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rUE ENGLISH NOVEL IN I' HE TIME OF 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE IN THE 
 MIDDLE AGES (XlVth CENTURY). 
 Translated from the French by Lucy Toulmin 
 Smith. Third Edition. Illustrated. Small Demy 
 8vo. (T. Fisher Unwin). 
 
p Wiltmann Far: 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH 
 
 from (he cm/ravui^g In, WlLLhWI ROGERS 
 
THE 
 
 ENGLISH NOVEL 
 
 IN THE 
 
 TIME OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 J. J. JUSSERAND 
 
 COXSEILLER d'AMBASSADE, DR. fes LETTRES 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 
 
 ELIZABETH LEE 
 
 REVISED AND ENLARGED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 New York : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 London : T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 \^' 
 

 J^J^^ 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 
 
 EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ... ii 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 BEFORE SHAKESPEARE ,., 31 
 
 I. Remote origin of the novel — Old historical romances 
 or epics — Beowulf. 
 
 The French conquest of England in the eleventh 
 century — The mind and literature of the new-comers 
 — Their romances, their short tales ... ... ... 33 
 
 II. Effects of the conquest on the minds of the 
 English inhabitants — Slow awakening of the native 
 writers — Awakening of the clerks, of the translators 
 and imitators — The English inhabitants connected 
 through a literary imposture with Troy and the classical 
 nations of antiquity — Consequences of this imposture. 
 
 Chaucer — His lack of influence on later prose novelists 
 — The short prose tales of the French never acclima- 
 tized in England before the Renaissance — More's Latin 
 "Utopia" 37 
 
 III. Printing — Caxton's role — Part allotted to fiction 
 in the list of his books — Morte Darthur. 
 
 Development of printing — Mediaeval romances set in 
 type in the sixteenth century ... ... ... ... 52 
 
CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TUDOR TIMES — THE FASHIONS AND THE 
 
 NOVEL 69 
 
 I. The Renaissance and the awakening of a wider 
 curiosity — Travelling in Italy — Ascham's censures ... 69 
 
 II. Italian invasion of England — Italian books trans- 
 lated, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, &c. 
 
 English collections of short stories imitated from the 
 French or Italian — Separate short stories — Lucrece of 
 Sienna — A " travelling literature" ... ... ... 74 
 
 III. Learning — Erasmus' judgment and prophecies — 
 The part played by women — They want books written 
 for themselves — Queen Elizabeth, her talk, her tastes, 
 her dress, her portraits — The " paper work " architec- 
 ture of the time ... ... ... ... ... 87 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 LYLT AND HIS '' EUPHUES'' 103 
 
 I. "Euphues," a book for women... ... ... 103 
 
 II. " Euphuism," its foreign origin — How embellished 
 and perfected by Lyly — Fanciful natural history of the 
 time — The mediaeval bestiaries — Topsell's scientific 
 works ... ... ... ... ... ... 106 
 
 III. The plot of the novel — Moral tendencies of 
 " Euphues " — Lyly's precepts concerning men, women 
 
 and children ... ... ... ... ... 123 
 
 IV. Lyly's popularity — Courtly talk of the time — 
 Translations and abbreviations of '' Euphues " in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ... ... 135 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LYLTS LEGATEES ... 145 
 
 I. Lyly's influence — His principal heirs and suc- 
 cessors, Riche, Dickenson, Melbancke, Munday, 
 Warner, Greene, Lodge, &c. ... ... ... 145 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. Robert Greene's biography — His autobiographical 
 tales — His life and repentance, characteristic of the 
 times ... ... ... ... ... ... 150 
 
 III. His love stories and romantic tales — His extra- 
 ordinary success — His tales of real life — His fame at 
 home and abroad ... ... ... ... ... 167 
 
 IV. N. Breton, an imitator of Greene — Thomas 
 Lodge, a legatee of Lyly — His life — His " Rosalynd " 
 
 and other works — His relation to Shakespeare ... 192 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL 
 
 ROMANCE ... 217 
 
 Of shepherds. 
 
 I. Sidney's life — His travels and friendship with 
 Languet — His court life and love — His death — The 
 
 end of "Stella" ... ... ... ... ... 219 
 
 II. Sidney's v^rorks — Miscellaneous writings — The 
 " Apologie " — Sidney's appreciation of the poetic and 
 romantic novel. 
 
 The *' Arcadia," why written — Sidney's various 
 heroes : shepherds, knights, princesses, &c. — Eclogues 
 and battles, fetes, masques and tournaments — Anglo- 
 arcadian architecture, gardens, dresses and furniture. 
 
 Sidney's object according to Fulke Greville, and 
 according to himself — His lovers — Youthful love, un- 
 lawful love, foolish love, innocent love — Pamela's 
 prayer — The final imbroglio. 
 
 Sidney's style as a novel writer — His wit and bright- 
 ness — His eloquence — His bad * taste — His fanciful 
 ornaments ... 
 
 III. Sidney's reputation in England — Continuators, 
 imitators, and admirers among dramatists, poets and 
 novelists — Shakespeare, Jonson, Day, Shirley, Quarles 
 — Lady Mary Wroth and her novel — Sidney's reputa- 
 tion in the eighteenth century, Addison, Young, Walpole, 
 Cowper — Chap-books. 
 
 228 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In France — He is twice translated, and gives rise to 
 a literary quarrel — Charles Sorel's judgment in the 
 '* Berger extravagant," and Du Bartas' praise — Mare- 
 schal's drama out of the "Arcadia" — Niceron and 
 Florian ... ... ... ... ... ... 260 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THOMAS NASH; THE PICARESQUE AND 
 
 REALISTIC NOFEL 287 
 
 T. Merry books as a preservative of health — Sidney's 
 contempt for the comic. 
 
 Studies in real life — The picaresque tale ; its Spanish 
 origin — Its success in Europe — Lazarillo and Guzman... 287 
 
 II. Thomas Nash — His birth, education and life — 
 His writings, his temperament — His equal fondness 
 for mirth and for lyrical poetry — His literary theories 
 on art and style — His vocabulary, his style. 
 
 His picaresque novel, ** Jack Wilton" — Scenes and 
 characters — Observation of nature — Dramatic and 
 melodramatic parts — Historical personages — Nash's 
 troubles on account of " Jack Wilton." 
 
 His other works — Scenes of light comedy in them — 
 Portraits of the upstart, of the sectary, &c. ... ... 295 
 
 III. Nash's successors — H. Chettle — Chettle's com- 
 bined imitation of Nash, Greene and Sidney. 
 
 Dekker — His dramatic and poetical faculty — His 
 prose works — His literary connection with Nash — His 
 pictures of real life — His humour and gaiety — 
 Grobianism — A gallant at the play-house in the time of 
 Shakespeare — Defoe and Swift as distant heirs ... 527 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 AFTER SHAKESPEARE ... 347 
 
 I. Heroical romances — Their origin mainly French 
 — The new heroism a panache on the stage, in 
 epics, in the novel, in real life — The heroic ideal — 
 The Hotel de Rambouillet ... ... ... ... 347 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 II. Heroes and heroism a panache migrate to England 
 — Their welcome in spite of the Puritans — Trans- 
 lations of French romances — Use of French engravings 
 — Imitation and appreciation of French manners — 
 Orinda, the Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy Osborne, 
 Mrs. Pepys 
 
 III. Original English novels in the heroical style — 
 Roger Boyle, J. Crowne — Heroism on the stage 
 
 IV. Reaction in France — Sorel, Scarron, Furetiere, 
 &c. — Reaction in England — "Adventures of Covent 
 Garden," " Zelinda," &c 
 
 V. Conclusion — The end of the period — Ingelo, 
 Harrington, Mrs. Behn ; how she anticipates Rousseau. 
 
 Connection between the master-novelists of the 
 eighteenth century and the prentice-novelists of the 
 sixteenth ... 
 
 9 
 
 PAGE 
 
 362 
 
 397 
 
 INDEX 
 
 419 
 
 ARIES. 
 
EXPLANATORY LIST 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 OF 
 
 I. — Queen Elizabeth in State costume, with the 
 royal insignia, a heliogravure by Dujardin, of 
 Paris, after the engraving by William Rogers 
 (born in London, about 1545) Frontispiece 
 
 2 to 13. — The signs of the Zodiac, after Robert 
 Greene's '^Francesco's Fortunes," 1590. 
 Towards the end of this novel a palmer is 
 asked by his host to leave a remembrance of 
 his visit in his entertainer's house ; the palmer 
 engraves on an ivory arch verses and drawings 
 illustrating at the same time, and in the same 
 way as the signs of the Zodiac, both the 
 course of the year and the course of human 
 life p. (^ et passim [tail-pieces to all the chapters^ 
 
 14. — An Elizabethan Shepherdess, from a wood- 
 block illustrating a ballad (the inscription 
 added) ... ... ... ... ... 23 
 
 15. — Beginning of the unique MS. of " Beowulf," 
 
 preserved in the British Museum ... ... 31 
 
1 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 6. — Chaucer's pilgrims seated round the table of 
 the '' Tabard " at Southwark, a reproduction 
 of Caxton's engraving in his second edition 
 of the "Canterbury Tales," 1484 .. ... 45 
 
 17. — Robert the devil on horseback {alias 
 Romulus), being the frontispiece of several 
 romances in verse published by Wynkyn de 
 Worde, London, 15 10 (.^), 8vo. The his- 
 tory of Robert is illustrated throughout ... 57 
 
 18. — The knight of the swan, from the frontis- 
 piece of the metrical romance : " The Knight 
 of the Swanne. Here beginneth the history 
 of ye noble Helyas knyght of the swanne, 
 newly translated out of frensshe," London, 
 Copland, 1550 (?), 4to ... ... ... 61 
 
 19. — *' Then went Guy to fayre Phelis." From 
 the metrical romance '* Guy of Warwick," 
 London, 1550 (.^),4to, Sig. Cc. iij ... ... d^ 
 
 20. — Elizabethan Architecture, Burghley House, 
 Northamptonshire ; the inner yard and clock 
 tower, 1585 ; probably built by John Thorpe, 
 perhaps in collaboration with John of Padua ; 
 the seat of the Marquis of Exeter 'To face f. 69 
 
 21. — Drawing by Isaac Oliver (b. 1556) after an 
 Italian model, from the original preserved in 
 the British Museum ; illustrative of the cul- 
 tivation of Italian art by Englishmen in 
 Tudor times... ... ... ... ... 69 
 
 22. — Frontispiece to Harington's translation of 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 13 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ariosto, London, 1591, fbl. This engraving 
 and the numerous copper-plates adorning this 
 very fine book are usually said to be English. 
 But these plates were in fact a product of 
 Italian art, being the work of Girolamo 
 Porro, of Padua ; they are to be found, 
 i» the Italian edition of Ariosto published at 
 Venice in 1588, and in various other editions. 
 The English engraver, Thomas Coxon (or 
 Cockson), whose signature is to be seen at 
 the bottom of the frontispiece, only drew 
 the portrait of Harlngton in the space filled 
 in the original by a figure of Peace. Coxon, 
 according to the " Dictionary of National 
 Biography " and other authorities, is supposed 
 to have flourished from about 1609 to 1630 
 or 1636. The date on this plate (ist August, 
 1 591), shows that he began to work nearly 
 twenty years earlier. 
 
 It must be added that this portrait of 
 Harington has an Italian softness and 
 elegance, and differs greatly in its style from 
 the other portraits signed by Coxon (portrait 
 of Samuel Daniel on the title-page of his 
 Works, 1609 ; of John Taylor, " Workes," 
 1630, &c.). It is possible that Harington's 
 portrait was merely drawn by Coxon, and 
 engraved by an Italian ... ... ... 77 
 
 23. — How the knight Eurialus got secretly into 
 his lady-love's chamber. From the German 
 version of the history of the Lady Lucrece 
 
 1 
 
14 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 of Sienna, 1477, fol. (a copy in the British 
 Museum) ... ... ... .... ... 82 
 
 24. — Queen Cleopatra as represented on the Eng- 
 lish stage in the eighteenth century : Mrs. 
 Hartley in '' All for Love " ; Page's engrav- 
 ing, dated 1776, for Bell's "Theatre" ... 97 
 
 25. — Sketches made by Inigo Jones in Italy, 1614 ; 
 from his sketch-book reproduced in facsimile 
 by the care of the Duke of Devonshire, 
 London, 1832 ... ... ... ... 100 
 
 26. — Persians standing as caryatides, from a draw- 
 ing by Inigo Jones for the circular court 
 projected at Whitehall, and reproduced by 
 W. Kent : " The Drawings of Inigo Jones," 
 London, 1835, ^ vols., fol. ... ... ... loi 
 
 27. — Queen Elizabeth in a fancy dress, from the 
 portrait at Hampton Court, attributed to 
 Zucchero (b. about 1543, a pupil of Barocci), 
 reproduced in heliogravure by Dujardin of 
 Paris ... ... ... 'To face -p. 103 
 
 28. — A dragon according to Topsell, " The historic 
 
 of Serpents," London, 1608, fol., p. 153 ... 103 
 
 29. — The " Egyptian or land crocodile," according 
 to Topsell's " Historic of Serpents," London, 
 1608, fol., p. 140 ... ... ... ... 109 
 
 30. — A Hippopotamus taking its food, according 
 
ILL USTRA TIONS. 1 5 
 
 PAGE 
 
 to Topsell's " Historie of foure footed 
 beastes," London, 1607, fol., p. 328 ... 113 
 
 31. — " The true picture of the Lamia," from Top- 
 
 seirs " Foure footed beastes," 1607, p. 453... 117 
 
 32. — "The boas," from Topsell's "Serpents," 
 
 1608, frontispiece ... ... ... ...121 
 
 33. — The great Sea-serpent, from Topsell's "Ser- 
 pents,'* 1608, p. 236 ... 125 
 
 34. — Knightly pastimes ; Hawking ; illustrative 
 of Gerismond's life in the forest of Arden as 
 described in Lodge's " Rosalynd " ; from 
 Turberville's " Booke of Faulconerie," Lon- 
 don, 1575, 4to, frontispiece... ... ... 144 
 
 i^t^. — Another dragon from Topsell's " Serpents,'' 
 
 1608, p. 153 145 
 
 i^d, — Yet another dragon, from TopselFs " Ser- 
 pents," p. 153 171 
 
 37. — Velvet breeches and cloth breeches from 
 Greene's " Quip for an upstart courtier," 
 1592, frontispiece ... ... ... ... 190 
 
 38. — Preparing for the Hunt, from Turberville's 
 " Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting," 
 London, 1575, 4to, frontispiece ... ... 205 
 
 39. — Sir Philip Sidney, a heliogravure by Dujar- 
 din, of Paris, after the miniature by Isaac 
 Oliver, at Windsor Castle ... 'To face f. 217 
 
i6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 VKQ.'S. 
 
 40. — Penshurst, Sidney's birthplace, from a draw- 
 ing by M. G. du Thuit. 
 
 " Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show 
 Of touch or marble . . . 
 
 Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport . . . 
 That taller tree which of a nut was set 
 At his great birth, where all the Muses met." 
 
 (Ben Jonson, " The Forest ") 217 
 
 41. — Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, for 
 whom the " Arcadia " was written ; a heho- 
 gravure by Dujardin, from the portrait at 
 Penshurst, attributed to Marc Gheeraedts 
 
 To face p. 235 
 
 42. — A shepherd of Arcady, as seen on the 
 title-page of various editions of Sidney's 
 '' Arcadia,'' ^.^., the third, 1598 242 
 
 43. — A Princess of Arcady, /^/^. ... 243 
 
 44. — Argalus and Parthenia reading a book in 
 their garden ; from Quarles' poem of 
 "Argalus and Parthenia," London, 1656, 
 4to, p. 135 265 
 
 45. — " The renowned Argalus and Parthenia": 
 
 " See the fond youth ! he burns, he loves, he dies ; 
 He wishes as he pines and feeds his famish'd eyes." 
 
 From " The unfortunate Lovers, the History 
 of Argalus and Parthenia, in four books," 
 London, i2mo, a chap-book of the 
 eighteenth century. Frontispiece ... ... 273 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 17 
 
 PAGE 
 
 46. — " How the two princesses, Pamela and her 
 sister Philoclea, went to bath themselves in 
 the river Ladon, accompanied with Zelmane 
 and Niso : And how Zelmane combated 
 with Amphialus for the paper and glove of 
 the princess Philoclea, and what after 
 hapned." From " The famous history of 
 heroick acts . . . being an abstract of Pem- 
 broke's Arcadia," London, 1701, i2rno, 
 p. 3 1 . Not without truth does the publisher 
 state that the book is illustrated with 
 " curious cuts, the like as yet not extant " ... 275 
 
 47. — *' How the two illustrious princesses, Philo- 
 clea and Pamela, being Basilius's only 
 daughters, were married to the two in- 
 vincible princes, Pyrocles of Macedon and 
 Musidorus of Thessalia : and of the glorious 
 entertainments that graced the happy nup- 
 tials," from the same chap-book, p. 139 ... 277 
 
 48. — An interior view of the Swan Theatre in the 
 time of Shakespeare, from a drawing by John 
 de Witt, 1596, recently discovered in the 
 Utrecht library by M. K. T. Gaedertz, of 
 Berlin. Reproduced as illustrative of Dek- 
 ker's "Horne-booke," 1609 [infra^ ch. vi. § 3). 
 Spectators have not been represented. They 
 must be supposed to fill the pit, " planities 
 sive arena," where they remained standing in 
 the open air, and the covered galleries. The 
 more important people were seated on the 
 stage. Actors, to perform their parts, came 
 
1 8 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 out of the two doors inscribed " mimorum 
 aedes." The boxes above these doors, con- 
 cerning which some doubts have been 
 expressed, seem to be what was called " the 
 Lords' room." " Let our gallant," says 
 Dekker, " advance himself up to the throne 
 of the stage. I meane not the Lords roome 
 (which is now but stages suburbs) : no, those 
 boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy 
 of waiting women and gentlemen ushers, that 
 there sweat together, and the covefousness of 
 sharers are contemptibly thrust into the reare, 
 and much new satten is there dambd by being 
 smothrd to death in darknesse. But on the 
 very rushes, where the comedy is to daunce, 
 yea and under the state of Cambises him- 
 selfe must our fethered Estridge be planted 
 valiantly, because impudently, beating downe 
 the mewes and hisses of opposed rascality" 
 ("Works," ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p. 247) ... 286 
 
 49. — Elizabethan gaieties. The actor Kemp's 
 dance to Norwich, from the frontispiece of 
 ** Kemps nine daies wonder performed in a 
 daunce from London to Norwich, containing 
 the pleasure, paines and kind entertainment 
 of William Kemp betweene London and that 
 city . . . written by himselfe to satisfie his 
 friends," London, 1600, reprinted by Dyce, 
 Camden Society, 1 840, 4to .. . ... ... 287 
 
 50. — Portrait of Nash, from " Tom Nash his 
 ghost . . . written by Thomas Nash his 
 
ILL USTRA TIONS. 1 9 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ghost " (no date). A copy in the British 
 Museum ... ... ... ... ... 326 
 
 51. — Portrait of Dekker, from " Dekker his 
 dreame," a poem by the same, London, 
 1620, frontispiece ... ... ... ... 333 
 
 52. — Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda, a 
 heliogravure by Dujardin, after the mezzo- 
 tint by Beckett ... ... To face f. 347 
 
 SZ'- 
 
 -Heroical deeds in an heroical novel. " Pan- 
 dion slayes Clausus," from " Pandion and 
 Amphigenia," by J. Crowne, London, 1665, 
 8vo 347 
 
 54. — Sir Guy of Warwick addressing a skull, in 
 a churchyard, from " The history of Guy, 
 earl of Warwick," 1750.^ (a chap-book), 
 P-i8 350 
 
 55. — Burial of Sir Guy of Warwick, from the 
 
 same chap-book ... ... ... ... 351 
 
 ^(i. — A map of the " tendre " country. The 
 original map was inserted by Mdlle. de 
 Scudery in her novel of " Clelie," Paris, 
 1654, et seq.^ 10 vols., 8vo, vol. i. p. 399. 
 It was a map drawn by Clelia and sent by her 
 to Herminius, and which " showed how to go 
 from New Friendship to Tender." It was 
 reproduced in the English translations of 
 " Clelie " ; the plate we give is taken from 
 the edition of 1678... ... ... ... 359 
 
20 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 57. — Endymion plunged into the river in the 
 presence of Diana, after an engraving by C. 
 de Pas, in ** L' Endimion de Gombauld," 
 Paris, 1624, 8vo, p. 223. The French 
 plates were sent to England and used for the 
 English version of this novel : " Endimion, 
 an excellent fancy . . . interpreted by Richard 
 Hurst," London, 1639, 8vo ... ... 367 
 
 58. — Frontispiece to Part IV. of the translation 
 of La Calprenede's " Cleopatre," by Robert 
 Loveday : " Hymen's prasludia or Loves 
 master-piece," London, 1652, et seq,, i2mo. 
 This frontispiece was drawn according to the 
 instructions of Loveday himself, " Loveday *s 
 Letters," Letter Ixxxiii. ... ... ... 371 
 
 59. — A fashionable conversation, from the frontis- 
 piece of *^ La fausse Clelie," by P. de 
 Subligny, Amsterdam, 1671, i2mo. An 
 enlarged plate was made after this one, to 
 serve as frontispiece to the English version of 
 the same work : " The mock Clelia, being a 
 comical history of French gallantries ... in 
 imitation of Don Quixote," London, 1678, 
 8vo 375 
 
 60. — Conversations and telling of stories at the 
 house of the Duchess of Newcastle, from a 
 drawing by Abr. a Diepenbeck, engraved for 
 her book : " Natures pictures drawn by 
 Fancies pencil to the life," London, 1656, 
 fol 379 
 
ILL USTRA TIONS. 
 
 21 
 
 PAGB 
 
 6i. — Moorish heroes, from an engraving in 
 Settle's drama : " The Empress of Morocco," 
 London, 1673, 4to 393 
 
 62. — A poet's dream realized, from the English 
 version of Sorel's *' Berger Extravagant," 
 "The extravagant Shepherd," London, 1653, 
 fol., translated by John Da vies. The usual 
 description of the heroine of a novel has 
 been taken to the letter by the engraver, who 
 represents Love sitting on her forehead, and 
 lilies and roses on her cheeks. Two suns 
 have taken the place of her eyes, her teeth 
 are actual pearls, &c. ... ... ... 401 
 
My heartiest thanks are due to the well- 
 known Elizabethan scholar^ Mr. A. H. 
 Bullen, who^ putting aside for a while much 
 more important work^ has shown me the great 
 kindness of reading for the press the proofs of 
 this volume. J. 
 
AN ELIZABETHAN SHEPHERDESS. 
 
 XTbe lEriGlisb TRovel m the 
 XLime of Sbakespeare* 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE London publishers annually issue statistics 
 of the works that have appeared in England 
 during the year. Sometimes sermons and 
 books on theology reach the highest figures ; England 
 is still the England of the Bible, the country that at 
 the time of the Reformation produced three hundred 
 and twenty-six editions of the Scriptures in less than 
 a century, and whose religious literature is so abundant 
 that to-day twenty-eight volumes of the British 
 Museum catalogue treat of the single word Bible. 
 
24 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 When theology does not obtain the first rank, it holds 
 the second. The only writings that can compete with 
 it, in the country of Shakespeare, of Bacon and of 
 Newton, are neither dramas, nor books of philosophy 
 nor scientific treatises ; they are novels. Theology had 
 the supremacy in 1885 ; novels obtained it in 1887, 
 1888, and 1889. Omitting stories written for children, 
 nine hundred and twenty- nine novels were published in 
 England in 1888, and one thousand and forty in 1889. 
 Thus the conscientious critic who wished to acquaint 
 himself with all of them would have to read more than 
 two novels and a half, often in three volumes, every 
 day all the year round, without stopping even on 
 Sundays. 
 
 This passion for the novel which does not exist 
 in the same degree in any other nation, only ac- 
 quired its full strength in England in the eighteenth 
 century. At that time English novels produced in 
 Europe the effect of a revelation ; they were praised 
 extravagantly, they were copied, they were imitated, 
 and the popularity hitherto enjoyed by the " Prin- 
 cesse de Cleves," " Marianne," and " Gil Bias," was 
 obscured for a while. '' I say that Anglicism is gain- 
 ing on us," wrote d' Argenson ; " afiier ' Gulliver ' and 
 * Pamela,' here comes ' Tom Jones,' and they are 
 mad for him ; who could have imagined eighty years 
 ago that the English would write novels and better 
 ones than ours ? This nation pushes ahead by force of 
 uni-estricted freedom." ^ 
 
 Modern society had at length found the kind of 
 
 ^ "Memoires et Journal inedit du Marquis d'Argenson," Paris, 
 ^^57j 5 vols. ; vol. v., " Remarqucs en lisant." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 literature which could be most suitably employed to 
 depict it. Society had been presented on the English 
 stage by the authors of domestic comedies ; Steele and 
 Addison had painted it in their essays. But in both 
 forms the portrait was incomplete. The exigencies of 
 the stage, the necessary brevity of the essay, made it 
 impossible to give adequate expression to the infinite 
 complexity of the subject. The novel created anew by 
 Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson, made it an easy thing 
 to introduce into the arena of literature those men and 
 women of intelligence and feehng who, for long ages, 
 had been pleased to see other people the chief subjects 
 of books and inwardly desired that authors should at 
 last deal more especially with themselves. The age of 
 chivalry was gone ; the time of the Arthurs and the 
 Tristans had passed away; such a society as the new 
 one could not so well be sung in verse ; but it could 
 extremely well be described in, prose. 
 
 As Fielding remarked, the novel takes the place 
 of the old epic. We think of the Harlowes when 
 in the olden time we should have dreamed of the 
 Atridas. While man's attachment to science and 
 demonstrated truth is growing year by year, so, 
 simultaneously, the art of the historian and the art 
 of the novelist, both essentially empirical, become more 
 highly valued and more widely cultivated. As for the 
 lengthy tales devoted to Tristan and to " I'Empereur 
 magne," we know that their day is done, and we think 
 of them with all the pensive tenderness we cannot 
 help feeling for the dead, for the dim past, for a race 
 without posterity, for childhood's cherished and fast- 
 fading dreams. Thus in the same age when Clarissa 
 
26 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Harlowe and Tom Jones came to their kingdom, the 
 poets Chatterton, Percy, Beattie, and others, turned 
 back lovingly to the Middle Ages ; and thus too the 
 new taste for history, archaeology, and the painting 
 of real life, all put together and combined, ended by 
 producing a particular school of novel, the romantic 
 school, at whose head stands Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Perhaps, however, something besides poetry is to 
 be sought for in these bygone epochs. Movements 
 of human thought have seldom that suddenness with 
 which they are sometimes credited ; if those literary 
 innovations, apparently so spasmodic, are carefully and 
 closely studied, it will be nearly always found that the 
 way had been imperceptibly prepared for them through 
 the ages. We are in the habit of beginning the 
 history of the English novel with Defoe or Richardson ; 
 but was there no work of the kind in England before 
 their time.^ had they to invent it all, matter and 
 method } It is not enough to say that the gift of 
 observation and analysis was inborn in the race, as 
 shown already, long before the eighteenth century, in 
 the work of the dramatists, moralists and philosophers. 
 Had not the same gift already manifested itself in the 
 novel } 
 
 The truth is that the novel shed its first splendour 
 during the age of Elizabeth ; but the glory of 
 Shakespeare has overshadowed the multitude of the 
 lesser authors of his time, a multitude which included 
 the early novelists. While they lived, however, they 
 played no insignificant part ; now they are so entirely- 
 forgotten that it will perhaps be heard with some 
 surprise that they were prolific, numerous, and very 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 popular. So great was the demand for this kind of 
 literature that some succeeded in making an income 
 out of their novels. Their books went through many 
 editions for that age, many more than the majority of 
 Shakespeare's plays. They were translated into French 
 at a time when even the name of the great dramatist 
 was entirely unknown to the French people. Lyly's 
 *' Euphues," for example, went through five editions in 
 five years ; in the same period *' Hamlet " passed 
 through only three, and " Romeo and Juliet " through 
 two editions. Not a line of Shakespeare was put into 
 French before the eighteenth century, while prose 
 fictions by Nash, Greene, and Sidney were translated 
 more than a century earlier. 
 
 As in our own day, some of these novehsts busied 
 themselves chiefly with the analysis of passion and 
 refined emotion ; others chiefly concerned themselves 
 with minute observation of real life, and strove to 
 place before the reader the outward features of their 
 characters in a fashion impressive enough to enable him 
 to realize what lay below the surface. Many of these 
 pictures of manners and of society were considered by 
 contemporaries good likenesses, not the less so because 
 embellished. Thus, having served as models to the 
 novelists, the men and women of the day in their turn 
 took as example the copies that had been made from 
 them. They had had their portraits painted and then 
 tried hard to resemble their counterfeit presentments. 
 Lyly and Sidney embellished, according to the taste of 
 the age, the people around them, whom they chose as 
 patterns for the heroes of their novels ; and as soon as 
 their books were spread over the country, fashionable 
 
28 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 ladies distinguished themselves from the common sort 
 by being '' Arcadian " or " Euphuizd." ^ 
 
 Thus through these very efforts, a literature, chiefly 
 intended for women, was arising in England, and this 
 is one characteristic more that links these authors to 
 our modern novelists. So that, perhaps, bonds, closer 
 than we imagine, unite those old writers lost in a far- 
 off past with the novelists whose books reprinted a 
 hundred times are to be found to-day on every reading- 
 table and in everybody's hands. 
 
 We make no pretence of covering in the present 
 volume this vast and little trodden field. To keep 
 within reasonable bounds we shall have to leave 
 altogether, or barely mention, the collections of 
 tales translated by Paynter, Whetstone and others 
 from the Italian or French, although they were 
 well known to Shakespeare, and provided him with 
 several of his plots. In spite of their charm, we 
 shall in like manner pass by the simple popular 
 prose tales, which were also very numerous, the 
 stories of Robin Hood, of Tom-a-Lincoln, of Friar 
 Bacon, however ** merry and pleasant," they may be, 
 " not altogether unprofitable, nor any way hurtfull, 
 very fitte to passe away the tediousness of the long 
 winters evenings." ^ We intend to deal here chiefly 
 
 ' Dekker, "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609. 
 
 2 "The Gentle Craft," 1598. "Early English Prose Romances," 
 ed. W. J. Thorns, London, 2nd edition, 1858, 3 vols., 8vo, 
 contents : " Robert the Devyll," " Thomas of Reading," by Thomas 
 Deloney, "Fryer Bacon," "Frier Rush," "George a Green," "Tom- 
 a-Lincoln," by Richard Johnson, "Doctor Faustus," &c. Nearly 
 all the stories in this collection bear the date of Shakespeare's 
 time. 
 
INTRO D UCTION. 
 
 29 
 
 with those writers from whom our modern novelists 
 are legitimately descended. These descendants, im- 
 proving upon the early examples of their art left 
 by the Elizabethan novelists, have won for themselves 
 a lasting place in literature, and their works are among 
 the undisputed pleasures of our lives. Our gratitude 
 may rightly be extended from them to their pro- 
 genitors. We must be permitted, therefore, to go far 
 back in history, nearly as far as the Flood. The 
 journey is long, but we shall travel rapidly. It was, 
 moreover, the customary method of many novelists of 
 long ago to begin with the beginning of created things. 
 Let their example serve as our excuse = 
 
 / 
 
 CANCER. 
 
BEGINNING OF THE UNIQUE MS. OF " BEOWULF." 
 
 h 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I. 
 
 MINUTE research has been made, in every 
 country, into the origin of the drama. The 
 origin of the novel has rarely tempted the 
 literary archaeologist. For a long time the novel 
 was regarded as literature of a lower order ; down 
 almost to our time, critics scrupled to speak of it. 
 When M. Villemain in his course of lectures on the 
 eighteenth century came to Richardson, he experienced 
 some embarrassment, and it was not without oratorical 
 qualifications and certain bashful doubts that he dared 
 to announce lectures on " Clarissa Harlowe '* and " Sir 
 Charles Grandison." He sought to justify himself on 
 the ground that it was necessary to track out a special 
 influence derived from England, '' the influence of 
 imagination united to moral sentiment in eloquent 
 prose." But this neglect can be explained still better. 
 
32 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 We can at need fix the exact period of the origin of 
 the drama. It is not the same with the novel. We 
 may go as far back as we please, yet we find the thin 
 ramifications of the novel, and we may say literally 
 that it is as old as the world itself. Like man himself, 
 was not the world rocked in the cradle of its childhood 
 to the accompaniment of stories and tales '^. Some 
 were boldly marvellous ; others have been called his- 
 torical ; but very often, in spite of the dignity of the 
 name, the '^ histories " were nothing but collections of 
 traditions, of legends, of fictions : a kind of novel. This 
 noble antiquity might doubtless have been invoked as a 
 further justification by M. Villemain and have confirmed 
 the reasons drawn from the " moral sentiment and elo- 
 quence " of novels, reasons which were such as to 
 rather curtail the scope of his lectures. 
 
 In England as much and even more than with any 
 other modern nation, novelists can pride themselves- 
 upon a long line of ancestors. They can, without 
 abusing the license permitted to genealogists, go back 
 to the time when the English did not inhabit England,, 
 when London, like Paris, was peopled by latinised 
 Celts, and when the ancestors of the puritans sacrificed 
 to the god Thor. The novelists indeed can show that 
 the beginning of their history is lost in the abysm of 
 time. They can recall the fact that the Anglo-Saxons, 
 when they came to dwell in the island of Britain, 
 brought with them songs and legends, whence was 
 evolved the strange poem of*' Beowulf," ^ the first epic,. 
 
 I "Beowulf, a heroic poem," ed. T. Arnold, London, 1876, 
 8vo. The unique MS. of this poem, discovered in the last century, is. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 33 
 
 the most ancient history, and the oldest EngHsh romance. 
 In it, truth is mingled with fiction ; besides the wonders 
 performed by the hero, a destroyer of monsters, we 
 find a great battle mentioned by Gregory of Tours, 
 where the Frenchmen, that were to be, cut to pieces 
 the Englishmen that were to be ; the first act of that 
 bloody tragedy continued afterwards at Hastings, Crecy, 
 Agincourt, Fontenoy, and Waterloo. 
 
 The battle of Hastings which made England subject ^ 
 to men from France resulted in a complete transfor- 
 mation of the literature of the Teutonic inhabitants of 
 the island. Anglo-Saxon literature had had moments 
 of brilliance at the time of Alfred, and afterwards at 
 that of Saint Dunstan ; then it had fallen into decay. 
 By careful search, accents of joy, though of strange 
 character, may be discovered in the texts which now 
 represent that ancient literature. Taking it as a whole, 
 however, this literature was sad ; a cloud of melancholy 
 enveloped it, like those penetrating mists, observed by 
 Pytheas and the oldest travellers, which rose from the 
 marshes of the island and concealed the outlines of its 
 impenetrable forests. But the conquerors who came 
 from Normandy, from Brittany, from Anjou, from all 
 the provinces of France, were of a cheerful tempera- 
 ment ; they were happy : everything went well with 
 them. They brought with them the gaiety, the wit, 
 the sunshine of the south, uniting the spirit of the 
 Gascon with the tenacity of the Norman. Noisy and 
 great talkers, when once they became masters of the 
 
 preserved at the British Museum ; it has been reproduced in fac- 
 simile by the Early English Text Society (Ed. J. Zupitza, 1882, 
 8vo). We give in fac-simile the first few lines of the MS. 
 
 3 
 
34 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 country, they straightway put an end to the already 
 dying literature of the conqtiered race and substituted 
 their own. God forbid that they should listen to the 
 lamentations of the Anglo-Saxon manner or traveller ! 
 They had no concern with their miserable diTges. 
 *' Long live Christ who loves the French ! " i Even in 
 the laws and religion of the French there now and then 
 appeared marks of their irrepressible entrain. Shall 
 we not, then, find it in their stories ? 
 
 The new-comers liked tales of two kinds. ' First, 
 they delighted in stories of chivalry, where they found- 
 marvellous exploits differing little from their own. 
 They had seen the son of Herleva, a tanner's daughter 
 of Falaise, win a kingdom in a battle, in course of which 
 the cares of a conqueror had not prevented him from 
 making jokes. When, therefore, they wrote a romance, 
 they might well attribute extraordinary adventures and 
 rare courage to Roland, Arthur and Lancelot : in face 
 of the behaviour of the bastard of Normandy, it would 
 be difficult to tax the exploits attributed to those 
 heroes with improbability. The numberless epic 
 romances in which they delighted had no resem- 
 blance with the "Beowulf" of old. These stories were 
 no longer filled with mere deeds of valour, but also with 
 acts of courtesy ; they were full of love and tenderness. 
 Even in the more Germanic of their poems, in '* Roland," 
 the hero is shaken by his emotions, and is to be seen 
 shedding tears. Far greater is the part allotted to the 
 gentler feelings in the epics of a subsequent date, in 
 those written for the English Queen Eleanor, by Benoit 
 
 ^ " Vivat qui Francos diligit Christus ! " ("Prologue of the Salic 
 Law," Pardessus, 1843, p. 345.) 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 35 
 
 de Sainte More in the twelfth century, which tell for 
 the first time of the loves of Troilus and Cressida ; in 
 those dedicated to Arthur and his knights, where the 
 favour of the mortal deities of whom the heroes are 
 enamoured, is responsible for more feats of chivalry 
 than is the search after the mysterious Grail. 
 
 They can take Constantinople, or destroy the Roman 
 armies ; they can fight green giants and strange mon- 
 sters, besiege castles of steel, put traitors to death, and 
 escape even the evil practices of enchanters ; but they 
 cannot conquer their passions. All the enemies they 
 have in common with Beowulf, be they men or armies, 
 monsters or sorcerers, they can fight and subdue ; but 
 enemies unknown to the Gothic warrior oppose them 
 now more effectually than giants, stormy seas, or armed 
 battalions ; enemies that are always present, that are 
 not to be destroyed in battle nor left behind in 
 flight : their own indomitable loves and desires. What 
 would the conqueror of Grendel have thought of such 
 descendants } One word in his story answers the ques- 
 tion : " Better it is," says he, " for every man, that he 
 avenge his friend than that he mourn much." This is 
 the nearest approach to tenderness discoverable in the 
 whole epic of '' Beowulf." 
 
 In this contest between heroes differing so greatly 
 in their notion of the duties and possibilities of life 
 with whom do we side, we of to-day.^ With Beo- 
 wulf or with Lancelot ? Which of the two has 
 survived ? Which of them is nearest of kin to us ? 
 Under various names and under very different con- 
 ditions, Lancelot still continues to live in our thoughts 
 and to play his part in our stories. We shall find him 
 
36 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 in the pages of Walter Scott ; he is present in the- 
 novels of George Eliot. For better or for worse, the 
 literature begun in England by the conquerors at the 
 battle of Hastings still reigns paramount. 
 
 Moreover, the new possessors of the English country- 
 were fond of tales and short stories, either moving or 
 amusing, in which a word would make the reader laugh 
 or make him thoughtful ; but where there was no 
 tirade, no declamation, no loud emphasis, no vague 
 speculation, a style of writing quite unknown to the 
 islanders and contrary to their genius. When they 
 returned of an evening to their huge and impregnable 
 castles, in perfect security and in good humour, they 
 liked to hear recited stories in prose, some of which are 
 still extant and will never be read without pleasure : 
 the story of Floire and Blanche fleur, for instance, or 
 perhaps, also that of Aucassin, who preferred " his 
 gentle love " to paradise even more unconcernedly 
 than the lover in the old song rejected the gift of 
 " Paris la grand ville ; '* of Aucassin, in whose adven- 
 tures the Almighty interposes, not in the manner of the 
 Jehovah of the Bible, but as " God who loveth lovers ;" ^ 
 and where Nicolete is so very beautiful that the touch 
 of her fair hands is enough to heal sick people. Accor- 
 ding to the author the same wonder is performed by 
 the tale itself ; it heals sorrow : 
 
 ^ " Nouvelles Fran9aises en prose," ed. Moland and d'Heri- 
 cault, Paris, 1856. Four English versions of the story of Floire 
 and Blanchefleur are extant. The story of Amis and Amile was 
 also very popular. "Amis and Amiloun," ed. Kolbing (Heilbronn, 
 1884). The cantefable of Aucassin is of the twelfth centurv^ 
 (G. Paris, "Litterature fran9aise au moyen age," 1888, § 51). 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 37 
 
 " Sweet the song, the story sweet, 
 There is no man hearkens it, 
 No man living 'neath the sun, 
 So outwearied, so foredone. 
 Sick and woful, worn and sad, 
 But is healed, but is glad 
 'Tis so sweet." ^ 
 
 So Speaks the author, and since his time the per- 
 formance of the same miracle has been the aim of the 
 many tale-writers of all countries ; they have not all 
 of them failed. 
 
