es transformation also.
The result is that the centre of gravity of the story is now shifted. Of
old it had treated of deeds and glorious prowess for the sake of honour,
or more often for the sake of some anaemic damsel; now it deals with the
passion itself and not its knightly manifestations,--with the very
feelings and hearts of the lovers. In other words under the auspices of
Elizabeth and her maids of honour, the English story becomes subjective,
feminine, its scene is shifted from the battlefield and the lists to the
lady's boudoir; it becomes a novel. "We change lance and war-horse, for
walking-sword and pumps and silk stockings. We forget the filletted
brows and wind-blown hair, the zone, the flowing robe, the sandalled or
buskined feet, and feel the dawning empire of the fan, the glove, the
high-heeled shoe, the bonnet, the petticoat, and the parasol[94]": in
fact we enter into the modern world. At the first expression of this
change in literature _Euphues and his England_ is of the very greatest
interest. Characters in fiction now for the first time move before a
background of everyday life and discuss matters of everyday importance.
And, as if Lyly wished to leave no doubt as to his aims and methods, he
gives at the conclusion of his book that interesting description of
Elizabethan England entitled _A glasse for Europe_.

[94] Bond, I. p. 161.

It is however in Lyly's treatment of the subject of love that the change
is most conspicuous. The subtleties of passion are now realised for the
first time. We are shown the private emotions, the secret alternations
of hope and despair which agitate the breasts of man and maid, and,
more important still, we find these emotions at work under the restraint
of social conditions; the violent torrent of passion checked and
confined by the demands of etiquette and the conventions of aristocratic
life. The relation between these unwritten laws of our social
constitution and the impetuous ardour of the lover, has formed the main
theme of our modern love stories in the novel and on the stage. In the
days of chivalry, when love ran wild in the woods, woman was the passive
object either of hunt or of rescue; but the scene of battle being
shifted to the boudoir she can demand her own conditions with the result
that the game becomes infinitely more refined and intricate. Persons of
both sexes, outwardly at peace but inwardly armed to the teeth, meet
together in some lady's house