Iffida, speaking to Fidus of one she loved but
wished to test, is made to say, "I seem straight-laced as one neither
accustomed to such suites, nor willing to entertain such a servant, yet
so warily, as putting him from me with my little finger, I drewe him to
me with my whole hand[28]." Other little delicate turns of phrase may be
found in the mine of _Euphues_--for the digging. Our author was no
genius, but he had a full measure of that indefinable quality known as
wit; and, though the stylist's mask he wears is uncouth and rigid, it
cannot always conceal the twinkle of his eyes. Moreover a certain
weariness of this sermonizing on the stilts of antithesis is often
visible; and we may suspect that he half sympathises with the petulant
exclamation of the sea-sick Philautus to his interminable friend:

"In fayth, Euphues, thou hast told a long tale, the beginning I have
forgotten, ye middle I understand not, and the end hangeth not well
together[29]"; and with this piece of self-criticism we may leave Lyly
for the present and turn to his predecessors.

[28] _Euphues_, p. 299.

[29] _Euphues_, p. 248.

SECTION II. _The Origins of Euphuism._

When we pass from an analytical to an historical consideration of the
style which Lyly made his own and stamped for ever with the name of his
hero, we come upon a problem which is at once the most difficult and the
most fascinating with which we have to deal. The search for a solution
will lead us far afield; but, inasmuch as the publication and success of
_Euphues_ have given euphuism its importance in the history of our
literature, the digression, which an attempt to trace the origin of
euphuism will necessitate, can hardly be considered outside the scope of
this book. Critics have long since decided that the peculiar style,
which we have just dissolved into its elements, was not the invention of
Lyly's genius; but on the other hand, no critic, in my opinion, has as
yet solved the problem of origins with any claim to finality. Perhaps a
tentative solution is all that is possible in the present stage of our
knowledge. It is, of course, easy to point to the book or books from
which Lyly borrowed, and to dismiss the question thus. But this simply
evades the whole issue; for, though it explains _Euphues_, it by no
means explains euphuism. Equally unsatisfactory is the theory that
euphuism was of purely Spanish origin. Such a solution has all the
fascination, and all the dang