rature to-day the standards are more numerous, but more distinctive,
than those of the Elizabethans. Our ideals are classified with almost
scientific exactness, and we wear the labels proudly. But the very
splendour of the Renaissance was due to the fact that in the same group,
in the same artist, were to be found the most diverse ideals and the
most opposite methods. They worshipped they knew not what, we know what
we worship. Yet this difference does not prevent us from seeing curious
points of similarity between our own and those times. The 16th, like the
19th century, was a period of revolt from the past: and at such moments
men feel a supreme contempt for the common-place in literature. The cry
of art for art's sake is raised, and the result is extravagance,
euphuism. A wave of intellectual dandyism seems to sweep over the face
of literature, aristocratic in its aims and sympathies. Then are the
battle lines drawn up, and the spectators watch, with admiration or
contempt, the eternally recurrent strife between David and the
Philistines; and whether the young hero be clad in the knee-breeches of
aestheticism, or the slashed doublet of the courtier; whether he be
armed with epigram and sunflower, or with euphuism and camomile;
variation of costume cannot conceal the identity of his personality--the
personality of the fop of culture.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST ENGLISH NOVEL.

Despite the disproportionate attention given to euphuism by so many of
Lyly's critics, _Euphues_ is no less important as a novel than as a
piece of prose. We can, however, dismiss this second branch of our
subject in fewer words, because the problem of _Euphues_ is much simpler
and more straightforward than the problem of euphuism. It can scarcely
be said that Lyly has yet been thoroughly appreciated as a novelist;
indeed, the whole subject of the Elizabethan novel is very far from
having received a satisfactory treatment at present. This is not
surprising when we consider that the last word remains to be said upon
the Elizabethan drama. The birth of modern literature was so sudden, its
life, even in the cradle, was so complex that it baffles criticism. Like
the peal of an organ with a thousand stops, the English Renaissance
seemed to break the stillness of the great mediaeval church, shaking its
beautiful sombre walls and filling it from floor to roof with wild,
pagan music. Indeed, the more we study those 50 or 60 years which
embrace th