 The fusion of these two sorts of stories, the epic- 
 romance and the tale, produced long afterwards in 
 every country of Europe the novel as we know it now. 
 To the former, the novel owes more especially its 
 width of subject, its wealth of incident, its occasionally 
 dignified gait ; to the second, its delicacy of observation, 
 its skill in expression of detail, its naturalness, its real- 
 ism. If we care to examine them closely, we shall 
 find in the greater number of those familiar tragi- 
 comedies, which are the novels of our own day, 
 discernible traces of their twofold and far-oiF origin. 
 
 II. 
 
 The first result of the diffusion in England, afiier the . 
 Conquest, of a new literature full of southern inventions \ 
 and gaieties, and loves, and follies, was the silencing of 
 the native singers. This silence lasted for a hundred 
 
 ^ Mr. Andrew Lang's translation, " Aucassin and Nicolete '* 
 ^(London, 1887, i6mo.). 
 
38 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 years ; the very language seemed doomed to disappear. 
 What was the good of writing in EngHsh, when there 
 was hardly any one who cared to read it, and even those 
 few were learning French, and coming by degrees to 
 enjoy the new literature ? But it turned out that the 
 native English writers had not been swept away for 
 ever. Their race, though silenced, was not extinct : 
 they were not dead, but only asleep. 
 
 The first to awake were the scholars, the men who 
 had studied in Paris. It was quite natural that they 
 should be less deeply impressed with nationalism than 
 the rest of their compatriots ; learning had made them 
 cosmopolitan ; they belonged less to England than to 
 the Latin country, and the Latin country had not 
 suffered from the Conquest. Numerous scholars of 
 English origin shone forth as authors from the twelfth 
 century onwards ; among them Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
 of Arthurian fame, Joseph of Exeter, John of Salisbury, 
 Walter Map, Nigel Wireker, and many others of 
 European reputation. 
 
 In the thirteenth century another awakening takes 
 place in the palace which the Norman enchanter had 
 doomed to a temporary sleep. Translators and imi- 
 tators set to work ; the English language is again 
 employed ; the storm has abated, and it has become 
 evident that there still remain people of English blood 
 and language for whom it is worth while to write. 
 Innumerable books are composed for them, that they 
 may learn, ignorant as they are of French or Latin,, 
 what is the thought of the day. Robert Manning de 
 Brunne states, in the beginning of the fourteenth century,. 
 that he writes : 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE, 39 
 
 ** Not for the lerid bot for the lewed, 
 Ffor tho that in this land wone, 
 That the Latyn no Frankvs cone, 
 Ffor to haf solace and gamen 
 In felawschip when thay sitt samen." 
 
 They are to enjoy this new literature in common, be 
 it rehgious, be it imaginative or historical ; they will 
 discuss it and it will improve their minds ; it will teach 
 them to pass judgments even on kings : 
 
 " And gude it is for many thynges 
 For to here the dedis of kynges 
 Whilk were foles and whilk were wyse." ^ 
 
 In their turn the English poets sang of Arthur ; in 
 all good faith they adopted his glory as that of an 
 ancestor of their own. Among them a man like Laya- 
 mon accepted the French poet Wace for his model, and 
 in the beginning of the thirteenth century, devoted 
 thirty-two thousand lines to the Celtic hero ; nor was 
 he ever disturbed by the thought that Arthur's British 
 victories might have possibly been English defeats.^ 
 Then came innumerable poems, translated or imitated 
 from French romances, on Charlemagne and Roland, 
 Gawain and the Green Knight, Bovon of Hanstone^ 
 Percival, Havelock the Dane, King Horn, Guy of 
 Warwick, Alexander, Octavian, and the Trojan War. 3 
 
 ^ "The Story of England," a.d. 1338, ed. F. J. Furnival^ 
 London, 1887, two vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. i. 
 
 2 " Layamon's Brut," ed. Madden, London, 1847, three vols. 8vo. 
 
 3 See, among others, the publications of the Early English Text 
 Society, the Camden Society, the Percy Society, the Roxburghe 
 Club, the Bannatyne Club, the Altenglische Bibliothek of E. 
 
40 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Hundreds of manuscripts, some of them splendidly 
 illuminated, testify at the present day to the immense 
 popularity of these imitations of French originals, and 
 provide endless labour for the many learned societies 
 that in our century have undertaken to print them. 
 
 Layamon's indifference to the price paid by his com- 
 patriots for Arthur's glory was not peculiar to himself 
 It is characteristic of a policy of amalgamation delibe- 
 rately followed from the beginning by the Normans. 
 As soon as they were settled in the country they desired 
 to unify the traditions of the various races inhabiting" 
 the great island, in the belief that this was a first and 
 necessary step towards uniting the races themselves. 
 Rarely was literature used for political purposes with 
 more cleverness and with more important results. The 
 conquerors set the example themselves, and from the 
 £rst adopted and treated all the heroic beings who had 
 won glory in or for England, and whose fame lingered 
 in ballads and popular songs, as if they had been per- 
 sonal ancestors of their own. At the same time they 
 
 Kolbing (Heilbronn) ; the " Metrical Romances of the Xlllth, 
 XlVth, and XVth Centuries," of H. W. Weber (Edinburgh, 
 l8io, three vols. 8vo) ; the ''Catalogue of MS. Romances in the 
 British Museum," by H. L. D. Ward (London, 1887); "Bishop 
 Percy's Folio MS. ; Ballads and Romances," ed. J. W. Hales and 
 F. J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1867, &c. 
 
 The publications of the Early English Text Society include, 
 among others, the romances of " Ferumbras," " Otuel," " Huon of 
 Burdeux," " Charles the Crete," " Four Sons of Aymon," " Sir 
 Bevis of Hanston," " King Horn," with fragments of " Floriz and 
 Blauncheflur," " Havelok the Dane," "Guy of Warwick," 
 *' William of Palerne," " Generides," " Morte Arthure," Lone- 
 lich's "History of the Holy Grail," "Joseph of Arimathie," "Sir 
 Gawaine and the Green Knight," &c. Others are in preparation. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 41 
 
 induced the conquered race to adopt the theory that 
 mythic Trojans were their progenitors, a theory already 
 discovered and applied by the French to their own 
 early history, and about which fables were already 
 ^current among the Welsh people : both races were thus 
 connected together as lineal descendants, the one of 
 Brutus, the other of Francus ; and an indissoluble link 
 •united them to the classic nations of antiquity. ^ So it 
 
 ^ The adoption by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, of Brutus the Trojan as father of the British race, as Nen- 
 nius had done two centuries earlier, did much for the spreading of 
 this belief; the popularity and authority of Geoffrey's fabulous 
 iiistory was so great that for several centuries the gravest English 
 iiistorians accepted his statements concerning Brutus without hesi- 
 tation. Matthew Paris, the most accurate and trustworthy his- 
 torian of the thirteenth century, gives an account of his coming 
 to the island of Albion, "that was then inhabited by nobody but a 
 few giants": " Erat tunc nomen insulae Albion, quse a nemine, 
 exceptis paucis gigantibus habitabatur." Brutus proceeds to the 
 banks of the Thames, and there founds his capital, which he calls 
 the New Troy, Trojam novam, " quae postea, per corruptionem 
 vocabuli Trinovantum dicta fuerit " (" Chronica Majora," Rolls 
 Series, I. pp. 2 1-22). In the fourteenth century Ralph, in his famous 
 *' Polychronicon," gives exactly the same account of the deeds of 
 the Trojan prince, and they continued in the time of Shakespeare 
 to be history. Here is the learned account Holinshed gives of 
 these events in his " Chronicles ": 
 
 " Hitherto have we spoken of the inhabitants of this He before 
 the coming of Brute, although some will needs have it that he was 
 the first which inhabited the same with his people descended of 
 the Troians, some few giants onelie excepted whom he utterlie 
 destroied, and left not one of them alive through the whole lie. 
 But as we shall not doubt of Brutes coming hither ..." &c. 
 
 " This Brutus or Brytus (for this letter Y hath of ancient times 
 had the sounds both of V and I) . . . was the sonne of Silvius, the 
 
42 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 happened that in mediasval England French singers- 
 were to be heard extolling the glory of Saxon kings, 
 while English singers told the deeds of Arthur, the 
 arch-enemy of their race. Nothing gives a better idea 
 of this extraordinary amalgamation of races and tradi- 
 tions than a certain poem of the thirteenth century 
 written in French by a Norman monk of Westminster, 
 and dedicated to Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry 
 III., in which we read : 
 
 " In the world, I may confidently say, there never 
 was country, kingdom or empire, where so many good 
 kings, and holy too, were found, as in the English 
 island. . . . Saints they were, martyrs and confessors, 
 of whom several died for God ; others most strong and 
 hardy, as were Arthur, Edmund, and Knut." ^ 
 
 Rarely was the like seen in any literature ; here is a 
 poem dedicated to a Frenchwoman by a Norman of Eng- 
 land, which begins with the praise of a Briton, a Saxon, 
 and a Dane. The same phenomenon is to be noticed, 
 after the Conquest in romances, chronicles and histories. 
 
 Sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Aeneas the Trojan, begotten of his 
 wife Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied " 
 (book ii. chap. i.). 
 
 ^ " En mund ne est (ben vus I'os dire) 
 
 Pais, reaume, ne empire 
 
 U tant unt este bons rois 
 
 E seinz, cum en isle d'Englois . . . 
 
 Seinz, martirs e confessurs 
 
 Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs ; 
 
 Li autre forz e hardiz mutz, 
 
 Cum fu Arthurs, Aedmunz, e Knudz." 
 (" Lives of Edward the Confessor," ed. H. R. Luard, London,, 
 Rolls, 1858, 8vo.) 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 45 
 
 Whoever the author may be, whether of French 
 or English blood, the unity of origin of the two races 
 receives almost invariably the fullest acknowledgment ; 
 the inhabitants of the great island cease to look towards 
 Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia, for their ancestors, 
 or for the sources of their inspiration ; they look rather,, 
 like their new French companions, to Rome, Greece 
 and Troy. This policy produced not only momentous 
 social results, but also very important literary conse- 
 quences ; the intellectual connection with the north 
 being cut off, the Anglo-French allowed themselves to 
 be drilled with the Latin discipline ; the ancient models 
 ceased to appear to them heterogeneous ; they studied 
 them in all good faith as the works of distant relations, 
 with such result that they, unlike the Germanic and 
 Scandinavian peoples, were ready, when the time of the 
 Renaissance came, to benefit by the great intellectual 
 movement set on foot by southern neo-classic nations ; 
 and while Italy produced Ariosto and Tasso, while Spain 
 possessed Cervantes, and France Montaigne, Ronsard 
 and Rabelais, they were ready to give birth to the un- 
 paralleled trio of Spenser, Bacon and Shakespeare. 
 
 From the fourteenth century this conclusion was easy 
 to foresee ; for, even at that period, England took part 
 in a tentative Renaissance that preceded the great one 
 of the sixteenth century. At the time when Italy 
 produced Petrarca and Boccaccio, and France had 
 Froissart, England produced Chaucer, the greatest of 
 the four. 
 
 Famous as Chaucer was as a story-teller, it is strange 
 that he was to have almost no influence on the develop- 
 ment of the novel in England. When we read of Harry 
 
44 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 Bailly and the Wife of Bath, of the modest Oxford 
 clerk and the good parson ; when we turn the pages of 
 the Inimitable story of Troilus and the fickle, tender, 
 charming Cressida, it seems as if nothing was lacking 
 to the production of perfect novels. All the elements 
 /of the art are there complete : the delicate analysis of 
 passions, the stirring plot, the natural play of various 
 characters, the very human mixture of grossness and 
 tenderness, of love songs and rough jokes, the portraits 
 of actual beings belonging to real life and not to 
 dreamland. It was only necessary to break the 
 cadence of the verse and to write such stories in prose. 
 No one did it ; no one tried to do it. 
 
 The fact is the stranger if we remember that 
 Chaucer's popularity never flagged. It was at its 
 height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; in the 
 following period the kings of literature, Dryden and 
 Pope, did homage to him. His works had been 
 amongst the first to be printed. Caxton's original 
 edition was quickly followed by a second. ^ The latter 
 was adorned with illustrations, and this rapid publica- 
 tion of a second and amended text testifies to the great 
 reverence in which the author was held. Nevertheless 
 it is the fact that Chaucer stands alone ; authors of 
 prose novels who wrote nearly two centuries after his 
 time, instead of trying to follow in his footsteps, sought 
 their models either in the old epic literature or in 
 French and Italian story-books. This is exactly what 
 
 ^ Both editions are undated ; the first one seems to have been 
 published in 1478, the second in 1484 (W. Blades, " Life and 
 Typography of William Caxton," 1861, two vols. 4to). 
 
CAXTON S REPRESENTATION OF CHAUCER's PILGRIMS, I484. [/. ^5. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 47 
 
 Chaucer had done himself ; but they did it with very 
 different success, and entirely missed the benefits of the 
 great advance made by him. By another strange 
 caprice of fate it was these sixteenth-century writers, 
 and not Chaucer, who were to be the ancestors of the 
 world-famous novelists of a later age, of the Richard- 
 sons and Fieldings of the eighteenth century. 
 
 In one thing, then, the French conquerors entirely 
 failed ; they never succeeded in acclimatizing during 
 the Middle Ages those shorter prose stories which 
 were so popular in their own country, in which they 
 themselves delighted and of which charming and some- 
 times exquisite models have come to us from the twelfth 
 century downwards. When this art so thoroughly 
 French began, as we shall see, to be cultivated in 
 England, it was the outcome of the Renaissance, not 
 of the Conquest. Hundreds of volumes of mediaeval 
 English manuscripts preserve plenty of sermons, 
 theological treatises, epic-romances, poems of all sorts ; 
 but the student will not discover one single original 
 prose story to set by the side of the many examples 
 extant in French literature ; nothing resembling the 
 French stories of the thirteenth century, so delightful 
 in their frank language, their brisk style and simple 
 grace, in which we find a foretaste of the prose of 
 Le Sage and Voltaire ; nothing to be compared, even 
 at a distance, in the following century, with the narra- 
 tives of Froissart, who, it is true, applied to history his 
 genius for pure romance ; nothing like the anecdotes 
 so well told by the Knight of La Tour Landry for 
 the instruction of his daughters ; nothing that at all 
 approaches " Petit Jehan de Saintre " or the " Cent 
 
48 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 nouvelles " in the fifteenth century. To find English 
 prose tales of the Middle Ages we should be forced 
 to look through the religious manuscripts where they 
 figure under the guise of examples for the reader's 
 edification. A very troublesome search it is, but not 
 always a vain one ; some of these stories deserve to be 
 included among the most memorable legends of the 
 Middle Ages. To give an idea of them I will quote 
 the story of a scholar of Paris, after Caesarius, but 
 told in far better style by the holy hermit Rolle de 
 Hampole, in the fourteenth century. It is short and 
 little known : 
 
 " A scolere at Pares had done many full synnys the 
 whylke he had schame to schryfe hym of. At the 
 last gret sorowe of herte ouercome his schame, & 
 when he was redy to schryfe till (to) the priore of the 
 abbay of Saynte Victor, swa mekill contricione was in 
 his herte, syghynge in his breste, sobbynge in his 
 throtte, that he moghte noghte brynge a worde furthe. 
 Thane the prioure said till hym : Gaa & wrytte thy 
 synnes. He dyd swa, & come a-gayne to the prioure 
 and gafe hym that he hade wretyn, ffor yitt he myghte 
 noghte schryfe hym with mouthe. The prioure saghe 
 the synnys swa grette that thurghe leve of the scolere 
 he schewede theyme to the abbotte to hafe conceyle. 
 The abbotte tuke that byll that ware wrettyn in & 
 lukede thare one. He fande na thynge wretyn & 
 sayd to the priour : What may here be redde thare 
 noghte es wretyne .? That saghe the priour & 
 wondyrd gretly & saide : Wyet ye that his synns 
 here warre wretyn & I redde thaym, bot now I see 
 that God has sene hys contrycyone & forgyfes hym 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 49 
 
 all his synnes. This the abbot & the prioure tolde 
 the scolere, & he, with gret joy thanked God." ^ 
 
 But instances of this kind of story lack those 
 features of gaiety and satirical observation of which 
 French stories are full, and which are an important ^^ 
 element of the novel. Some are mystical ; others, in 
 which the devil figures on whom the saints play rude 
 tricks, are intended to raise a loud laugh ; in both 
 cases real life is equally distant. A keen faculty of ,^ 
 observation however existed in the nation ; foibles of </ 
 human nature did not escape the English writer's eye 
 any more than its higher aspirations. This is illus- 
 trated not only by Chaucer, who chose to write 
 poetry, but by such men as Nigel Wireker - and 
 Walter Map who chose to write Latin. 3 But not 
 
 ' " English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole," ed. 
 G. G. Perry, London, Early English Text Society, 1866, 8vo. p. 7. 
 Rolle de Hampole died in 1349. Csesarius' tale (Caesarius Heister- 
 bacensis, d. 1240) begins thus: " Erat ibi juvenis quidam in 
 studio, qui, suggerente humani generis inimico, talia quaedam 
 peccata commiserat, quae, obstante erubescentia, nulli hominum 
 confiteri potuit : cogitans tamen quae malis prccparata sunt tormenta 
 gehenn^e, & quae bonis abscondita sunt gaudia perennis vitae, 
 timens etiam quotidie judicium Dei super se, intus torquebatur 
 morsu conscientiae & foris tabescebat in copore . . . ." ("Illus- 
 trium miraculorum . . . libri xii.," bk. ii. ch. 10). 
 
 2 " Speculum Stultorum," in " Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets . . . 
 of the Twelfth Century" ed. Th. Wright, London, 1872, 2 
 vols. 8vo. 
 
 3 " Gualteri Mapes De nugis curialium distinctiones quinque," 
 ed. Th. Wright, Camden Society, 1850, 4to. Part IV. of this 
 work contains the celebrated "Disuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de 
 •ducenda uxore," long attributed to St. Jerome, and one of the 
 principal text-books of the authors of satires against women during 
 the Middle Ages. It was well known to the Wife of Bath, who 
 held it in special abomination. 
 
50 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 one English author before the Renaissance employed 
 such gifts in writing prose studies of real Ufe in his 
 native tongue. Owing to the Conquest a certain 
 discredit seemed to rest for generations on England's 
 original language. Long after an English nation, 
 rich in every sort of glory had come into being, writers 
 are to be found hesitating to use the national idiom. 
 This circumstance is chiefly noticeable in prose where 
 the use of a foreign tongue offers less difficulties 
 than in poetry. Prose was less cultivated in England 
 even so late as the commencement of the sixteenth 
 century than in France during the thirteenth. At the 
 time of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More, the wittiest 
 Englishman of his day, whose English style was 
 admirable and who moreover loved the language of 
 his native land, wishing to publish a romance of social 
 satire, the " Utopia," ^ wrote it in Latin. It is one of 
 the oldest examples in modern literature of that species 
 of book which includes at a later date the story of 
 Gargantua and Pantagruel, Bacon's '* New Atlantis/' 
 Cyrano de Bergerac's " Etats et empires de la lune 
 et du soleil," Fenelon's " Telemaque,*' *' Gulliver's 
 
 ' The "Utopia" was composed in 1515-1516, and was pub- 
 lished anonymously at Louvain, under the title : " Libellus vcre 
 aureus, nee minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reipublicae^ 
 statu . . . cura P. ^gidii . . . nunc primum . . . editus." Louvain 
 1 5 16, 4to. It was translated into English by Ralph Robinson in 
 155 1, and this translation has been reprinted by Arber, London,. 
 1869. Another famous novel of the same class was written in the 
 following century also in Latin by another Englishman, or rather 
 Scotchman, the celebrated "Argenis" of John Barclay (1582-1621). 
 It was translated into English by Sir Robert Le Grys, 1629, 4to. 
 Queen Elizabeth appears in it under the name of Hyanisbe. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 51 
 
 Travels," Voltaire's tales, &c. More's use of Latin 
 is to be the more regretted since his romance exhibits 
 infinite resources of spirit and animation ; of all his 
 writings it is the one that best justifies his great reputa- 
 tion for wit and enlightenment. His characters are living 
 men and their conversation undoubtedly resembles that 
 which delighted him in the society of his friend Erasmus. 
 The subject of the book is the quest for the best 
 possible government. More and his companions meet 
 at Antwerp one of the fellow voyagers of Amerigo 
 Vespucci the famous godfather of America, and they 
 question him concerning the civilizations he has seen. 
 " He likewise very willingly tolde us of the same. 
 But as for monsters, by cause they be no newes, of 
 them we were nothyng inquisitive. For nothyng is 
 more easye to bee founde, then bee barkynge Scyllaes, 
 ravenyng Celenes, & Lestrigones devourers of people, 
 & suche lyke great, & incredible monsters. But to 
 find citisens ruled by good & holsome lawes, that is 
 an exceding rare, & harde thyng." ^ By good luck 
 Amerigo's companion had discovered an empire which 
 presented this admirable quality : the island of Utopia, 
 or the country of '^ Nowhere." This country became 
 immediately famous all over Europe, so much so that 
 Pantagruel would not look to any other place for 
 immigrants to people his newly conquered kingdom 
 of Dispodie. There he transported " Utopians to 
 the number of 9,876,543,210 men," says Rabelais, 
 with his usual care for exact numbers, '' without speak- 
 ing of women and little children." He did so to 
 " refresh, people, and adorn the said country otherwise 
 ^ Ralph Robinson's translation {ut supra). 
 4 
 
52, THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 badly enough inhabited and desert in many places.'' ^ 
 His acting in this manner was only natural, for, as is 
 well known, connections existed between his family and 
 the Utopians, his own mother Badebec, the wife of 
 Gargantua, being '' daughter to the king of the Amau- 
 rotes in Utopia." - 
 
 A hundred years later, something of this want of 
 confidence in the future of English prose still lingered. 
 Bacon, after having employed it in his essays and 
 treatises, was seized with anxiety and kept in his pay 
 secretaries with whose help he meant to translate all his 
 works into Latin, in order to assure himself of their 
 permanence. 
 
 III. 
 
 Some years before Sir Thomas More wrote his 
 "Utopia," an Englishman, who had long lived abroad 
 and had there learnt a new industry, unknown in his 
 own land, returned to England and settled in West- 
 minster. He and his trade were destined to exercise 
 a very important influence on the diflnasion of literature, 
 and especially on the development of romances. His 
 art was printing, and his name was Caxton. We can 
 iudge of the amazement he produced among his 
 countrymen by his new art, from his own wonder ; 
 
 } " Pantagruel, apres avoir entierement conqueste le pays de 
 Dispodie, en icelluy transporta une colonic des Utopiens, en 
 riombre de 9,876,543,210 hommes, sans les femmes et petitz enfans, 
 artisans de tous mesticrs et professeurs de toutes sciences liberales, 
 polir ledict pays refraischir, peupler et aorner, mal aultrement 
 habite et desert en grande partie " (" Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. i). 
 
 2 *' Pantagruel," bk. ii. ch. 2. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 53 
 
 one of his prefaces shows clearly enough how ex- 
 traordinary his performance seemed to himself: "And 
 for as moche, says he, as in the wrytyng of the same 
 my penne is worn, myn hande wery & not stedfast, 
 myn eyen dimed with overmoche lokyng on the whit 
 paper & my corage not so prone & redy to laboure 
 as hit hath ben & that age crepeth on me dayly 
 & febleth all the bodye, & also be cause I have 
 promysid to diverse gentilmen & to my frendes to 
 addresse to hem as hastely as I myght this sayd book, 
 therfore I have practysed & lerned at my grete 
 charge & dispense to ordeyne this said book in 
 prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here 
 see, & is not wreton with penne & ynke as other 
 bokes ben, to thende that every man may have them 
 attones, ffor ail the bookes of this storye named the 
 recule of the historyes of troyes thus enpryntid as ye 
 here see were begonne in oon day & also fynysshid in 
 oon day." ^ 
 
 The list of his books shows that he was no less 
 intent upon diverting his customers than upon im- 
 proving their knowledge and morals. The part 
 allotted to fiction was extremely large, not perhaps 
 quite so extensive as that occupied by the novel 
 proper in the publishers' lists of to-day ; but regarding 
 it as merely a beginning, it must be admitted to be 
 very promising. Not only did he print the tales of 
 Chaucer, the confessions of Gower, with their 
 numerous stories, several poems of Lydgate, a number 
 of mediaeval epic romances in verse, but he also issued 
 
 ^ " Recueyll of the historyes of Troye," Bruges, 1474 ? 
 Epilogue to Book iii. 
 
54 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 from his press the prose story of " Reynard the Fox," 
 which contains so much excellent dialogue and so many 
 fine scenes of comedy ; and, besides, the most remark- 
 able prose romance that had yet been written in the 
 English language, the famous *' Morte d' Arthur " of 
 A Sir Thomas Malory. Its appearance marks an epoch 
 in the history of English romance literature. 
 
 Why, among so many famous works, should this pub- 
 lication have obtained the preference and the attention 
 of the printer ? Caxton states his reasons very clearly : 
 firstly, for him as for Layamon, Arthur is a national 
 hero, and Englishmen should be proud of him : then 
 again he is one of the nine worthies of the world. 
 These nine dignitaries were, as is well known, three 
 pagans. Hector, Alexander and Caesar ; three Jews, 
 Joshua, David and Judas Maccabasus ; three Christians, 
 Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon. And 
 lastly, Caxton considered his undertaking justified by 
 the great lessons that were to be drawn from Arthur's 
 example : " And I accordyng to my copye have doon 
 sette it in enprynte to the entente that noble men may 
 see & lerne the noble actes chyvalrye the jentyl & 
 vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in tho dayes 
 by whyche they came to honour & how they that 
 were vycious were punysshed & ofte put to shame 
 & rebuke, humbly byseching al noble lordes & 
 ladyes wyth al other estates of what estate or degree 
 they been of, that shal see & rede in this sayd book 
 & werke, that they take the good & honest actes in 
 their remembraunce & to folowe the same. Wherein 
 they shalle fynde many joyous & playsaunt hystoryes 
 & noble & renomed actes of humanyte gentylnesse & 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 55 
 
 chyualryes. For herein may be seen noble chyvalrye, 
 curtosye, humanyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, 
 frendshyp, cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue & synne. 
 Doo after the good & leve the evyl & it shal brynge 
 you to good fame & renommee." ^ 
 
 Everything, in fact, is to be found in Malory's book ; 
 everything, except those marks of character which 
 transform traditional types into living personalities ; 
 everything except those analyses of feeling which are 
 for us the primary raison d'etre of the modern novel 
 and its chief attraction. The old knight's book is a 
 vast compilation in which he has melted down and 
 mixed together a large number of tales about Arthur, 
 Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, Percival, and all the 
 Knights of the Round Table. An infinite number 
 of short chapters, written ' in a clear and quiet style, 
 possessing no other charm than its simplicity, tell of 
 the loves and of the fights of these famous men ; " of 
 theyr marvaylous enquestes and adventures," as Caxton 
 has it, "thachyevyng of the Sangraal, -and in thende 
 the dolorous deth and departyng out of thys world of 
 
 ^ '' Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory," ed. O. Sommer 
 and Andrew Lang, London, 1889, 2 vol. 8vo. Caxton's Preface, 
 p. 3. The book was originally published at Westminster, in 1485, 
 under the title : "The noble and ioyous book entytled Le Morte 
 Darthur notwythstondyng it treateth of the byrth, lyf and actes 
 of the sayd kyng Arthur of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table, 
 theyr marvayllous enquestes and adventures, thachyevyng of the 
 Sangraal, and in thende the dolorous deth and departyng out of 
 thys world of them al, whiche book was reduced into englysshe 
 by Syr Thomas Malory knyght." 
 
 It ends with the statement that it was printed and " fynysshed 
 in thabbey of Westmestre the last day of Juyl the yere of our lord 
 M cccc Ixxxv. Caxton me fieri fecit." 
 
56 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 them al.'^ Malory never made the slightest effort to 
 reach a grand style ; he did not think that there could 
 be any other method of writing than that of putting 
 on paper, without preparation, what first came into his 
 mind. Since he possessed neither a passionate tempera- 
 ment nor a wandering imagination, he tells, without 
 any apparent emotion, the most important of his 
 stories, even the last battle of his hero ^ and his final 
 disappearance, when he is borne by fairies into the 
 Vale, of Avilion. It is for sensitive hearts to weep 
 over these misfortunes, if they choose. As for him, 
 he goes on his way, telling tale after tale, in the same 
 clear and even voice ; but very rarely giving us his 
 confidence or opening to us his heart. 
 
 Once in the whole length of this immense work he 
 does impart to us his personal opinion on a question 
 of importance : in the twenty-fifth chapter of his 
 eighteenth book, Malory confesses what he thinks ot 
 love, and lays aside his usual reserve : and thus 
 furnishes the first attempt at analysis of feeling to be 
 found in the English prose romance. Malory declares 
 that every man should love God first and his mistress 
 afterwards ; and so long as a man does love his God 
 
 ^ " And then kyng Arthur smote syr mordred under the shelde 
 wyth a foyne of his spere thorughoute the body more than a 
 fadom. . And when syr mordred felte that he had hys dcthcs 
 wounde, he thryst hymself wyth the myght that he had up to the 
 bur of kyng Arthurs spere. And right so he smote his fader 
 Arthur wyth his swerde holden in bothe his handes, on the syde of 
 the heed, that the swerde persyd the helmet & the brayne panne, & 
 therwythall syr Mordred fyl starke deed to the erthe, & the nobyl 
 Arthur fyl in a swoune to the erthe & there swouncd ofte times " 
 (JJt supra, book xxi. ch. iv. p. 847). 
 
ROBERT THE DEVIL, ABOUT I5IO. 
 
 [A. 57. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 59 
 
 first, the other love seems to him to be not only 
 permissible but even commendable ; it is a virtue. 
 " Therfore, as may moneth floreth & floryssheth 
 in many gardyns, soo in lyke wyse, lete every man 
 of worship florysshe his herte in this world, fyrst unto 
 God & next unto the joye of them that he promysed 
 his feythe unto : for there was never worshypful man 
 or worshipfull woman but they loved one better than 
 another ... & suche love, I calle vertuous love." 
 But now-a-days, continues the old knight, little 
 suspecting that his grievance is one of all ages, 
 men cannot love seven-night but they must have 
 all their desires. The old love was not so. Men 
 and women could love together seven years, and no 
 wanton lusts were between them, and then was love, 
 truth and faithfulness. "And loo," Malory adds, 
 forgetting that his Lancelot and his Tristan waited 
 much less than seven years, " in lyke wyse was used 
 love in Kynge Arthurs dayes." ^ 
 
 Very strikingly does this view of love contrast 
 with the southern irrepressible impetuosities of young 
 Aucassin, who, considering, three centuries earlier, this 
 same question of holy and profane love, of earth' and 
 paradise, in the above-mentioned exquisite prose tale 
 which bears his name, simply alters the order of pre- 
 cedence afterwards adopted by good Sir Thomas : " Tell 
 me," says he, " where is the place so high in all the 
 world that Nicole te, my sweet lady and love, would 
 not grace it well ? If she were Empress of Con- 
 stantinople or of Germany, or Queen of France or 
 
 ^ " Le Morte Darthur," ed. Sommer and Lang, London, 1889, 
 8vo., book xviii. ch. 25, p. 771. 
 
6o THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 England, it were little enough for her. ... In Paradise 
 what have I to win ? Therein I seek not to enter, but 
 only to have Nicolete my sweet lady that I love so 
 well. . . . For in Paradise go none but . . . these 
 same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who 
 all day and night cower continually before the altars, 
 and in the crypts. . . . These be they that go into 
 Paradise ; with them have I naught to make. But into 
 Hell would I fain go ; for into Hell fare the goodly 
 clerks and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and 
 
 great wars And thither pass the sweet ladies. 
 
 . . . Thither goes the gold and the silver and cloth 
 of vair, and cloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and 
 the prince of this world. With these I would gladly 
 go, let me but have with me Nicolete my sweetest 
 lady." I 
 
 No one perceived the coldness of Malory's stories. 
 He wrote for a youthful and enthusiastic people ; it 
 was a period of new birth throughout Europe, the 
 period of the spring-time of modern literature, the 
 epoch of the Renaissance. There was no need to 
 depict in realistic fashion the passions and stirrings of 
 the heart in order to excite the emotion of the reader ; 
 a relation of events sufficed for him ; his own imagina- 
 tion did the rest, and enlivened the dull-painted canvas 
 with visions of every colour. The book had as much 
 success as Caxton could have expected ; it was con- 
 stantly reprinted during the sixteenth century, and 
 enchanted the contemporaries of Surrey, of Elizabeth, 
 and of Shakespeare. It was in vain that the serlous- 
 
 ^ " Aucassin and Nicolete/' done into English by Andrew Lang, 
 London, 1887, pp. 6, 1 1, and 12. 
 
Y« NOBLE HELYAS KNYGHTE OF THE SWANNE, ' ABOUT I550 
 
 [/. 61. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 63 
 
 minded Ascham condemned it; it survived his con- 
 demnation as the popularity of Robin Hood survived 
 the sermons of Latimer. Vainly did Ascham denounce 
 " Certaine bookes of Chevalrie. ... as one for 
 example, Morte Arthure : the whole pleasure of 
 whiche booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in 
 open mans slaughter, & bold bawdrye. In which 
 booke those be counted the noblest knightes, that do 
 kill most men without any quarell, & commit fowlest 
 aduoulteres by sutlest shiftes." ^ 
 
 When the people became more thoughtful or more 
 exacting in the matter of analysis, they neglected the 
 old book. After 1634, two hundred years passed 
 without a reprint of it. In our time it has met 
 with an aftermath of success, not only among the 
 curious, but among a class of readers who are not 
 more exacting than Caxton's clients, and who are 
 far more interested in fact than in feeling. Children 
 form this class of readers ; in the present century 
 Malory's book has been many times re-edited for them, 
 and it is to Sir Thomas Malory, rather than to 
 Tennyson, Swinburne or Morris, that many English 
 men and women of to-day owe their earliest acquaint- 
 ance with King Arthur and his Knights. 
 
 Caxton's example was followed by many ; printing 
 presses multiplied, and with most of them fiction kept 
 its ground. A new life was infused into old legendary 
 heroes, and they began again, impelled not by the 
 genius of new writers, but simply by the printer's 
 skill, their never ending journeys over the world. 
 Their stories were published in England in small 
 
 ^ "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 4to. 
 
64 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 handy volumes, often of a very good appearance, and 
 embellished with woodcuts. There were prose stories 
 of " Robert the devyll," and there were verse stories 
 of "Sir Guy of Warwick" and of *'Syr Eglamoure of 
 Artoys." Many of the cuts are extremely picturesque 
 and excellently suited to the general tone of the story. 
 On the title-page the hero of the tale usually sits 
 on his horse, and indomitable he looks with his 
 sword drawn, his plume full spread, his mien defiant. 
 A faithful squire sometimes follows him, sometimes 
 only his dog ; between the feet of the horse fabulous 
 plants spread their unlikely leaves, and give the sole 
 and very doubtful clue to the country in which the 
 knight is travelling, certainly a very desolate and 
 unpleasant one. In this fashion does Duke Robert 
 of Normandy travel, and so does Eglamoure, and 
 Tryamoure, and Bevis, and Isumbras. In the same 
 series too is to be seen *' Y^ noble Helyas, Knyght of 
 the Swanne," drawn by the said swan, a somewhat 
 wooden bird, not very different from his successor 
 of a later age whom we are accustomed to see swim- 
 ming across the stage to the accompaniment of Wagner's 
 famous music. I 
 
 The means by which English printers supplied them- 
 selves with these engravings, is a mystery that they 
 
 ^ " Robert the deuyll," London, Wynkyn de Worde, I 510 ? 8vo. 
 "Syr Tryamoure," " Syr Beuys of Hampton," "Syr Isumbras," "Syr 
 Degore," "The Knight of the Swanne," " Virgilius," and many 
 others were published by W. Copland about 1550. " Guy of 
 Warwick" was printed in the same style about 1560, "Syr 
 Eglamoure of Artoys," about 1570. Many others were at this 
 period printed in the same way with engravings from the same 
 wood blocks. 
 
" Then went Guy to fay re Phelis." 
 SIR GUY OF WARWICK," ABOUT I560. [/. 65. 
 
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE. 67 
 
 have kept to themselves. Many of the blocks were, 
 very probably, purchased in the Low Countries. A very 
 few are almost certainly of English manufacture, and 
 among them are Caxton's illustrations of the Canterbury 
 Tales : on this account we have given a fac-simile of the 
 most important of them, representing the pilgrims 
 seated round the table at the '^ Tabard '' prior to 
 starting on their immortal journey. What is certain is 
 that many of these wood-block portraits of knights, 
 supplied to the printers by English or Dutch artists, 
 underwent many successive christenings. The same 
 knight, with the same squire, the same dog and the 
 same fabulous little wooden plants between the legs 
 of the horse was sometimes Romulus and sometimes 
 Robert of Normandy. In one book a rather fine en- 
 graving of a lord and a lady in a garden, represents 
 Guy of Warwick courting " fayre Phelis," ^ but in 
 another book the same engraving does duty for '^ La 
 bel Pucell " and the knight " Graund Amoure." 2 It 
 may be observed, in passing, that these romances might 
 be soundly criticized without much study of their con- 
 tents by simply inspecting their illustrations. Full as 
 they are of extraordinary inventions and adventures, 
 unrestricted as their authors were by considerations of 
 what was possible or real, some dozen well-chosen 
 engravings seem enough to illustrate any number of 
 them. For, alas, there is nothing more stale and more 
 
 ^ London, 1560? 410. 
 
 ^ "The history of Graund Amoure and la bel Pucell, called 
 the Pastime of pleasure," by Stephen Hawes, London, Tottell, 
 1555, 4to. The same engraving embellishes also " The Squyr of 
 Lowe Degre," published by W. Copland, &c. 
 
68 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 subject to repetitions than these series of extraordinary 
 adventures ; all their heroes are the same hero, and 
 whether he was following the philosophical turn of his 
 mind, or merely the thrifty orders of his printer, the 
 engraver was well justified in leaving as he did in most 
 of his drawings an empty scroll over the head of his 
 knights, for the publisher to label them at will, Robert 
 the Devil or Romulus. 
 
 We are thus fairly advanced into the sixteenth 
 century ; the Renaissance has come ; before long 
 Spenser will sing of the Fairy Queen and Shakespeare 
 will leave his native Stratford to present to a London 
 audience the loves of Juliet and Romeo. Scarcely any 
 sign of improvement appears yet in the art of novel- 
 writing ; nothing but mediaeval romances continue to 
 issue from the press ; it is even difficult to foresee an 
 epoch in which something analogous to the actual novel 
 might be produced in England. Contrary to what was 
 taking place in France at the same time, that period 
 seemed far off. In reality, however, it was near at 
 hand ; the great age of English literature, the age of 
 Elizabeth and of Shakespeare, was about to furnish, 
 at least in the rough draft, the first specimens of the 
 true novel. 
 
 LEO. 
 
DRAWING T?Y ISAAC OLIVER, AFTER AN ITALIAN MODEL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 TUDOR TIMES, THE FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 
 
 I. 
 
