06 he had seen his novel
eclipsed by the new Arcadian fashion, and had watched the rise of a host
of rival dramatists, thrusting him aside while they took advantage of
his methods. Greatest of them all, as he must have realised, was
Shakespeare, the sun of our drama before whom the silver light of his
little moon, which had first illumined our darkness, waned and faded
away and was to be for centuries forgotten.

CHAPTER I.

EUPHUISM.

It was as a novelist that Lyly first came before the world of English
letters. In 1578 he published a volume, bearing the inscription,
_Euphues: the anatomy of wyt_, to which was subjoined the attractive
advertisement, _very pleasant for all gentlemen to reade, and most
necessary to remember_. This book, which was to work a revolution in our
literature, was completed in 1580 by a sequel, entitled _Euphues and his
England_. _Euphues_, to combine the two parts under one name, the fruit
of Lyly's nonage, seems to have determined the form of his reputation
for the Elizabethans; and even to-day it attracts more attention than
any other of his works. This probably implies a false estimate of Lyly's
comparative merits as a novelist and as a dramatist. But it is not
surprising that critics, living in the century of the novel, and with
their eyes towards the country pre-eminent in its production, should
think and write of Lyly chiefly as the first of English novelists. The
bias of the age is as natural and as dangerous an element in criticism
as the bias of the individual. But it is not with the modern
appraisement of _Euphues_ that we are here concerned. Nor need we
proceed immediately to a consideration of its position in the history of
the English novel. We have first to deal with its Elizabethan
reputation. Had _Euphues_ been a still-born child of Lyly's genius, had
it produced no effect upon the literature of the age, it would possess
nothing but a purely archaeological interest for us to-day. It would
still be the first of English novels: but this claim would lose half its
significance, did it not carry with it the implication that the book was
also the origin of English novel writing. The importance, therefore, of
_Euphues_ is not so much that it was primary, as that it was primordial;
and, to be such, it must have laid its spell in some way or other upon
succeeding writers. Our first task is therefore to enquire what this
spell was, and to discover whether the attraction of _Eup