th
the documents which are supposed to prove them. He is supposed, on
uncertain but tolerable inferences, to have been born about 1554, and he
certainly entered Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1569, though he was not
matriculated till two years later. He is described as _plebeii filius_, was
not on the foundation, and took his degree in 1573. He must have had some
connection with the Cecils, for a letter of 1574 is extant from him to
Burleigh. He cannot have been five and twenty when he wrote _Euphues_,
which was licensed at the end of 1578, and was published (the first part)
early next year, while the second part followed with a very short
interval. In 1582 he wrote an unmistakable letter commendatory to Watson's
_Hecatompathia_, and between 1580 and 1590 he must have written his plays.
He appears to have continued to reside at Magdalen for a considerable time,
and then to have haunted the Court. A melancholy petition is extant to
Queen Elizabeth from him, the second of its kind, in which he writes:
"Thirteen years your highness' servant, but yet nothing." This was in 1598:
he is supposed to have died in 1606. _Euphues_ is a very singular book,
which was constantly reprinted and eagerly read for fifty years, then
forgotten for nearly two hundred, then frequently discussed, but very
seldom read, even it may be suspected in Mr. Arber's excellent reprint of
it, or in that of Mr. Bond. It gave a word to English, and even yet there
is no very distinct idea attaching to the word. It induced one of the most
gifted restorers of old times to make a blunder, amusing in itself, but not
in the least what its author intended it to be, and of late years
especially it has prompted constant discussions as to the origin of the
peculiarities which mark it. As usual, we shall try to discuss it with less
reference to what has been said about it than to itself.

_Euphues_ (properly divided into two parts, "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit,"
and "Euphues and his England," the scene of the first lying in Naples) is a
kind of love story; the action, however, being next to nothing, and
subordinated to an infinite amount of moral and courtly discourse. Oddly
enough, the unfavourable sentence of Hallam, that it is "a very dull
story," and the favourable sentence of Kingsley, that it is "a brave,
righteous, and pious book," are both quite true, and, indeed, any one can
see that there is nothing incompatible in them. At the present day,
however, its substa