 ONE of the most remarkable effects of the Re- 
 naissance was the awakening of a slumbering . 
 curiosity. The regime of the Middle Ages was 
 just ended ; its springs were exhausted, its mysteries 
 unveiled, its terrors ridiculed. Armour was beginning 
 to be thought troublesome ; the towers of the strong 
 castles, dark and too much confined for the pleasures of 
 life ; the reasonings of the schoolmen had grown old : 
 
c 
 
 70 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 blind faith was out of fashion ; a world was ending, 
 and all that was sinking with it appeared in the eyes of 
 the young generation, out of season and " tedious as a 
 twice-told tale." The rupture between the Middle Ages 
 and modern times was complete in certain countries, 
 partial in others, and consequently the Renaissance had 
 very different results among the various peoples of 
 Europe. But the same characteristic symptoms of an 
 eager, newly awakened curiosity manifested itself in 
 all. There was no longer question of continuing, but 
 of comparing and of discovering. What did the ancient 
 Greeks and the old Romans say.^ What do our neigh- 
 bours think .^^ What are their forms of style, their 
 recent inventions ? England competed with France in 
 her youthful curiosity, and English poets and travellers 
 following the example of their rivals beyond the seas, 
 " plundered " (in the words of Joachim du Bellay's 
 famous manifesto i), not only Athens and Rome, but 
 Florence, Paris, Venice, and all the enlightened towns 
 of France, Italy, and Spain. 
 
 This curiosity spurred on the English in the diff^erent 
 paths of human knowledge and activity with an 
 audacity worthy of the Scandinavian Vikings. After 
 having destroyed the Armada, they were going to burn 
 the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, to discover new lands in 
 America and to give them the name of *' Virginia " in 
 
 ^ "La doncques, Fran9oys, marchez couraigeusement vers ceste 
 superbe cite romaine ; & des serves depouilles d'elle, comme vous 
 avez fait plus d'une fois, ornez vos temples & autelz. . . , Pillez 
 moi sans conscience les sacrez thesors de ce temple Delphique 
 . . . Vous souvienne de vostre ancienne Marseille, secondes 
 Athenes ! " ("La DefFense et illustration de la langue Fran9oyse," 
 
 1549)- 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 71 
 
 honour of their queen, and to attempt the impossible 
 task of discovering a way to China through the icy 
 regions of the North Pole. The fine gentlemen and the 
 fine wits, even the lack-dinner, lack-penny Bohemians 
 of literature crossed the Channel, the Alps, and the 
 Pyrenees, seeking, they too, for gold mines to work, 
 gathering ideas, listening to stories, noting down recent 
 discoveries, and often appropriating the elegant vices 
 and the light morals of the southern nations. C " An 
 Italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate '^ is a / 
 popular proverb which quiet home-keeping men were / 
 never tired of repeating. 
 
 Kindly Ascham who had personally visited Italy, 
 had come back as much horrified with the sights he 
 had seen as Luther had been when he returned from 
 Rome. Of the masterpieces of art, of madonnas and 
 palaces he has little to say ; but he has much to note 
 concerning the loose morals of the inhabitants. He 
 beseeches his compatriots not to continue to visit this 
 dangerous country : they will meet " Circe " there, and 
 will certainly greatly enjoy themselves ; but, behold, they 
 will come back to their native land with an ass's head 
 and a swine's belly. In Italy, according to his experi- 
 ence, a man may sin to his heart's content and no one 
 will in any way interfere. He is free to do so, " as it 
 is free in the citie of London to chose without all 
 blame, whether a man lust to weare shoo or pantocle." 
 Yet he speaks of what he has seen with his own eyes r 
 " I was once in Italie my selfe ; but I thanke God my 
 abode there was but ix dayes. And yet I sawe in 
 that little tyme in one citie more libertie to sinne than 
 ever I heard tell of in our noble citie of London in ix. 
 
7 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 yeare. . . The lord maior of London, being but a 
 civill officer, is commonlie for his tyme more diligent in 
 punishing sinne . . . than all the bloodie inquisitors in 
 Italic be in seaven yeare." 
 
 When Englishmen come back from Italy th ey are^ 
 full of smiles ; they have a ready wit, and delight jti_ 
 vain talk. They give up all idea of getting married ; 
 love and no marriage is their only wish ; they arrange 
 assignations ; they behave most improperly. " They 
 be the greatest makers of love, the daylie daliers, with 
 such pleasant wordes, with such smilyng & secret 
 countenances, with such signes, tokens, wagers, pur- 
 posed to be lost before they were purposed to be 
 made, with bargaines of wearing colours, floures & 
 herbesi to breede occasion of often meeting of him 
 & her & bolder talking of this & that, &c." ^ 
 /^ According to some, travelling increased, in a certain 
 / number of Englishmen, the tendency we have already 
 \^ noticed, to feel contempt towards their mother tongue. 
 There are persons, wrote George Pettie in 1581, "who 
 will set light by my labours, because I write in English : 
 and those are some nice travailours who retourne home 
 with such queasie stomachs that nothing will downe with 
 r-^ them but French, Italian or Spanish . . . They count 
 ^ £our tongue] barren : they count it barbarous : they 
 count it unworthy to be accounted of." The more 
 reason, thinks Pettie, to try to polish it ; if it is 
 barren it can be enriched by borrowing from other 
 languages, especially the Latin : " It is indeed the readie 
 
 ^ "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 410, p. 26; Arber's 
 reprint, 1870, 410, pp. 83, et seq. Ascham had died in 1568 ; this 
 "work was published by his widow. 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL 73 
 
 waie to inrich our tongue and make it copious ; and it 
 is the waie which all tongues have taken to inrich them- 
 selves." I Pettie, as we see, wished Du Bellay's advice 
 to be followed, and Rome to be " plundered." 
 X But Ascham's pleading, though many others spoke 
 to the same effect,- had very little result. Learned 
 and well informed as he was, his ** conservatism " in 
 all things was so intense that much might be laid to 
 the account of this tendency of his mind. Had he not 
 written that " his soul had such an horror of English 
 or Latin books containing new doctrines that, except 
 the psalter and the New Testament, this last, too, in 
 the Greek text, he had never taken any book, ' either 
 small or big,' to use Plato's words, concerning Christian 
 religion " } 3 Had he not recommended the bow as, 
 even in those gunpowder times, the best weapon in 
 war .? " If I were of authority, I would counsel all 
 the gentlemen and yeomen of England not to change 
 it -with any other thing, how good soever it seems to 
 
 ^ Preface dated 1581 to "Civile Conversation," London, 1586, 
 4to. 
 
 2 The novelist Greene, for example, an^ the novelist Lyly. 
 The latter writes in his "Euphues," 1579 : "Let not your mindes 
 be caryed away with vaine delights, as with travailing into farre & 
 straunge countries, wher you shal see more wickednesse then learn 
 vertue & wit" (Arber's reprint, 1868, p. 152). As for Greene, 
 see infra^ chap. iv. One of the most curious of these denunciations 
 of travel was the "Quo vadisr a juste censure of travel," by Bishop 
 Joseph Hall, 1617, izmo. The author demonstrates that most of 
 the vices of the English are of foreign importation, chiefly from 
 France and Italy ; good qualities alone are native and national. 
 The best thing to do, then, is to keep at home. 
 
 3 Letter (in Latin) to the Archbishop of York, 1544. "Works," 
 ed. Giles, London, 1865, 4 vol. i6mo, vol. i. p. 35. 
 
 5 
 
74 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 be ; but that still, according to the old wont of 
 England, youths should use it for the most honest 
 pastime in peace, that men might handle it as a most 
 sure weapon in war." ^ The other " strong weapons " 
 must not lead men to forget this one : a thing they 
 have nevertheless done. 
 
 Nothing dismayed by the threat of the dire con- 
 sequences of Circe's wiles, travellers eager to see her 
 crowded to the south. They continued not to 
 " exchewe the way to Circes court, but go & ryde 
 & runne & flie thether." - No education was com- 
 plete without a sojourn on the continent. Surrey, 
 Wyatt, Sidney, penniless Robert Greene, and hundreds 
 if not thousands of others went there. There was an 
 eagerness to see and to learn that no sight and no 
 knowledge could satisfy, that no threat nor sermon 
 could stop. Paris, Venice, Rome, Vienna, the Low 
 Countries, received an ever-increasing flood of English 
 visitors. 
 
 II. 
 
 England in her turn, not to mention the classics 
 of antiquity that were being speedily translated, was 
 flooded with French, Spanish, and Italian books, again 
 to the great dismay of good Ascham. If " Morte 
 d' Arthur " was bad, nothing worse could well be 
 imagined than Italian books in general. *' Ten 
 * Morte d'Arthures ' do not the tenth part so much 
 harme as one of these bookes made in Italie and 
 translated in England." They are to be found "in 
 
 ^ " Toxophilus," 1545, in "Works,"' ed. Giles, vol. ii. p. 5 
 2 " Scholemaster," 1570, Arber's reprint, p. 77. 
 
I 
 
 TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 75 
 
 every shop in London," and each of them can do 
 more mischief than ten sermons at St. Paul's Cross 
 can do good. They introduce into the land such 
 refinements in vice '* as the single head of an English- 
 .man is not hable to invent.*' ^ 
 
 But, if unable to invent, the English seemed at least 
 rdetermined to enjoy and imitate, for translating and^^ 
 adapting went on at a marvellous pace. Boccaccio's ^^^ 
 " Filocopo," 2 for instance, to speak only of the better 
 known of these works, was translated in 1567, his 
 
 ' " The Scholemaster," Arber's reprint, pp. 79, 80. 
 
 ' "A pleasant disport of divers noble personages . . . intituled 
 Philocopo . . . englished by H. G[ifFord ?]," London, 1567, 4 to; 
 " Amorous Fiametta, wherein is sette downe a catalogue of all & 
 singular passions of love and jealosie incident to an enamoured yong 
 gentlewoman . . . done into English by B. Giovano [/>., B. Young]," 
 London, 1587; "The Decameron, containing an hundred pleasant 
 novels," London, 1620, fol. (with woodcuts); "The Civile Con- 
 versation . . . translated ... by G. Pettie . . . and B. Yong," 
 London, 1586, 4to; " The lamentations of Amyntas . . . translated 
 out of latine into english hexameters," by Abraham Fraunce, London, 
 1587, 4to; "Godfray of Bulloigne, or the recoverie of Hierusalem 
 , . . translated by R. C[arew] . . . imprinted in both languages," 
 London, 1594; "The courtier of Count Baldesar Castilio . . . 
 done into English by Th. Hobby," London, 1588, 8vo (contains an 
 Italian, English and French text) ; " Diana of George of Monte- 
 mayor, translated by B. Yong," London, 1598, fol. Among other 
 translations three of the most important were Lorc^Berners' " Froys- 
 shart," " translated out of Frenche into our maternall Englysshe 
 tonge," 1522, North's translation of Plutarch after the French of 
 Amyot (1579), and Florio's translation of Montaigne, 1603, fol., 
 which were well known to the dramatists, and went through several 
 editions. The British Museum possesses a copy of Florio's Mon- 
 taigne, which was the property of Ben Jonson. A far more satis- 
 factory translation of the same author was made by Cotton, 
 1685-6, 3 vol. 8vo. 
 
76 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 *' Amorous Fiametta, wherein Is sette downe a cata- 
 logue of all and singuler passions of love," in 1587 ; 
 his "Decameron" in 1620. Guazzo's "Civile Con- 
 versation" was, translated in 1586 ; Tasso's '' Amynta'*' 
 in 1587, and his '' Recoverie of Hierusalem " in 1594. 
 Castiglione's " Courtier . . . very necessary and pro- 
 fitable for young gentlemen abiding in court, palace 
 or place" was published in English in 1588. It waa 
 " profitable " in a rather different sense from the one 
 Ascham would have given the word, for it contains 
 lengthy precepts concerning assignations and love- 
 making : " In my minde, the way which the courtier 
 ought to take, to make his love knowne to the woman> 
 me think should be to declare them in figures and 
 tokens more than in wordes. For assuredly there is 
 otherwhite a greater affection of love perceived in a 
 sigh, in a respect, in a feare, than. in a thousand wordes. 
 Afterwarde, to make the ey^es the trustie messengers 
 that may carrie the Ambassades of the hart." ^ Many 
 heroes in the English novels we shall have to study 
 were apparently well read in Castiglione's " Courtier." 
 Montemayor's Spanish " Diana," a tale of princes and 
 shepherds, . well known to Sidney, was published in. 
 1598. Ariosto's ''Orlando furioso" appeared in 1591,, 
 in a magnificently illustrated edition, and was dedicated 
 to the Queen. The engravings, though sometimes said 
 to be English, were in fact printed from the Italian 
 plates of Girolamo Porro, of Padua, and had been 
 used before in Italy. 2 Their circulation in England 
 
 ^ Sig. F. f. I. 
 
 2 " Orlando Furioso, in English heroical verse," by John 
 Harington, London, 1591, fol. The plates were used in the 
 
FRONTISPIECE TO HARINGTON S TRANSLATION OF ARIOSTO, I59I, 
 , BY COXON AND GIROLAMO PORRO. [/. 77. 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 79 
 
 is none the less remarkable, and the influence such 
 a pubHcation may have had in the difl^sing of Italian 
 tastes in this country cannot be exaggerated. For 
 those who had not been able to leave their native 
 land, it was the best revelation yet placed before the 
 public of the art of the Renaissance. That it was 
 an important undertaking and a rather risky one, 
 the translator, John Harington, was well aware ; for 
 he prefaced his book not only with his dedication 
 to the Queen, a sort of thing to which Ascham had 
 had great objection, ^ but by a " briefe apologie of 
 poetrie," especially of that of Ariosto. It must be 
 confessed that his arguments are -far from convincing, 
 and it would have been much better to have left 
 the thing alone than to have defended the moral 
 purposes of his author by such observations as these : 
 " It may be and is by some objected that, although 
 he writes christianly in some places, yet in some 
 other, he is too lascivious. . . . Alas if this be a 
 fault pardon him this one fault ; though I doubt too 
 many of you, gentle readers, wil be to exorable in this 
 
 Italian edition: "Orlando Furioso . . . novamente adornato di 
 Figure di Rame da Girolamo Porro Padouano," Venice, 1588, 
 4to. There is, however, a difference in the frontispiece, where 
 .the allegorical figure of Peace is replaced in the English edition 
 by a portrait of Harington, engraved by Thomas Coxon, who signed 
 .as if the whole frontispiece was by his hand. We give a reduced 
 facsimile of this frontispiece. 
 
 ^ He had written in his " Scholcmaster " : These "fond books" 
 are " dedicated over boldlie to vertuous and honourable personages, 
 the easelier to beguile simple and innocent wittes. It is pitie that 
 those which have authority and charge to allow and dissallow bookes 
 to be printed, be no more circumspect herein than they arc " 
 ^Ar.ber's reprint, p. 79). 
 
8o THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 point, yea me thinks I see some of you searching 
 already for those places of the booke and you are halfe 
 offended that I have not made some directions that you 
 might finde out and reade them immediately. But I 
 beseech you ... to read them as my author ment 
 them, to breed detestation and not delectation," &c. 
 And he then appends to his book a table, by means, 
 of which the gentle readers will have no trouble in 
 finding the objectionable passages enumerated in the 
 " Apologie " itself. 
 
 At the same time as translations proper, many 
 Imitations were published, especially imitations of 
 those shorter prose stories which were so numerous- 
 on the continent, and which had never been properly 
 acclimatized in England during the Middle Ages. Their 
 introduction into this country had a great influence on 
 the further development of the novel ; their success 
 showed that there was a public for such literature ; 
 hence the writing of original tales of this sort in 
 English. Among collections of foreign tales trans- 
 lated or imitated may be quoted Paynter's '' Palace 
 of Pleasure," 1566,1 containing histories from Boc- 
 caccio, Bandello, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Straparole, 
 the Spaniard Guevara, the Queen of Navarre, " and 
 other italian and french authours." One of them is 
 the history of '' Rhomeo and lulietta," from which 
 Shakespeare derived his immortal drama ; another tale 
 in the same collection supplied the plot of " All's 
 Well," and another the main events of " Measure for 
 Measure." Then came G. Fenton's " Tragicall Dis- 
 
 ^ Old Style. The dedication is dated : " Nere the Tower of 
 London the first of Januaric 1566." 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 8i 
 
 courses," 1567, finished at Paris and published by the 
 author as the first-fruits of his travels ; T. Fortescue's 
 *' Foreste or collection of histories . . . done out of 
 French," 1571 ; George Pettie's " Pettie Pallace of 
 Pettie his pleasure," 1576 ; Robert Smyth's " Straunge \ 
 and tragicall histories translated out of french," 1577 ; / 
 Barnabe Rich's '* Farewell to militarie profession," 
 1584, where Shakespeare found the plot of "Twelfth 
 Night " ; G. Whetstone's " Heptameron of civill 
 discourses," 1582; Ed. Grimeston's translation of the 
 " Admirable and memorable histories " of Goulart, 
 1607, and several others. 
 
 Besides such collections many stories were separately 
 translated and widely circulated. A number have been 
 lost, but some remain, such, for instance, as " The ad- 
 ventures passed by Master F. I.," adapted by Gascoigne 
 from the Italian, ^ or a certain '' Hystorie of Hamblet," 
 1608,2 which was destined to have great importance ^ 
 in English literature, or the '' Goodli history of the 
 . . . Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskane and' of her 
 lover Eurialus," a translation from the Latin of ^neas 
 Sylvius Piccolomini, and one of the most popular novels 
 of the time. It went through twenty-three editions in 
 the fifteenth century, and was eight times translated, 
 one of the French translations being made " a la priere 
 
 ^ First published in Gascoigne's " Hundrcth sundric flowres 
 bound up in one small poesie," London, 1572, 4to. 
 
 - Translated from the French of Belleforest, who had himself 
 translated it from Bandello. Though the date of the only known 
 edition of the story in English is later than the production of 
 " Hamlet," it seems to have been known before, and to have been 
 used by Shakespeare. See Furnivall's "Leopold Shakspere," p. Ixix. 
 
82 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 et requeste des dames." A German translation by 
 Nicolaus von Wyle is embellished with coloured wood- 
 cuts of the most naive and amusing description. Three 
 English translations were published, one before 1550, 
 another in 1669, and a third in 1741.^ 
 
 It is a tale of unlawflil love, and tells how Lucrece 
 a married lady of Sienna, fell in love with Eurialus, 
 
 THE KNIGHT EURIALUS GETTING SECRETLY INTO HIS LADY-I.OVE's 
 CHAMBER, 1477. 
 
 a knight of the court of the Emperor Sigismond. 
 It isj we are told, a story of real life under fictitious 
 names. The dialogue is easy, vigorous, and passionate, 
 and the translator has well succeeded in transmuting 
 
 ^ " The historic of . i . Plasidas and other rare pieces," ed. H. 
 H. Gibbs, Roxburghc Club, London, 1873, 4to. One of these 
 " pieces," prefaced with an important introduction, is the " Goodli 
 history *' of Lady Lucrece. 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL, %z 
 
 these qualities into His yet unbroken mother tongue. 
 Here, for instance, Lucrece is discussing with the 
 faithful Zosias the subject of her love. 
 
 " Houlde thy peace quod Lucrece, there is no feare 
 at all. Nothynge he feareth that feareth not death. . . 
 
 " Oh ! unhappie quod Zosias, thou shalt shame thy 
 house, and onlye of all thy kynne thou shake be adul- 
 teresse. Thinkest thou the deede can be secreate } A 
 thousand eyne are about thee. Thy mother, if shee do 
 accordinge, shall not suffer thy outrage to be prevye, 
 not thy husbande, not thy cousyns, not thy maidens, 
 ye, and thoughe thy servauntes woulde holde theyr 
 peace, the bestes would speake it, y^ dogges, the poostes 
 and the marble stones, and thoughe thou hyde all, thou 
 canste not hyde it from God that seeth all. . . 
 
 " I knowe quod she it is accordinge as thou sayest, 
 but the rage maketh me folow the worse. My mynde 
 knoweth howe I fall hedling, but furour hath overcom 
 and reygneth, and over all my thought ruleth love. I 
 am determined to folow the commandement of love. 
 Overmuche alas have I wrestled in vaine ; if thou have 
 pytie on me, carye my mesage." i 
 
 If the German translation was adorned with wood- 
 cuts, the English text had an embellishment of a greater 
 value ; it consisted in the conclusion of the tale as 
 altered by the English writer. In the Latin original 
 of the future pope, Pius II., Lucrece dies, and 
 Eurialus, having followed the Emperor back to 
 Germany, mourns for her ** till the time when Cassar 
 married him to a virgin of a ducal house not less 
 beautiful than chaste and wise," a very common-place 
 ^ JJt supra, p. 119. 
 
84 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 way of mourning for a dead mistress. This seemed 
 insufferable to the English translator. Faithful as he 
 is throughout, he would not take upon himself to 
 alter actual facts, yet he thought right to give a 
 different account of his hero's feelings : " But lyke as 
 he folowed the Emperoure so dyd Lucres folow hym 
 in hys sleep and suffred hym no nygtes rest, whom 
 when he knew hys true lover to be deed, meaved by 
 extreme dolour, clothed him in mournynge apparell, 
 and utterly excluded all comforte, and yet though the 
 Emperoure gave hym in manage a ryghte noble and 
 excellente Ladye, yet he never enjoyed after, but in 
 conclusyon pitifully wasted his palnRil lyfe." ^ 
 
 The greater the display of feeling in such tales of 
 Italian origin, the bitterer were the denunciations of 
 moral censors, and the greater at the same time their 
 popularity with the public. The quarrel did not abate 
 _for one minute during the whole of the century ; the 
 period is filled with condemnations of novels, dramas 
 and poems, answered by no less numerous apologies for 
 the same. The quarrel went on even beyond the 
 century, the adverse parties meeting with various 
 success as Cromwell ruled or Charles reigned ; it can 
 
 ^ Here is Piccolomini's text: " Sed ut ipse C^sarem, sic eum 
 Lucretia sequebatur in somnis, nullamque noctem sibi quietam 
 permittebat. Quam ut obiisse verus amator cognovit, magno dolorc 
 pcrmotus, lugubrem vestem recepit ; nee consolationem admisit, 
 nisi postquam Caesar ex ducalo sanguine virginem sibi cum formo- 
 sam turn castissimam atque prudcntem matrimonio junxit." The 
 French translator did not alter this end. It will be remembered 
 that the conclusion of Chaucer's " Troilus " compares in the same 
 way with Boccaccio's and with the French translator's, Pierre do 
 Bcauveau. 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. S5 
 
 scarcely be said to have ever been entirely dropped, and 
 the very same arguments used by Ascham against the 
 Italian books of his time are daily resorted to against 
 the French books of our own age. 
 
 Be this as it may, the Italian novels had the better of 
 it in Elizabethan times ; they were found not only " in 
 every shop," but in every house ; translations of them 
 were the daily reading of Shakespeare, and as they had 
 an immense influence not only in emancipating the 
 genius of the dramatists of the period, but, what was of 
 equal importance, in preparing an audience for them, 
 we may be permitted to look at them with a more 
 indulgent eye than the pre-Shakespearean moralists. 
 
 A curious list of books, belonging during this same 
 period (1575) to a man of the lower middle class, an 
 average member of a Shakespearean audience, has been 
 preserved for us. It is to be found in a very quaint 
 account of the Kenilworth festivities, sent by Robert 
 Laneham, a London mercer, to a brother mercer of the 
 same city. Laneham states how an acquaintance of 
 his. Captain Cox, a mason by trade, had in his posses- 
 sion, not only " Kyng Arthurz book, Huon of 
 Burdeaus, The foour suns of Aymon, Bevis of 
 Hampton," and many of those popular romances, illus- 
 trated with woodcuts of which a few specimens are to 
 be seen above, but also, mason as he was, the very 
 same Italian book, the " Lucres and Eurialus," of which 
 we have just given an account. ^ 
 
 With the diffusion of these small handy volumes 
 
 ^ "Captain Cox, his ballads and books, or Robert Laneham's 
 Letter . . . 1575," ed. F. J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society,. 
 1871, 8vo, p. 29. 
 
36 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 of tales of all kinds, from all countries, a quite 
 modern sort of literature, a literature for travellers, 
 was being set on foot. Manuscript books did not 
 easily lend themselves to be carried about ; but it 
 was otherwise with the printed pamphlets. Authors 
 began to recommend their productions as convenient 
 travelling companions, very much in the same manner 
 as the publishers recommend them now as suitable to 
 be taken to the Alps or to the seaside. Paynter, for 
 example, who circulated in England from the year 
 1566 his collection of tales translated or imitated from 
 Boccaccio and Bandello, Apuleius and Xenophon, the 
 Queen of Navarre, and Bonaventure Desperriers, Belle- 
 forest and Froissart, Guevara and many others, assures 
 his reader that : *'Pleasauntthey be for that they recreate, 
 and refreshe weried mindes defatigated either with 
 painefull travaile or with continuall care, occasioning 
 them to shunne and to avoid heavinesse of minde, 
 vaine fantasies and idle cogitations. Pleasaunt so well 
 abroad as at home, to avoide the griefe of winters 
 night and length of sommers day, which the travailers 
 on foote may use for a staye to ease their weried bodye, 
 and the journeours on horsback, for a chariot or lesse 
 painful meane of travaile in steade of a merie companion 
 to shorten the tedious toyle of wearie wayes." ^ 
 
 It is pleasant to think of Shakespeare in some 
 journey from Stratford to London, sitting under a 
 tree, and in order to forget " the tedious toyle of 
 wearie wayes," taking out of his pocket Paynter*s 
 book to dream of future Romeos and possible Helenas. 
 
 ^ Epistle to the reader, prefacing the " Palace of Pleasure." 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 87 
 
 III. 
 
 The Italian and French languages were held in great 
 honour ; both were taught at Oxford and Cambridge ; 
 the latter especially was of common use in England, 
 and this peculiarity attracted the notice of foreigners.. 
 " As regards their manners and mode of living, orna- 
 ments, garments and vestments," writes the Greek 
 Nicander Nucius, in 1545, *'they resemble the French 
 more than others, and, for the most part, they use 
 their language." ^ But besides these elegant languages, 
 Greek and Latin were becoming courtly. They were 
 taught in the schools and out of the schools ; the 
 nobles, following the example of King Henry VI 11. 
 and his children, made a parade of their knowledge. 
 Ignorance was no longer the fashion, no more than 
 the old towers without windows. The grave Erasmus- 
 went to hear Colet, the Dean of St. Paul's, and "he 
 thought he was hearing Plato " ; Sir T. More, accord- 
 ing to Erasmus, is the " sweetest, softest, happiest 
 genius nature has ever shaped." In a word, " literature 
 is triumphant among the English. The king himself, 
 the two cardinals, almost all the bishops, favour with 
 all their soul and adorn Letters." 2 To learn Greek 
 and Latin was to move with the times and to follow 
 the fashion. " All men," says Ascham, less displeased 
 with this novelty than with the travelling propensities 
 
 ^ That there was also in London a public for Italian books is 
 shown, among many other proofs, by the early publication thereof 
 an edition of the " Pastor Fido" of Guarini in the original, London, 
 1591, i2mo. 
 
 2 "Epistolarum . . . libri xxxi.," London, 1642, fol., col. 308, 
 533, 364, &c. A.D. 1497 and 15 19. 
 
88 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 of his compatriots, '^ covet to have their children speake 
 latin " ; and '* Sophocles and Euripides are more familiar 
 now here than Plautus was formerly." i Dazzled by what 
 he saw and heard, Erasmus was announcing to the world 
 in enthusiastic letters that " the golden age " was to be 
 born again in this fortunate island. ^ His only regret 
 was that he would perhaps not live long enough to see 
 it. Well might he regret it, even though it were not 
 to follow exactly as he had foreseen ; for the golden 
 apple of the golden age was not to be plucked in the 
 Greek Hesperides' garden, but in a plain Warwickshire 
 orchard : nor was it the less golden. 
 
 This fermentation of mind lasted for more than a 
 century ; lives were often shortened by it, but they had 
 been doubly well filled. From this restless curiosity, 
 bent towards past ages and foreign countries, towards 
 everything that was remote, unknown and different, 
 •came that striking appearance of omniscience and uni- 
 versality, and that prodigious wealth of imagery, allu- 
 sions and ideas of every kind that are to be found in 
 all the authors of that time, small as well as great, and 
 which unites in one common bond Rabelais and Shake- 
 speare, Cervantes and Sidney and the " master of the 
 enchanters of the ear," Ronsard. 
 
 When the armour, worn less often, began to grow 
 rusty in the great halls, and the nobles, coming forth 
 
 ^ " The Scholemaster," p. 2, and Letter to Brandesby (in 
 Latin), 1542-3 ; "Works," ed. Giles, torn. i. p. 25. 
 
 2 " Equidem aureum quoddam seculum exoriri video, quo mihi 
 fortassis non continget frui, quippe qui jam ad fabulae meae cata- 
 ;strophem accedam" (Letter to Henry of Guildford, May, 1519, 
 " Epistolarum . . . libri xxxi.," London, 1642,^0!., col. 368). 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL 89 
 
 from their coats-of-mail like the butterfly from the 
 chrysalis, showed themselves all glistening in silk, pearls 
 in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and 
 mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons 
 of a kind were organized, and the role of the women 
 was enlarged. English mediaeval times had been by no 
 means sparing of compliments to them. But there is a 
 great difference between celebrating in verse fair, slim- 
 necked ladies, and writing books expressly for them : 
 and it is one of the points in which, during the Middle 
 Ages and even until the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 England differed from the nations of the south. In 
 England no Lady Oisille had gathered round her in the 
 depth of green valleys tellers of amorous stories ; no 
 thickly-shaded parks had seen Fiammettas or Philomenas 
 listening to all kinds of narratives, forgetful of the 
 actual world and its sorrows. The only group of 
 story-tellers, bound together by a true artist's fancy, 
 Chaucer's pilgrims, had ridden in broad davlight on 
 the high road to Canterbury, led by Harry Bailly, the 
 jovial innkeeper of South wark, a blustering, red-faced 
 dictator, who had regulated the pace of the nags, and 
 silenced the tedious babblers : very different in all 
 things from Fiammetta and the Lady Oisille. 
 
 Under the influence of Italy, France and mythology, v^ 
 the England of the Tudors, changed all that. Women 
 appeared in the foreground : a movement of general y- 
 curiosity animated the age, and they participated in it ^ 
 quite naturally. They will become learned, if neces- 
 sary, rather than remain in the shade ; they will no 
 longer rest contented with permission to read books 
 written for their fathers, brothers, lovers, or husbands ; 
 
90 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 some must be written especially on their account, 
 consulting their preferences and personal caprices ; and 
 they had good reason to command : one of them sat 
 on the throne. 
 
 They, too, began to read Greek, Latin, Italian and 
 French ; knowledge was so much the fashion that it 
 extended to women. Here Ascham bears testimony 
 in their favour ; the Queen herself gives the example : 
 "She readeth now at Windsore more Greeke every 
 day than some prebendarie of this chirch doth read 
 Latin in a wole weeke." ^ In this she has innumerable 
 imitators, so much so that Harrison sums up as follows 
 his judgment concerning EngHsh ladies : " To saie 
 how many gentlewomen and ladies there are, that 
 beside sound knowledge of the Greeke and Latin 
 toongs are thereto no lesse skilfull in the Spanish, 
 Italian and French or in some one of them, it resteth 
 not in me." 2 
 
 It must not be believed, however, that so much 
 Greek and Latin in any way imperilled the grace and 
 ease of their manners, or that when you met them you 
 would be welcomed with a quotation from Plato and 
 dismissed with a verse from Virgil. Far from it. It 
 was the custom at that time with English ladies to 
 greet their friends and relations, and even strangers, 
 with kisses, and strange as it may appear to our 
 modern ideas, accustomed as we are to stare in amaze- 
 ment at such practices when by any chance we observe 
 them in southern countries, the custom was so strikingly 
 
 ^ "The Scholemaster," p. 21. ■ 
 
 2 "Description of Britaine," 1577, ed. Furnivall, New Shak- ■ 
 
 spcre Society, part i, p. 271. 
 
 i 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL 91 
 
 prevalent in England that travellers noticed it as one of 
 the strange sights of the land ; grave Erasmus cyni- 
 cally calls it one of its attractions. "This custom," says 
 he, " will never be praised enough." ^ The above-named 
 Nicander Nucius, of Corcyra, who came to England 
 some fifty years later, notices the same habit as a 
 great local curiosity. According to him, the English 
 '^display great simplicity and absence of jealousy in 
 their usages towards females. For not only do those 
 who are of the same family and household kiss them 
 . . . with salutations and embraces, but even those, 
 too, who have never seen them. And to themselves 
 this appears by no means indecent." - The very Queen 
 herself, even in the middle of the most imposing cere- 
 monies, could not help indulging in familiarities contrary 
 to our ideas of decorum, but quite in accordance with 
 the freedom of manners then prevalent. Sir James 
 Melville relates in his memoirs how he was present 
 when Robert Dudley was made '^ Earl of Leicester and 
 baron of Denbigh ; which was done at Westminster 
 with great solemnity, the Queen herself helping to put 
 on his ceremonial, he sitting upon his knees before her 
 with a great gravity. But she could not refrain from 
 putting her hand in his neck, smilingly tickling him, 
 
 ^ " Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venias 
 omnium osculis exciperis ; sive discedas aliquo, osculis dimitteris; 
 redis, redduntur suavia . . . denique quocumque te moveas, sua- 
 viorum plena sunt omnia " (" Epistolarum . . , libri.," London, 
 1642, col. 315, A.D. 1499). 
 
 2 "The second book of the travels of Nicander Nucius," ed. 
 Cramer, London, Camden Society, 1841, 4to, p. 10. Nucius 
 resided in England in 1545-6. \ 
 
 6 I 
 
92 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 the French Ambassadour and I standnig by. Then 
 she turned, asking at me, ^ how I Hked him ? '" i 
 
 The earliest attempts at the novel in the modern 
 style bore a resemblance to these social and intellectual 
 manners. Let us not be surprised if these works 
 are too heavily bedizened for our liking : the toilettes 
 and fashions of that time were less sober than 
 those of to-day; it was the same with literature. 
 /Queen Elizabeth, who was wholly representative of 
 / her age, and shared even its follies, liked and en- 
 Vcouraged finery in everything. All that was ornament 
 and pageantry held her favour ; in spite of public 
 affairs, she remained all her life the most feminine 
 of women ; on her gowns, in her palaces, with her 
 poets, she liked to find ornaments and embellish- 
 ments in profusion. The learned queen who read 
 Plutarch in Greek, a thing Shakespeare could never 
 do, and translated Boetius into English,- found, in 
 spite of her philosophy, an immense delight in having 
 herself painted in fantastic costumes, her thin person 
 hidden in a silken sheath, covered by a light gauze, over 
 which birds ran. Around her was a perpetual field of 
 cloth of gold, and the nobles sold their lands in order 
 to appear at Court sufficiently embroidered. She 
 liked nothing better than to hear and take part in 
 conversations on dresses and fashions. This was so 
 well known, that when Mary, Queen of Scots, sent 
 the same Sir James Melville on his mission to the 
 ' " The Memoires of Sir James Melvil, of" Hal-hill," ed. G. Scott, 
 London, 1683, fol. p. 47. 
 
 2 The autograph manuscript of her translations, which comprise 
 a part of the works of Plutarch, Horace and Boetius, was found in 
 1883, at the Record Office. 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 93 
 
 English Court, in 1564, she was careful to advise him 
 not to forget such means to propitiate her " dear sister/' 
 The account left by Melville of the way in which he 
 carried into effect this part of his instructions is highly 
 characteristic of the times, and gives an idea of the way 
 in which a courtly conversation was then conducted : 
 
 '^ The Queen my mistress," says Melville, in his 
 " Memoires," '^ had instructed me to leave matters of 
 gravity sometimes, and cast in merry purposes, lest 
 otherwise I should be wearied [wearying], she being 
 well informed of that queens natural temper. There- 
 fore in declaring my observations of the customs of 
 Dutchland, Poland and Italy, the buskins of the women 
 was not forgot, and what countrey weed I thought best 
 becoming gentlewomen. The Queen said she had cloths 
 of every sort, which eveiy day thereafter, so long as I 
 was there, she changed. One day she had the English 
 weed, another the French, and another the Italian and 
 so forth. 
 
 " She asked me which of them became her best } 
 
 " I answered, in my judgment the Italian dress, 
 which answer I found pleased her well, for she de- 
 lighted to shew her golden coloured hair, wearing a 
 caul and bonnet as they do in Italy. Her hair was more 
 reddish than yellow, curled in appearance naturally. 
 
 " She desired to know of me what colour of hair was 
 reputed best, and which of them two was fairest. 
 
 '^ I answered the fairness of them both was not their 
 worst faults. 
 
 *' But she was earnest with me to declare which of 
 them I judged fairest ? 
 
 " I said she was the fairest Queen of England, and 
 mine the fairest Queen of Scotland. 
 
94 ^ THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 " Yet she appeared earnest. 
 
 " I answered they were both the fairest Ladies in 
 their countries ; that Her Majesty was whiter, but my 
 Queen was very lovely. 
 
 " She inquired which of them was of highest stature? 
 
 " I said my Queen. 
 
 " Then saith she, she is too high, for I, my self, am 
 neither too high nor too low. Then she asked what 
 kind of exercise she used } 
 
 " I answered that when I received my dispatch, the 
 Queen was lately come from the High-land hunting. 
 That when her more serious affairs permitted, she was 
 taken up with reading of histories ; that sometimes she 
 recreated her self in playing upon the lute and virginals. 
 
 '' She asked if she played well } I said reasonably, 
 for a Queen. 
 
 " That same day after dinner my Lord of Huns- 
 dean drew me up to a quiet gallery, that 1 might hear 
 some musick, but he said that he durst not avow it,, 
 where I might hear the Queen play, upon the virginals. 
 After I had hearkned a while, I took up the tapistry 
 that hung before the door of the chamber, and seeing 
 her back was toward the door, I entered within the 
 chamber, and stood a pretty space hearing her play 
 excellently well, but she left off immediately, so soon 
 as she turned her about and saw me. She appeared to be 
 surprized to see me, and came forward, seeming to strike 
 me with her hand, alledging she used not to play before 
 men, but when she was solitary to shun melancholly." 
 
 Fortunately she does not strike the ambassador, and 
 is easily pacified. She wants to dazzle him also with 
 her knowledge of languages : 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 95 
 
 " She said my French was good, and asked if I could 
 speak Italian which she spoke reasonably well. . . . 
 Then she spake to me in Dutch [i.^., German], which 
 was not good ; and would know what kind of books I 
 most delighted in, whether theology, history, or love 
 matters." She manages to keep Melville two days 
 longer than he had intended to stay " till I might see 
 her dance, as I was afterward informed. Which being 
 over, she inquired of me whether she or my Queen 
 danced best ? I answered the Queen danced not so high 
 and disposedly as she did." 
 
 This woman, nevertheless, with so many frailties and 
 ultra-feminine vanities, was a sovereign with a will and 
 a purpose. Even in the midst of this talk about 
 buskins, love-books and virginals, it shone out. So 
 much so, that hearing she is resolved not to marry, 
 the Scottish ambassador immediately retorts in some- 
 what blunt fashion : '* I know the truth of that, 
 madam, said I, and you need not tell it me. Your 
 Majesty thinks if you were married, you would be 
 but Queen of England, and now you are both King 
 and Queen. I know your spirit cannot endure a 
 commander." ^ 
 
 The same singular combination may be observed in \ 
 the literary works of her time : flowers of speech and ^ 
 vanities abound, but they are not without an aim. \ 
 Rarely was any sovereign so completely emblematic of \- 
 his or her period. She may almost be said to be the j 
 key to it ; and it may be very well asserted that what- 
 ever the branch of art or literature of this epoch you 
 wish to understand, you must first study Elizabeth. 
 ^ " Mcmoires," London, 1683, pp. 49 et seq. 
 
96 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Her taste for finery and jewels remained to the last. 
 Hentzner, a German, who saw her many years after 
 Melville, describes her coming out of her chapel at 
 Greenwich Palace, in 1598. She has greatly altered ; 
 she is no longer the young princess that would publicly 
 forget etiquette at Westminster for the sake of Robert 
 Dudley ; but she still glitters with jewels and orna- 
 ments. "Next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year 
 of her age, as we were told, very majestic ; her face 
 oblong, fair, but wrinkled, her eyes small, yet black 
 and pleasant ; her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, 
 and her teeth black. . . . She had in her ears two 
 pearls, with very rich drops ; she wore false hair and 
 that red ; upon her head she had a small crown. . . . 
 Her bosom was uncovered as all the English ladies have 
 till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding 
 fine jewels ; her hands were small, her fingers long, and 
 her stature neither tall nor low ; her air was stately, her 
 manner of speaking kind and obliging. That day she 
 was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the 
 size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot 
 with silver threads . . . Instead of a chain, she had 
 an oblong collar of gold and jewels." ^ 
 
 These descriptions of her by Melville and Hentz- 
 ner are supplemented, in highly characteristic fashion, 
 not only by such fancy portraits as the one alluded 
 to before, where she is represented as a shepherdess, 
 a nymph, an imaginary being from Arcady, from 
 mythology, or from nowhere, but by such grave, digni- 
 fied, official portraitures as the very fine engraving 
 left by Rogers. Round the sharp-featured face, with 
 
 ^ "Travels in England," ed. H. Morley, London, 1889, p. 47. 
 
