he intellect of those who in their humbler fashion find pleasure in
the solution of acrostics. And consequently his writings were frequently
as finical as his dress was fastidious; for it was the form and not the
idea which fascinated him; to his type of mind the letter was everything
and the spirit nothing. Indeed, the true spirit of art was quite beyond
his comprehension, though he was connoisseur enough to appreciate its
presence in others. Artist and man of taste he was, but he was no poet.
Artist he was, I have said, to the fingertips, but his art lay at his
fingers' ends, not at his soul. He was facile, ingenious, dexterous,
everything but inspired. He had wit, learning, skill, imagination, but
none of that passionate apprehension of life which makes the poet, and
which Marlowe and Shakespeare possessed so fully. And therefore it was
his fate to be nothing more than a forerunner, a straightener of the
way; and before his death he realised with bitterness that he was only a
stepping-stone for young Shakespeare to mount his throne. He was,
indeed, the draughtsman of the Elizabethan workshop, planning and
designing what others might build. He was the expert mathematician who
formulated the laws which enabled Shakespeare to read the stars. Of the
heights and depths of passion he was unconscious; he was no
psychologist, laying bare the human soul with the lancet; and though now
and again, as in _Endymion_, he caught a glimpse of the silver beauties
of the moon, he had no conception of the glories of the midday sun.

And yet though he lacked the poet's sense, his wit did something to
repair the defect, and even if it has a musty flavour for our pampered
palates, it saves his writings from becoming unbearably wearisome; and
moreover his fun was without that element of coarseness which mars the
comic scenes of later dramatists who appealed to more popular audiences.
But it is quite impossible for us to realise how brilliant his wit
seemed to the Elizabethans before it was eclipsed by the genius of
Shakespeare. Even as late as 1632 Blount exclaims, "This poet sat at the
sunne's table," words referring perhaps more especially to Lyly's
poetical faculty, but much truer if interpreted as an allusion to his
wit. The genius of our hero played like a dancing sunbeam over the early
Elizabethan stage. Never before had England seen anything like it, and
we cannot wonder that his public hailed him in their delight as one of
the great