the
trivial and the ordinary. Let him lead us to Verona, Athens, into
Arcadia, where he will, but as far as possible from Fleet Street! And if
by ill-luck he sets foot in Fleet Street, let him at least speak the
language of Arcadia!

Authors found this advice excellent, and took good care to relieve
themselves of difficult search after the mere truth. The public who
imposed these laws, this exacting public of women who read Plutarch and
Plato, who judged the merits of great men as learnedly as the cut of a
ruff, found at the very moment they most wanted him the author who could
please them in the person of a novel writer, the famous Lyly. At
twenty-five years of age, John Lyly, a _protege_ of Lord Burghley, who
was at this same time busy with his own architectural poem, if one may
say so, of Burghley House, wrote "Euphues,"[67] a new kind too of
"paper-work" with which people were enraptured.

It was written expressly for women, and not only did the author not
conceal the circumstance, but he proclaimed it aloud. Their opinion
alone interested him, to that of the critics he was indifferent. "It
resteth Ladies," he said, "that you take the paines to read it, but at
such times, as you spend in playing with your little dogges, and yet
will I not pinch you of that pastime, for I am content that your dogges
lie in your laps: so 'Euphues' may be in your hands, that when you shall
be wearie in reading of the one, you may be ready to sport with the
other.... 'Euphues' had rather lye shut in a Ladyes casket, then open
in a Schollers studie." Yet after dinner, "Euphues" will still be
agreeable to the ladies, adds Lyly, always smiling; if they desire to
slumber, it will bring them to sleep which will be far better than
beginning to sew and pricking their fingers when they begin to nod.[68]

There is no possibility of error; with Lyly commences in England the
literature of the drawing-room, that of which we speak at morning calls,
productions which, in spite of vast and many changes, still occupy a
favourite place on the little boudoir tables. We must also notice what
pains Lyly gives himself to make his innovation a success, and so please
his patronesses, and how he ornaments his thoughts and engarlands his
speeches, how cunningly he imbues himself with the knowledge of the
ancients and of foreigners, and what trouble he gives himself to improve
upon the most learned and the most florid of them. His care was not
thrown away. He