QUEEN CLEOPATRA, AS REPRESENTED ON THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, [/• 97- 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. 99 
 
 closed, wilful lips, weary eyes, open, intelligent forehead, 
 lace ruffs of various shapes, some very bushy, some 
 quite flat and round-shaped like butterfly wings, are 
 displayed in most imposing array. No imaginable 
 kind of gum or starch could keep them straight ; they 
 were spread on iron wires. The gown itself, of cylin- 
 dric shape, expanded by means of a farthingale, is 
 covered with knobs, knots, pearls, ribbons, fringes, and 
 ornaments of all sorts. Well does this figure deserve 
 the attention of the student of Shakespeare, for in 
 thi's and no other fashion was Cleopatra, the Egyptian 
 queen, dressed, when she appeared on the boards 
 of the Globe Theatre. Never did the author of 
 " Antony " dream of Denderah's temple, and of the soft, 
 voluptuous face, peacock-covered, representing there 
 I sis-Cleopatra ; but he dressed his Egyptian queen as 
 the queen he had known had been dressed, and it was 
 in the costumes of Rogers' engraving, and most appro- 
 priately too, that the Cleopatra of the Globe was heard 
 to make the remarkable proposal, *' Let's to billiards." ^ 
 
 Does this seem very strange or in any way incredible I 
 But we must remember that many years, nay, several 
 centuries, were to elapse before anything like historical 
 accuracy was to afl^ect dresses on the stage. Another 
 Cleopatra trod the boards of the English theatre in the 
 eighteenth century ; she was very difl^erent from her 
 Elizabethan elder sister ; she wore paniers and a 
 Louis XV. wig, and, as may be seen in our engraving, 
 came in no way nearer the model at Denderah. 
 
 The architecture of this period corresponded with 
 
 ^ *' Antony and Cleopatra,'' act ii. sc. 5. As for a reproduction 
 ot Rogers' engraving, sec Frontispiece of this volume. 
 
loo THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 the richness and pomp of the costumes. A new style, 
 partly from Italy, partly from dreamland, was intro- 
 duced into England during the Tudor and early 
 Jacobean times. There was lace, and knots and knobs 
 and curious holes, pillars, and pilasters. The sincerest 
 admirers of antiquity, such as Inigo Jones, who went 
 to Italy with such good purpose, and there filled his 
 albums with many exquisite sketches of antique and 
 Renaissance masterpieces, ^ could not refrain from some- 
 times introducing Arcady and dreamland into their 
 architecture. Inigo Jones died before finishing his 
 
 Whitehall palace, and we 
 know from his drawings 
 that he intended to em- 
 bellish the central circular 
 court with a row of gigan- 
 ^y^ ^v tic caryatides representing 
 ^# f ^ /^ Persians, six or seven yards 
 
 4 , i^(^ high.- A contriver of 
 
 'Mt 
 
 masks for the Court, Inigo 
 
 SKETCHES MADE BY INIGO t • 1. * 
 
 JONES IN ITALY. Jones, was m this way 
 
 tempted to build palaces, 
 
 if one may say so, in mask-style. Such houses as 
 
 ' An album of sketches of this sort, made by Inigo Jones while 
 in Italy, 1614, was reproduced in fac-simile by the care of the 
 Duke of Devonshire, London, 1832. See also drawings, by the 
 same, for scenery and costumes in masks in the " Portfolio," May, 
 June, and July, 1889, three articles by Mr. R. T. Blomfield. 
 Isaac Oliver the famous Elizabethan miniature painter, has left 
 also drawings, one of which is reproduced at the head of this 
 chapter, testifying to his careful study of Italian models. 
 
 2 A view of this court, with the caryatides, is to be seen in W. 
 Kent, "The Designs of Inigo Jones," London, 1835, two vol. fol. 
 We give a reproduction of the caryatides. 
 
TUDOR TIMES, FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL. loi 
 
 Audley End, Hatfield, and especially Burghley, this 
 last being mostly Elizabethan, ^ are excellent repre- 
 sentations of the architectural tastes of the time ; the 
 thick windowless towers of a former age are replaced ^^ 
 by palatial facades, where countless enormous windows 
 occupy more space in the wall than the bricks and stones 
 themselves. Not a few people of a conservative turn 
 of mind were heard to grumble at these novelties : 
 "And albeit," said Harrison, in 1577, at the very time 
 when Lord Burghley was busy building his house in 
 Northamptonshire, '^ that in these daies there be manie 
 
 r 
 
 INIGO JONES'S PERSIANS STANDING AS CARYATIDES. 
 
 goodlie houses erected in the sundrie quarters of this 
 Hand ; yet they are rather curious to the eie, like paper 
 worke than substantiall for continuance ; whereas such 
 as he [Henry VIIL] did set up, excel in both and 
 therefore may justlie be preferred farre above all the 
 rest." But notwithstanding such a threatening pro- 
 
 ^ It was built on the plans, as is supposed, of J. Thorpe, possibly 
 with the help of the Italian John of Padua. Above one of the 
 doors of the inner court is the date 1577 ; the clock tower is dated 
 
 15815 ; see the engraving p. 69. Hatfield bears on 
 the date 161 1. Audley End was built 1603-1616. 
 
 Its 
 
 fa^ad 
 
102 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 phecy neither at Burghley nor at Hatfield has the 
 " paper worke " put there been yet blown away by 
 storm or time, and these houses continue to afford 
 a safe residence to the descendants of the Cecils. 
 According to Harrison's judgment the interior of the 
 new houses, no less than the exterior, testified to a 
 decadence : " Now have we manie chimnies ; and yet 
 our tenderlings complaine of rheumes, catarhs and 
 poses. Then had we none but reredosses ; and our 
 heads did never ake. For as the smoke in those daies 
 was supposed to be a sufficient hardening of the timber 
 of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine 
 to keepe the goodman and his familie from the quacke 
 or pose, wherewith, as then verie few were acquainted." ^ 
 But Harrison's blame does not seem to have greatly 
 affected the taste for chimneys, any more than his 
 sinister prophecies concerning Elizabethan houses have 
 been fulfilled ; chimneys have continued, and paper-work 
 houses remain still to help us if need be to understand 
 the poetry, the drama, and the novel of the period. 
 
 ^ "Description of Britaine," ed. Furnivall, New Shakspere 
 Society, part i. pp. 268 and 338. 
 
TT Of THE ' 
 
 XJNIVEBSITY 
 
Helio6Dujardin Imp Wntmann Pans 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH 
 
 from (he portrctil at Hanuiton Court 
 
A DRAGON, ACCORDING TO TOPSEI.L, 1608. 
 
 CHAPTER 111. 
 
 LYLY AND HIS *'EUl»HUES. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE romance which, at this period, received a new 
 life, and was to come nearer to our novels than 
 anything that had gone before, has many traits in 
 common with the fanciful style of the architecture, cos- 
 tume, and conversation described above. What have 
 we to do, thought men, with things practical, con- 
 venient, or of ordinary use ? We wish for nothing but 
 what is brilliant, unexpected, extraordinary. What is 
 the good of setting down in writing the incidents of 
 commonplace lives ? Are they not sufficiently known 
 to us ? does not their triviality sadden us enough every 
 day ? If we are told stories of imaginary lives, let 
 them at least be dissimilar from our own ; let them offer 
 unforeseen incidents ; let the author be free to turn 
 aside from reality provided that he leaves the trivial 
 and the ordinary. Let him lead us to Verona, Athens^ 
 
104 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 into Arcadia, where he will, fot 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 frotdgd 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," i 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 pro- 
 claimed 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 pas- 
 time, 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 
 
 ^ " * Euphues ' the anatomy of" wyt . . . wherin are contained 
 the delights that wyt followeth in his youth by the pleasauntnesse 
 of Love, and the happynesse he rcapeth in age by the perfectnesse 
 of wisedome " ; London [1579], 4to ; reprinted by Arber, London, 
 1869. Lyly was born in 1553 or 1554; he died in i6o5. 
 
 i 
 
LYLY AND HIS '' EUPHUESr 105 
 
 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.^ 
 
 There is no possibility of error ; with Lyly com- 
 mences 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 was spoiled, petted, and caressed 
 by the ladies ; with an impartial heart they extended to 
 the author the same favour they granted to the book, 
 and to their little dogs. He was proclaimed king of 
 letters by his admirers, and became, in fact, king of the 
 -prdcieux. He created a school, and the name of his 
 hero served to baptize a whole literature. This par- 
 ticular form of bad style was called euphuism. 
 
 ^ Dedication of the second part : " To the Ladies and Gentle- 
 woemen of England." There is afterwards a sort of second preface 
 addressed to the " Gentlemen readers," but Lyly puts into it much 
 less animation, and appears to have written it only for conscience'' 
 sake in order not to forget any one. 
 
1 06 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 II. 
 
 Euphuism owes to him its name and its diffusion in 
 England; but not, although it is usually so stated, its 
 birth. This strange language, as Dr. Landmann^ has 
 well demonstrated, was imported from Spain into Eng- 
 land, and Lyly was not the first to use it in this country. 
 The works of Guevara, turned into English by ^vt or 
 tix different translators, had a considerable vogue and 
 /acclimatized this extraordinary style in Great Britain. 
 One of his writings especially, ''The golden boke of 
 [Marcus Aurelius, emperour/' enjoyed a very great 
 popularity ; it was translated by Lord Berners in 1532, 
 and by Sir Thomas North in 1557,- and went through 
 
 ^ In his excellent work, " Shakspere and Euphuism," T^ransac- 
 tions of the Nezv Shakspere Society^ 1884, Dr. Landmann was the 
 first to break up Lyly's style into its different parts, and point 
 out the true sources where he found not only the elements of 
 his language, but even many of his ideas. The same essay contains 
 very useful information on Gongorism and other kinds of affected 
 styles of the sixteenth century. See also Dr. Landmann's " Dcr 
 Euphuismus," Giessen, 1881 ; his edition of part of "Euphues," 
 Heilbronn, 1887; and an article by Mr. S. L. Lee, Athenaum^ 
 July 14,1883. 
 
 2 The " Libro aurco " appeared in 1529; it was translated 
 into French in 1531, and went through a great many editions, 
 entitled sometimes " Le Livre dorc de Marc-Aurcle " ; sometimes 
 *' L'Horloge des princes." North's translation, which followed 
 the French editions, is entitled, " The Diall of Princes, by 
 Guevara, englyshed out of the Frenche," London, 1557, fol. ; 
 it had several editions. It is to the Marcus Aurelius of Guevara 
 that La Fontaine alludes in his " Paysan du Danube" ; the story 
 of the peasant was one of the most popular of the " Golden 
 Boke." Guevara's style, with all the supplementary embel- 
 lishments that Lyly has added, was already to be seen in the 
 
LYLY AND HIS " EUPHUESr 107 
 
 many editions. The moral dissertations of which it is 
 full enchanted serious minds ; the unusual language of 
 Spain delighted frivolous souls. Before Lyly, English 
 authors had already imitated it ; but when Lyly 
 appeared and embellished it even more, enthusiasm 
 ran so high that its foreign progenitor was forgotten, 
 and this exotic style was rebaptized as proof of 
 adoption and naturalization in England. 
 
 Since it is not a natural product, but the mere result 
 of ingenious artifices, nothing is easier than to reduce 
 it to its component parts, to take it to pieces so to 
 speak. It consists in an immoderate, prodigious, mon- 
 strous use of similes, so arranged as to set up antitheses 
 in every limb of the sentence. What is peculiar to the 
 English imitators, is the employment of alliteration, in 
 order to better mark the balance of the sentences 
 written for effect. Finally, the kind of similes even 
 has something peculiar : they are for the most part 
 borrowed from an imaginary ancient history and a 
 fantastical natural history, a sort of mythology of plants 
 and stones to which the most extraordinary virtues are 
 attributed. \ 
 
 In the important parts, when he means to use a noble \ 
 style, Lyly cannot relate the most trivial incident with- 
 out setting up parallels between the sentiments of his 
 characters and the virtues of toads, serpents, unicorns, 
 scorpions, and all the fantastical animals mentioned in / 
 Pliny or described in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. / 
 His knowledge of zoology resembles that of Richard' 
 
 collection of short stories by Pettie, 1576 {supra^ p. 81) of 
 which one of the early editions begins like *' Euphues," with an 
 epistle to the " gentlewomen readers/' 
 
. io8 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 de Fournival, who, in the thirteenth century, lamented 
 in his " Bestiaire d' Amour," ^ that he was like the wolf, 
 who, when instead of first noticing the man, allowed 
 the man to see him first, lost all his courage ; or Hke 
 the cricket who loves chirping so much that he 
 forgets to eat and allows himself to be caught. 
 Richard was overcome in like manner by the glances of 
 his mistress, and all his songs only served to accom- 
 plish his ruin. The woman he loves resembles the 
 bird called " Kalander," or again, the animal called 
 *^ cockatrice '* or " cocodrille," which is often mentioned 
 by Lyly. " Its nature is such that when it finds a man, 
 then it devours him, and when it has devoured him, 
 then it laments him all the days of its life." - Such 
 is the conduct, says Richard, of women too beautiful 
 and too much beloved. 
 
 Bestiaries had enjoyed an immense popularity from 
 the earliest times. They were not all, far from it, 
 like Richard de^ Fourniyal's, love-bestiaries ; most of 
 themTiad a religious tendency. Such were, for exam- 
 ple, in England, the well-known Anglo-Saxon bestiary,3 
 or the English bestiary of the thirteenth century, in 
 which we read of the world-famous wickedness 
 of the whale who allows sailors to rest on her 
 back, and even to light a fire thereon, in order to 
 
 ^ "Le Bestiaire d'Amour," ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1840, 8vo. 
 Richard de Fournival died about 1260. The MS. followed in 
 this edition is dated 1285. 
 
 2 " Sa nature si est que quand il trouve un homme, si le devorc, 
 et quand il I'a devore, si le pleure tous les jours de sa vie." 
 
 3 Fragments of which remain in the "Codex Exoniensis," ed. 
 Thorpe, London, 1842, 8vo. The Panther, p. 355 ; the Whale, 
 p. 360, &c. 
 
8^ 
 
LYLY AISfD HIS '' EUPHUESr iii 
 
 warm themselves ; but as soon as she feels the heat 
 she dives and drowns them all : an example of what 
 may be expected from the devil. There is, too, the 
 elephant that leans against a tree to take his rest. 
 People cunningly cut the tree, and replace it ; when the 
 elephant comes the tree falls and so does he, and is 
 caught, an emblem of our father Adam, who also owed 
 his fall to a tree.i Again the " Contes Moralises" of 
 Nicole Bozon, written in French by a friar who lived 
 rrrETgland in the first half of the fourteenth century, 
 are also full of the most curious comparisons between 
 the properties of animals, plants, and minerals, and the 
 sinful tendencies and frailties of mankind. 2 
 
 These are old, far-off examples, and it might be sup- 
 posed that people of education in Elizabethan England 
 would have possessed a sounder knowledge of natural 
 history. This was, however, not the case. And if we 
 wish to know what were the current beliefs among 
 well-informed men of the time about animals, we have 
 only to open the two folio volumes penned with greatest 
 care by painstaking Topsell, concerning " Foure-footed 
 beastes " and '' Serpents." 3 We shall then willingly set 
 Lyly and his followers free from all blame of exaggera- 
 tion and improbable inventions. Most often indeed 
 
 ^ "An old English Miscellany, containing a bestiary," ed. R, 
 Morris, London, Early English Text Society, 1872. 
 
 2 Recently published by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith and M. 
 Paul Meyer, Paris, Societe des anciens textes Fran^ais, 1889, 
 8vo. 
 
 3 " The historic of Foure-footed beastes, describing the true and 
 lively figure of every beast," London, 1607, fol. "The historic 
 of Serpents or the second book of living creatures," London, 1608, 
 fol. 
 
 7 
 
112 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 they did not invent; they knew. Topsell's books are 
 nothing but a careful summary of the then generally 
 accepted reports concerning animated creation. 
 
 His histories are the more curious as his scruples and 
 earnestness are obvious. His purpose is high, and he 
 means to write only for the Creator's glory, considering 
 his subject to be a " part of Divinity that was never 
 known in English. I take my owne conscience to wit- 
 ness, which is manifest to my Judge and Saviour, I have 
 intended nothing but his glory, that is the creator of 
 all." Secondly, his serious attention to his subject is 
 shown by what he says of accessible animals ; the 
 engravings he gives of them, of dogs, for instance, of 
 bulls, asses, and many others being really excellent. 
 Even rare animals, when by any chance he had secured 
 a glimpse of them, are represented with the utmost 
 care ; such, for instance, is his chameleon, of which he 
 gives a very good engraving, not long after careless 
 Robert Greene had been writing of " this byrd, a 
 camelion." ^ 
 
 But, then, nature is full of surprises, and so is 
 Topsell's book. His antelopes are very dangerous 
 things : " They have homes . . . which are very long 
 and sharpe ; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced 
 through the sheeldes of his souldiers, and fought with 
 them very irefully : at which time his companions slew 
 as he travelled to India, 8,550; which great slaughter 
 may be the occasion why they are so rare and sildome 
 seene to this day." Undoubtedly. 
 
 The blood of the elephant has a very strange pro- 
 
 '"Alcida. Greenes metamorphosis," licensed 1588 ; earliest known 
 edition, 161 7. 
 
LYLY AND HIS " E UPHUESr 1 1 5 
 
 perty : " Also it is reported that the blood of an 
 elephant is the coldest blood in the world and that 
 Dragons in the scorching heate of summer cannot get 
 anything to coole them except this blood." The sea- 
 horse, or hippopotamus, '' is a most ugly and filthy 
 beast, so called because in his voice and mane he re- 
 sembleth a horsse, but in his head an oxe or a calfe ; 
 in the residue of his body a swine. ... It liveth for 
 the most part in rivers ; yet it is of a doubtful life, for 
 it brings forth and breedeth on the land." According to 
 the accompanying engraving he apparently feeds on 
 crocodiles. The rhinoceros is remarkable for his 
 breathing : he " hath a necke like unto a horsse and 
 also the other parts of his body, but it is said to breath 
 out aire which killeth men." 
 
 But in this world of animals, which includes the 
 Mantichora, the Sphinga, the Papio, and a monster 
 alive " in the territory of the bishop of Salceburgh," 
 the most interesting is the Lamia. It is of such great 
 interest because its very existence has been disputed, 
 but quite wrongly. Some untrue reports were cir- 
 culated concerning this animal, and as these accounts 
 were fabulous, people have been found who disbelieved, 
 not only the stories, but even the possibility that Lamias 
 existed. Topsell wisely takes a middle course : " These 
 and such like stories and opinions there are of Phairies, 
 which in my judgment arise from the prasstigious 
 apparitions of Devils, whose delight is to deceive and 
 beguile the minds of men with errour, contrary to the 
 truths of holye scripture which doeth no where make 
 mention of such inchaunting creatures ; and therefore if 
 any such be, we will holde them the workes of the 
 
1 1 6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Devill and not of God." But, then, there are true 
 Lamias, and *' we shall take for granted by the testimony 
 of holy scripture that there is such a beast as this." 
 The particulars Topsell was able to gather about them 
 are to the following effect : *' The hinde parts of this 
 beast are like unto a goate, his fore legs like a beares, 
 his upper parts to a woman, the body scaled all over 
 like a Dragon, as some have observed, by the observa- 
 tion of their bodies." Their wickedness is so great 
 that it scarcely bears description : " They are the 
 swiftest of foot of all earthly beasts, so as none can 
 escape them by running, for by their celerity, they com- 
 passe their prey of beastes, and by their fraud, they 
 overthrow men. For when as they see a man, they lay 
 open their breastes, and by the beauty thereof entice them 
 to come neare to conference, and so having them within 
 their compasse, they devoure and kill them." So much 
 for four-footed beasts. ^ 
 
 The " Historie of serpents " is not less instructive, 
 for it contains, " with their lively figures : names, con- 
 ditions, kindes and natures of all venomous beasts : with 
 their severall poisons and antidotes ; their deepe hatred to 
 mankind and the wonderfull worke of God in their crea- 
 tion and destruction." Among serpents are included : 
 bees, drones, wasps, hornets, frogs, toads, tortoises, 
 spiders, earthworms, and many other unexpected 
 " venomous beasts." There is in this book information 
 concerning the boas : " The Latines call it Boa and Bossa 
 of Bos because by sucking cowes milke it so encreaseth 
 that in the end it destroyeth all manner of herdes and 
 cattels." The cockatrice, above named, '' seemeth to be 
 ^ " Foure-footed beastes," ut supra, pp. i, 199, 328, 453. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
LYLY AND HIS '' EUPHUESr 119 
 
 the king of serpents . . . because of his stately face and 
 magnanimous mind." The crocodile is to be carefully 
 avoided, '^ even the Egyptians themselves account a 
 crocodile a savage and cruell murthering beast, as may 
 appeare by their Hieroglyphicks, for when they will 
 decypher a mad man, they picture a crocodile/' And 
 Topsell goes on to relate the particular hatred which 
 existed between crocodiles and the inhabitants of 
 Tentyris, that exquisitely charming Denderah which 
 overlooks the valley of the Nile, and still deserves its 
 old fame as the chief temple of the Goddess Athor, 
 the Egyptian Aphrodite. 
 
 The dipsas, the hydra, the dragon, are also endowed 
 with the most remarkable qualities ; but they seem to 
 have disappeared since Topsell's day. Not so another 
 very wonderful animal of whom we continue to hear 
 from time to time, I mean the great sea-serpent ; this 
 marvellous beast is not only described, but depicted in 
 our naturalist's book. Topsell gives a faithful por- 
 trait of it, and we do the same. These animals are so 
 big that " many a time, they overthrow in the waters a 
 laden vessell of great quantitie, with all the wares 
 therein contained." The engraving shows one of them 
 upsetting a three-masted Jacobean ship and swallow- 
 ing sailors, apparently with great relish and voracity. ^ 
 
 Such being the current belief among students of the 
 natural sciences, we may be the better prepared to excuse 
 some eccentricities in a novelist. Lyly, who was well 
 versed in the legendary lore of plants and animals, is 
 never tired of making a display of his knowledge, but 
 the wonder is that his readers had never too much of that. 
 
 ^ *' Historic of serpents," /// supra, pp. iii, 140, 236, &c. 
 
 / 
 
I20 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 A single erudite or scientific simile never satisfies Lyly ; 
 he has always in his hands a long bead-roll of them, 
 which he complacently pays out : *' The foul toade hath 
 a faire stone in his head, the fine golde is found in the 
 filthy earth : the sweet kernell lyeth in the hard shell : 
 vertue is harboured in the heart of him that most men 
 esteeme mishapen . . . Doe we not commonly see that 
 in painted pottes is hidden the deadlyest poyson ? that 
 in the greenest grasse is ye greatest serpent? in the 
 cleerest water the uglyest toade ? " and four or five 
 similes still follow. Tormented by examples, over- 
 whelmed with similitudes, the adventurous reader, who 
 to-day risks a reading of " Euphues," feels it impossible 
 to keep his composure. He would like to protest, to 
 defend himself, to say that he has lied, this imper- 
 turbable naturalist, that bitter kernels are found indeed 
 in the hardest shells, that painted pots often contain 
 something other than poison, and that if toads appear 
 less ugly in foul water, it is perhaps because they are 
 the less seen. But what does it matter to Lyly } He 
 writes for a select coterie, and when a man writes for 
 a coterie, the protestations of the discontented, of the 
 envious, alas ! of those of good sense, too, are scarcely 
 of any consequence. Let the common herd then shriek 
 themselves hoarse at Lyly's door : it is shut fast, he 
 will hear nothing, and is indifferent even if among this 
 common herd Shakespeare figures. He is happy ; 
 " Euphues," in company with the little dogs, rumples 
 the silken laps of ladies with the lace-plaited ruffs. 
 
LYLY AND HIS " E UPHUESr 1 2 3 
 
 III. 
 
 But however important style may be, it is not every- 
 thing in a literary work. It must be acknowledged 
 that Lyly's success, if it is no commendation of the 
 taste of his contemporaries, is greatly to the credit of 
 their morality and earnestness. By the form of his 
 sentences Lyiy is a Spaniard ; he surpasses the most 
 bombastic, and could give points to that author men- 
 tioned by Louis Racine, who, discovering his mistress 
 lying under a tree, cried : " Come and see the sun reclining 
 in the shade ! " But the basis of his character is purely 
 English ; he is truly of the same country as Richardson, 
 and belongs at heart to that race which Tacitus said did 
 not know how " to laugh at vices," a very high praise 
 that Rousseau rendered later almost in the same terms. ^ 
 From the time of Lyly until our own day, the English 
 novel, generally speaking, has remained not only rnoral, 
 but a moralizing agent ; the author has recourse to a 
 thousand skilful and fascinating devices, and leads us 
 by the hand through all sorts of flowery paths ; but 
 whatever the manner may be, he almost invariably, with- 
 out saying so, leads us to the sermon. There are 
 sermons in Defoe, who strongly protested against some 
 abbreviations of his " Robinson Crusoe " : " They strip 
 
 ^ It should not, however, be thence concluded that Lyly is 
 original in all his moral dissertations ; as Dr. Landmann has 
 pointed out (see supra, p. 106) he often borrows large pass-ages 
 from Plutarch and Guevara ; but what is remarkable is the intense 
 and persistent conviction, and also the success, at least success in 
 so far that it was read, with which this young man of twenty-five, 
 who was of the world and not of the church, preaches good morals 
 to all classes of society. 
 
1 24 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 it of all those reflections as well religious as moral, which 
 are not only the greatest beauties of the work, but are 
 calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader." ^ 
 There are sermons in Richardson, so much so that it 
 might rather be said that novels are to be noticed in 
 Richardson's magnificent series of sermons. This is 
 the way he himself would have spoken. Did he not 
 write to Lady Bradsaigh, while forwarding her the last 
 volumes of " Clarissa " : " Be pleased ... to honour these 
 volumes with a place with your Taylor's Holy Living 
 and Dying, with your Practice of piety, and Nelson's 
 Fasts and Festivals, not as being worthy of such 
 company, but that they may have a chance of being 
 dipt into thirty years hence. For I persuade myself, 
 they will not be found utterly unworthy of such a 
 chance, since they appear in the humble guise of novel, 
 only by the way of accommodation to the manners and 
 taste of an age overwhelmed with luxury, and aban- 
 doned to sound and senselessness." 2 There are some 
 sermons in Fielding, many in Dickens, not a few in 
 George Eliot, and even in Thackeray. Splendid they 
 are, most eloquent, most admirable in their kind, most 
 beneficial in their way ; but there is no denying that 
 sermons they are. Unfortunately for Lyly, what 
 formerly constituted the attraction of " Euphues," 
 and hid the sermon's bitte'rness, makes it to-day 
 ridiculous and even odious : it is the style. Let us 
 forget for a moment his unicorns and his scorpions ; 
 taken in himself, his hero deserves attention, because he 
 
 ^ Preface to Part II. 
 
 2 "Correspondence of Samuel Richardson," ed. Barbauld, 
 London, 1804, 6 vols. i2mo. 
 
L YLY AND HIS " EUPHUESr 127 
 
 is the ancestor in direct line of Grandison, of Lord 
 Orville, of Lord Colambre, and of all the sermonizing 
 lords, and lords of good example, that England owed 
 to the success of Richardson. 
 
 Euphues is a young Athenian, a contemporary not 
 of Pericles, but of Lyly, who goes to Naples, thence 
 to England, to study men and governments. Grave 
 with that gravity peculiar to lay preachers, well-in- 
 formed on every subject, even on his own merits, 
 assured by his conscience that in making mankind 
 sharer in his illumination, he will assure their sal- 
 vation, he addresses moral epistles to his fellow men / 
 to guide them through life. \ Omniscient like the 
 inheritors of his vein whom we have heard since, he 
 instructs the world in the truth about marriage, travel, 
 religion. He anticipates, in his discourses concerning 
 aristocracy, the philosophical ideas of " Milord 
 Edouard," of " Nouvelle Heloise " fame ; he treats 
 of love with the wisdom of Grandison, and of the 
 bringing up of children with the experience of Pamela.^ 
 
 When women are his subject he is especially earnest 
 and eloquent, and having, as it seems, suffered much 
 at their hands he concludes : '' Come to me al ye 
 lovers that have bene deceived by fancy, the glasse of 
 pestilence, or deluded by woemen, the gate to perdition ; 
 be as earnest to seeke a medicine, as you were eager 
 
 ^ The meaning of his name is thus given by Ascham in his 
 " Scholemaster " (1570) : " Ev(pvr)g is he that is apte by goodnes of 
 witte and appliable by readines of will, to learning, having all 
 other qualities of the minde and partes of the bodie that must an 
 other day serve learning, not troubled, mangled or halfed, but 
 sounde, whole, full, and hable to do their office." So was Grandison. 
 
128 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 to runne into a mischiefe." Having thus secured, 
 as it seems, a fairly large audience, he begins his 
 sermon, which he is pleased to call, " a cooling carde 
 for Philautus, and all fond lovers." ^ His intention 
 is to give men remedies, which shall cure them of 
 loving. Some of his precepts resemble the wise advice 
 oF Rondibilis to Panurge ; some do not. Philautus is 
 to avoid solitude, and idleness ; he must study. In 
 the same way Panurge is recommended laheur assidu 
 and fervente estude? Philautus is advised to try law, 
 *' whereby thou mayest have understanding of olde and 
 auntient customes ; " if law proves of no ava.il, there 
 is *' Physicke," and if this again fails, then there is 
 " the atteining of ye sacred and sincere knowledge of 
 divinitie." Study then may be supplemented by con- 
 temptuous meditations about women ; 3 a remedy 
 which Rabelais, who probably knew more of life than 
 twenty-five-years-old Lyly, refrains from recommending. 
 This part of the anathema, including as it does 
 a description of the superfluities of Elizabethan dress, 
 is especially worth noticing : " Take from them," 
 cries Euphues, in a burst of eloquence, " their pery- 
 wigges, their paintings, their Jewells, their rowles, their 
 boulstrings, and thou shalt soone perceive that a woman 
 is the least part of hir selfe. When they be once 
 robbed of their robes, then wil they appeare so odious, 
 so ugly, so monstrous, that thou wilt rather think them 
 serpents then saints, and so like hags, that thou wilt 
 
 ^ Arber's reprint, pp. io6 et seq. 
 
 2 " Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. xxxi. 
 
 3 Compare the meditations of the same sort of the Pedant in the 
 " Pedant joue," of Cyrano de Bergerac. 
 
LYLY AND HIS '' EUFHUESr 129 
 
 feare rather to be enchaunted than enamoured. Looke 
 in their closettes, and there shalt thou finde an appoti- 
 caryes shop of sweete confections, a surgions boxe of 
 sundry salves, a pedlers packe of newe fangles. Besides 
 all this their shadows, their spots, their lawnes, their 
 leefekyes, their ruffes, their rings, shew them rather 
 cardinalls curtisans then modest matrons. ... If every 
 one of these things severally be not of force to move 
 thee, yet all of them joyntly should mortifie thee.*' 
 This was, however, by no means the case, and Philautus 
 not so much "cooled" by this " carde '' as his friend 
 expected, behaved himself in such a way as to 
 demonstrate that, according to his experience, here 
 was gross exaggeration indeed. 
 
 Euphues shows better knowledge of the heart of 
 woman when, continuing his analysis of women's foibles, 
 he comes to give his friend information that teaches 
 him in fact rather how to be loved than how to 
 cease loving : *'Yet if thou be so weake being be- 
 witched with their wiles that thou hast neither will to 
 eschue nor wit to avoyd their company . . . yet at the 
 hearte dissemble thy griefe . . . cary two faces in one 
 hood, cover thy flaming fancie with fained ashes . . . 
 let thy hewe be merry when thy heart is melancholy, 
 beare a pleasaunt countenaunce with a pined conscience. 
 . . . Love creepeth in by stealth, and by stealth slideth 
 away. If she breake promise with thee in the night, 
 or absent hir selfe in the day, seeme thou carelesse, and 
 and then will she be carefull ; if thou languish \i.e.^ 
 becomest slack in thy suit], then wil she be lavish of 
 hir honour, yea and of the other strange beast her 
 honestie." 
 
1 30 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 He continues in this bitter vein, avenging, as it 
 seems, his private wrongs, and vowing never, as far as 
 he is himself concerned to have anything more to do 
 with women. From them, he is naturally led to think 
 of children who form an equally good theme on 
 which to moralise. He does not fail in this duty, and 
 writes for the good of his friend, and of the public at 
 large, a little treatise very much in the style of some 
 of Pamela's letters, ^ where we are taught how 
 " Ephoebus," the child that is to be, should be brought 
 up. Ephoebus is the Emile of this sixteenth-century 
 Rousseau. Always thorough and exact, Lyly is careful 
 to begin at the beginning, informing us at first '^ that 
 the childe shoulde be true borne and no bastarde." - 
 
 Then he comes to the bringing up of the boy, and 
 with as much earnestness as Jean- Jacques, and with 
 true and moving eloquence, he beseeches the mother 
 to be the nurse of her own progeny. " It is most 
 necessary and most naturall in mine opinion, that the 
 mother of the childe be also the nurse, both for the 
 entire love she beareth to the babe, and the great desire 
 she hath to have it well nourished : for is there any 
 one more meete to bring up the infant than she that 
 bore it .^ or will any be carefull for it, as she that 
 bredde it .^ ... Is the earth called the mother of all 
 things onely bicause it bringeth forth .^ No, but 
 
 ^ For instance, the letter on the nursing of children by their 
 mothers (vol. iii. of the original edition, letter 56), and the long 
 letter where Pamela takes to pieces Locke's *' Treatise on Educa- 
 tion," and remodels it according to her own ideas (vol. iv. letters 48 
 et seq.). 
 
 2 Arber's reprint, ut supra^ " Euphues and his Ephoebus," pp. 
 123^/ seq. 
 
LYLY AND HIS '' EUPHUESr 131 
 
 bicause it nourisheth those things that springe out of 
 it. Whatsoever is bred in ye sea is fed in the sea ; no 
 plant, no tree, no hearbe commeth out of the ground 
 that is not moystened, and as it were noursed of the 
 moysture and mylke of the earth ; the lyonesse nurseth 
 hir whelps, the raven cherisheth hir byrdes, the viper 
 her broode, and shal a woman cast away her babe ? 
 
 '^ I accompt it cast away which in the swath clouts is 
 cast aside, and lyttle care can the mother have which 
 can suffer such crueltie : and can it be tearmed with 
 any other title then cruelty, the infant yet looking redde 
 of the mother, the mother yet breathing through the 
 torments of hir travaile, the child crying for helpe which 
 is said to move wilde beastes, even in the selfe said 
 moment it is borne, or the nexte minute, to deliver to 
 a straunge nurse, which perhappes is neither wholesome 
 in body, neither honest in manners, whiche esteemeth 
 more thy argent though a trifle, then thy tender 
 infant, thy greatest treasure? " Here Lyly is at his 
 best, and neither Richardson nor Rousseau spoke better 
 on this point, which is one of their favourite subjects. 
 
 He goes on to show how his child should be brought 
 up, with what principles he should be imbued ; many 
 of these principles again very much resembling those 
 Rousseau was to accept and propagate two hundred- 
 years later : '' It is good nurture that leadeth to virtue, 
 and discreete demeanour that playneth the path to 
 felicitie. . . . To be a noble man it is most excellent, 
 but that is our ancestors ... as for our nobilytie, our 
 stocke, our kindred, and whatsoever we ourselves have 
 not done I scarcely accompt ours. ... It is vertue, 
 yea vertue, gentlemen, that maketh gentlemen. . . . 
 
1 3 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 These things \i.e.^ knowledge, reason, good sense], 
 neither the whirling wheele of Fortune can chaunge 
 neither the deceitful cavilling of worldlings 'separate, 
 neither sickenesse abate, neither age abolish." Then 
 follows a dialogue between Euphues and an atheist,^ 
 in which I need not say the latter is utterly routed ; 
 and the book ends with a collection of letters ^ between 
 Euphues and various people who ask and get his advice 
 on their difficulties, oracle-wise, Pamela-wise too. 
 
 In the second part of his romance, which appeared 
 in 1580,3 Lyly gives a kind of Lettres persanes, but 
 Lettres persanes reversed, Montesquieu making use 
 of his foreigner to satirize France, and Lyly of his to 
 eulogize his native land. Euphues comes to England 
 with his friend Philautus, and, since he knows every- 
 thing, instructs the latter as they go along. He warns 
 him against wine, gambling, and debauchery, teaches 
 him geography, and points out to him what is worth 
 seeing. Philautus does not retort that Euphues is a 
 pedant, which proves him to be very good tempered 
 and a perfect travelling companion. The two friends 
 are enchanted with the country : its natural products, 
 its commerce, its agriculture, its inhabitants and their 
 manners, its bishops and their flocks, the civil govern- 
 ment, the religious government, everything is perfect. 
 
 ^ " Euphues and Atheos," Arber's reprint, ut supra, pp. 160, et seq. 
 
 2 "Certeine Letters writ by Euphues to his friends," ibid, 
 pp. 178 et seq. 
 
 3 "Euphues and his England. Containing his voyage and 
 adventures, myxed with sundry pretie discourses of honest love, 
 the description of the countrey, the court and the manner of that 
 Isle. . . . by John Lyly, Maister of Arte, London 1580," reprinted 
 by Arber, ut supra. 
 
LYLY AND HIS EUPHUES. 133 
 
 English gentlewomen are prodigies of wisdom and 
 beauty ; and indeed that is the least Lyly can say of 
 them, since it is for them that he is writing. When 
 he spoke, as we have seen, disparagingly of women, 
 he meant Italian women (none of whom, as a matter 
 of fact, he had ever known or even seen), not English- 
 women. These spend their mornings " in devout 
 prayer," and not in bed like the ladies of Italy ; they 
 read the Scriptures instead of Ariosto and Petrarch ; 
 they are so beautiful that the traveller is enraptured 
 and cannot help crying out : " There is no beauty but 
 in England." To sum up, " they are in prayer devoute, j 
 in bravery humble, in beautie chast, in feasting/ 
 temperate, in affection wise, in mirth modest, in all^^ 
 their actions though courtlye, bicause woemen, yet 
 Aungels, bicause virtuous." As for the women of 
 other countries, they all have lovers and spend their 
 time in painting their faces. ^ 
 
 Having verified such important differences, Philautus 
 cannot do less than find a wife in England, and 
 Euphues, whose unsociable humour prevents his doing 
 likewise, carries away with him into his native land 
 the remembrance of " a place, in my opinion (if any 
 such may be on the earth) not inferiour to a paradise," 
 and of a Queen " of singuler beautie and chastitie, 
 excelling in the one Venus, in the other Vesta." 
 
 It is, however, appropriate to recollect that at the time 
 of the Renaissance, before the blossoming in England of 
 this literature for ladies, Caxton too had enumerated the 
 chief qualities of the women of his country. They are 
 the same as in Lyly, only, as we shall see, the honest 
 ' "Euphues and his England," ut supra, p. 447, 
 
134 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 printer closes his remarks with a slight reservation. In 
 the preface placed at the beginning of a work translated 
 from the French by Lord Rivers, he states that in the 
 translation, several passages reflecting on the female 
 sex were suppressed ; that is easily understood ; they 
 would have no application in England ; '' for I wote 
 wel," says he, "of whatsomever condicion women ben in 
 Grece, the women of this contre ben right good, wyse, 
 playsant, humble, discrete, sobre, chast, obedient to their 
 husbandis, trewe, secrete, stedfast, ever besy and never 
 ydle, attemperat in speking and vertuous in all their 
 werkis " — " or," he is fain to add, " atte leste sholde 
 be soo." I And thereupon, Caxton, on his own 
 authority, restores the suppressed passages. 
 
