Footnote 1: Langb. Lives of the Poets, p. 249.]

[Footnote 2: Langb. ubi supra.]

[Footnote 3: Athen. Oxon.]

* * * * *

JOHN LILLY,

A writer who flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; he was a
Kentish man, and in his younger years educated at St. Mary Magdalen
College in Oxon, where in the year 1575 he took his degree of Master
of Arts. He was, says Langbaine, a very close student, and much
addicted to poetry; a proof of which he has given to the world, in
those plays which he has bequeathed to posterity, and which in that
age were well esteemed, both by the court, and by the university. He
was one of the first writers, continues Langbain, who in those
days attempted to reform the language, and purge it from obsolete
expressions. Mr. Blount, a gentleman who has made himself known to the
world, by several pieces of his own writing (as Horae Subsecivae, his
Microcosmography, &c.) and who published six of these plays, in his
title page stiles him, the only rare poet of that time, the witty,
comical, facetiously quick, and unparallell'd John Lilly. Mr. Blount
further says, 'That he sat 'at Apollo's table; that Apollo gave him a
wreath of his own bays without snatching; and that the Lyre he played
on, had no borrowed strings:' He mentions a romance of our author's
writing, called Euphues; our nation, says he, are in his debt, for a
new English which he taught them; Euphues, and his England began first
that language, and all our ladies were then his scholars, and that
beauty in court who could not read Euphism, was as little regarded,
as she who now speaks not French. This extraordinary Romance I
acknowledge I have not read, so cannot from myself give it a
character, but I have some reason to believe, that it was a miserable
performance, from the authority of the author of the British Theatre,
who in his preface thus speaks of it; "This Romance, says he, so
fashionable for its wit; so famous in the court of Queen Elizabeth,
and is said to have introduced so remarkable a change in our language,
I have seen and read. It is an unnatural affected jargon, in which the
perpetual use of metaphors, allusions, allegories, and analogies,
is to pass for wit, and stiff bombast for language; and with this
nonsense the court of Queen Elizabeth (whose times afforded better
models for stile and composition, than almost any since) became
miserably infected, and greatly help'd to let in all the vil