ss Boccaccio may
have found a place in many a lady's secret bookshelf as Zola and Guy de
Maupassant do perchance to-day, but he was scarcely suitable for the
boudoir table or for polite literary discussion. Something was needed
which would appeal at once to the feminine taste for learning and to the
desire for delicacy and refinement. This want was only partially
supplied by the moral Court treatise, which was ostensibly written for
the courtier and not the maid-in-waiting. What was required was a book
expressly provided for the eye of ladies--such a book, in fact, as
_Euphues and his England_. Lyly's discovery of this new literary public
and its requirements was of great importance, for have not the ladies
ever since his day been the patrons and purchasers of the novel? What
would happen to the literary market to-day were our mothers, wives, and
sisters to deny themselves the pleasure of fiction? The very question
would send the blood from Mr Mudie's lips. The two thousand and odd
novels which are published annually in this country show the existence
of a large leisured class in our community, and this class is
undoubtedly the feminine one. The novel, therefore, owes not only its
birth, but its continued existence down to our own day, to the "ladies
and gentlewomen of England"; and this dedication may be taken as a
general one for all novels since Lyly's time. "_Euphues_," he writes,
"had rather lye shut in a Ladye's casket than open in a scholar's
studie," and he continues, "after dinner you may overlooke him to keepe
you from sleepe, or if you be heavie, to bring you to sleepe ... it were
better to hold _Euphues_ in your hands though you let him fall, when you
be willing to winke, then to sowe in a clout, and pricke your fingers
when you begin to nod[91]." "With _Euphues_," remarks M. Jusserand,
"commences in England the literature of the drawing-room[92]"; and the
literature of the drawing-room is to all intents and purposes the novel.

[90] _Schoolmaster_, p. 47.

[91] _Euphues_, p. 220.

[92] Jusserand, p. 5.

All the faults of its predecessor are present in _Euphues and his
England_, but they are not so conspicuous. The euphuistic garb and the
mantle of the prophet Guevara sit more lightly upon our author. In every
way his movements are freer and bolder; having gained confidence by his
first success, he now dares to be original. The story becomes at times
quite interesting, even for a modern reader. At