 From the particular point of view of the historian 
 of the English novel, Lyly with all his absurdities had 
 yet one merit which must be taken into account. With 
 him we leave epic and chivalrous stories and approach 
 the novel of manners. There is no longer question 
 of Arthur and his marvellous knights, but rather 
 of contemporary men, who, in spite of excessive 
 oratorical gew-gaws, possess some resemblance to 
 reality. Conversations are reported in which we find 
 the tone of well-born persons of the period. Lyly 
 takes care also to be very exact in his dates. Having 
 announced at the end of his first volume that Euphues 
 was about to set out for England, he informs us in the 
 beginning of the second, which appeared in 1580, that 
 the embarkation took place on December i, 1579. 
 He would, for anything, have gone so far as to give 
 an engraved portrait of his hero, just as we were to 
 ^ Preface to the "Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophres," 1477. 
 
LYL V AND HIS '' EUPHUESr 135 
 
 see later, at the beginning of a book destined to make 
 some noise in the world, the portrait of " Captain 
 Lemuel Gulliver of RedriiF." Undoubtedly his 
 opinions on men and life, his analysis of sentiment, 
 are rather clumsily blended with the story and savour 
 of the awkwardness of a first attempt ; but there was 
 however merit in making the attempt, and it is not 
 impossible at distant intervals to discover under the 
 crust of pedantry some well-turned passage, possessing 
 eloquence, as we have seen, or, more rarely, a sort of 
 humour. It is thus that a tolerably good lesson may 
 be drawn from the adventures of Philautus in London, 
 who, deeply smitten with the charms of a young English 
 lady, consults a sorcerer in order to obtain a philtre that 
 will inspire love. Here was an excellent opportunity, 
 which the magician does not fail to seize, of talking 
 about serpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration 
 of the bones, stones, and livers of animals that cause 
 love, the alchemist, urged by Philautus, ends by con- 
 fessing that the best sorcery of all to gain the loving 
 regard of a woman, is to be handsome, witty, and 
 charming. 
 
 IV 
 
 By his defects and his merits, his wisdom, his grace- 
 fulness and also his bad style, Lyly could not fail to 
 please. His public was ready when he began writing, 
 a public with many frivolous tastes and many serious 
 instincts. The lightness of tone and of behaviour 
 which struck a foreigner coming for the first time to 
 the English court or a professional censor who by 
 
136 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 trade Is meant to see nothing else, was misleading as 
 showing only the surface of the sort of mankind that 
 was flourishing there at that time. This lightness of 
 tone, however, did exist nevertheless, and those who 
 assumed it were not slow to embellish their speeches 
 with flowers from Lyly's paper garden. The austere 
 French Huguenot, Hubert Languet, the friend and 
 adviser of Sir Philip Sidney, who visited England in 
 the very year '' Euphues " was published, was very 
 much astonished to see how English courtiers behaved 
 themselves ; accustomed as he was to the grave talk 
 he enjoyed with his young friend, he had imagined, 
 it seems, that no other was relished by him or by 
 anybody in Queen Elizabeth's palaces. When he left 
 the country he wrote to Sidney his opinion of the 
 manners he had observed. It is simply a confirmation 
 of what Ascham had stated sometime before, when he 
 wrote of his travelled compatriots : neither of them 
 did justice to the more serious qualities hidden under 
 all this courtly trifling : " It was a delight to me last 
 winter," says Languet, " to see you high in favour and 
 enjoying the esteem of all your countrymen ; but to 
 speak plainly, the habits of your court seemed to me 
 somewhat less manly than I could have wished, and 
 most of your noblemen appeared to me to seek for 
 a reputation more by a kind of affected courtesy than 
 by those virtues which are wholesome to the State, 
 and which are most becoming to generous spirits and 
 to men of high birth. I was sorry therefore, and so 
 were other friends of yours, to see you wasting the 
 flower of your life on such things, and I feared lest 
 that noble nature of yours should be brought to 
 
L YLY AND HIS ''EUFHUES," 137 
 
 take pleasure in pursuits which only enervate the 
 mind." ^ 
 
 Lyly's book proved well suited to this public ; it 
 went through numerous editions ; it was printed five 
 times during the first six years of its publication, and 
 new editions were issued from time to time till 1636. 
 It gave birth, as we shall see, to many imitations ; the 
 name of Euphues on the title-page of a novel was for 
 years considered a safe conduct to the public, if not to 
 posterity ; books purporting to 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 mytho- 
 logy 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 sym- 
 pathetic 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 
 
 ^ Antwerp, Nov. 14, 1579, "Correspondence of Sir Ph. Sidney 
 and Hubert Languet," ed. Pears, London, 1845, 8vo, p. 167. 
 
138 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 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 ; ail 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." ^ 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 foHo 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 per- 
 formed 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," performed also before the 
 Queen by the same children, on Shrove Tuesday, 1584 ; 
 his " Endimion, the man in the moone/' played before 
 
 ^ Preface " to the Reader " in " Six Court Comedies ... by 
 the onely rare poet of that time, the wittie, comicall, facetiously- 
 quicke and unparalelld John Lilly," London, 1632, izmo. 
 
LYL V AND HIS ^^ EUPBUES." 139 
 
 the Queen "at Greenwich on Candlemass day at night, by 
 the chyldren of Paules"; " Gallathea," played on New- 
 Year's Day ; '' Midas," performed on Twelfth Night, 
 also before the Queen, &c.i 
 
 On love matters and women's affairs, he was con- 
 sidered an authority ; the analysis of the passions and 
 the knowledge of the deeper moods of the soul, which 
 many consider to be, among novelists, a new-born 
 science, were regarded by his contemporaries as a thing 
 wholly his, a discovery made by himself; not fore- 
 seeing his successors, they proclaimed him a master of 
 his newly invented art. Beginners would come to him 
 for advice or for a preface, as they go now to the heirs 
 of his art, especially when love is their theme. In this 
 way Thomas Watson published in 1582 his "Passionate 
 Centurie of Love," and prefaced it, as with a certificate 
 of its worth, by a letter from Lyly : " My good friend, 
 I have read your new passions, and they have renewed 
 mine old pleasures, the which brought to me no lesse 
 delight, then they have done to yourself commenda- 
 tions. . . . Such is the nature of persuading pleasure, 
 that it melteth the marrow before it scorch the skin 
 . . . not unlike unto the oyle of jeat which rotteth the 
 bone and never rankleth the flesh." 2 
 
 It was useless for wise minds to grumble ; Lyly always 
 found women to applaud him. In vain did Nash, 
 twelve years after the appearance of " Euphues," scoff 
 at the enthusiasm with which he had read the book 
 
 ^ "Dramatic Works," ed. Fairholt, London, 1858, two vols. 8vo. 
 2 Watson was then about twenty-five years old. " Poems," 
 reprinted by Arber, London, 1870, 4to. 
 
T40 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 when he was " a little ape In Cambridge''; ^ vainly was 
 Euphuism derided on the stage before a Cambridge 
 audience : " There is a beaste in India call'd a polecatt 
 . ,. . and the further she is from you the less you smell 
 her," a piece of information that contains more proba- 
 bility than perhaps any given by Lyly.^ Vainly, too, 
 Shakespeare showed his opinion of the style in lending 
 it to FalstafF when the worthy knight wishes to ad- 
 monish Prince Henry in the manner of courts. Grown 
 old in his tavern, FalstafF has no idea that these refine- 
 ments, fashionable at the time when he was as slender 
 as his page, may be now the jest of the young genera- 
 tion : " There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often 
 heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the 
 name of pitch : this pitch, as ancient writers do report, 
 doth defile ; so doth the company thou keepest : for, 
 Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in 
 tears ; not in pleasure, but in passion ; not in words 
 only, but in woes also." 3 
 
 Many persons to whom the book doubtless recalled 
 the memory of their spring-time, shared FalstaflF's 
 ingenuousness, and remained faithful to Lyly ; if men 
 of letters, after some years of enthusiasm, ceased to 
 imitate him, his book was for a long time continuously 
 read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the 
 
 ^ " ' Euphues ' I read when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and 
 I' then thought it was ipse ille ; it may be excellent still for ought 
 T know, but I lookt not on it this ten yeare" ("Strange Newes," 
 1592). 
 
 2 "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," ed. Macray, Oxford, 1886, 
 8vo. " The Returne," part i. act v. sc. 2. This part was per- 
 formed in 1600. 
 
 3 " \ Henry IV.," act ii. sc. 4 (a.d. 1597-8, Furnivall). 
 
? 
 
 LYLY AND HIS " E UPHUESr 141 
 
 reign of Charles I. It was translated into Dutch in the 
 same century, i and was modernized in the following, 
 under the title : " The false friend and the inconstant .,^ 
 mistress : an instructive novel . . . displaying the arti- S 
 fices of the female sex in their amours." 2 High praise 
 is rendered by the editor to Lyly, who " was a great 
 refiner of the English tongue in those days." The 
 book appeared not very long before Richardson's 
 " Pamela/' a fact worthy of notice, the more so as in 
 this abbreviation of Euphues, the letters contained 
 in the original have been reproduced and look the more 
 conspicuous in the little pamphlet. Quite Richard- 
 sonian, too, is the table of contents which is rather a 
 table of good precepts and useful information, a very 
 different table from the one appended by Harington to 
 his " Ariosto. "' Here we find enumerated the many wise 
 recommendations by which Lyly so long anticipated 
 Richardson and Rousseau : 
 
 *' The mother ought to be her own nurse p. 83. 
 
 " The wild beasts more tender of their young 
 than those who nurse not their own children p. 83. 
 
 *' Children not to be frightened with stories 
 of spirits and bugbears (&c.) ... ... p. 86." 
 
 So much for the continuation of Lyly's fame. As 
 for the period of imitation proper, the era of euphuism's 
 
 ^ "De vermakelijke historic Zee-ecn Landreize van Euphues," 
 Rotterdam, 1671, izmo. Another edition of the same, 1682. 
 
 2 London, 17 18, i6mo. "Price 2s." (on title-page). Defoe's 
 "Robinson Crusoe "appeared the next year ; Richardson's "Pamela'^ 
 was published in 1740. 
 
142 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 full glory, it lasted, as we have said, hardly more than 
 twelve or at most fifteen years. But it saw the birth 
 of works that are not without importance in the history 
 of the origin of the novel in this country. 
 
 LIBRA. 
 

 Ka 
 
 3S^ 
 
ANOTHER DRAGON, 1608. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LYLYS LEGATEES. 
 
 I. 
 
 ALL Lyly's imitators, Greene, Lodge, Melbancke, 
 Riche, Munday, Warner, Dickenson, and others, 
 did not faithfully copy his style in all its 
 peculiarities, at any rate in all their works ; some of 
 them borrowed only his ideas, others his plot ; others 
 his similes ; most of them, however, when they first 
 began to write, went the fullest length in imitation, and 
 tricked themselves out in euphuistic tinsel. They were 
 careful by choosing appropriate titles for their novels 
 to publicly connect themselves with the euphuistic 
 cycle. *' Euphues " was a magic pass-word, and they 
 well knew that the name once pronounced, the doors of 
 the " boudoirs," or closets as they were then called, and 
 
146 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 the hands of the fair ladies, were sure to open ; the book 
 was certain to be welcome. 
 
 Hence the number of writers who declared them- 
 selves Euphues' legatees and executors. Year after 
 year, for a while, readers saw issuing from the press 
 such books as *' Zelauto, the fountaine of Fame . . . 
 containing a delicate disputation . . . given for a 
 friendly entertainment to Euphues at his late arrival 
 into England/' by Munday, 1580 ; or as " Euphues his 
 censure to Philautus, wherein is presented a philo- 
 sophicall combat betweene Hector and Achylles," by 
 Robert Greene, 1587 : "Gentlemen," says the author to 
 the readers, " by chance, some of Euphues loose papers 
 came to my hand, wherein hee writ to his friend Philautus 
 from Silexedra, certaine principles necessary to bee 
 observed by every souldier." Or there was *' Menaphon, 
 Camillas alarum to slumbering Euphues," by the same, 
 1589; " Rosalynde, Euphues golden legacie, found after 
 his death in his cell at Silexedra," by Thomas Lodge, 
 1590 ; " Arisbas, Euphues amidst his slumbers," by John 
 Dickenson, 1594, &c. ^ All these authors continued:'' 
 their model's work in contributing to the development \ 
 of literature written chiefly for ladies ; in that way t 
 especially was Lyly's initiative fruitful. ^ 
 
 Barnabe Riche, for example, publishes " Don Simo- 
 
 ^" Prose and Verse" by John Dickenson, ed. Grosart, Man- 
 chester, 1878, 4to. At a later date Dickenson took Greene for 
 his model when he wrote his " Greene in conceipt new raised 
 from his grave, to write the tragique history of the faire Valeria of 
 London," 1598. In this Dickenson imitates Greene's descriptions 
 of the life of the courtezans of London (Troy-novant). See 
 infra^ pp. 187 et seq. 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES, 147 
 
 nides,"! a story of a foreigner who travels in Italy 
 and then comes to London, like Euphues, mixes 
 in good society, and makes the acquaintance of Phi- 
 lautus ; he writes this romance " for the amuse- 
 ment of our noble gentilmen as well as of our 
 honourable ladies." He wrote also a series of short 
 stories,- this time '' for the onely delight of the 
 courteous gentlewoemen bothe of England and Ire- 
 lande ; " and, for fear they should forget his design of 
 solely pleasing them, he addresses them directly in 
 the course of his narrative : '' Now, gentil women, doe 
 you thinke there could have been a greater torment 
 devised, wherewith to afflicte the harte of Silla ? " 
 Shakespeare, an assiduous reader of collections of this 
 kind, and who, unfortunately for their authors, has 
 not transmitted his taste to posterity, was acquainted 
 with Riche's tales, and drew from this same story of 
 Silla the principal incidents of his " Twelfth Night." 
 Riche himself had taken it from the " Histoires 
 tragiques " of Belleforest, and Belleforest had tran- 
 slated it from Bandello. 
 
 Mimday's Zelauto 3 is also a traveller. A son of 
 
 ^"The straunge and wonderfull Adventures of Don Simonides," 
 London, 1581, 4to ; in 1584 appeared "The second tome of the 
 travailes ... of Don Simonides." 
 
 2 " Riche his Farewell to Militarie profession : Conteining verie 
 pleasaunt discourses fit for a peaceable tyme. Gathered together 
 for the onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen bothe of 
 England and Irelande, for whose onely pleasure thei were collected 
 together, and unto whom thei are directed and dedicated," London, 
 1 58 1, 4to. By the same : "The Adventures of Brusanus, Prince 
 of Hungaria," 1592 ; " Greenes newes both from heaven and 
 hell," 1593, &c. 
 
 3 London, 1580, 4to. One copy in the Bodleian Library. 
 
1 48 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 the Duke of Venice, he goes on his travels, after the 
 example of Euphues, visiting Naples and Spain, where 
 he falls " in the company of certain English merchants,'' 
 very learned merchants, " who, in the Latin tongue, told 
 him the happy estate of England and how a worthy 
 princes governed their common wealth." He comes 
 accordingly to this country, for which he feels an admira- 
 tion equal to Euphues' own. From thence he " takes 
 shipping into Persia," and visits Turkey, prepared upon 
 any emergency to fight valiantly or to speak eloquently, 
 his hand and tongue being equally ready with thrusts 
 and parries, or comparisons and similes. 
 
 Again we find Lyly's manner in Melbancke's 
 ''Philotimus," I 1583, a book full, as ** Euphues," of 
 letters, dialogues, and philosophical discussions, and in 
 Warner's *' Pan his Syrinx," 1 584. Warner, whose fame 
 mainly rests on his long poem, " Albion's England," 
 published in 1586, began his literary career as a novelist 
 of the euphuistic school. In common with many 
 youths of all times, of whom Lyly was one, he was 
 scarcely out of " non-age," to use his own word, than 
 he wanted to impart to his fellow-men his experience 
 of a life, for him just begun, and to teach them how to 
 behave in a world of which he knew only the outside. 
 He lands his hero, Sorares, 'Mn a sterile and harborlesse 
 island," not a rare occurrence even in novels anterior to 
 Defoe ; Sorares' sons start to find him. Both they and 
 their father meet with sundry adventures, in the course 
 of which they tell or hear stories and take part in 
 various " controversies and complayntes." Many topics 
 
 ^ "Philotimus, the wane betwixt nature and fortune,"' London, 
 1583, 4to. A copy in the Bodleian Library. 
 
ZVLV'S LEGATEES. 149 
 
 are philosophically discussed ; the chief being, as in 
 Lyly, woman. One of the speakers puts . forward the 
 assertion that there may be, after all, some good in 
 women ; but another demonstrates that there is none 
 at all ; and that their name of *^ wo-man " contains their 
 truest definition. Whereupon, we are treated once 
 more to a description of dresses and fashions : *' Her 
 face painted, her beautie borrowed, her haire an others, 
 and that frisled, her gestures enforced, her lookes pre- 
 meditated, her backe bolstred, her breast bumbasted, 
 her shoulders bared and her middle straite laced, and 
 then is she in fashion ! " Of course this does not apply 
 to English, but to Scythian and Assyrian ladies. This 
 description is followed, as in Lyly, by a proper antidote, 
 and with a number of rules to be observed by all the 
 honest people who desire to escape the wiles of the 
 feminine sex. 
 
 Warner's book had some success ; it reached a second 
 edition in 1597,^ in which the author states that two 
 writers, at least, copied him, sometimes *' verbatim" 
 without any acknowledgment ; one of them seems to 
 have been no less a person than Robert Greene, " a 
 scholler," says Warner, " better than my selfe on whose 
 grave the grasse now groweth green, whom otherwise, 
 though otherwise to me guiltie, I name not." Several 
 incidents in Greene's works resemble Warner's stories, 
 especially the one called " Opheltes," the plot of which 
 forciblv reminds us of " Francesco's Fortunes," and at 
 
 ^ " Syrinx or a seavenfold historie . . . newly perused and 
 amended by the original author," London, 1597, 4to. Warner died 
 in 1609. 
 
150 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 the same time of a different work of greater fame, the 
 " Two Gentlemen of Verona." ^ 
 
 When Warner spoke, apparently, of Greene as a 
 " scholler " better than himself he was quite right, and 
 as a matter of fact, Lyly's two most famous disciples 
 were Thomas Lodge, a friend of Riche, who helped him 
 to revise his works and corrected his faulty verses, and 
 Robert Greene, a novelist and dramatist like Lodge and 
 Lyly, and a friend of the former. Endowed with a less 
 calm and sociable temperament than their model, Greene 
 and Lodge led a chequered existence very characteristic 
 of their epoch. 
 
 n. 
 
 With Robert Greene we are in the midst of 
 Bohemia, not exactly the Bohemia which Miirger 
 described and which dies in the hospital : the hospital 
 
 ^ "Episodeof Julia and Proteus." This episode has been traced 
 to the story of the shepherdess Felismena, in Montemayor's 
 *' Diana." But Shakespeare may have taken some hints also from 
 Warner. Opheltes (Proteus) married (not betrothed) to the 
 virtuous Alcippe (Julia), goes to " Sardis," where he becomes 
 acquainted (in the same manner as Greene's Francesco) with the 
 courtesan Phoemonoe (Greene's Infida). Alcippe hears of it, and 
 wants at least to be able to see her husband ; she enters the service 
 of the courtesan, and there suffers a moral martyrdom. Opheltes 
 is ruined, and, in words which Greene nearly copied, " Phoemonoe 
 not brooking the cumbersome haunt of so beggerly a guest, 
 with outragious tearms flatly forbad him her house." Alcippe 
 makes herself known, and all ends well for the couple. 
 
LYLTS LEGATEES. 151 
 
 corresponds in some manner to ideas of order and rule ; 
 under Elizabeth men remained irregular to the end ; 
 hterary men who were not physicians hke Lodge, or 
 shareholders in a theatre like Shakespeare, or subsidized 
 by the Court like Ben Jonson, died of hunger in the 
 gutter, or of indigestion at a neighbour's house, or of 
 a sword-thrust in the tavern. Therein is one of the 
 peculiarities of the period. It distinguishes the Bohemia 
 of Elizabeth from other famous Bohemias, that of Grub 
 Street, known to Dr. Johnson, and that of the quartier 
 latin described by Miirger. 
 
 Greene was one of the most original specimens of 
 the unfortunate men who in the time of Elizabeth ^ 
 attempted to live by their pen. He was as remarkable 
 for his extravagances of conduct as for his talents, 
 sometimes gaining money and fame by the success of his 
 writings, sometimes sinking into abject poverty and 
 consorting with the outcasts of society. Of all the 
 writers of the Elizabethan period he is perhaps the 
 one whose life and character we can best picture to 
 ourselves ; for in his last years, repentant and sorrow- 
 stricken, he wrote with the utmost sincerity autobio- 
 graphical tales and pamphlets, which are invaluable as 
 a picture 'of the times ; they are, in fact, nothing else 
 than the " Scenes de la vie de Boheme " of Elizabethan 
 England. 
 
 In these books Greene gives us the key to his own 
 character, to his many adventures, and to his miserable 
 end. There were two separate selves in him, and they 
 proved incompatible. One was full of reasonable, 
 sensible, and somewhat bourgeois tendencies, highly 
 appreciating honour, respectability, decorum, civic and 
 
1 5 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 patriotic virtues ; of women liking only those that 
 were pure, of men those that were honest, religious 
 and good citizens. Greene's other self was not, properly 
 speaking, the counterpart of the first, and had no taste 
 for vices as vices, nor for disorder as disorder, 
 but was wholly and solely bent upon enjoyment^ 
 immediate enjoyment whatever be the sort, the cost, or 
 the consequence. Hence the glaring discrepancies in 
 Greene's life, his faults, not to say his crimes, his sudden 
 short-lived repentances, his supplications to his friends 
 y not to imitate his example, his incapacity to follow 
 steadily one course or the other. His better self kept- 
 his writings free from vice, but was powerless to control 
 his conduct. This struggle between the forces of good 
 and evil is exceedingly well depicted in Greene's 
 Repentances, under his own or fictitious names ; of 
 all the heroes of his tales he is himself the most 
 interesting and the most deeply studied. As a novel 
 writer and an observer of human nature, his own por- 
 trait is perhaps his masterpiece. 
 
 Greene was born at Norwich about 1560, and 
 belonged to a family in easy circumstances. He was 
 sent to Cambridge, where he was admitted to St. John's 
 College on November, 1575. There, according to a 
 propensity that was inborn, he at once associated with 
 noisy, unprincipled young fellows. This propensity 
 accompanied him through life, and led him to con- 
 stantly surround himself with a rabble of merry com- 
 •J panions, to be greatly liked by them, but to make few 
 sincere friends, and to quarrel with these very often, 
 to drop their acquaintance, to befriend them again, 
 and so on to the last. 
 
LYL Y'S LEGATEES, 153 
 
 The universities at that time were not places of 
 edification ; and Lyly, who during the same period had 
 a personal experience of them, was careful when, 
 shortly afterwards, he wrote his advice for the educa- 
 tion of ** Ephoebus " to warn fathers of the dangers 
 of university life : " To speak plainly of the disorder 
 of Athens [that is, Oxford] who does not se it and 
 sorrow at it? Such playing at dice, such quaffing of 
 drink, such daliaunce with women, such dauncing, 
 that in my opinion there is no quaffer in Flaunders 
 so given to tipplyng, no courtier in Italy so given 
 to ryot, no creature in the world so misled as a 
 student in Athens." Many return from the uni- 
 versities *' little better learned, but a great deal worse 
 lived, then when they went, and not only unthrifts 
 of their money, but also banckerouts of good man- 
 ners/' I 
 
 Greene did not fail to choose his associates among 
 people of this sort, and with some of them he crossed 
 over to the continent in his turn to visit '^ Circe."" 
 '^ Being at the University of Cambridge, I light 
 amongst wags as lewd as my selfe, with whome I con- 
 sumed the flower of my youth, who drew me to travell 
 into Italy and Spaine, in which places I saw and prac- 
 tizde such villainie as is abhominable to declare. . . ." 
 He comes back, and after the pleasures and excite- 
 ment of travel, ordinary every-day life seems to him 
 tasteless ; the mere idea of a regular career of any sort 
 is abhorrent to him. '^ At my return into England, I 
 ruffeled out in my silks, in the habit of Malcontent^ and 
 seemed so discontent that no place would please me to 
 ^ Arber's reprint, pp. 139 and 141. 
 9 
 
154 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 abide in, nor no vocation cause mee to stay myselfe 
 in." I 
 
 In this uncertainty, and with his head full of Italian 
 remembrances and romantic adventures, he thought, 
 being not yet twenty, to try his hand at writing. His 
 first attempt was a novel, a love story in the Italian 
 fashion, in which very much loving was to do for very 
 little probability and less observation of character and 
 nature. It was called " Mamillia " ; it was finished in 
 1580, and published three years later. 
 
 Greene at that time was again in Cambridge, and 
 strange to say, among the many whims that crossed his 
 mind, a fancy took him to apply himself to study. 
 Gifted as he was, this caused him no trouble ; he 
 acquired much varied knowledge, of which his writings 
 show sufficient proof, and was received M.A. in 1583.2 
 He then left the universitv and went to London, where 
 the most curious part of his life, that was to last only 
 nine years longer, began. 
 
 ^ "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592. "Works," ed. 
 Grosart, vol. xii. p. 172. 
 
 2 He belonged then to Clare Hall ; the preface to the second 
 part of " Mamillia " (entered 1583) is dated " from my studie in 
 Clarehall." Later in life he seems to have again felt the want of 
 increasing his knowledge, and he was, for a while, incorporated 
 at Oxford, July, 1588 ; he, therefore, describes himself on the 
 title-page of some of his works, not without touch of pride, as- 
 belonging to both universities. In common with his friend Lodge 
 he had a taste for medical studies, and he appears to have attempted 
 to open to himself a career of this kind ; he styles himself on the 
 title-page of " Planetomachia," 1585, as "Student in Phisicke," 
 but as he never gave himself any higher appellation we may take it 
 for granted that he never went beyond the preliminaries. 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES. 155 
 
 The reception awarded to *' Mamillia " seems to have 
 encouraged him to continue writing. It had, in fact, 
 crude as it seems to us now, many quahties that would 
 ensure it a welcome : its style was euphuistic ; its tone 
 was Italian ; its plot was intricate, and, lastly, there was 
 very much love in it. He continued therefore in this 
 vein, writing with extreme facility and rapidity im- 
 probable love stories, with wars, kings, and princesses, 
 with euphuism and mythology, with Danish, Greek, 
 Egyptian and Bohemian adventures. There was a 
 *' Myrrour of Modesty" which has for its heroine the 
 chaste Susannah, a '^ Gwydonius, the card of fancie," 
 again a tale in the Italian style, an " Arbasto " which 
 tells of the wars and loves of a Danish king, a " Morando,'* 
 containing a series of discussions and speeches on love, 
 all of them entered or published in 1584-6. Then came 
 his " Planetomachia," 1585, where the several planets 
 describe and exemplify their influence on human fate ; 
 '^ Penelopes web," 1587, containing a succession of short 
 stories; '' Perimedes," 1588, imitated from Boccaccio; 
 " Pandosto," a tale of Bohemian and Sicilian kings and 
 shepherds, which had an immense success, much greater 
 according to appearances than the exquisite drama of 
 a '' Winter's Tale," that Shakespeare drew from it. 
 " Alcida," a story of the metamorphosis of three young 
 love-stricken princesses of an island '^ under the pole 
 antartike," was apparently published in the same year ; 
 " Menaphon," a charming pastoral tale, appeared in 
 1589, and several others followed. His popularity was 
 soon considerable ; his books were in all the shops ; 
 several went through an extraordinary number of 
 editions ; his name was better known than any : '^ I 
 
156 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 became," says he, " an author of playes, and a penner of 
 love pamphlets, so that I soone grew famous in that 
 qualitie," and who then " for that trade " was there 
 " so ordinarie about London as Robin Greene ? " ^ 
 
 As for his beginning to write plays, he has left a 
 lively account of the casual meeting which led to his 
 becoming attached to a company of players and to be 
 for a time their playwright in ordinary. It was at a 
 moment when his purse was empty ; for as he quaintly 
 puts it in one of his stories : '* so long went the pot to 
 the water, that at last it came broken home ; and so long 
 put he his hand into his purse that at last the emptie 
 bottome returned him a writt of non est inventus ; for 
 well might the divell dance there for ever a crosse to 
 keepe him backe." ^ In this difficulty he met by chance 
 a brilliantly dressed fellow who seemed to be a cavalier, 
 and happened to be a player. It is a well-known fact 
 that if scenery was scanty in Elizabethan play-houses, 
 the players' dresses were very costly, and if need there 
 was, this would be an additional proof that no mone- 
 tary consideration would have induced the young man 
 who played, for example, the part of Shakespeare's 
 Cleopatra, to appear in less than queenly ruffs and 
 farthingales, such as Rogers has represented in his 
 portrait of Elizabeth. 
 
 " What is your profession ? said Roberto [that is, 
 Robert Greene]. 3 
 
 ^ "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592, "Works" vol. 
 xii. p. 173. 
 
 2 "Greene's never too late," 1590, "Works," vol. viii. p. loi. 
 
 3 " Greene's Groats-worth of wit," 1592, "Works," vol. xii. pp. 
 131^^ se^. " Roberto . . . whose life in most parts agreeing with 
 mine, found one selfe punishment as I have done " (IhW. p. 137). 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES. 157 
 
 " Truely, sir, said he, I am a player. 
 
 " A player, quoth Roberto ; I tooke you rather 
 for a gentleman of great living, for if by outward 
 habit men should be censured, I tell you, you woud be 
 taken for a substantial! man. 
 
 "So am I, where I dwell, quoth the player, re- 
 puted able at my proper cost, to build a windmill. 
 What, though the worlde once went hard with me, when 
 I was faine to carrie my playing fardle a footebacke ; 
 tempora mutantur ... it is otherwise now ; for my share 
 in playing apparell will not be solde for two hundred 
 pounds." 
 
 The player goes on relating his own successes, the 
 parts he performs, and how he had been himself for a 
 while the playwright of his troop, but that had been 
 some time ago ; tastes are changing and his wit is now 
 out of fashion : " Nay, more, I can serve to make a 
 prettie speech, for I was a countrie author, passing at 
 a morall, for it was I that pende the moral of mans 
 wit, the Dialogue of Dives, and for seaven yeeres space 
 was absolute interpreter of the puppets. But now my 
 Almanacke is out of date : 
 
 The people make no estimation 
 Of morals teaching education, 
 
 " Was not this prettie for a plaine rime extempore ? 
 If ye will, ye shall have more. 
 
 " Nay, it is enough, said Roberto, but how meane 
 you to use mee ? 
 
 " Why, sir, in making playes, said the other, for 
 which you shall be well paid, if you will take the 
 paines." 
 
158 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Greene did so, and with no mean success. He grew 
 more and more famous, and, without becoming more 
 wealthy, had the pleasure of being able to squander at 
 one time much larger sums of money than before : 
 *' Roberto was now famozed for an arch-playmaking- 
 poet ; his purse, like the sea, somtime sweld, anon like 
 the same sea fell to a low ebb ; yet seldom he wanted, 
 his labors were so well esteemed." 
 
 He had not yet broken all connection with his birth- 
 place and his family, and some of his visits were for 
 him memorable ones. During one of them he was 
 seized with a sudden fit of repentance for the loose life 
 he had been leading in London ; the better man in 
 him made himself heard, and he fell into such an abyss 
 of misery and despair as to remind us of the great 
 conversions of the Puritan epoch. In fact, his com- 
 panions, when he again saw them, wondering at his 
 altered countenance, called him a Puritan. *' Once I 
 felt a feare and horrour in my conscience, and then the 
 terrour of Gods judgementes did manifestly teach me 
 that my life was bad, that by sinne I deserved damna- 
 tion, and that such was the greatnes of my sinne that 
 I deserved no redemption. And this inward motion 
 I received in St. Andrews church in the cittie of 
 Norwich, at a lecture or sermon then preached by a 
 godly learned man. ... At this sermon the terrour 
 of Gods judgementes did manifestly teach me, that 
 mv exercises were damnable, and that I should bee 
 wipte out of the booke of life, if I did not speedily 
 repent my loosenes of life, and reforme my misde- 
 meanors." 
 
 In the same way, in the next century, George Fox the 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES. 159 
 
 Quaker, John Bunyan, and many others, were to find 
 themselves awe-stricken at the thought of God's judg- 
 ment ; in the same way also, and in almost the same 
 words, the hero of a novel that was to be world-famous 
 in the following age was to express the sudden horror 
 he felt when remorse began to prey upon him. '' No 
 one," wrote Robinson Crusoe, in his journal, '^ that 
 shall ever read this account will expect that I shall be 
 able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible 
 vision." But Greene differed from them all by the 
 short duration of his anxieties : " This good notion 
 lasted not long in mee, for no sooner had I met with 
 my copesmates, but seeing me in such a solemn humour, 
 they demaunded the cause of my sadnes . . . they fell 
 upon me in a jeasting manner, calling me Puritane and 
 Presizian, and wished I might have a pulpit." And 
 soon the good effect of the godly vision in St. Andrew's 
 church wore away. 
 
 He allowed another chance of escaping his final doom 
 to pass in the same manner. Famous as he was all 
 over the country, witty and brilliant, with such patrons 
 as Leices ter, Essex and Arundel, to whom several of 
 his works are dedicated, he became acquainted with " a 
 gentlemans daughter of good account." He loved her ; 
 his suit was favoured, and he married her, about 1586. 
 He lived with her for a year and they had a boy ; but 
 she objected to his disorderly ways of life, and he, 
 unable to alter them, '' cast her off^, having spent 
 the marriage money." She returned to Lincolnshire, 
 he to London, and they never met again. That 
 Greene, however, had felt within himself what it is to 
 be a father is shown by the exquisite " lullaby " he 
 
1 60 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 composed shortly after for Sephestia in his " Menaphon." 
 It is the well-known song : 
 
 "Weepe not my wanton ! smile upon my knee ! 
 When thou art olde, ther's griefe inough for thee ! 
 Mothers wagge, pretie boy, 
 Fathers sorrow, fathers joy. 
 When thy father first did see 
 Such a boy by him and mee. 
 He was glad, I was woe. 
 Fortune changde made him so, 
 When he left his pretie boy, 
 Last his sorowe, first his joy. 
 
 Weepe not my wanton ! smile upon my knee ! 
 When thou art olde, ther's griefe inough for thee ! 
 
 The wanton smilde, father wept ; 
 
 Mother cride, babie lept : 
 
 More he crowde, more we cride ; 
 
 Nature could not sorowe hide. 
 
 He must goe, he must kisse 
 
 Childe and mother, babie blisse : 
 
 For he left his pretie boy, 
 
 Fathers sorowe, fathers joy." 
 
 In London he continued a favourite : " For these 
 my vaine discourses [that is, his love novels] I was 
 beloved of the more vainer sort of people, who being 
 my continuall companions came still to my lodging, 
 and there would continue quaffing, corowsing, and 
 surfeting with me all the day long." One of his 
 best friends has corroborated his statement, giving at 
 the same time a graphic description of his physical 
 appearance : " Hee inherited more vertues than vices,'* 
 wrote Nash, " a jolly long red peake [beard] like the 
 spire of a steeple he cherisht continually, without 
 
LYLY'S LEG A TEES, 1 6 1 
 
 cutting, whereat a man might hang a Jewell, it was so 
 sharp and pendant. . . He had his faultes. . . Debt 
 and deadly sinne, who is not subject to ? . .A good 
 fellow he was. . . In a night and a day would he have 
 yarkt up a pamphlet as well as in seaven yeare, and glad 
 was that printer that might bee so blest to pay him 
 deare for the very dregs of his wit. He made no 
 account of winning credite by his workes. . . His 
 only care was to have a spel in his purse to conjure up 
 a good cuppe of wine with at all times." ^ 
 
 The few samples that have come to us of the talk 
 in these meetings of Elizabethan literary men show, as 
 might well have been supposed, that it was not lacking 
 in freedom. Greene himself has left an account of one 
 of these conversations, when he expressed, Bohemia- 
 wise, his opinions of a future life and, without Aucassin's 
 extenuating plea that he was love-mad, he exclaimed : 
 " Hell, quoth I, what talke you of hell to me } I know 
 if I once come there, I shall have the company of better 
 men than my selfe ; I shall also meete with some madde 
 knaves in that place, and so long as I shall not sit there 
 alone, my care is the lesse. But you are mad folks, 
 quoth I, for if I feared the judges of the Bench no 
 more than I dread the judgments of God, I would 
 before T slept dive into one carles bagges or other, make 
 merrie with the shelles I found in them so long as they 
 would last." 2 
 
 ^ " Strange Newes," 1592. A rough engraving, showing Greene 
 at his writing table, is to be seen on the title-page of " Greene in 
 conceipt," a novel by T. Dickenson, 1598; his " peake " exists, 
 but is not quite so long as Nash's description would have led us to 
 expect. 
 
 ^ "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 164, 
 
/ 
 
 i62 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 His associations at that time were getting lower and 
 lower. He was leaving Bohemia for the mysterious 
 haunts of robbers, sharpers, loose women, and " conny- 
 catchers." He had once for a mistress the sister of a 
 famous thief nicknamed Cutting Ball that ended his 
 days on the gallows, and he had a child by her, called 
 Fortunatus, who died in 1593. He thought it a sort 
 of atonement to communicate to the public the ex- 
 perience he derived from his life among these people, 
 and accordingly printed a series of books on " conny- 
 catching," in which he unveiled all their tricks and 
 malpractices. The main result was that they wanted to 
 kill him. I 
 
 It was, in fact, too late to reform ; all that was left for 
 him was to repent, an empty repentance that no deed 
 could follow. Though scarcely thirty his constitution 
 was worn out. The alternations of excessive cheer and 
 of scanty food had ruined his health ; it was soon obvious 
 that he could not live much longer. One day a "surfet 
 which hee had taken with drinking " 2 brought him 
 home to his room, in a poor shoemaker's house, who 
 allowed him to stay there by charity on credit. He was 
 not to come out alive. His illness lasted some weeks, 
 and as his brain power was unimpaired he employed his 
 
 ^ See especially vol. x. of the "Works." Greene's example gave 
 a great impetus to these strange kinds of works, but he was not the 
 first to compose such ; several came before him, especially T. 
 Audeley, with his " Fraternitye of vacabondes," 1560-1, and 
 Thomas Harman, " A caveat or warening for common cursetors 
 vulgarely called vagabones," 1566 or 1567 ; both reprinted by 
 Viles and Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1869, 
 
 2 See the note added by the editor to his " Repcntance,"^ 
 "Works," vol. xii. p. 184. 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES. 163 
 
 time in writing the last of his autobiographical pam- 
 phlets. Considering the extravagance of his life, in which 
 he had known so many successes, and the sorrows of his 
 protracted illness, they read very tragically indeed. He 
 addressed himself to the public at large, to his more 
 intimate friends, to his wife confessing his wrongs 
 towards her, and asking pardon. Yet to the last, 
 broken as he was in body, he remained a literary man, 
 and while confessing all round and pardoning every one, 
 he could not drop his literary animosities nor forget his 
 life-long complaint against plagiarists. 
 
