village, house, or chamber.'
Here, indeed, is no lack of plain speech.

In the section called 'Euphues and his Ephoebus' twenty-nine pages are
devoted to the question of the education of youth. It is largely taken
from Plutarch. Some of the points are these: that a mother shall
herself nurse her child, that the child shall be early framed to
manners, 'for as the steele is imprinted in the soft waxe, so learning
is engraven in ye minde of an young Impe.' He is not to hear 'fonde
fables or filthy tales.' He is to learn to pronounce distinctly and to
be kept from 'barbarous talk,' that is, no dialect and no slang. He is
to become expert in martial affairs, in shooting and darting, and he
must hunt and hawk for his 'honest recreation.' If he will not study,
he is not to be 'scourged with stripes, but threatened with words, not
_dulled with blows_, like servants, the which, the more they are
beaten the better they bear it, and the less they care for it.' In
taking this position Lyly is said to be only following Ascham. Ascham
was not the first in his own time to preach such doctrine. Forty years
before the publication of _The Schoolmaster_, Sir Thomas Elyot, in his
book called _The Governour_, raised his voice against the barbarity of
teachers 'by whom the wits of children be dulled,'--almost the very
words of John Lyly.

_Euphues_, besides being a treatise on love and education, is a sort
of Tudor tract upon animated nature. It should be a source of joy
unspeakable to the general reader if only for what it teaches him in
the way of natural history. How much of what is most gravely stated
here did John Lyly actually believe? It is easy to grant so orthodox a
statement of physical fact as that 'the Sunne doth harden the durte,
and melte the waxe;' but ere the sentence be finished, the author
calls upon us to believe that 'Perfumes doth refresh the Dove and kill
the Betill.' The same reckless extravagance of remark is to be noted
whenever bird, beast, or reptile is mentioned. The crocodile of
Shakespeare's time must have been a very contortionis