be Euphues'
legacies or copies of Euphues' papers, or bearing in some way or other
the stamp of his supposed approbation, multiplied accordingly. The
movement increased rapidly, but it was not to last long; in fact, it did
not continue beyond ten or twelve years; after this time the monuments
of the euphuistic literature were still reprinted, but no addition was
made to their number.

This period, however, was filled in a measure with the product of Lyly's
brains or that of his imitators. All who prided themselves on elegance
spoke his affected language, and studied in his book the mythology of
plants. Edward Blount, a bookseller who reprinted Lyly's comedies in the
following century, at a time when these courtly dramas were beginning to
be forgotten, has well expressed the kindly and sympathetic favour
accorded to Lyly by the ladies of Elizabethan days: "These papers of
his," says he, "lay like dead lawrels in a churchyard; but I have
gathered the scattered branches up, and by a charme, gotten from Apollo,
made them greene againe and set them up as epitaphes to his memory. A
sinne it were to suffer these rare monuments of wit to lye covered in
dust and a shame such conceipted comedies should be acted by none but
wormes. Oblivion shall not so trample on a sonne of the Muses; and such
a sonne as they called their darling. Our nation are in his debt for a
new English which he taught them. 'Euphues and his England' began first
that language; all our ladyes were then his schollers; and that beautie
in court, which could not parley eupheueisme was as little regarded, as
shee which now there speakes not French."[95] It may be appropriately
recalled here that this same Blount who thus eulogizes Lyly had
published already another set of Elizabethan dramas, and a much more
important one, viz., the first folio of Shakespeare in 1623.

Those comedies which Blount thought fit to reprint, considering that in
so doing he was presenting to his readers "a Lilly growing in a grove of
lawrels," are another proof of the success Lyly had, through his novel,
secured for himself at court. His plays are mythological or
pseudo-historical dramas, interspersed with some pretty songs and
dialogues, and were performed by children before the Queen on holy-days.
Among others were his "Campaspe," "played before the Queenes Majestie,
on new yeares day at night, by Her Majesties children and the children
of Paules," 1584; his "Sapho and Phao," perform