 His complaint was one of which the world of letters 
 was to hear much more in after time, and which in fact 
 is constantly renewed in our own day ; it is the com- 
 plaint of the novelist against the dramatist, claiming as his 
 own incidents transferred by the playwright from readers 
 to spectators. i\s novels proper were just beginning 
 then in England, and as drama was also beginning to 
 spread, Greene's protest is one of the first on record, 
 and thousands were to follow it. Strange to say of all 
 the men of whom he complains, the one he has picked 
 out to hold up to disdain and to scorn, and towards 
 whom in his dying days he seems to have entertained 
 the strongest animosity, was a young man of twenty- 
 eight, who was just then becoming known, and whose 
 fame was to increase somewhat in aftei" years, namely, 
 William Shakespeare. Greene beseeches the three 
 principal friends he still had, Marlowe, Nash, and 
 Peele, to cease writing plays ; what is the good of it } 
 others come, turn to account what has been written before 
 them, give never a thank-you for it, and get the praise. 
 Let them stop publishing and these new-comers, among 
 
1 64 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 them this "upstart" Shakespeare, unable as they obviously 
 are to invent anything, will have their careers cut short. 
 Be warned by my fate, says Greene, and mind " those 
 puppits . . . that speake from our mouths, those anticks 
 garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to 
 whom they al have beene beholding : is it not like 
 that you to whome they all have been beholding, shall 
 (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at once 
 of them forsaken ? Yes, trust them not, for there is 
 an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with 
 his 'Tigers heart wrapt in a players hide^ supposes he is 
 as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best 
 of you ; and being an absolute Joannes fac totum^ is in 
 his owne conceit the onely shake-scene in a countrie. 
 O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed 
 in more profitable courses : and let those apes imitate 
 your past excellence and never more acquaint them with 
 your rare inventions." ^ 
 
 This savage abuse of young Shakespeare, who had 
 probably mended at that time more plays than we 
 know, and more, surely, than he had personally written, 
 must not pass without the needful comment that his 
 abuser was, according to his own testimony, as ready, 
 for a trifle, to make an acquaintance and start a friend- 
 ship as to turn a friend into a foe. " Though," says he, '" I 
 
 ^ Epilogue to the " Groats-worth of wit," directed " to those 
 gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in 
 making plaies," "Works," vol. xii. p. 144. The verse quoted by 
 Greene occurs in the third part of Henry VI., with the difference 
 of " womans " for " players." About this, see Furnivall, Intro- 
 duction to the " Leopold Shakspere," p. xvi. As to the identifica- 
 tion of Greene's three friends, see Grosart's memorial introduction 
 and Storojenko's "Life," in " Works," vol. i. 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES. 165 
 
 knew how to get a friend, yet I had not the gift or reason 
 how to keepe a friend." He quarrelled, in fact, with 
 most of them, not excepting Nash and Marlowe, to whom 
 he is now appealing against Shakespeare ; and his pre- 
 faces contain numerous attacks on the writers of the 
 time. It must be remembered, too, how bitter was the 
 end of poor Greene, how keenly he felt, he the boon 
 companion par excellence^ finding himself " forsaken " 
 in his need, and left alone in the shoemaker's desolate 
 room. It is curious to think that among the men 
 whose absence from his bedside he most resented was 
 Shakespeare, and that this want of a visit whetted his 
 already ill-disposed mind into expressing the only abuse 
 known to have been directed by his contemporaries 
 against the author of " Hamlet." 
 
 Shakespeare, of course, did not answer ; ^ his plea 
 might have been that if he did not pay much attention 
 to others' authorship, much less did he pay to his own ; 
 for he never published his own dramas, nor did he ' 
 protest when mangled versions of them were circulated 
 by printers. He only showed that Greene's criticisms 
 had not much affected him by turning later on another 
 
 ^ The exaggeration in the attack was so obvious that it raised 
 some protest, and Henry Chettle, who had edited Greene's 
 " Groats-worth " after his death, felt obliged to print a rectification 
 in his next book, as was the custom then, when newspapers did 
 not exist. This acknowledgment, that would to-day have been pub- 
 lished in the Athe?ia:ii7n or the Academy^ was inserted in his " Kind 
 Heart's Dream," issued in the same year, 1592, and is to the effect 
 that so far as Shakespeare (for Chettle can allude here to no other) 
 is concerned : " divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of 
 dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing 
 that approoves his art." 
 
i66 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 of the complainer's novels into a drama. Shakespeare's 
 friend, Ben Jonson, who was not accustomed to so 
 much reserve, speaks very disparagingly of Greene ; he 
 represents him as being a perfectly forgotten author in 
 1599, which was untrue, and as for the particular work 
 in which Shakespeare was abused, he describes it as only 
 fit for the reading of crazy persons. 
 
 " trusty. . . Every night they read themselves 
 asleep on those books [one of the two being the 
 " Groats- worth "]. 
 
 " Epicoene. Good faith it stands with good reason. I 
 would I knew where to procure those books. 
 
 " Morose. Oh ! 
 
 " Sir Amorous La Foole, I can help you with one of 
 them, mistress Morose, the * Groats -worth of wit.' 
 
 '^ Epicoene. But I shall disfurnish you, Sir Amorous, 
 can you spare it ? 
 
 '' La Foole. O yes, for a week or so ; I shall read it 
 myself to him," &c.i 
 
 With the exception just mentioned, Greene's thoughts 
 were all turned to repentance. He had the consolation 
 of receiving from his wife a kindly message on the eve 
 of his death, ''whereat hee greatly rejoiced, confessed that 
 he had mightily wronged her, and wished that hee 
 might see her before he departed. Whereupon, feeling 
 his time was but short, hee tooke pen and inke and 
 wrote her a letter to this effect : 
 
 '' Sweet wife, as ever there was any good will or 
 friendship betweene thee and mee, see this bearer (my 
 host) satisfied of his debt : I owe him tenne pound, and 
 
 ^ "The Silent Woman," act iv. sc. 2 ; and "Every man out of 
 his humour," act ii. sc. i. 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES, 167 
 
 but for him I had perished in the streetes. Forget and 
 forgive my wronges done unto thee, and Almighty God 
 have mercie on my soule. Farewell till we meet in 
 heaven, for on earth thou shalt never see me more. 
 This 2d of September, 1592. Written by thy dying 
 husband." ' 
 
 He died a day after. 
 
 III. 
 
 Greene's non-dramatic works are the largest contribu- 
 tion left by any Elizabethan writer to the novel 
 literature of the day. They are of four sorts : his 
 novels proper or romantic love stories, which he called 
 his love pamphlets ; his patriotic pamphlets ; his conny- 
 catching writings, in which he depicts actual fact, 
 and tells tales of real life forshadowing in some degree 
 Defoe's manner ; lastly, his Repentances, of which som 
 idea has already been given. - 
 
 ^ "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 185. 
 
 2 The "Life and Complete Works " of Greene have been pub- 
 lished by Dr. Grosart, London, 1881, 15 vols. 4to. His principal 
 non-dramatic writings may be classified as follows : 
 
 1. Ro?nantic novels, or *''■ love pa?nphlets^\' " Mamillia," 1583 ; 
 "The second part," 1583 ; " Myrrour of Modestie," 1584; " Card of 
 fancie," 1584 (?) ; " Arbasto," 1584 (?) ; " Planetomachia," 1585 ; 
 " M or an do, the Tritameron of love," 1586 (?); "Second part," 
 1587; "Debate betweene follie and love," 1587; " Penelopes web," 
 1587; " Euphues his censure to Philautus," 1587; " Perimedes," 
 1588; "Pandosto" {alias "Dorastus and Fawnia "), 1588; 
 "Alcida," 1588 (?); " Menaphon," 1589; " Ciceronis amor," 
 [589 ; " Orpharion," 1590 (?) ; "Philomela," 1592. 
 
 2. Civic and patriotic pamphlets : " Spanish Masquerado," 1589; 
 *' Royal Exchange," 1590; "Quip for an upstart courtier," 1592. 
 
 3. Conny-catching pamphleti : "A notable discovery of coosnage," 
 
\ 
 
 1 68 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 His love pamphlets, which filled the greatest part of 
 his literary career, connect him with the euphuistic 
 cycle, and he is assuredly one of Lyly's legatees. Possess- 
 ing a much greater fertility of invention than Lyly, he 
 follows as closely as the original bent of his mind allows 
 him, the manner of his master. He is euphuistic in his 
 style, wise in his advice to his readers, and a great 
 admirer of his own country. 
 
 His moral propensities do not lie concealed behind 
 pretty descriptions or adventures ; they are stamped on 
 the very first page of each of his books and are expressly 
 mentioned in their titles. In this too, like his master 
 Lyly, he may be considered a precursor of Richardson. 
 He writes his " Mamillia " to entreat gentlemen to 
 beware how, '^ under the perfect substaunce of pure 
 love, [they] are oft inveigled with the shadowe of lewde 
 luste ; " his '' Myrrour of Modestie " to show " howe the 
 Lorde delivereth the innocent from all imminent perils 
 and plagueth the bloudthirstie hypocrites with deserved 
 punishments." " Euphues his censure to Philautus " 
 teaches " the vertues necessary in every gentleman ; " 
 " Pandosto " shows that " although by the meanes of 
 
 iij9I ; "Second part of Conny-catching," 1591; "Third and last 
 part," 1592; "Disputation betweene a Hee conny-catcher and a 
 Shee conny-catcher," 1592 (attributed to Greene) ; "The Blacke 
 bookes messenger" (/>., "Life of Ned Browne"), 1592. 
 
 4. Repentances : "Greenes mourning garment," 1590 (?) ; 
 "Greenes never too late to mend," 1590; " Francescos fortune or 
 the second part of Greenes never too late," 1590 (these two last 
 belong also to Group i) ; "Farewell to follie," 1591 (entered 1587) ; 
 " Greenes Groats-worth of wit," 1592; "The Repentance of Robert 
 Greene," 1592. 
 
LYLY'S LEG A TEES. 169 
 
 sinister fortune truth may be concealed, yet by Time 
 in spight of fortune, it is most manifestly revealed." ^ 
 Quiet, wealthy, comfortable Richardson had " no better 
 aim, and had, in fact, a very similar one, when he wrote 
 his " Pamela," as he is careful to state on the title-page, 
 " in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and 
 religion in the minds of the youth of both sexes ;" and 
 his '* Clarissa," to show " the distresses that may attend 
 the misconduct both of parents and children in relation 
 to marriage." Be it said to the praise of both authors 
 and readers, this moral purpose so prominently stated 
 did not in the least frighten the public of ladies, whose 
 suffrage, the two men, different as they were in most 
 things, were especially courting. Richardson's popu- 
 larity among them needs not to be recalled, and as for 
 Greene, he was stated at the time of his greater vogue 
 to be nothing less than *' the Homer of women." 2 
 
 Greene's praise of England is as constant as Lyly's ; 
 he is careful to show that whatever appearances may 
 be, he is proud to be a citizen of London, not, after 
 all, of Bohemia ; if he represents himself shipwrecked 
 near the coast of an island where, like Robinson Crusoe, 
 he is alone able to swim, finding the country pleasant, 
 he describes it as " much like that faire England the 
 
 ^ The same virtuous tone and purpose appear invariably in the 
 dedications of his books to his patrons or friends. To all of them 
 he wishes " increase of worship and vcrtue," and he commends 
 them all " to the tuition of the Almightie." 
 
 ^ Thomas Nash, "The Anatomic of Absurditie," London, 1590, 
 4to, written in 1588. There seems to be no doubt that Nash 
 refers to Greene in the passage: "I but here the Homer of 
 women hath forestalled an objection," &c., sig A ii. 
 
 10 
 
1 70 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 flower of Europe." i Euphues* praise of London is 
 matched by Greene's description of its naval power in 
 his " Royal Exchange " : " Our citizens of London (Her 
 Majesties royal fleet excepted) have so many shyppes 
 harboured v^^ithin the Thames as wyll not onelie match 
 with all the argosies, galleyes, galeons and pataches in 
 Venice, but to encounter by sea with the strongest cittie 
 in the whole world." 2 As for foreign women, Greene 
 agrees with Lyly that they all paint their faces, and 
 cannot live without a lover. French women, for 
 example, are " beautifull," it is true, but " they have 
 drugges of Alexandria, minerals of Egypt, waters from 
 Tharsus, paintings from Spaine, and what to doe for- 
 sooth } To make them more beautifull then vertuous 
 and more pleasing in the eyes of men then delightful 
 in the sight of God. . . . Some take no pleasure but in 
 amorous passions, no delight but in madrigals of love, 
 wetting Cupid's wings with rose water, and tricking up 
 his quiver with sweete perfumes." 3 
 
 But Greene's style marked him most indelibly as a 
 pupil of Lyly. He has taken Euphues' ways of speech 
 with all their peculiarities, and has sometimes crowded 
 his tales with such a quantity of similes, metaphors and 
 antitheses as to beat his master himself on his own 
 ground.4 Here, again, we are in the middle of scor- 
 
 ^ "Alcida," "Works," vol. ix. p. 17. 
 
 2 "The Royal Exchange, contayning sundry aphorismes of 
 phylosophie . . . fyrst written in Italian," 1590, "Works," vol. vii. 
 p. 224, 
 
 3 "Greenes never too late," 1590, "Works," vol. viii. p. 
 
 4 Greene and Lyly are placed on a par by J. Eliote, a friend of 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES, 
 
 171 
 
 -pions, crocodiles, dipsas, and what not. Take, for 
 instance, " Philomela the lady Fitzwaters nightingale ; *' ^ 
 as it is written expressly for ladies, and dedicated to one 
 of them, and as, in addition, the characters are of 
 high rank, the novel is nearly one unbroken series of 
 similes : ^' The greener the alisander leaves be, the 
 more bitter is the 
 says Philip, 
 
 sappe 
 the 
 
 i jealous husband, #^.^|^pil 
 himself ; '' the sala- \<mMk'^^4^^9S^ 
 
 to 
 
 mander is most warm 
 when it lyeth furthest 
 ■from the fire ; " thus 
 his wife may well be 
 as heart-hollow as she 
 seems lip-holy. He 
 charges his friend 
 Lutesio to tempt her, 
 by way of trial. 
 ^" Lutesio," the lady 
 replies to the young 
 man's declaration, 
 *' now I see, the 
 •strongest oake hath 
 his sap and his worms [and] that ravens will breed 
 
 the former; in the sonnet, in Stratford-at-Bow French, he wrote in 
 commendation of Greene's " Perimedes " : 
 
 " Greene et Lylli tous deux raffineurs de TAnglois.*' 
 
 See also the commendatory verses by H. Upchear, prefacing 
 *** Menaphon" : 
 
 "Of all the flowers a Lil/ie one I lov'd." 
 
 ^ 1592, "Works," vol. xi. 
 
 ANOTHER DRAGON, 1608. 
 
172 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 in the fayrest ash." These observations appear un- 
 answerable to Lutesio, and the husband would share 
 his conviction if he did not reflect that *^ the onix is 
 inwardly most cold, when it is outwardly most hot/' 
 The experiment must be tried again, and the friend 
 returns to the charge : " Madam, I have been stung 
 with the scorpion and cannot be helpt or healed by 
 none but by the scorpion." 
 
 *' I see now," replies the lady to this compliment,, 
 "that hemlocke wheresoever it bee planted, will be 
 pestilent [and] that the serpent with the brightest scales 
 shroudeth the most fatall venome." Is there anything 
 more certain.? But that does not prevent the halcyon 
 from hatching when the sea is calm, and the phoenix 
 from spreading her wings when the sunbeams shine on 
 her nest. This is what the husband remarks, and,, 
 guided by the onyx, the alexander, &c., after a mock 
 trial, he divorces his wife. 
 
 What did the people think of it } They thought " alf 
 was not golde that glistered, . . . that the Agate, bee 
 it never so white without, yet it is full of black strokes . 
 within.*' 
 
 During this time, Philomela, the wife who had been 
 driven away, retires to Palermo, where her knowledge 
 of natural history allows her to observe that the more 
 the camomile is trodden on, the faster it grows. 
 Scarcely separated from her, the husband loses his 
 confidence in the onyx and alexander, and sets out in 
 search of her. He does not know her place of retreat, 
 but, happily, among all possible routes, he chooses 
 precisely that leading to Palermo. He finds his wife 
 again, and his joy is so great that he is choked by it,. 
 
LYLTS LEGATEES. 173 
 
 and dies ; a just punishment for his confidence in Lyly's 
 botany. I 
 
 In the same way as patient GriseH's story had been 
 in the same period transferred to the stage, this new 
 example of feminine virtue, from the pen of the 
 " Homer of women," was, in later years, worked into 
 a drama. At that time Greene had long been dead 
 and could not complain of the new " shake-scene " 
 tortures inflicted upon him by Davenport.2 
 
 This story, characteristic as it is of Greene's style 
 when he means to be euphuistic, can scarcely be taken 
 as a fair sample of the improbability he is able to 
 crowd into a single novel. Most of his tales (and 
 in this he greatly difl^ers from Lyly) take place 
 we do not know when, we do not know where, 
 among men we have never anywhere come across. 
 Learned as he was, versed in the Greek, Latin, 
 French and Italian tongues, able to translate passages 
 from the Italian of Ariosto, to dress in English language 
 the charming " Debat de Folic et d'Amour " 3 of 
 Louise Labe, to imitate (as he thought) Cicero's style, 
 while describing (as he thought) the great orator's 
 loves,4- his turn of mind was as little critical as can be 
 
 ^ Some faint resemblance has been pointed out by Dunlop 
 between this story and the tale of Tito and Gisippo in the 
 " Decameron," giornata x. novella 8. 
 
 2 " The City Nightcap, or crede quod habes et habes, a tragi- 
 comedy," London, 1661, 4to, licensed 1624, reprinted in Dodsley's 
 ^' Old plays." 
 
 3 *' The debate betweene Follie and Love, translated out of 
 French," 1587, "Works," vol. iv. 
 
 4 " Ciceronis amor Tulies love ... a work full of pleasure, as 
 following Ciceroes vaine," 1589, "Works," vol. vii. This work 
 
;[ 74 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 imagined, and his wide popularity served to spread 
 geographical and historical absurdities, some of which 
 were preserved by Shakespeare himself, for the 
 amusement of a learned posterity. Greene's picture of 
 Ulysses' Penelope is not more Greek than the exquisite 
 painting by Pinturicchio at the National Gallery, where 
 the wise king of Ithaca appears under the guise of a 
 red-hosed Italian youth with flowing hair ; while his wife 
 sits at her ** web " in a Florentine blue dress. In Greene,. 
 Penelope is represented telling stories to while away the 
 time, which, unless we endow her with a prophetical 
 gift, are impossibilities. Her first story begins thus : 
 " Saladyne the Souldan of i^gipt, who by his prowesse 
 had made a generall conquest of the south-east part of 
 ye world tooke to wife Barmenissa, the onely daughter 
 and heire of the great chan." No wonder that such 
 tales could chain the attention and awaken the curiosity 
 of her maids, and keep them quiet till the time when 
 *' a messenger came hastily rushing in, who tolde Pene- 
 lope that Ulisses was arryved that night within the port 
 of Ithaca. . . . Penelope called for her sonne and that 
 night sent him post to the sea.*' ^ 
 
 is noteworthy as being an almost if not quite unique example of an 
 attempt in Elizabethan times to write a pseudo-historical novel in 
 the style of the period referred to. Greene set to work expressly 
 with such a purpose, and he states it in the title of the book and 
 in- its preface : " Gentlemen, I have written of Tullies love, a 
 worke attempted to win your favours, but to discover mine owne 
 ignorance in that coveting to counterfeit Tullies phrase, I have lost 
 myself in unproper words." In this tale Cicero is represented 
 standing at the tribune and haranguing the senate : " Conscript 
 fathers and grave senators of Rome," &c. 
 
 ^ "Penelopes web," 1587, "Works," vol. iv. p. 233. 
 
L YLTS LEGATEES. 175 
 
 Not less wonderful are the stories of " Arbasto," 
 King of Denmark, or of " Pandosto/' King of Bohemia, 
 They may be taken as typical specimens of the sort of 
 romantic novel the Elizabethan public enjoyed, and 
 which was sure to make an author popular. We must 
 remember when reading these tales that they were the 
 fashion, the craze, at a time when " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream " and '' Romeo and Juliet " were being played. 
 Chaotic, improbable, and in some parts ridiculous as 
 they appear to us, they would have made their author 
 wealthy if anything could, so much so that, as we have 
 seen, the publishers, according to Nash, considered 
 themselves " blest to pay Greene deare for the very 
 dregs of his wit." He was, if anything, an author that 
 sold. What were his wares } 
 
 In " Arbasto " Greene represents himself reaching in 
 his travels the island of Candia. He meets in a cell a 
 solitary old man, and without any ceremony makes bold 
 to ask him for his story. The old man is at first some- 
 what shocked at this inquisitiveness, and gets very 
 angry ; but he grows calmer and complies. He is 
 Arbasto, late King of Denmark, and was once very 
 happy : "I feared not the force of forraigne foes, for I 
 knewe none but were my faithfuU friends," says he, in 
 a style that reminds one of the King Herod of miracle- 
 plays. Living in such content, he thought it advisable 
 to invade France, where at that time a king was reign- 
 ing, named Pelorus, about whom chroniclers are silent. 
 Arbasto came straight to Orleans, and after some siege 
 operations, " had so shaken the walles with cannon shot, 
 that they were forced to strengthen them with counter 
 mures. " 
 
1 76 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 A three months' truce is agreed to on both sides, 
 and the two sovereigns entertain each other. At the 
 French court, Arbasto meets the two daughters of the 
 king, Myrania and Doralicia, two wonderful creatures, 
 especially the latter, who was " so adorned with more 
 then earthlie perfection as she seemed to be framed by 
 nature to blemishe nature, and that beautie had skipt 
 beyond her skil in framing a peece of such curious 
 workemanship." Arbasto cannot cease gazing at her ; 
 he addresses to himself euphuistic speeches several pages 
 long, but they do him no good. It so happens, that 
 while his love is set on Doralicia, the other princess 
 falls in love with him. But this again does him no 
 good. He ceases to find anything worth living for ; 
 even the possible destruction of France seems to him 
 tasteless. His nobles observe his changed mood, and 
 wonder, and his confidant, Duke Egerio, vainly tries 
 on him the effect of a new series of euphuistic examples 
 and similes. Arbasto continues loving, and Doralicia 
 perseveres in her coldness ; they meet once, and argue 
 one against the other with the help of salamanders and 
 scorpions, and empty their whole herbaria over each 
 other's head ; but things remain in statu. 
 
 King Pelorus, who, for all that, does not lose his 
 head, offers Arbasto an interview in Orleans to sign 
 the peace. Arbasto comes, the gates are shut, he is 
 thrown into prison ; his army is cut to pieces, and a 
 great scaffold is erected in a conspicuous place, on which 
 the prisoner is to be publicly executed in ten days' 
 time. 
 
 The royal Dane tries to console himself in his prison 
 with what remains of his herbarium and zoology. But 
 
Z YLY'S LEG A TEES. 1 7 7 
 
 better help comes in the shape of the loving princess, 
 Myrania, who is resolved to save him. By her com- 
 ;mand her maid entices the gaoler to her room, and 
 causes him to tread "upon a false bord" that had appa 
 rently been there in all times, ready for this very 
 emergency. The gaoler falls " up to the shoulders ; " 
 then he disappears into a hole, where he dies, and his 
 -keys are taken from him. 
 
 Arbasto is very happy, and promises Myrania to love 
 and marry her ; they go " covertly out of the citie, 
 passing through France with many fearefull perils" 
 and reach Denmark. Pelorus and Doralicia are ex- 
 tremely angry ; she even takes to " blaspheming . . . 
 but as words breake no bones, so we cared the lesse for 
 her scolding." 
 
 But Arbasto learns to his cost that no man when 
 truly in love can cease to love as he pleases. Before 
 keeping his word to Myrania he wants once more to 
 appeal to her fair sister. But the fair sister continues 
 in her blaspheming mood, and sends a very sharp and 
 contemptuous answer. 
 
 Both letters fall into the hands of Myrania, who is 
 so struck by this piece of treachery that she dies of her 
 sorrow ; hearing which Pelorus rather unexpectedly 
 dies of his sorrow for her death. Doralicia then is 
 queen, and at last discovers that in the innermost part 
 of her heart there is love for Arbasto. She writes 
 accordingly, but the Dane this time returns a con- 
 temptuous answer. Receiving which, the poor French 
 queen dies of her sorrow. And thereupon, for no appa- 
 rent reason, except to add yet more sorrow to the 
 conclusion of this tragical tale, the confidant of the 
 
178 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Danish king turns traitor, usurps his crown, and 
 Arbasto goes to Candia, where Greene had the good 
 fortune to hear from his own lips this wondrous and 
 authentic tale. " Merry and tragical ! tedious and 
 brief ! '' as Duke Theseus would think. 
 
 However complete the success awarded to Arbasto's 
 adventures, it was nothing compared with the popu- 
 larity of " Pandosto." If this was not the best it was 
 the most famous of Greene's tales. The plot is well 
 known, for Shakespeare, unmoved by the dying male- 
 dictions of his late companion, drew from it the 
 materials of his *' Winter's Tale " (i6i i .^). He kept 
 many of the improbabilities of Greene, rejected a few^ 
 and added some of his own. But the great change he 
 made was to give life to the heroes, and as they had 
 been shaped by Greene they sorely needed it. Rarely 
 did a more unlikely and a cruder tale come from the 
 pen of our novelist. 
 
 The events of the story take place among kings and 
 shepherds : *' In the countrey of Bohemia there raygned 
 a king called Pandosto." This is the usual beginning 
 of novels of the time ; hundreds of them commence in 
 this manner ; ^ the very first lines transport the reader 
 to an unknown country, and place him before am 
 unknown king, and if, after reading only those few 
 words, he is surprised to find himself entangled in 
 extraordinary, inexplicable adventures, he must be of 
 
 ^ "There dwelled in Bononia a certaine Knight called Signior 
 Bonfadio" (" Morando "). " There dwelled in the citie of Mete- 
 lyne a certain Duke called Clerophantes "("Greenes carde of" 
 fancie "). " There dwelled ... in the citie of Memphis a poore 
 man called Perymedes " (" Perimedes "), &:c. 
 
LYLTS LEGATEES. 179^ 
 
 a very na'ive disposition. But in Elizabethan times, 
 adventures were liked for their own sake ; probability 
 was only a very secondary motive of enjoyment. 
 " Pandosto/' in any case, deserves our attention, for, 
 if it commenced like many other novels of the time, it 
 led, as we have said, to " Winter's Tale," to which it is 
 worth while to go. When the two are read together 
 and compared, it seems as if Sliakespeare had chosen 
 on purpose one of the worst of Greene's tales, to show 
 by way of an answer to the accusations of the dead 
 writer, that he was able to form something out of 
 nothing. Greene had, in truth, only modelled the 
 clay ; Shakespeare used it, adding the soul. 
 
 Greene simply states his facts and takes little trouble 
 about explaining them ; the reader must rest satisfied 
 with the author's bare word. There is no attempt at 
 the study of passions ; his heroes change their minds, 
 all of a sudden, with the stiff, sharp, improbable action 
 of puppets in a show. Pandosto (Leontes) loves and' 
 hates, and becomes jealous, and repents always in the 
 same brusque wire-and-wood manner ; the warmth of his 
 passions, so great and terrible in Shakespeare, is here, 
 simply absent ; when he begins to suspect his friend 
 Egistus (Polixenes) of feeling an unlawful love for 
 Bellaria (Hermione), we are barely informed that the 
 Bohemian king *' concluded at last to poyson him." 
 When Dorastus and Fawnia (Florizel and Perdita) 
 seek refuge in Pandosto's kingdom, Pandosto at once 
 falls in love with his own daughter, Fawnia, whom 
 he does not know ; then on the receipt of a letter 
 from Egistus, *' having his former love turned to a 
 disdainful hate," he wishes to have her killed. Very 
 
i8o THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 differently is the couple received by Shakespeare's 
 Leontes : 
 
 " Were I but twenty-one, 
 Your father's image is so hit in you, 
 His very air, that I should call you brother, 
 As I did him; and speak of something wildly 
 By us performed before. Most dearly welcome ! 
 And you, fair princess, goddess ! — O, alas, 
 I lost a couple, that 'twixt heaven and earth 
 Might thus have stood, begetting wonder as 
 You gracious couple do." 
 
 In Greene the exquisite figure of Perdita appears as 
 a very rough sketch under the name of Fawnia. She 
 loves her Dorastus not merely because he is lovable, 
 but because " hoping in time to be advaunced from 
 the daughter of a poore farmer to be the wife of a 
 riche king." Dorastus comes to her . disguised as a 
 shepherd, and as she does not recognize him " she 
 began halfe to forget Dorastus and to favor this 
 prety shepheard whom she thought shee might both 
 love and obtaine." It would be cruel to make further 
 comparisons, but it is necessary to say thus much 
 in order to show what a hold adventures, however 
 crude, surprises, unexpected meetings and recognitions, 
 had upon Elizabethan minds. They were quite suffi- 
 cient to insure success ; to add life and poetry was very 
 well, but by no means necessary. Shakespeare did so 
 because he could not do otherwise ; and he did it 
 thoroughly, as was his wont, endowing with his life- 
 giving faculty the most insignificant personage he found 
 embryo-like in Greene. The least of them has, in 
 Shakespeare, his own moods, his sensitiveness, a mind 
 
LYL TS LEG A TEES. 1 8 1 
 
 and a heart that is his and his alone ; even young 
 Mamillius, the child who lives only the length of one 
 scene, is not any child, but tells his tale, his sad tale 
 with a grace that is all his own, 
 
 " A sad tale's best for winter. 
 . . . I will tell it softly ; 
 Yond crickets shall not hear it." 
 
 Living people, too, are his Paulina, his Antigonus, 
 his CamillOj his Autolycus, all of them additions of his 
 own creation. Living also, his shepherds, for whom he 
 received only insignificant hints from Greene. In 
 *' Pandosto " we hear of " a meeting of all the farmers 
 daughters in Sycilia," without anything more, and from 
 this Shakespeare drew the idea of his sheep-shearing 
 feast, where he delights in contrasting with the rough 
 ways of his peasants^ the inborn elegance of Perdita : 
 *' O Proserpina," says she, in her delicious mythological 
 prattle : 
 
 " For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall 
 From Dis's wagon ! daffodils, 
 That come before the swallow dares ..." 
 
 And Florizel, wondering at her with his young 
 admiring eyes, answers in the same strain : 
 
 " When you speak, sweet, 
 I'd have you do it ever ; when you sing, 
 I'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms ; 
 Pray so ; and, for the ordering your affairs, 
 To sing them too : when you do dance, I wish you 
 A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
 Nothing but that." 
 
1 8 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 Very different is the old shepherd's tone ; though 
 kindly, it is quite conformable to his estate and 
 situation : 
 
 " Fie, daughter ! when my old wife lived, upon 
 This day she was both pantler, butler, cook, 
 Both dame and servant ; welcomed all, served all, 
 Would sing her song, and dance her turn ; now here, 
 At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle ; 
 On his shoulder and his ; her face o' fire 
 With labour, and the thing she took to quench it. 
 She would to each one sip. You are retired. 
 As if you were a feasted one, and not 
 The hostess of the meeting." 
 
 Never has the language of country people been 
 "better transferred to literature ; their manners, tone, and 
 language in Shakespeare have remained true to nature 
 even to the present day, so much so that it is difficult, 
 while writing, not to think of harvest and vintage 
 scenes, which every year brings round again in 
 our French valleys, and the sort of kindly talk very 
 similar to the old shepherd's that many of us remember, 
 as well as I do, to have heard in the country, from 
 peasant associates in early days. This unsurpassed 
 fidelity to nature is the more remarkable as it dates 
 from the Arcadian times of English literature, days 
 that were to last long, even down to the time of 
 Pope and of Thomson himself, to stop at Burns, 
 when at last a deeper, if not truer, note was to be 
 struck. 
 
 But with regard to mere facts, Shakespeare was in no 
 way more careful than Greene, and he seems to have 
 
LYLTS LEGATEES. 183 
 
 known, and it was in fact visible enough, the greedi- 
 ness of his pubHc to be such that, ostrich like, they 
 would swallow anything. He, therefore, changed very 
 little. In Greene, ships '' sail into Bohemia," a feat that 
 cannot be repeated to-day ; the Queen is tried by a jury 
 ** panelled " for that purpose ; the nobles go '^ to the 
 isle of Delphos, there to enquire of the oracle of 
 Apollo whether she had committed adultery." Very 
 much the same things happen in Shakespeare. The 
 survival of Hermione is his own invention ; in Greene 
 she dies for good at the beginning of the novel, when 
 she hears of the death of her son. With the same 
 aptitude to die for no other cause than to improve a 
 story, Pandosto dies also in Greene's tale : he remem- 
 bered his faults and " fell in a melancholie fit, and to 
 close up the comedie with a tragicall stratageme he 
 slewe hiniselfe." Merry and tragical ! But otherwise 
 Dorastus and Fawnia would have had to wait before 
 becoming king and queen, and such a waiting was 
 against the taste of the time and the rules of novel 
 writing. 
 
 Such as it is, Greene's tale had an extraordinary 
 success. While Shakespeare's drama was not printed, 
 either in authentic or pirated shape, before the 
 appearance of the 1623 folio, the prose story had a 
 number of editions throughout the seventeenth century 
 and even, under one shape or another, throughout the 
 eighteenth. It was printed as a chap-book during this 
 last period, and in this costume began a new life. It 
 ^as turned into verse in 1672, under the title, "For- 
 tune's tennis ball : or the most excellent history of 
 Dorastus and Fawnia, rendred into delightful english 
 
i84 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 verse"; I it begins with this "delightful" invoca- 
 tion : 
 
 "Inspire me gentle love and jealousie, 
 Give me thy passion and thy extasie, 
 While to a pleasant ayr I strik the strings 
 Singing the fates of lovers and of kings." 
 
 But the highest and most extraordinary compliment 
 to Greene's performance was its translation into French, 
 not only once, as has been said, but twice. The first 
 time was at a moment when the English language and 
 literature were practically unknown and as good as non- 
 extant to French readers. It appeared in 1615, and 
 was dedicated to " tres haute and tres illustre princesse, 
 Madame Christine Soeur du Roy." 2 The second trans- 
 lation, that has never yet been noticed, was made at 
 a time when France had a novel literature of its own 
 well worth reading, and when Boileau had utterly routed 
 and discomfited the writers of romantic and improbable 
 tales. Nevertheless, it was thought that a public would 
 be found in Paris for Greene's novel, and it was printed 
 accordingly in French in 1722, this time adorned with 
 engravings. 3 They show ''Doraste" dressed as a mar- 
 
 ^ London, 1672. 
 
 2 " Histoire tragique dc Pandosto roy de Boheme et de Bcllaria 
 sa femme. Ensemble les amours de Dorastus et de Faunia ; ou sont 
 comprises les adventures de Pandosto roy de Boheme, enrichies de 
 feintes moralites, allegories, et telles autres diversites convenables 
 au sujet. Le tout traduit premierement en Anglois de la langue 
 Boheme et de nouveau mis en fran^ois par L. Regnault," Paris, 
 161 5, i2mo. A copy in the Bodleian Library. 
 
 3 " Histoire tragique de Pandolphe roy de Boheme et de Cel- 
 laria sa femme, ensemble les amours dc Doraste et de Faunia ;, 
 enrichie de figures en taille douce," Paris, 1722, i2mo. 
 
I 
 
 LYLY'S LEGATEES. 185 
 
 quis of Louis XV. 's time ; while " Pandolphe " wears 
 a flowing wig under his cocked hat, and sits on a throne 
 in rococo style. A copy of the book was purchased 
 for the royal library, and is still to be seen at the 
 Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, with the crown and 
 cipher of his Most Christian Majesty on the cover. 
 
 Greene's story of " Menaphon '* ^ is hardly more 
 probable, but it takes place in the country of Arcadia, 
 a fact that predisposes us to treat with indulgence any 
 lack of reality ; moreover, it contains touches of true 
 poetry, and is perhaps, all considered, the best of Greene's 
 romantic novels. In common with most of this author's 
 tales it abounds in monologues and dialogues ; heroes 
 think aloud and let us into their secret thoughts, a 
 device adapted from the classic drama and very common 
 in all the English novels of the period. There is also, 
 according to Greene's custom, a great abundance of songs 
 and verses, the best piece being the lullaby quoted above. 
 Propriety and the truth of characters are not much 
 better observed here than in Greene's other stories. 
 Everybody in this romance speaks with infinite grace and 
 politeness. The shepherd Menaphon, introducing himself 
 to the Princess Sephestia and her child, who have been 
 cast ashore through a shipwreck, says to therii : 
 " Strangers, your degree I know not, therefore pardon 
 if I give lesse title than your estates merit."' And, 
 falling desperately in love with the beautiful young 
 woman, who gives as her name Samela of the island of 
 Cyprus, he describes to her with ardour and not with- 
 out grace the pastoral life that he would like to lead 
 
 ^ " Menaphon. Camillas alarum to slumbering Euphues, in his 
 melancholic cell at Silexedra," 1589. " Works," vol. vi. 
 
 II 
 
1 86 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 with her : ''I tell thee, faire nymph, these planies that 
 thou seest stretching southward, are pastures belonging 
 to Menaphon : ther growes the cintfoyle, and the 
 hyacinth, the cowsloppe, the primrose and the violet, 
 which my flockes shall spare for flowers to make thee 
 garlands, the milke of my ewes shall be meate for thy 
 pretie wanton, the wool of the fat weathers that seemes 
 as fine as the fleece that Jason fet from Colchos, shall 
 serve to make Samela webbes withall ; the mountaine 
 tops shall be thy mornings walke, and the shadie valleies 
 thy evenings arbour : as much as Menaphon owes 
 shall be at Samelas command if she like to live with 
 Menaphon." 
 
 The romance goes on its way, strewn with songs 
 whose refrains of varied and tuneful metres afford 
 charming melody. In the end two knights, Melicertus 
 and Pleusidippus, both enamoured of Sephestia, fight a 
 duel ; they are separated. The king of the country 
 interferes, and comprehending nothing of these intricate 
 love affairs, he is on the point of cutting off^ all their 
 heads, when it is discovered that Melicertus is the long 
 lost husband of Sephestia ; the other duellist is the child 
 of the shipwrecked woman, who, in the course of the 
 tale, has been stolen from her on the shore and has 
 grown up in hiding. They embrace one another ; and, 
 as for Menaphon, whose sweetheart finds herself thus 
 provided with a sufficiently fond husband and son, he 
 returns to his old love, Pesana, who had had patience to 
 wait for him, doubtless without growing old : for, in 
 these romances, people do not grow old. Pleusidippus 
 has become a man, without the least change in his 
 mother's face ; she has remained as beautiful as in the 
 
Z YL yS LEGATEES. 187 
 
 first page of the book, and is, according to appearances, 
 still " sweet-and-twenty." 
 
 In his tales of this sort Greene was mostly 
 describing delights with which he was not personally 
 acquainted, lands of which he had no practical know- 
 ledge, princely adventures for which no historian could 
 vouch. He was perfectly free and unimpeded. The 
 taste of the public was similar to his ; no Boileau was 
 there to stop him, and he wrote accordingly, following 
 his fancy, not caring in the least for nature and possi- 
 bility, letting his pen go as fast as it would, and turning 
 out " in a night and a day " a tale like his " Menaphon." 
 But if he did not choose to paint from life and to 
 describe realities in his " love pamphlets," he did so on 
 purpose, not because he was unable to do it. In several 
 of his other writings his subject was such that the work 
 would have been nothing if not true ; and there we 
 find a clear view of human passions, foibles and 
 peculiarities, which show that if the taste of the 
 romance readers of the time had been such as to 
 encourage him in this line, he would have proved no 
 mean realistic novelist. His Repentances abound in 
 portraits and scenes, showing the keen eye he had for 
 realities. His conny-catching literature is full of exact 
 descriptions of the sordid life of the sharpers and 
 low courtesans of Elizabethan London. In more 
 than one of these pamphlets he foreshadows, though 
 I need not say with a much lesser genius, the '^ Moll 
 Flanders " and the " Colonel Jack " of a later period. 
 The resemblance is especially great in the *' Life and 
 death of Ned Browne," ^ in which the hero, according to 
 
 ^ "The blacke bookes messenger, laying open the life and death 
 
1 88 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 the custom in picaresque novels, of which more here- 
 after, himself tells his own story in the first person. 
 Greene is particularly bitter in his denunciations of the 
 professional courtesans of London, about whom he knew 
 probably more than any of his contemporaries. But 
 with all the hatred he felt towards them so long as he 
 had pen in hand, he cannot help repeating that, however 
 objectionable they are in many ways, they have for 
 themselves this advantage, that they are extremely 
 beautiful, so that if their morals are exactly the same as 
 in other countries they excel at least in something which 
 in itself is not contemptible. They are " a kinde of 
 women bearing the faces of Angels, but the hearts of 
 devils, able to intrap the elect if it were possible." ^ 
 Greene had no pretension to be one of the elect, and 
 was only too often "intraped'' ; but for all his miseries 
 his words show a scarcely less intense admiration for his 
 diabolical angels than Des Grieux's famous rapturous 
 phrase when he meets Manon on her way to the ship 
 that is to convey her to America : " Son linge etait sale 
 et derange ; ses mains delicates exposees a I'injure de 
 Tair ; enfin tout ce compose charmant, cette figure 
 capable de ramener Vunivers a Vidolatrie^ paraissait 
 dans un desordre et un abattement inexprimables." 
 **Again," writes Greene : " let me say this much, that 
 our curtizans ... are far superiour in artificiall allure- 
 ment to them of all the world, for, although they have 
 
 of Ned Browne one of the most notable of cutpurses ... in 
 England. Heerein hee telleth verie pleasantly in his owne person 
 such strange prancks ... as the like was yet never heard of," 
 1592, "Works," vol. xi. 
 
