d how he
exhibits the influence of the writings of Ascham and perhaps other
humanists, how he laid himself under obligation to the bestiaries and
the proverb-books for his euphuistic philosophy, and how his lyrics
indicate a possible study of the mediaeval scholar song-books. In
conclusion, it is interesting to notice that we have clear evidence that
he knew Chaucer[135].

[135] Bond, I. p. 401.

Idleness, therefore, cannot be urged against him; nor does this imposing
display of learning indicate a pedant. Lyly had nothing in common with
the spirit of his old friend Gabriel Harvey, whom indeed he laughed at.
There is a story that Watson and Nash invited a company together to sup
at the Nag's Head in Cheapside, and to discuss the pedantries of Harvey,
and our euphuist in all probability made one of the party. His erudition
sat lightly on him, for it was simply a means to the end of his art.
Moreover, a student's life could have possessed no attraction for one of
his temperament. Unlike Marlowe and Greene, he had harvested all his
wild oats before he left Oxford; but the process had refined rather than
sobered him, for his laugh lost none of its merriment, and his wit
improved with experience, so that we may well believe that in the Court
he was more Philautus than Euphues. In his writings also his aim was to
be graceful rather than erudite; and, ponderous as his _Euphues_ seems
to us now, it appealed to its Elizabethan public as a model of elegance.
His art was perhaps only an instrument for the acquisition of social
success, but he was nevertheless an artist to the fingertips. Yet he was
without the artist's ideals, and this fact, together with his frivolity,
vitiated his writings to a considerable extent, or, rather, the
superficiality of his art was the result of the superficiality of his
soul. Of that "high seriousness," which Aristotle has declared to be the
poet's essential, he has nothing. Technique throughout was his chief
interest, and it is in technique alone that he can claim to have
succeeded. "More art than nature" is a just criticism of everything he
wrote, with the exception of his lyrics. He was supremely clever, one of
the cleverest writers in our literature when we consider what he
accomplished, and how small was the legacy of his predecessors; but he
was much too clever to be simple. He excelled in the niceties of art, he
revelled in the accomplishment of literary feats, his intellect was akin
to t