han our English
novel.

The difference between the two parts is remarkable in more ways than
one, and in none more so than in the change of dedication. The _Anatomy
of Wit_, as was only fitting in a moral Court treatise, was inscribed to
the gentleman readers; _Euphues and his England_, on the other hand,
made an appeal to a very different class of readers, and a class which
had hitherto been neglected by authors--"the ladies and gentlewomen of
England." With the instinct, almost, of a religious reformer, Lyly saw
that to succeed he must enlist the ladies on his side. And the
experiment was so successful that I am inclined to attribute the
pre-eminence of Lyly among other euphuists to this fact alone. "Hatch
the egges his friendes had laid" he certainly did, but he fed the chicks
upon a patent food of his own invention. Mr Bond suggests that the
general attention which the _Anatomy_ secured by its attacks upon women
gave Lyly the idea for the second part. But, though this was probably
the immediate cause of his change of front, something like _Euphues and
his England_ must have come sooner or later, because all the conditions
were ripe for its production. Side by side with the ideal of the
courtier had arisen the ideal of the cultured lady. Ascham, visiting
Lady Jane Grey, "founde her in her chamber reading _Phaedon Platonis_
in Greeke and that with as much delite, as some gentlemen would read a
merie tale in Bocase[90]"; and, when a Queen came to the throne who
could talk Greek at Cambridge, the fashion of learning for ladies must
have received an immense impetus. With a "blue stocking" showing on the
royal footstool, all the ladies of the Court would at least lay claim to
a certain amount of learning. Dr Landmann has attributed the vogue of
euphuism, at least in part, to feminine influences, but in so far as
England shared that affectation with the other Courts of Europe, where
the fair sex had not yet acquired such freedom as in England, we must
not press the point too much in this direction. The importance in
English literature of that "monstrous regiment of women," against which
John Knox blew his rude trumpet so shamelessly, is seen not so much in
the style of _Euphues_ as in its contents; indeed, in the second part of
that work euphuism is much less prominent than in the first. The romance
of chivalry and the Italian tale would be still more distasteful to the
new woman than they were to the new courtier. Doubtle