 ^ " Groats-worth of wit," "Works," vol. xii. p. 140. 
 
L YL Y'S LEG A TEES. 189 
 
 not the painting of Italic, nor the charms of France, 
 nor the jewelles of Spaine, yet they have in their eyes 
 adamants that wil drawe youth as the jet the strawe. 
 . . . Their lookes . . . containe modesty, mirth, chas- 
 tity, wantonness and what not/' ^ 
 
 Besides the personal reminiscences with which he 
 made up his repentance tales and stories, Greene as an 
 observer of human nature is seen at his best in his 
 curious, and at the time famous, dialogue *' between 
 velvet breeches and cloth breeches." 2 Jt is in fact 
 a disputation between old England and new England ; 
 the England that built the strong houses praised by 
 Harrison, and the England that adorned itself with the 
 Burghley House paper work ; traditional England and 
 italianate England. Velvet breeches is " richly daubde 
 with gold, and poudred with pearle," and is '' sprung 
 from the auncient Romans, borne in Italy, the mistresse 
 of the worlde for chivalry." Cloth breeches is of 
 English manufacture and descent, and deplores the 
 vices that have crept into " this glorious Hand " in 
 the wake of Italian fashions. Both plead before 
 Greene, each giving very graphic accounts of the 
 
 ^ "Greenes never too late,'' "Works," vol. viii. p. 6"]. 
 
 2 "A quip for an upstart courtier, or a quaint dispute between 
 velvet breeches and cloth breeches," London, 1592 ; "Works," 
 vol. xi. In the year of its publication it went through three editions 
 and had several afterwards. It was translated into Dutch : " Een 
 seer vermakelick Proces tusschen Fluweele-Broeck ende liaken- 
 Broek," Leyden, 1601, 4.to. Greene had as his model in writing 
 this book F. T.'s "Debate between pride and lowliness," and 
 he drew much from it, though not so much by far as he has 
 been accused of by Mr. Collier. " The Debate," &c., Shakespeare 
 Society, 184.1, preface. (F. T. is not Francis Thynne.) 
 
190 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 behaviour of the other. Here, for example, is a 
 scene, assuredly from the life, at a barber's shop : 
 
 " Velvet breeches he sittes downe in the chaire 
 wrapt in fine cloathes . . . then comes [the barber] 
 out with his fustian eloquence, and making a low 
 conge, saith : 
 
 " Sir, will you have your wor[ship's] haire cut 
 
 VELVET BREECHES AND CLOTH BREECHES, 1 592. 
 
 after the Italian maner, shorte and round, and then 
 frounst with the curling yrons, to make it looke like 
 a halfe moone in a miste? or like a Spanyard, long at 
 the eares and curled like the two endes of an old cast 
 periwig ? or will you be Frenchified, with a love locke 
 downe to your shoulders, wherein you may weare 
 your mistresse favour? The English cut is base and 
 gentlemen scorne it, novelty is daintye; speake the woord 
 
LYLY'S LEGATEES. 191 
 
 sir, and my sissars are ready to execute your worships 
 wil. 
 
 " His head being once drest, which requires in 
 combing and rubbing some two howers, hee comes to 
 the bason : then being curiously washt with no woorse 
 then a camphire bal, he descends as low as his berd, 
 and asketh whether he please to be shaven or no, 
 whether he will have his peak cut short and sharpe, 
 amiable like an inamorato., or broad pendant like a 
 spade, to be terrible like a warrior and a Soldado . . . 
 if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primed or his 
 mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like ye 
 branches of a vine. . . ." 
 
 The question pending between cloth and velvet is 
 submitted to a jury ; men of the various professions are 
 called and accepted, or rejected, according to their 
 merit ; each is described, often in a very lively manner. 
 Here is, for example, the portrait of a poet or rather of 
 the poet of the Elizabethan period ; for the specimen 
 here represented stands as a type for all his class ; and 
 it is worth notice, for if Shakespeare himself was 
 different, many of his associates at the " Mermaid," 
 we may be sure, well answered the description. " I 
 espied far off^ a certain kind of an overworne gentle- 
 man, attired in velvet and satin ; but it was somewhat 
 dropped and greasie, and bootes on his legges, whose 
 soles wexed thin and seemed to complaine of their 
 maister, which treading thrift under his feet, had 
 brought them unto that consumption. He walked 
 not as other men in the common beaten way, but came 
 compassing circumcirca, as if we had beene divells and 
 he would draw a circle about us, and at every third 
 
192 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 step he looked back as if he were afraid of a baily or 
 a sarjant." Cloth Breeches, who seems to be describing 
 here Greene himself, is not too severe in his appre- 
 ciation of the character of the poor troubled fellow ; 
 " If he have forty pound in his purse together, he 
 puts it not to usury, neither buies land nor merchan- 
 dise with it, but a moneths commodity of wenches and 
 capons. Ten pound a supper, why tis nothing if his 
 plough goes and his ink home be cleere . . . But to 
 speak plainely I think him an honest man if he would 
 but live within his compasse, and generally no mans 
 foe but his ow^n. Therefore I hold him a man fit to be 
 of my jury." 
 
 Judgment is passed in favour of cloth England 
 against velvet England ; and in this ultra-conservative 
 sentence the views of the Bohemian novelist are summed 
 up in this premature essay on the " philosophy of 
 clothes." 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fame and success of Greene encouraged writers 
 to follow his example. He had shown that there was 
 a public for novels, and that it was a sort of literature 
 that would pay, both in reputation and money. He 
 had, therefore, many rivals and imitators who were 
 thus only second-hand disciples of Lyly. Among these 
 Nicholas Breton and Emmanuel Ford may be taken as 
 examples. Both were his contemporaries, but survived 
 him many years. In both traces of euphuism survive, 
 but they are faint ; at the time they wrote euphuism 
 was on the wane, and it is only on rare occasions that 
 
ZVZV'S LEGATEES. 193 
 
 Ford reminds us that "the most mightie monarch 
 Alexander, aswel beheld the crooked counterfeit of 
 Vulcan as the sweet picture of Venus. Philip of 
 Macedon accepted. . . ." ^ 
 
 What Ford especially imitated from Greene was the 
 art of writing romantic tales with plenty of adventures, 
 unexpected meetings and discoveries, much love, and 
 improbabilities enough to enchant Elizabethan readers 
 and sell the book up to any number of editions. In 
 this he rivalled his model very successfully, and his 
 romances were among the most popular of the time of 
 Shakespeare. The number of their editions was extra- 
 ordinary, and they were renewed at almost regular 
 intervals up to the eighteenth century ; there was 
 a far greater demand for them than for any play of 
 Shakespeare. 2 Besides imitating Greene, who obviously 
 revealed to him the success to be won by writing 
 romantic tales, he imitated at the same time the 
 Italians and the Spaniards, introducing into his 
 romances a licentiousness quite unknown to Greene, 
 but well known to Boccaccio, and heroic adventures 
 similar to those his friend Anthony Munday was 
 just then putting into English. These last were 
 to be the chief delight of novel-readers in the seven- 
 teenth century, and did more than anything for the 
 great popularity of Ford's novels during that period. 
 
 Ford's earliest and most characteristic work was 
 called " Parismus, the renowned prince of Bohemia 
 
 ^ Dedication of " Parismus," 1598. 
 
 2 The thirteenth edition of "Parismus" appeared in 1649; 
 there were others in 1657, 1663, 1664, 1665, 1668, 1671, 1677, 
 1684, 1690, 1696, 1704, &:c. (Sidney L. Lee.) 
 
194 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 . . . conteining his noble battailes fought against 
 the Persians ... his love to Laurana . . . and his 
 straunge adventures in the desolate Hand/* &c., &c. ^ 
 As the title informs us there are loves and wars in this 
 romance, deeds of valour and of sorcery, there are 
 pageants and enchanters. The adventures take place 
 in purely imaginary lands, which the author is pleased 
 to call Bohemia, Persia, &c., but which might have 
 been as well baptized Tartary or Mongolia. The 
 manners and costumes, however, when there is an 
 attempt at describing them, are purely Elizabethan. 
 There are masques such as were shown at court in 
 Shakespeare's time, and during one such fete, as in 
 " Romeo and Juliet," Parismus for the first time 
 declares his love to Laurana : '' The maskers entred 
 in this sort : first entred two torch bearers, apparelled 
 in white satten, beset with spangles of gold, after 
 whom followed two Eunuches, apparelled all in greene, 
 playing on two instruments, then came Parismus attired 
 all in carnation satten . . . next followed . . . when came 
 two knights . . . next followed ..." - and so on ; in 
 the same style as in Shakespeare's play, " enter Romeo, 
 Mercutio, Benvolio, with ^y^ or six maskers, torch- 
 bearers and others.*' 3 But, alas, this is the only 
 place where there is any resemblance between the two 
 styles ; though the situation developes under Ford's 
 
 ^ London, 1598, 4to. ^ Sig. C iii. et seq. 
 
 3 Act i. sc. 4. "Romeo" was first printed in 1597. A con- 
 temporary representation of such an entree of maskers is to be 
 seen in the curious painting representing Sir H, Unton and the 
 principal events in his life ; now kept in the National Portrait 
 Gallery (painted about 1596). 
 
LYLY'S LEG A TEES. 1 95 
 
 pen in a manner to suggest that he must have read 
 " Romeo " not without a purpose. Had his purpose 
 been to show his contemporaries the height of 
 Shakespeare's genius by giving, side by side with 
 it, the measure of an ordinary mind, he could not 
 have tried better nor succeeded less. For con- 
 temporaries and successors consumed innumerable 
 editions of '' Parismus," and only too easily numbered 
 editions of " Romeo." 
 
 Parismus and Laurana talk, in the midst of the ball, 
 of their new-born love, and after an exchange of highly 
 polite phrases she thus confesses her feelings : " My 
 noble lord ... I heartily thanke you for taking so 
 much paines for my sake, being unwoorthie thereof, 
 and also unable to bee sufficiently thankfull unto you 
 for the same, and for that you say your happinesse 
 resteth in my power, if 1 can any way work your 
 content to the uttermost of my endeavour I will do 
 it." Parismus, of course, has nothing to answer except 
 that no one could require more. 
 
 It had been, however, with her also, love at first 
 sight ; but Laurana does not say : 
 
 " Go, ask his name : if he be married, 
 My grave is like to be my wedding bed." 
 
 She is far too well bred and courtly, and she explains 
 as follows what she has felt : " My Lord, I assure you, 
 that at such time as I sawe you comming first into 
 this court, my heart was then surprised, procured, as 
 I think by the destinies, that ever since I have vowed 
 to rest yours." This speech is made at a nightly 
 
1 96 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 garden meeting, similar to the one where Romeo 
 went " with love's light wings," and where was heard 
 the sweetest and gravest lovers' music that ever 
 enchanted human ears : 
 
 " At lovers' perjuries, 
 They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, 
 If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully : 
 Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, 
 I will frown and be perverse. . . . 
 Well, do not swear : although I joy in thee, 
 I have no joy of this contract to-night. 
 It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden ; 
 Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 
 Ere one can say, It lightens." ... 
 
 He of Bohemia had not come with " love's light 
 wings," but '' somewhat before the hour, was gone forth 
 in his night gowne, with his sworde under his arme, 
 and comming to the gate he was wont to goe in at into 
 the gardeine, found it shut, and having no other meanes, 
 he gott over the wall." We picture him clambering 
 over the wall, his night-gown flowing about him to do 
 duty for love's wings. The lovers meet, and " thus they 
 spent the night in kinde salutations and curteous im- 
 bracings to the unspeakable joy and comfort of them 
 both." 
 
 To complete the external resemblance of the two 
 situations, there is in Ford's novel a young lord to play 
 the part of '' County Paris." He is called Sicanus, and 
 Laurana's family greatly favours his suit : " Laurana, 
 my cheefest care is to see thee married, according to 
 thy state, which hath made me send for thee, to know 
 whether thou hast alreadie placed thy affection or no : 
 
LYL Y'S LEG A TEES. 197 
 
 otherwise there is come into this country, a knight of 
 great estate/' &c., &c. " Laurana departed with a heavie 
 heart." 
 
 Then again, as in " Romeo," there is another meeting 
 of the lovers, this time in Laurana's chamber ; and they 
 spend the hours " in sweete greetings, but farre from 
 anie thought of unchastnesse, their imbracings being 
 grounded upon the most vertuous conditions that might 
 bee : and sitting together upon the beds side, Laurana 
 told him. ..." As in Romeo, they are parted by 
 morn : 
 
 "Wilt thou be gone ? it is not yet near day : 
 It was the nightingale, and not the lark. . . . 
 — It was the lark, the herald of the morn, 
 No nightingale : look, love, what envious streaks 
 Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. . . . 
 — Yond light is not daylight. . . ." 
 
 A very different morn shines in at Laurana's win- 
 dows : ^' Nowe the dismall houre of their parting being 
 approached, by reason of the light that the sunne began 
 to give into the chamber, Parismus taking Laurana in 
 his arnies, drawing sweete breath from her lippes, told 
 her that now, to his greefe, he must leave her to be 
 courted by his enemie." 
 
 Without any very great grief on our side we shall 
 leave them to follow from this point a series of adven- 
 tures very different from Romeo's. Parismus becomes 
 a chief of outlaws, and acquires great fame under the 
 name of the Black Knight ; he wages war against 
 Sicanus, he encounters young Violetta, and their meet- 
 ings read like a tale from Boccaccio rather than like a 
 
198 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 play of Shakespeare ; at last he marries Laurana " with 
 admirable pompe " in the '' temple of Diana." We 
 shall leave them in this holy place, though many more 
 adventures are in store for them. We shall only state 
 that Ford, encouraged by the great success of this first 
 attempt, wrote several other novels exactly in the same 
 style, containing the same improbable monsters and 
 wonders, and the same licentious adventures. In spite, 
 however, of the condemnation he suffered at the hands 
 of wise people on account of the undeniable immorality 
 of several of his episodes, his reputation went on in- 
 creasing for years and long survived him. ^ 
 
 Another follower of Greene was Nicholas Breton,^ 
 eighteen years his senior ; but he did not begin novel- 
 writing until after the death of his model, when this 
 kind of literature had taken a firm hold of the public. 
 Very little euphuism remains in Breton ; we do not 
 find in him those clusters of similes with which Lyly 
 and Greene were fond of adorning their novels, and 
 alliteration is there only to remind us that through 
 Greene, Breton may be considered a secondary legatee 
 
 ^ " Parismenos, the second part of . . . Parismus," 1599; 
 "Ornatus and Artesia," of uncertain date, but surely anterior to 
 1598 ; " Montelion, Knight of the Oracle," of uncertain date; 
 the earliest known copy bears date, 1633. Francis Meres, in his 
 celebrated " Palladis Tamia," gives a list of books " hurtful to 
 youth," and which are to be "censured"; among them, besides 
 ^'Gargantua," "Owlglass," &c., he names " Ornatus and Artesia" 
 and the " Black Knight," which might perhaps be "Parismus," for 
 such was our hero's nickname. 
 
 2 "Works in verse and prose," ed. Grosart, London, 1879, 2 
 vols., 4to. Breton was born in 1542-3 ; he studied at Oxford, 
 and travelled on the continent ; he died in 1626. 
 
L YL Y'S LEG A TEES. 1 99 
 
 of Lyly. The subjects and the form of his writings, 
 much better than his style, prove him a pupil of 
 Greene. He imitated his dialogues, publishing in suc- 
 cession his conference '^ betwixt a scholler and an angler," 
 his discussion between " wit and will " ; his disputation 
 of a scholar and a soldier, *' the one defending learning, 
 the other martiall discipline," and several others on 
 travels, on court and country, &c. He imitated 
 Greene's tales of low life, anticipating in his turn 
 Defoe's novels, with his " Miseries of Mavilha ; " he re- 
 mained, however, far below the level not only of Defoe, 
 but of Greene, whose personal knowledge of the mis- 
 fortunes he was describing enabled him to give in his 
 writings of this kind pictures of reality that contrasted 
 strangely with the fanciful incidents of his romantic 
 novels. The only things worth remembering in these 
 '' miseries," besides their subject, are a few thoughtful 
 observations such as the one (in alliterative style) which 
 opens the story : '^ Sorrow sokes long ere it slayes ; 
 care consumes before it killes ; and destinie drives the 
 body into much miserie, before the heart be strooken 
 dead ; " a far juster observation than Greene's fancies, 
 according to which heroes of novels may be got rid of 
 as quickly by sorrow as by poison or apoplexy. 
 
 There are also in Breton imitations of the romantic 
 novel of Italian origin such as Greene understood it 
 and such as the Elizabethan public loved it. Breton 
 published in 1600 his ''Strange fortunes of two excel- 
 lent princes," which his modern editor does not hesi- 
 tate to declare " a bright and characteristic little book." 
 This little masterpiece begins thus, in very characteristic 
 fashion indeed : '* In the Ilandes of Balino, neere unto the 
 
2CO THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 city of Dulno, there lived a great duke named Firente. 
 . . . This lord had to wife a sweete ladie called Merilla, 
 a creature of much worth. . . . This blessed lord and 
 ladie had issue male, onlie one sonne named Penillo 
 and female one onlie daughter named Merilla." These 
 two children were famous for their wit and beauty. 
 *' But I will . . . entreat of another Duke, who dwelt 
 in the Hands of Cotasie. . . . This duke had to name 
 Ordillo, a man famous for much worth as well in wit 
 as valour. . . . This duke had to wife a gratious ladie. 
 . . . She had by her lord the duke two blessed children, 
 a Sonne and a daughter ; her sonne named Fantiro and 
 her daughter Sinilla.'* These two children begat wonder 
 for their wit and their beauty. 
 
 Such is the introduction. What do you think will 
 follow.^ That the two perfect young men will marry 
 the two unique young women } This is exactly what 
 happens ; and the only perceptible interest in the tale 
 is to see from what improbable incidents such likely 
 consequences are derived. We can safely, it seems, 
 class this] novel in the same category as " Arbasto," 
 *' Mamillia," and other products of Greene's pen ; not, 
 however, without remarking that Breton's stories, as well 
 as those of his model, were not meant to delight nurseries, 
 but were destined to give pleasure to grown-up people, 
 to people in society ; they were offered them as 
 jucunda oblivia vit^y exactly in the same fashion as 
 the three-volume novels of to-day. Breton himself is 
 positive on this point, and he has been careful to inform 
 us that his intention was to write things *' which being 
 read or heard in a winters evening by a good fire, or a 
 summers morning in the greene fields may serve both 
 
LYLTS LEGATEES. 201 
 
 to purge melancholy from the minde and grosse humours 
 from the body." ^ 
 
 Again, he was connected with the Greene and Lyly 
 group by the pleasure he felt in composing imagmary 
 letters. A number of such letters had been inserted by 
 Lyly in his " Euphues," and had proved one of the at- 
 tractions of the book ; Greene and the other novelists of 
 the period never missed an opportunity of making their 
 heroes write to each other, and they always transcribed 
 their letters in full, a process inherited from the romance 
 writers of the Middle Ages. Breton, following the 
 example already given by some of his contemporaries, 
 went beyond that, and published a volume of imaginary 
 letters from everybody to anybody on any subject, many 
 of them rather coarse, some good, some rather slow 
 in their gait and heavy in their wit.- The public taste 
 
 ^ This forms part of the title of his " Wonders worth the 
 hearing," 1602 (a dialogue with anecdotes). 
 
 2 "A poste with a packet of mad Letters." The earliest dated 
 edition is of the year 1603. Breton published, besides the writings 
 above mentioned, some religious, pastoral, and other poetry. Part 
 of it is dedicated to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, the 
 famous sister of Sir Philip : " The Countesse of Pembrookes love," 
 1592; "The Countesse of Pembroke's passion" (no date). His 
 pastoral poetry is among the best of his time. He left also 
 moral essays and characters or typical portraits : " Characters upon 
 essaies morall and divine, 161 5," dedicated to Bacon, and concern- 
 ing wisdom, learning, knowledge, patience, love, peace, war and 
 other, even then, rather trite subjects. "The good and'badde," 
 1 616, contains characters of a knave, an usurer, a virgin, a para- 
 site, a goodman, an " atheist or most badde man : hee makes robberie 
 his purchase, lecherie his solace, mirth his exercise, and drunken- 
 nesse his glory," &c. These books of " Characters" were extremely 
 popular. Cf. "Characters of virtues and vices," by Hall, 1608; 
 Sir Thomas Overbury's "Characters," 1614 ; John- Earle's 
 
 12 
 
202 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 was so decidedly in favour of these compositions that 
 this was the most successful of Breton's enterprises. I 
 was often reprinted ; a number of similar collections 
 were circulated in the seventeenth century, and their 
 popularity had not abated when Richardson was asked, 
 by the publishers Osborne and Rivington, to compose 
 one for country people. He did so, and the only 
 difference, and a sufficiently important one, was that in 
 his series the letters were connected by the thread of 
 a story. 
 
 Greene had a rival of much higher stature in his 
 friend Thomas Lodge. Lodge was a little older than 
 Greene, and survived him long, so that he happened to 
 be a contemporary both of Greene and of his imitators. 
 He rivalled Greene, but did not imitate him, being 
 himself a direct legatee of Lyly. The sort of life he 
 led differed greatly from that of his friend, but it was 
 scarcely less characteristic of the period. Lodge was 
 the son of a rich London grocer who had been Lord 
 Mayor. Born in 1557, he had known Lyly at Oxford ; 
 had studied law ; then, yielding to those desires of 
 seeing the dangers and beauties of the world which 
 drove the English youths of the period to seek prefer- 
 ment abroad, he closed his books for a while, and became 
 a corsair, visiting the Canary Isles, Brazil, and Patagonia. 
 He brought back, as booty from his expeditions, 
 romances written at sea to beguile the tedium of the 
 passage and the anxieties of the tempest. One was 
 called "The Margarite of America'' ; another '' Rosa- 
 
 " Microcosmographie," 1628, and a great many others. The last- 
 named was translated into French by J. Dymocke, *' Le vice 
 ridicule," Louvain, 1671, izmo. One of his most curious works 
 is his " Fantasticks," 1626. 
 
LYLYS LEGATEES. 203 
 
 •■ 
 
 lynde. The latter fell into Shakespeare's hands and 
 
 pleased him ; he drew from it the plot of " As you 
 like it." I Coming before the literary public, Lodge 
 does not altogether forget his profession of corsair, 
 and in order to deprive the critics of the temptation to 
 sneer, he is careful to brandish his rapier from time to 
 time, and to write prefaces that make one's hair stand 
 on end. *' Roome for a souldier and a sailer, that gives 
 you the fruits of his labors that he wrote in the Ocean ! " 
 he cries to the reader at the beginning of his " Rosa- 
 lynde," and let fault-finders keep silence ; otherwise he 
 will throw them overboard '^ to feed cods." 
 
 After such a warning there would be nothing it 
 seems but to hold our tongue ; but perhaps, taking the 
 practical side of the question, we may consider that by 
 this time Lodge's rapier must have grown very rusty, 
 and would not offer more danger than any critic is 
 
 ^ The principal novels or short stories of Lodge are : " For- 
 bonius and Prisceria," 1584, reprinted by the Shakespeare 
 Society, 1853; " Rosalynde, Euphues golden legacie found after 
 his death in his cell at Silexcdra . . . fetcht from the Canaries," 
 1590, reprinted by Hazlitt, 1875, and again in a popular form by 
 Prof. H. Morley, 1887; "The famous, true, and historicall life 
 of . . . Robin the divell," 1591 ; "Euphues shadow the battaile 
 of the sences wherein youthful folly is set downe," 1592 ; 
 it was edited by Greene in the absence of his friend, who was at 
 sea "upon a long voyage." The story takes place in Italy at the 
 time when " Octavius possessed the monarchy of the whole world." 
 "The Margarite of America," i 596, reprinted by Halliwell, 1859. 
 In this romance (p. 116), Lodge incidentally eulogizes his con- 
 temporary the French poet Philippe Desportes, and he mentions 
 the popularity of his works in England. The " Complete Works " of 
 Lodge have been published by the Hunterian Club, ed. Gosse, 
 Glasgow, 1875, ^t ^^1- 
 
204 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 bound to incur in the performance of his duty. Besides 
 that admiration may in all sincerity be blended with 
 criticism when it is a question of Lodge's masterpiece, 
 " Rosalynde." 
 
 The tale itself bears a somewhat curious history. 
 Twice at two hundred years' distance it took the fancy 
 of the greatest genius of the period. In the Middle 
 Ages it was called the " Tale of Gamely n," i and Chaucer 
 apparently intended to work it into his " Canterbury 
 Tales," but he died before he had completed his wish, 
 and some copy of the rough old poem having, as it 
 seems, been found among his papers, it was in after 
 time inserted in the manuscripts of his works as the 
 *' Cooke's Tale." As it stood in the fourteenth century 
 this story recited mere deeds of valour, of strong, 
 sinewy fighters ; love and women played no part in it ; 
 and it is a great loss for us not to know whether old 
 Chaucer would have made this very necessary addition, 
 and what sort of mediaeval Rosalind he would have 
 depicted. 
 
 As things went, we are indebted to our gentleman 
 adventurer for the invention of Rosalind. Lodge took 
 up the tale and remodelled it entirely ; he gave place 
 in it to the fair she-page and to her friend Alinda and 
 to Phoebe, the hard-hearted shepherdess, in such a way 
 that when Shakespeare in his turn bethought himself of 
 - ^1 ^ this story, he had nothing to add to fit it for his own 
 
 stage, nothing except genius. 
 
 But if Lodge cannot be considered a man of genius, 
 he is certainly a writer of very remarkable gifts. || His 
 
 I "The tale of Gamelyn, from Harleian MS., 7334," ed. Skeat, 
 Oxford, 1884, i6mo. 
 
LYLTS LEGATEES. 
 
 . ^y^'^ 
 
 >^ 
 
 ^ V 
 
 novel is a pastoral tale that takes place somewhere 
 
 in France, near Bordeaux, and reads as pleasantly as any 
 
 story in *' Astree/' no mean compliment. Probability, 
 
 geography and chronology, are not Lodge's strong 
 
 points; we are in fact again in the country of nowhere, , 
 
 in an imaginary kingdom of France over which the AM^^^-^ 
 
 usurper Torismond reigns. The true king has been 
 
 deposed and leads a forester's life, untroubled, unknown, 
 
 in the thick woods of Arden, Rosalind, a daughter of 
 
 the deposed king, has been kept as a sort of hostage at 
 
 the court of the tyrant in 
 
 Bordeaux, presumably his 
 capital. All of a sudden 
 she is exiled in her turn, 
 without more explana- 
 tion than " I have heard 
 of thy aspiring speaches 
 and intended treasons." ^ 
 Alinda, her friend, the 
 daughter of the tyrant, 
 refuses to leave her, and 
 
 both fly the court, Rosalind being dressed as a page, 
 a rapier at her side, her wit full of repartees, her / 
 mind full of shifts, and equal, in fact, as in Shakespeare, IMi^ A 
 to any emergency. " Tush, quoth Rosalynd, art thou j U^^*— n ^ 
 a woman and hast not a sodaine shift to prevent a ^ "^ 
 misfortune.^ I, thou seest, am of a tall stature, and 
 would very well become the person and apparell of a 
 page ; thou shalt bee my mistris, and I will play the 
 man so properly, that, trust me, in what company so 
 ever I come, I will not bee discovered. I will buy mee 
 ^ " Works," vol. ii. p, 12 (each work has a separate pagination). 
 
 PREPARING FOR THE HUNT 
 
 ^575- 
 
2o6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 a suite, and have my rapier very handsomely at my 
 side, and if any knave offer wrong, your page will 
 shew him the point of his weapon. At this Alinda 
 smiled, and upon this they agreed, and presentlie 
 gathered up all their jewels which they trussed up in a 
 casket. . . . They travailed along the vineyards, and 
 by many by-waies, at last got to the forrest side," the 
 forest of Arden, which at that time happened to be near 
 the vineyards of Gascony. 
 
 But this geographical situation is the least of the 
 wonders offered by the forest. In it live not only Geris- 
 mond, the lawful king, very happy and contented, free 
 . and without care, wanting nothing ; but, in the valleys, 
 the most lovable shepherdesses and the most loving 
 shepherds ; they feed their flocks while piping their 
 ditties ; they inscribe their sonnets on the bark of trees ; 
 they are very learned, though mere shepherds ; they 
 quote Latin and write French^; they4cnow-hew-H:-e ask 
 the god of love that the heart of their mistress may 
 not be-''de glace." 
 
 " Bien qu'elle ait de neige le sein." 
 
 They live in the shade of the most unaccountable 
 woods, woods composed of pine-trees, fig-trees, and 
 lemon-trees. " Then, comming into a faire valley, com- 
 passed with mountaines whereon grewe many pleasant 
 shrubbs, they might descrie where two flocks of sheepe 
 did feede. Then looking about they might perceive 
 where an old shepheard sat, and with him a yong swaine, 
 under a covert most pleasantlie scituated. The ground 
 where they sat was Smpre J with Floras riches, as if she 
 ment to wrap Tellus in the glorie of her vestments : 
 
L YL TS LEGATEES. 207 
 
 round about, in the forme of an amphitheater were 
 most curiouslie planted pine-trees, interseamed with 
 limons and citrons, which with the thicknesse of their 
 boughes so shadowed the place, that Phoebus could not 
 prie into the secret of that arbour. . . . Fast by . . . 
 was there a fount so christalline and cleere that it seemed 
 Diana and her Driades and Hemadriades had that 
 spring as the secret of all their bathings. In this 
 glorious arbour sat these two shepheards seeing their 
 sheepe feede, playing on their pipes. . . ." It is like 
 a landscape by Poussin. Alinda and her page find 
 the place very pleasant, and decide to settle there, 
 especially when they have heard what a shepherd's 
 life is like. " For a shepheards life, oh ! mistresse, 
 did you but live a while in their content, you 
 would saye the court were rather a place of sorrowe 
 than of solace . . . Envie stirres not us, wee covet notl 
 to climbe, our desires mount not above our degrees, 
 nor our thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot 
 harbour in our cottages, nor doo our homely couches 
 know broken slumbers^ Fine assertions, to which some 
 hundred and fifty years later Prince Rasselas was most 
 solemnly to give the lie. But his time had not yet come, 
 and both princesses resolve to settle there, to purchase 
 flocks, and " live quiet, unknowen, and contented." ^ 
 
 1 Many other pleasant things are to be found in the 
 forest ^ in fact, the two ladies meet their lovers there ; 
 brave Rosader, the Gamelyn of Chaucerian times, the 
 Orlando of Shakespeare, and wicked but repentant and 
 reformed Saladin, who loves Alinda as Rosader loves 
 Rosalind. They meet,, too, the shepherdess Phoebe, *' as 
 
 I "Works," vol. ii. pp. 14, 16, 19, 20. 
 
2o8 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 faire as the wanton that brought Troy to ruine," but 
 in a different dress ; " she in a peticoate of scarlet, 
 covered with a greene mantle, and to shrowde her from 
 the sunne, a chaplet of roses ; " in a different mood, too, 
 towards shepherds, thinking nothing of her Paris, poor 
 Montanus whom she disdains while he is dying for 
 her. 
 
 Yet there were even more wonders in this forest of 
 Arcadian shepherds, exiled princesses, and lemon-trees. 
 There were '* certaine rascalls that lived by prowling in 
 the forrest, who for feare of the provost marshall had 
 caves in the groves and thickets " ; ^ there were lions, 
 too, very dangerous, hungry, man-eating lions. Such 
 animals appear in Shakespeare also, as well as " palm 
 trees," and Shakespeare moreover takes the liberty of 
 doubling his lion with a serpeiij 
 
 A wretched ragged mail o'ergrown with hair 
 Lay sleeping on[^hi^ack : about his neck 
 A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself 
 Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd 
 The opemif'g of his mouth ; but suddenly, 
 Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself, 
 And with indented glides did slip away 
 Into a bush : under which bush's shade 
 'A lioness, with udders all drawn dry. 
 Lay couching." ^ 
 
 Let US not be too much troubled ; here will be good 
 opportunities for lovers to show the sort of men they 
 are, to be wounded, but not disfigured, and finally to 
 be loved. 
 
 ' " Works,'* vol. ii. pp. 63, 46, 42, 
 ^ "As you like it," act iv. sc. 3. 
 
y 
 
 rv- 
 
 LYLTS LEGATEES. 209 
 
 So many rare encounters of men and animals, and 
 shepherds and lovers^ give excellent occasions for 
 Rosalind to display the special turn of her mind, and 
 if, in Lodge, she has not all ihe ready wit that 
 Shakespeare has given her, she is by no means s low of 
 speech ; she possesses besides much more of that human 
 kindness in which we sometimes find the brilliant page 
 of the play a little deficient. The conversations between 
 her and Alinda are very pleasant to read, and show how 
 at last, not only on the stage, but even in novels, the 
 tongues of the speakers had been loosened. 
 
 '^ No doubt, quoth Aliena,i this poesie is the \^ 
 passion of some perplexed shepheard, that being "^ 
 enamoured of some fair and beautifull shepheardesse 
 suffered some sharpe repulse, and therefore complained 
 of the cruelty of his mistris. 
 
 " You may see, quoth Ganimede [Rosalind's page- 
 name], what mad cattell you women be, whose hearts 
 sometimes are made of adamant that will touch with 
 no impression, and sometimes of waxe that is fit for 
 everie forme ; they delight to be courted and then they 
 glorie to seeme coy, and when they are most desired, 
 then they freeze with disdaine. . . . 
 
 " And I pray you, quoth Aliena, if your roabes 
 were off, what mettall are you made of that you are 
 so satyricall against women ? . . . Beware, Ganimede, 
 that Rosader heare you not. . . . 
 
 " Thus, quoth Ganimede, I keepe decorum, I 
 
 speake now as I am Alienas page, not as I am 
 
 Gerismonds daughter ; for put me but into a peticoate, 
 
 and I will stand in defiance to the uttermost, that 
 
 ^ Mcr forest name for Alinda. 
 
 ^ 
 
2 lo THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 women are courteous, constant, virtuous, and what 
 not/: 
 
 Thus there is much merry prattle between these two, 
 especially when the presence of the lover of the one 
 sharpens the teasing disposition of the other ; when, 
 for example, Rosader finding, not without good cause, 
 some resemblance between the page and his Rosalind, 
 pities the former, for not equalling the perfection of 
 his mistress. 
 
 " He hathanswered you, Ganimede, quoth Aliena, 
 it is inough for pages to waite on beautifull ladies and 
 not to be beautifull themselves. 
 
 "Oh! mistres," answers the she-page, who cannot 
 help feeling some spite, " holde your peace, for you 
 are partiail ; who knowes not, but that all women 
 have desire to tie sovereigntie to their peticoats, and 
 ascribe beautie to themselves, where if boyes might 
 put on their garments, perhaps they would proove as 
 comely ; if not as comely, it hiay be more curteous." 
 ^ There are also some morning scenes full of pleasant 
 mirth and cheerful light, in which perhaps there 
 I is more of Phoebus than of the sun, and more of 
 I Aurora than of the dawn ; but this light, such as it 
 ' is, is worth the looking at, so merrily it shines ; and 
 the talk of these early risers well suits the half-classic 
 landscape, 
 V " The sunne was no sooner stept from the bed of 
 
 Aurora, but Aliena was wakened by Ganimede, who 
 j restlesse all night, had tossed in her passions ; saying 
 / it was then time to goe to the field to unfold their 
 sheepe. 
 
 " Aliena . . . replied thus : What ? wanton, the sun 
 
Z YL Y'S LEG A TEES, 2 1 1 
 
 is but new up, and as yet Iris riches lies folded in the 
 bosom of Flora ; Phoebus hath not dried the pearled 
 deaw, and so long Coridon hath taught me it is not 
 fit to lead the sheepe abroad lest the deaw being 
 unwholesome they get the rot. But now see I the 
 old proverbe true . . ." (and here comes some 
 euphuism). 
 
 *' Come on," answers Ganimede, who does not seem 
 in a mood to appreciate euphuism just then, *' this 
 sermon of yours is but a subtiltie to Ue still a bed, 
 because either you think the morning colde, or els I 
 being gone, you would steale a nappe ; this shifte 
 carries no palme, and therefore up and away. And 
 for Love, let me alone ; He whip him away with 
 nettles and set Disdaine as a charme to withstand his 
 forces ; and therefore, looke you to your selfe ; be not 
 too bolde, for Venus can make you bend ; nor too coy, 
 for Cupid hath a piercing dart that will make you cry 
 Feccavi. 
 
 " And that is it, quoth Aliena, that hath raysed 
 you so early this morning ? 
 
 " And with that she slipt on her peticoate, and 
 start up ; and assoone as she had made her readie 
 and taken her breakfast, away goe these two with 
 their bagge and bottles to the field, in more pleasant 
 content of mind than ever they were in the court of 
 Torismond." 
 
 In the same way as in Shakespeare, fair Phoebe, 
 deceived by Rosalind's dress, Phoebe, who thought 
 herself beyond the reach of love, becomes enamoured 
 of the page and feels at last all the pangs of an 
 unrequited passion. Lodge's Rosalind, more human 
 
2 1 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 we think than her great Shakespearean sister, uses, to 
 persuade Phoebe into loving Montanus, a kindly, tender 
 language, meant to heal rather than irritate the poor 
 shepherdess's wounds. " What ! " will exclaim the 
 great sister, ... / 
 
 "... What though you have no beauty . . . 
 Must you b^ therefore proud and pitiless ? 
 Why, wlyt means this ? Why do you look on me r 
 I see noonore in you than in the ordinary 
 Of ng/ure's sale-work : Od's my little life ! 
 I think she means to tangle my eyes too : — 
 N0, 'faith, proud mistress, hope not after it ; 
 
 is not your inky brows, your black silk-hair, 
 Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream 
 That can entame my spirits to your worship." ^ 
 
 Very spiritless, and tame, and old fashioned, will 
 the other Rosalind appear by the side of this 
 impetuous, relentless deity. A few perhaps will 
 consider that her tame, kindly, old-fashioned, mytho- 
 logical piece of advice to the shepherdess, makes her 
 the more lovable : '^ What, shepheardesse, so fayre and 
 so cruell.? . . . Because thou art beautifull, be not so 
 coye : as there is nothing more faire, so there is nothing 
 more fading, as momentary as the shadowes which 
 growes from a cloudie sunne. Such, my faire 
 shepheardesse, as disdaine in youth, desire in age, and 
 then are they hated in the winter, that might have 
 been loved in the prime. A wrinkled maid is like 
 a parched rose, that is cast up in coffers to please 
 the smell, not worn in the hand to content the eye. 
 There is no folly in love to had-I-wist, and therefore, 
 
 ^ "As you like it," act iii. sc. 5. 
 
L YL YS LEG A TEES. 2 1 3 
 
 be rulde by me. Love while thou art young, least 
 thou be disdained when thou art olde. Beautie nor 
 time cannot bee recalde, and if thou love, like of 
 Montanus ; for if his desires are manie, so his deserts 
 are great." ^ And it is indeed quite touching to see 
 poor Montanus in the simplest lover fashion verify by 
 his acts this description of himself ; for while reduced 
 to the last degree of despair, seeing the unconquerable 
 love Phoebe entertains for the page, he beseeches 
 Rosalind to save her by returning her love ; sorrow 
 will kill him any way, but he will die contented 
 if he thinks that even through another's love Phoebe 
 will live happy in her Arcadian vale. 
 
 I need not add that all these troubles end as happily 
 as possible ; the storms pass away and a many-coloured 
 rainbow encompasses Arden, Arcady, and the kingdom 
 of France ; every lover becomes loved, the three 
 couples get married, and while the music of the bridal 
 fete is still in our ears, news is brought that " hard 
 by, at the edge of this forest, the twelve peers of 
 France are up in arms " to recover Gerismond's rights. 
 They accomplish this feat in a twinkling, as French 
 peers should ; why they did not do it before does not 
 appear : probably because the treble marriage would 
 not have looked so pretty in Notre Dame as under the 
 lemon trees. There is much bloodshed of course, but 
 it is blood we do not care for, and we are allowed 
 to part from our shepherd friends with the pleasing 
 thought that they will see no end to their loves and 
 happiness. 
 
 Such is " Euphues golden legacy," one of the best 
 ^ "Works," vol. ii, pp. 29, 30, 31, 49. 
 
214 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 examples of the sort of novel that was being written 
 at this period. It has all the characteristics of this 
 kind of writing such as it had come to be 
 understood at that date ; prose is mixed with verse, 
 and several of Lodge's best songs are included in 
 " Rosalynde " ; it is full of meditations and monologues 
 like those with which the neo-classic drama of the 
 French school has made us familiar. ^ In the more 
 important places, in monologues, speeches and letters 
 euphuistic style usually prevails 'f^ the chronology 
 and geography of the tale, its logic and probability, 
 the grouping of events are of th e loosest d escription ; 
 but it has moreover a freshness and sometimes a pathos 
 which is more easily felt than expressed and of which 
 the above quotations may have given some idea. 
 
 In " Rosalynde" we see Lodge at his best. Perhaps, 
 
 ^"Saladin's meditation with himself: *Saladin, art thou dis- 
 quieted in thy thoughts ?' " &c. " Rosalind's passion : ' Unfortunate 
 Rosalind, whose misfortunes are more than thy years,'" &c. 
 *' Aliena's meditation : ' Ah ! me ; now I see, and sorrowing sigh 
 to see that Diana's laurels are harbours for Venus doves,' " &c. 
 
 (pFor example, in "the schedule annexed to Euphues testament," 
 by which the dying man leaves the book to Philautus for the 
 benefit of his children. They will find in it what is fit for the 
 God Love, "roses to whip him when he is wanton, reasons to 
 whistant him when he is wilie."' In the same manner Sir John of 
 Bourdeaux informs his sons that " a woman's eye as it is precious 
 to behold, so is it prejudicial to gaze upon " ; Rosalind observes to 
 herself that " the greatest seas have the sorest stormes, the highest 
 birth is subject to the most bale and of all trees the cedars soonest 
 shake with the wind," &c. The same style is used in " Euphues 
 shadow " in " Robin the divell," &c. : " Thou art like the verven 
 (Nature) poyson one wayes, and pleasure an other, feeding me with 
 grapes in shewe lyke to Darius vine, but not in substance lyke 
 those of Vermandois " (" Robin the divell "). 
 
L YL TS LEG A TEES. 
 
 215 
 
 remembering his threats, it is better not to try to see 
 him at his worst ; it will therefore be sufficient to add 
 that, having published also satires and epistles imitated 
 from Horace, eclogues, some other short stories or 
 romances, a translation of the philosophical works of 
 Seneca, two or three incoherent dramas (in one of which 
 a whale comes on to the stage, and without any 
 ceremony vomits forth the prophet Jonah), i Lodge 
 changed his profession once again, abandoned the 
 sword for the lancet, became a physician, gained a 
 fortune, and died quietly a rich citizen in 1625. 
 
 He had thus lived beyond the period of Lyly's 
 fame, of Greene's reputation, of Shakespeare's 
 splendour, and saw, before he died, the beginnings 
 of a new and very different era in which both the 
 drama and the novel were to undergo, as we shall 
 see, many and vast transformations. 
 
 ^ " A Looking glasse for London and England." This drama 
 was written by Lodge and by his friend Greene. The following 
 stage direction occurs in it : " lonas the prophet cast out of the 
 whales belly upon the stage." 
 
 SCORPIO. 
 
Imp Wiiimann Par 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 
 from (he nujuada'c In/ JS A\C OLI\ I'.ll , at Windsor Casdo 
 
?A'^^ 
 
 PENSHURST, Sidney's birthplace. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 
 
 WHEN nowadays we see our shepherds, wrapped 
 in their long brown cloaks, silently fpllowing 
 the high roads in the midst of a suffocating 
 dust which seems to come out of their sheep, it is 
 difficult to explain the enthusiasm that has ascribed to 
 this race of mutes such fine speeches and such pleasant 
 adventures. Greeks, Romans, Italians, Spaniards, the v 
 French and the English, have differed in a multitude / 
 of points, but they have one and all delighted in 
 pastorals. No class of heroes either in history or 
 fiction has uttered so much verse and prose as the 
 keepers of sheep. Neither Ajax son of Telamon, nor 
 the wise king of Ithaca, nor Merlin, Lancelot, or 
 Charlemagne, nor even the inexhaustible Grandison, 
 
 13 
 
2 1 8 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 can bear the least comparison with Tityrus. It is 
 easy to give many reasons for this ; but the phe- 
 nomenon still remains somewhat strange. The best 
 explanation is perhaps that the pastoral is one of the 
 most convenient pretexts existing for saying what would 
 otherwise be embarrassing. To many authors the 
 eclogue is like a canvas for trying their colours 
 and brushes. Many would not willingly confess 
 it, and Pope would have vowed a mortal hatred 
 ' to any one who explained his eclogues thus : but it 
 is better for his reputation to believe that he had at 
 least that reason for writing them. For some, the 
 pastoral is an allegory, where, if one would, place 
 can be given to Cynthia, Queen of the Sea, that is to 
 say, to Elizabeth, and to a Shepherd of the Ocean who 
 is Raleigh ; it allows the poet to speak to kings, 
 to ask alms discreetly of them, and to thank them. 
 
 In England in Shakespeare's time people were pas- 
 sionately fond of the country of Arcadia, not the 
 Arcady " for better for worse " that can be seen any- 
 where outside London,! but the old poetical Arcadia, 
 the Arcadia of nowhere, which was the more cherished 
 on account of its non-existence. They could invent at 
 their ease, imagine prodigious adventures and wonderful 
 amours ; since no one had ever been in Arcadia, it 
 was hardly possible for any one to protest that events 
 happened differently there. To-day we think in quite 
 another way ; we must be told of well-ascertained 
 facts, of warranted catastrophes, at once certified and 
 
 ^ And which has been faithfully and touchingly described in 
 Dr. Jessopp's book : " Arcady : For better, for worse/' recently 
 published in London. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 219 
 
 provable. That is why the action of our novels, far 
 from carrying us into Arcadia, often unfolds itself in 
 our kitchens and on our back staircases. It is not at 
 all as it was in the time of Robert Greene. 
 
 Very rarely now does any one ask if perchance some 
 of these " Arcadias," so cherished by our fathers, con- 
 tained their share of enduring beauty, or if their 
 lasting success is to be explained otherwise than by 
 their improbabilities and their artificial embellishments. 
 Nevertheless the study might be profitable, for it must 
 be borne in mind that the readers of these romances 
 went in the afternoon to the "Globe" to see Shakespeare 
 play his own pieces, and that, admitting their fondness 
 for such dramas, in which, without speaking of other 
 merits, the kitchen is sometimes the place represented, 
 it would be surprising to find only mere nonsense in 
 the whole collection of their favoured romances. Let 
 these suggestions justify us at need in examining one 
 more Arcadia : besides, it is not that of a penniless 
 Bohemian ; it is the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, the 
 pattern of chivalrous perfection under Elizabeth. His 
 life is not, in its way, less characteristic of his time 
 than that of starving Robert Greene, or of Thomas 
 Lodge the corsair. 
 
 L 
 
 Born in 1554, in the noble castle of Penshurst in 
 Kent,^ Sidney passed a part of his childhood in Ludlow 
 
 ^ Besides its fine collection of family portraits, one of which is 
 reproduced in this volume, by the kind permission of Lord de 
 
2 20 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Castle, where in the next century Milton's "Comus" 
 was to be represented. At college he was famous for 
 his personal charm, his knowledge, and the thoughtful 
 turn of his mind. " I knew him," wrote in later years 
 his friend and companion Fulke Greville, ^' with such 
 staiednesse of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as 
 carried grace and reverence above greater years." ^ 
 During the year 1572 he was staying in France, 
 where he had been appointed by King Charles IX. 
 one of the gentlemen of his chamber. It was the time 
 of the St. Bartholomew massacre, and Sidney, who 
 belonged to the English mission, remained in the house 
 of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's ambassador, 
 and escaped the perils of that terrible day. 
 
 He left France shortly after and travelled in several 
 countries of Europe, studying men and nations, storing 
 his mind with information ; he was comparatively free 
 from prejudice, and believed that useful examples and 
 precepts might be obtained even from "the great 
 Turk." " As surely," did he write some years later 
 to his brother Robert, " in the great Turk, though 
 we have nothing to do with him, yet his discipline 
 in war matters is . . . worthy to be known and 
 learned. Nay even the kingdom of China which is 
 almost as far as the Antipodes from us, their good 
 laws and customs are to be learned." ^ In such a 
 
 risle and Dudley, Penshurst is remarkable because it offers to this 
 day a perfect example of a fourteenth-century hall with the fire- 
 place in the middle. 
 
 ^ "Life of the renowned S" Philip Sidney," London, 1652, 
 i2mo. 
 
 2 " The Correspondence of Sir Ph. Sidney and Hubert Languet," 
 ed. Pears, London, 1845, 8vo, Appendix; a.d. 1579 (?) 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 221 
 
 disposition of mind he visited successively Germany, 
 Austria, Hungary, and Italy. The most interesting 
 incident of his journey was the acquaintance he made 
 with a Frenchman, the political thinker Hubert 
 Languet, from whom Milton, a long time before 
 Rousseau, probably derived his ideas of the social 
 contract " foedus," says Languet, "inter [principem] and 
 populum," and his theories on the right of insurrec- 
 tion. ^ A most tender friendship was formed between 
 the revolutionary writer and the aristocratic Sidney. 
 They began a correspondence which did not cease till 
 the former's death in 158 1. Languet had great in- 
 fluence over his young friend, and was constantly 
 giving him most manly advice and that best suited 
 to strengthen his character, warning him especially in 
 very wise fashion against a melancholy unsuitable to 
 his age, which in the grave Huguenot's opinion was 
 only a useless impedimentum in life. " I readily allow," 
 wrote Sidney, in answer to his friend's remonstrances, 
 '' that I am often more serious than either my age or 
 my pursuits demand." ^ That this tendency to pensive- 
 ness left its trace on his features may be seen in 
 most of his portraits, among others in that by Isaac 
 Oliver, of which we give a reproduction. 
 
 The most interesting of Sidney's portraits is unfortu- 
 nately lost. He sat for it while in Italy, at the request 
 of his friend, and chose no mean artist to paint it : 
 '' As soon as ever I return to Venice, I will have it 
 done, either by Paul Veronese or by Tintoretto, who 
 hold by far the highest place in the art." He decided 
 
 ^ " Vindictae contra tyrannos," Edinburgh, 1579, part iii. 
 2 Padua, February 4, 1574, "Correspondence," p. 29. 
 
2 2 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 for Veronese, and sent the picture to Languet, who 
 wrote shortly after : " As long as I enjoyed the sight 
 of you, I made no great account of the portrait you 
 gave me, and scarcely thanked you for so beautiful 
 a present. I was led by regret for you on my return 
 from Frankfort to place it in a frame and fix it in a 
 conspicuous place. When I- had done this, it appeared 
 to me so beautiful and so strongly to resemble you 
 that I possess nothing that I value more . . . The 
 painter has represented you sad and thoughtful. I 
 should have been better pleased if your face had worn 
 a more cheerful look when you sat for the painting." ^ 
 When Languet died, Sidney described his sentiments 
 for him in a touching poem, inserted in his '^Arcadia" ; 
 it was sung by the shepherd Philisides, who represents 
 the author himself and whose name is a contraction 
 of the words Philip Sidney : 
 
 "I sate me downe ; for see to goe ne could, 
 And sang unto my sheepe lest stray they should. 
 The song I sang old Lan[g]uet had me taught, 
 Lan[g]uet, the shepeard best swift Ister knew, 
 For clearkly reed, and hating what is naught, 
 For faithfull heart, cleane hands and mouth as true. 
 With his sweet skill my skillesse youth he drew, 
 To have a feeling taste of him that sits 
 Beyorrd the heaven, farre more beyond our wits . . . 
 With old true tales he wont mine eares to fill. 
 How shepeards did of yore, how now they thrive . . . 
 He liked me, but pitied lustfull youth : 
 His good strong stafFe my slipperie yeares upbore : 
 He still hop'd well because I loved truth." ^ 
 
 A.D. 1575, " Correspondence," p. 94. ^ "Arcadia/'' bk. iii. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 223 
 
 In 1575, when twenty-one years old, Sidney returned 
 to shine at court, where his uncle Leicester, the Queen's 
 favourite was to make all things easy for him. He 
 assisted that year at the fetes given in Elizabeth's 
 honour at Kenilworth, in those famous gardens ^' though 
 not so goodly," writes a witness of the festivities, " as 
 Paradis, for want of the fayr rivers, yet better a great 
 deal by the lack of so unhappy a tree." ^ Then Sidney 
 accompanied the Queen to C hartley, and these cere- 
 monies mark a great epoch in his existence. While 
 Elizabeth listened to the compliments of her enter- 
 tainers, Sidney's eyes were fixed on a child. A 
 sentiment, the flill strength of which he was to feel 
 only in after time, sprang up in his heart for Penelope 
 Devereux, the twelve-year-old daughter of the Earl 
 of Essex, who was as beautiful as Dante's Beatrice. 
 He began to visit at her father's house frequently ; it 
 seemed as if a marriage would ensue ; Essex himself 
 was favourable to it, but for some cause or other Sidney 
 did not press his suit ; and while his friend Languet 
 strongly advised him to marry, he was answering him 
 in the leisurely style of one who believes himself 
 heart-whole : *' Respecting her of whom I readily 
 acknowledge how unworthy I am, I have written you 
 my reasons long since, briefly indeed, but yet as well 
 as I was able." 2 He was soon to write in a very 
 different manner. Penelope, the Stella of Sidney's 
 verse, was, very much against her will, compelled at 
 last by her ' family to marry the wealthy Lord Rich, 
 
 ^ " Captain Cox his ballads ... or Robert Laneham's Letter, 
 1575," ed. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1871, 8vo, p. 53. 
 - " Correspondence," 2^/ j-///)r/7, March i. 1578. 
 
2 24 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 and then Sidney awoke to his fate : what he had 
 believed to be mere inclination, a light feeling of which 
 he would always remain the master, had from the first 
 been Love, irrepressible, unconquerable love : 
 
 '' I might ; — unhappie word — O me, I might, 
 And then would not, or could not see my blisse ; 
 Till now wrapt in a most infernall night, 
 I find how heav'nly day, wretch ! I did miss." ^ 
 
 He remained a lover of Stella, saw her, wrote to 
 her, sang of her, and at length ascertained that she 
 too, despite her marriage ties, loved him. He continued 
 then, in altered tones, the magnificent series of sonnets 
 dedicated to her and which read still like a love-drama 
 of real life, a love-drama which is all summarized in 
 the beautiful and well-known dirge : 
 
 " Ring out your belles, let mourning shewcs be spread ; 
 For Love is dead : 
 
 All Love is dead, infected 
 With plague of deep disdaine : 
 
 Worth, as nought worth, rejected 
 And Faith faire scorne doth gaine. 
 
 From so ungratefull fancie. 
 
 From such a femall franzie 
 
 From them that use men thus. 
 
 Good Lord, deliver us ! 
 
 Weepe, neighbours, weepe ; do you not hcare it said 
 That Love is dead ? 
 
 ^ " Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella . . , edited from the 
 folio of 1598," by Alfred Pollard, London, 1888, 8vo, sonnet 33. 
 Penelope's marriage with Lord Rich seems to have taken place in 
 April, 1 581. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 225 
 
 Alas I I lie : rage hath this errour bred ; 
 Love is not dead ; 
 
 Love is not dead, but sleepeth 
 In her unmatched mind. 
 
 Where she his counsell keepeth, 
 Till due desert she find. 
 
 Therefore from so vile fancie. 
 
 To call such wit a franzie, 
 
 Who Love can temper thus. 
 
 Good Lord, deliver us ! " 
 
 Love that was not dead but asleep awoke, and Sidney's 
 raptures were again expressed in his verse : 
 
 " O joy too high for my low stile to show ! . . . 
 For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine. 
 Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchie : 
 I, I, O I, may say that she is mine.'' ^ 
 
 This lasted some time and when love faded away, 
 at least in Stella's fickle heart, '^Astrophel'* wrote the 
 real dirge of his passion. 
 
 Sidney had nevertheless continued his active life all 
 this while, sometimes at court and sometimes on the 
 continent, recognized as a statesman by statesmen, as a 
 poet by poets, as a perfect knight by all experts in 
 knightly accomplishments. Spenser dedicated in 1579 
 his '^ Shepheardes Calender " to *' the most noble and 
 vertuous gentleman, most worthy of all titles, both of 
 learning and chevalrie, M. Philip Sidney " 2 ; and 
 
 ^ "Astrophel and Stella/' ut supra, pp. 170 and 72. (sonnet 69). 
 2 " Goe little booke ! thy selfe present 
 As childe whose father is unkent 
 To him that is the President 
 Of noblenesse and chevalree. . . ." 
 Dedication of the "Shepheardes Calender." Sidney seems to 
 
226 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 William the Silent, Prince of Orange, once said to 
 Fulke Greville that " Her Majesty had one of the ripest 
 and greatest counsellors of estate in Sir Philip Sidney 
 that at this day lived in Europe." The remaining 
 years of his short life were well filled ; he had been 
 ambassador to the German Emperor in 1577 ; he had 
 taken part at home, though unasked, in the negotiations 
 concerning the Queen's marriage, and he lost favour 
 for a while on account of the extraordinary freedom 
 with which he had written to Elizabeth against the 
 French match. He retired from court at that moment 
 and went to live in the country ; while staying with 
 his sister at Wilton in the midst of congenial sur- 
 roundings, he wrote most of his " Arcadia " (1580). 
 He was a member of Parliament in 158 1 and 1584, 
 and married in 1583 the daughter of Sir Francis 
 Walsingham. He all but accompanied Drake to 
 America, where he had received from the Queen a large 
 ' grant of lands ; he became at last Governor of Flushing 
 in the Netherlands. He died in that country at thirty- 
 one years of age, in 1586, of a wound received at 
 Zutphen ; a premature death that gave the finishing 
 touch to men's sympathy and love for him ; all 
 England wept for him.^ Even now, it is difficult to 
 
 have had a right and not over-enthusiastic appreciation of Spenser's 
 eclogues ; in his " Apologie for Poetrie " he is content to say that 
 , " the Sheapheardes Kalender hath much poetrie in his eglogues : 
 indeede worthy the reading if I be not deceived " (Arber's reprint, 
 p. 62). 
 
 ^ The elegies written on this occasion are counted by the 
 hundred. A splendid series of engravings were published by 
 T. Laut to perpetuate the memory of Sidney's funeral, London, 
 
 1587. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 227 
 
 think unmoved of his well-filled career ending on 
 the eve of the great triumphs of his country, to call 
 to our memory this brave man who died with his face 
 to the enemy without knowing that victory would be 
 declared for his side, without having known Shake- 
 speare, without having seen the defeat of the Armada. 
 
 As for his Stella she survived him only too long. A 
 few years after Sidney's death she deserted her husband 
 by whom she had had seven children, and became the 
 m.istress of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, afterwards 
 Earl of Devonshire, to whom she gave three sons and 
 two daughters. Lord Rich, a man full of prudence it 
 seems, waited for the death of the Earl of Essex, his 
 wife's brother, to divorce her. She then married her 
 lover in 1605. But till her death, which happened in 
 1608 she was mostly remembered as having been 
 Sidney's friend, and books were dedicated to her because 
 she had been Astrophel's " Stella." Thus Yong's 
 translation of the '' Diana " of Montemayor, a pastoral 
 from which Sidney had taken many hints, is dedicated 
 to her. I Thus again Florio asks her conjointly with 
 Sidney's daughter 2 to patronize the second book of 
 Montaigne's Essays, addressing Penelope, in the extra- 
 ordinary style that belonged to him : " I meane you 
 (truely richest Ladie Rich) in riches of fortune not 
 deficient, but of body incomparably richer, of minde 
 most rich : who yet, like Cornelia, were you out- vied, 
 or by rich shewes envited to shew your richest jewelles, 
 
 ^ London, 1598, fol. 
 
 2 Sidney left only one daughter who became Countess of Rut- 
 land. His wife remarried twice, first with the Earl of Essex, 
 brother of Penelope, then with Lord Clanricarde. 
 
228 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 would stay till your sweet images (your deere-sweete 
 children) came from schoole." And then, addressing 
 the ladies together, both the daughter and the mistress 
 of the departed hero : '^ I know not this nor any I 
 have seen, or can conceive, in this or other language, 
 can in aught be compared to that perfect-imperfect 
 Arcadia, which all our world yet weepes with you, that 
 your all praise-exceeding father (his praise-succeeding 
 countesse) your worthy friend (praise-worthiest lady) 
 lived not to mend or end it/' ^ Once Astrophel had 
 sung of Stella, and now Lady Rich was praised by the 
 pedant Rombus. 
 
 II. 
 
 Sidney's works well accord with his life ; in these few 
 years he had time to take in with a clear and kindly 
 glance all those beauties of ancient or modern times, 
 of distant countries or of his own which set the hearts 
 
 ^ " Essayes," London, 1603, fol. Dedication of Book II. This 
 " Epistle " is followed by two sonnets, one to each lady, again 
 praising them for their connection with Sidney. The sonnet to 
 Penelope begins thus : 
 
 *' Madame, to write of you, and doe you right, 
 What meane we, or what meanes to ayde meane might ? 
 Since HE who admirably did endite, 
 Entiteling you perfections heire, joies light, 
 Loves life, lifes gemme, vertues court, Heav'ns delight, 
 Natures chiefe worke, fair'st booke, his muses spright, 
 Heav'n on earth, peerlesse Phoenix, Phoebe bright, 
 Yet said he was to seeke, of you to write " (p. 191). 
 This last line alludes to Astrophel's lirst sonnet to Stella 
 (quoted below, p. 233). 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 229 
 
 of his contemporaries beating, and he is therefore 
 perhaps, on account of his catholicity, the most worthy 
 of Shakespeare's immediate precursors. The brilliance 
 of the Spaniards enchants him, and he translates 
 fragments of Montemayor ^ ; the Kenilworth fetes 
 amuse him and he writes a masque, " The Lady of 
 May," 2 to be used at like festivities. A true Christian 
 he translates the Psalms of David ; a tender and 
 passionate heart, he rhymes the sonnets of Astrophel to 
 Stella ; enamoured of chivalry and great exploits, he 
 writes, with fluent pen, his " Arcadia," where he 
 imitates the style made fashionable in Europe by Mon- 
 temayor in his " Diana " ; a lover of belles lettres^ he 
 defends the poet's art in an argument charming from 
 its youthfiilness, vibrating with enthusiasm, which 
 holds in English literature the place filled in French by 
 Fenelon's " Lettre a I'Academie." 3 This work is very 
 
 ^ "What changes here," &c. "translated out of the 'Diana' of 
 Montemayor in Spanish. Where Sireno a shepheard pulling out a 
 little of his mistresse Diana's haire, wrapt about in greene silke, 
 who now had utterly forsaken him, to the haire hee thus bewayled 
 himselfe." — " The same Sireon . . . holding his mistresse glasse . . . 
 thus sung." "Certaine sonnets written by Sir Philip Sidney, 
 never before printed." 
 
 2 This masque was written in 1578 ; and was performed before 
 the Queen when staying with the Earl of Leicester at Wanstead. 
 Sidney wrote also for festivities of the same kind a "Dialogue 
 betweene two shepheards, uttered in a pastorall shew at Wilton " 
 (the seat of his sister the Countess of Pembroke). Both works are 
 to be found in divers old editions of the "Arcadia" [e.g.^ the 
 eighth, 1633, fol.), which in fact contain, very nearly, Sidney's 
 complete works. 
 
 3 The "Apologie" written about 1581, which circulated in 
 MS. during Sidney's life-time, was published only after his death : 
 
230 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 important with regard to the subject that now occupies 
 us, not only because Sidney gives in it his opinion on 
 works of fiction in general ; but because here we have 
 at last a specimen of flexible, spirited, fluent prose, 
 without excessive ornament of style, or learned impedi- 
 menta^ a specimen of that prose which is exactly suited 
 to novels and that no one — Roger Ascham perhaps 
 excepted — had until then used in England. 
 
 Perhaps it will be found, he writes at the beginning 
 of his work, with the elegant gracefulness of a 
 man who knows how to do everything that he does 
 well, that I carry my apology to excess ; but that is 
 excusable : listen to what Pietro Pugliano, my master 
 of horsemanship, at the Emperor's Court, said : ' Hee 
 sayde souldiours were the noblest estate of mankinde, 
 and horsemen, the noblest of souldiours. Hee sayde, 
 they were the maisters of warre, and ornaments of 
 peace : speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers 
 both in camp and courts." For a prince no accom- 
 plishment is comparable to that of being a good 
 horseman ; " skill of government was but a Pedanteria 
 in comparison : then would hee adde certaine prayses, 
 by telling what a peerlesse beast a horse was. The 
 onely serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of 
 most beutie, faithfulnes, courage, and such more, that 
 if I had not beene a peece of a logician before I came to 
 him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have 
 wished my selfe a horse. But thus much at least with 
 his no fewe words hee drave into me, that selfe-love is 
 
 '" An Apologie for Poetrie, written by the right noble, vertuous and 
 learned Sir Philip Sidney, Knight," London, 1595, reprinted by 
 Arber, London, 1869. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 231 
 
 better then any guilding to make that seeme gorgious, 
 wherein our selves are parties. Wherein, if Pugliano 
 his strong affection and weake arguments will not 
 satisfie you, I wil give you a neerer example of my 
 selfe, who (I knowe not by what mischance) in these my 
 not old yeres and idelest times, having slipt into the 
 title of a poet, am provoked to say somthing unto 
 you in the defence of that my unelected vocation/' 
 
 Set at ease by Pugliano's example, who seems to have 
 had the same veneration for the horse as his country- 
 man Vinci, Sidney enters on his defence and does not 
 restrain himself from extolling poetry beyond any 
 product of the human mind. Poetry is superior to 
 history, to philosophy, to all forms of literature. Poets 
 have, by the charm of their works, surpassed the 
 beauties of nature and they have succeeded in making 
 " the too much loved earth more lovely." He gives to 
 poetry, in effect, an immense domain : everything that 
 is poetic or even merely a work of the imagination is 
 poetry for him : '^ there have beene many most excellent 
 poets, that never versified, and now swarme many 
 versifiers that neede never aunswere to the name of 
 poets." For him, the romance of " Theagines and 
 Cariclea " is a " poem " ; Xenophon's " Cyrus " is '^ an 
 absolute heroicall poem." To the great joy of their 
 author he would certainly have seen an epic in Chateau- 
 briand's " Martyrs." " It is not riming and versing 
 that maketh a poet, no more then a long gowne maketh 
 an advocate : who though he pleaded in armor should 
 be an advocate and no soldiour." Even historians 
 have sometimes to do the work of poets, that is 
 imagining, inventing, '' although theyr lippes sounde of 
 
232 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 things doone and veritie be written in theyr fore- 
 heads." 
 
 In spite of his fondness for the ancients, whose 
 unities and messenger he greatly approves, and of his 
 contempt for the modern drama, such as it was 
 understood in those pre-Shakespearean times, he re- 
 mains, at bottom, entirely English ; he adores the old 
 memorials of his native land, and does not know his 
 Virgil better than his Chaucer, or even the popular 
 songs hummed by the wayfarer along the high roads. 
 Irish ballads, English ballads of Robin Hood, Scottish 
 ballads of Douglas, are fam.iliar to him, and some of 
 them make him start as at the sound of a trumpet : 
 " Certainly, I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I 
 never heard the olde song of Percy and Douglas, that 
 I found not my heart mooved more then with a 
 trumpet : and yet it is sung by some blind crouder, 
 with no rougher voyce then rude stile ; which being 
 so evill apparelled in the dust and cobwebbes of that 
 unciyill age, what would it worke, trymmed in the 
 gorgeous eloquence of Pindar ? " He would have 
 loved, like Moliere, the song of the '' roi Henri," and 
 like La Fontaine, the story of Peau d'Ane. But his 
 closest sympathies were reserved for poetical tales, for 
 the adventures of Roland and King Arthur, which are 
 a soldier's reading, and even for the exploits of 
 Amadis of Gaul. " I dare undertake * Orlando fiirioso ' 
 or honest King Arthur will never displease a souldier. 
 . . . Truely, I have knowen men, that even with 
 reading ' Amadis de Gaule,' which God knoweth 
 wanteth much of a perfect poesie, have found their 
 hearts mooved to the exercise of courtesie, liberalitie 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 233 
 
 and especially courage." He imagines nothing more 
 enchanting or more powerful than the charm of 
 poetical prose stories, " any of which holdeth children 
 from play, and old men from the chimney corner/' 
 Their attraction has something superior, divine ; for, 
 he adds with a depth of emotion that appears quite 
 modern, " so is it in men, most of which are childish 
 in the best things, till they bee cradUd in their 
 graves." i 
 
 He closes with a witty and delightful ending, a 
 kindly wish for the hardened enemies of poetry : 
 " Yet this much curse T must send you, in the behalfe 
 of all Poets, that while you live, you live in love, and 
 never get favour, for lacking skill of a sonnet : and 
 when you die, your memory die from the earth, for 
 want of an epitaph." 
 
 Neither did Sidney lack epitaphs ; all the poets wept 
 for him ; nor was he wanting in those favours that a 
 sonnet can win, for he wrote the most passionate that 
 appeared in England before those of Shakespeare. 
 Like the "Apologie" they move us by their youth 
 and sincerity ; they come from the heart : 
 
 "Loving in truth, and faine in verse my love to show, 
 That She, dear She ! might take some pleasure of my paine : 
 • •••••• 
 
 I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, 
 Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine ; 
 Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow 
 Som fresh and fruitfull showers upon my sun-burn'd brain : 
 But words came halting forth . . . 
 
 ^ Arber's reprint, pp. 46, 55, 41, and 40. 
 14 
 
r 
 
 L, 
 
 234 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite : 
 ^^-^ * Foole ! ' said my Muse to me, ' looke in thy heart, and 
 write ! ' " ^ 
 
 Unfortunately, when Sidney took up his pen to 
 write his '' Arcadia," ^ he no longer looked into his 
 heart ; he loosed the rein of his imagination, and, 
 without concerning himself with a critical posterity 
 /for whom the book was not destined, he only wished, 
 like Lyly, to write a romance for ladies, or rather for 
 one lady, his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, famous as 
 his sister, famous as a patron of letters,3 famous also as 
 the mother of William Herbert, the future friend of 
 Shakespeare, the " W. H." for whom in all probability 
 the sonnets of the great poet were written. Sidney 
 sent the sheets to his sister as fast as he penned them, 
 charging her to destroy them, a thing she did not do,, 
 
 ^ " The Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney," ed. Grosart, 
 London, 1877, 3 vol. 8vo ; " Sir Philip Sidney'-s Astrophel and 
 Stella . . . edited from the folio of 1598," by Alfred Pollard, 
 London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 2 The "Arcadia" begun in 1580, appeared after Sidney's death : 
 " The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, written by Sir Philippe 
 Sidnei," London, 1590, 4to. Several of the numerous poems 
 inserted in the "Arcadia" are written in classical ^ metres ; for 
 Sidney took part with several of his contemporaries in the futile 
 effort made in England ?s in France to apply to modern languages 
 the rules of ancient prosody. The pages referred to in the follow- 
 ing notes are those of the edition of 1633, "now the eighth time 
 published with some new additions." 
 
 3 And compared as such to Octavia, sister of Augustus, by 
 Meres in his " Paladis Tamia," 1598. She helped her brother in 
 translating the Psalms of David and published various works, one of 
 them being a translation of one of Garnier's neo-classical tragedies : 
 *'The tragedie of Antonie," written in 1590, printed in 1595, 
 
;rsity 
 
Imp Witlmann Pans 
 
 MAHY SIDNEY 
 
 COUISI'1'.EGS OF PKT4BR0KE 
 from (he porfraif a( Pons-hurS't . 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 
 
 235 
 
 The poet knight only saw in it an amusement for 
 himself and for the Countess, and he gave free vent 
 to his fondness for poetical prose : *' For severer eyes 
 it is not," says he to his sister, "being but a trifle and 
 that triflingly handled. Your deare selfe can best 
 witnesse the manner, being done in loose sheets of 
 paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheetes, 
 sent unto you as fast as they were done. In summe, a 
 young head, not so well staied as I would it were (and 
 shall bee when God will) having many fancies begotten 
 in it, if it had not beene in some way delivered, w^ould 
 have growne a monster, and more sorry might I bee 
 that they came in than that they gat out." His 
 ^^Apologie" was perhaps from its style more useful 
 to the development of the novel than the *' Arcadia" ; 
 but the latter, in spite of its enormous defects of style \ 
 and composition, was also of use, and it is not unim- y 
 portant to note that its influence lasted until and even 
 beyond the time of Richardson. 
 
 Sidney's romance is not, as might be believed, an 
 enormous pseudo-Greek pastoral, with tunic-wearing / 
 shepherds in the foreground, piping their ditties to 
 
 which contains, conformably to Sidney's taste, messengers, mono- 
 logues and choruses. It begins thus in the regular classical style 
 of that time : 
 
 " Since cruel Heav'ns against me obstinate, 
 Since all mishappes of the round engin doo 
 Conspire my harme : since men, since powers divine, 
 Aire, earth, and sea are all injurious : 
 And that my queene her selfe, in whom I liv'd 
 The idoll of my harte, doth me pursue, 
 It's meete I dye." 
 
236 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 their flocks, to their nymphs, to Echo. Elizabethan 
 Arcadias were knightly Arcadias. Sidney's heroes are 
 all princes or the daughters of kings. Their adven- 
 tures take place in Greece, undoubtedly, and among 
 learned shepherds, but the great parts are left to the 
 noblemen, and the distance between the two classes is 
 well marked. However intelligent and well bred the 
 shepherds may be, they are only there for decoration 
 and ornament, to amuse the princes with their songs, 
 and to pull them out of the water when they are 
 drowning. There are Amadises and Palmerins in 
 Sidney's work. Amadis has come to live among the 
 shepherds, but he remains Amadis, as valiant and as 
 ready as ever to draw his sword. To please his sister 
 the better, Sidney mingles thus the two kinds of 
 affectations in fashion, the affectation of pastoral and 
 of chivalry, taking in this as his example the famous 
 " Diana '* of George de Montemayor, which was then 
 the talk not only of Spain, but of all the reading public 
 in Europe. I As for the shepherds, are we to pity them 
 because their domain is invaded by foreign knights, by 
 whom they are dispossessed of the high rank belonging 
 to them, of all places, in Arcady } There is no need 
 for . pity ; a time will come when they will repay their 
 invaders, and the end of their piping has not come yet. 
 Leaving their country, where their place has been taken 
 by British noblemen, we shall see them some day 
 invade the land of their conquerors, and, sitting in 
 
 ^ The " Diana " was turned into English by B. Yong, London, 
 1598, fol. Shakespeare derived from one of the stories in Monte- 
 mayor's romance (the story of the shepherdess Felismena) a part 
 of the plot of his " Two Gentlemen of Verona." See above p. 1 50. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE.. 237 
 
 their turn under the elms of Windsor Park, sing their 
 songs at the call of Mr. Pope. They will look a little 
 awry, no doubt, among the mists of an English 
 landscape, with their loose tunics, bare limbs, and 
 *' in-folio " wigs ; but they will prove none the less 
 fine speakers, and they will for a time concentrate 
 upon themselves the attention of the capital. Better 
 still will be their treatment at the hands of a 
 Frenchman, not a poet, but a painter, Gaspard. Poussin, 
 who will gain more permanent attention and sympathy 
 for them than most poets when he will inscribe in his 
 canvas, on the representation of a ruined tomb, his 
 famous '' Et in Arcadia ego.'' ^ 
 
 Sidney's heroes, in the meantime. Prince Musidorus 
 and Prince Pyrocles, the latter disguised as a woman 
 under the name of the amazon Zelmane, are in love 
 with the Princesses Pamela and Philoclea, daughters of 
 the King of Arcady. A great many crosses are in the 
 way of the lovers' happiness. They have to fight 
 helots, lions, bears, enemies from Corinth. They lose 
 each other, find each other again, and relate their 
 adventures. The masculine amazon especially does 
 wonders, for she has to fight not only with the sword, 
 but in argument. She is so pretty in woman's costume 
 that the old king Basilius, until then wise and virtuous, 
 falls distractedly in love with her, as imprudent as 
 Fior-di-Spina in Ariosto ; while the queen, whom the 
 disguise does not deceive, feels an intense passion spring 
 up in her heart for the false amazon and a terrible 
 jealousy of her own daughter, Philoclea. 
 
 Disguises are numerous in this romance ; they are 
 ^ Now in the Louvre. 
 
238 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 also frequent in Shakespeare's plays and in most of 
 the novels of the time. Parthenia gives herself out 
 to her admirer, Argalus, as the Queen of Corinth, 
 whom she resembles, and announces her own death. 
 As pretended queen she offers her hand to Argalus, 
 to prove him ; but he refuses with horror ; she then 
 discovers herself to this paragon of lovers, and gives 
 him his Parthenia alive and more loving than ever. 
 
 When we read now of such disguises, of princes 
 Pyrocles dressed as women, of Rosalinds dressed as 
 pages, we are tempted to smile at the vain fancies of 
 the novelists of the Shakespearean era.^ But it must 
 not be forgotten that, after all, there was not so much 
 invention in these fancies, and that living examples were 
 not rare from which writers might copy. Disguises were 
 abundantly used in fetes and ceremonies, but they were 
 also utilized in actual life. The manners of the time 
 in this particular are well illustrated by the earnest 
 entreaties of a certain ambassador to Her Majesty 
 Queen Elizabeth, advising her to leave her palace 
 secretly and travel over the country as his page. The 
 
 ^ The taste for these fancies had been handed down from the 
 Middle Ages ; ladies following as pages their own lovers, unknown 
 to them, abound in the French mediaeval literature ; one, e.g., 
 is to be found in the " Tres chevaleureux Comte d' Artois," a 
 very old talc, of which we have only a version of the fifteenth 
 century, but which existed long before, and supplied Boccaccio 
 with the groundwork of his story of Giletta of Narbonne. From 
 Boccaccio, this talc was transferred by Paynter to his "Palace of 
 Pleasure," and from this work, by Shakespeare, to the stage, under 
 the name of ''All's well." Sidney's model Montemayor gives the 
 same part to play, as we have seen, to his pretended shepherdess 
 Felismena, who follows as his page her lover Don Felix. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 239 
 
 Queen was in no way ^hocked, but rather pleased ; 
 she did not order the ambassador to be turned out of 
 her palace, but heard him expound his plan, wishing 
 she might have followed it. This happened in one of 
 those curious conversations of which Melville, the 
 ambassador of Mary Queen of Scots, has left us an 
 account. Elizabeth was very desirous of seeing her 
 '* dear sister " of Scotland and of judging with her own 
 eyes what truth there was in the reports concerning her 
 beauty. " Then again," says Melville, " she wished 
 that she might see the queen at some convenient place 
 of meeting. I offered to convey her secretly to Scot- 
 land by post, clothed like a page, that under this 
 disguise she might see the queen, as James the fifth 
 had gone in disguise to France with his own Am- 
 bassadour, to see the Duke of Vendom's sister, ^ who 
 should have been his wife. Telling her that her 
 chamber might be kept in her absence, as though 
 she were sick; that none needed to be privy thereto 
 except my Lady Strafford and one of the grooms of 
 her chamber. 
 
 " She appeared to like that kind of language, only 
 answered it with a sigh, saying : Alas, if I might do it 
 thus." 2 
 
 Surely ladies who " appeared to like that kind of 
 language," and men who were wont to use it, would 
 be certain to accept with much pleasure representations 
 in plays and novels of he-Rosalinds and she-Pyrocles. 
 
 In the midst of battles, masques and eclogues, 
 
 ^ See "Les projets de mariage de Jacques V.," by Edmond 
 Bapst, Secretaire d'Ambassade, Paris, 1889, 8vo, ch. xxiv. p. 289. 
 2 " Memoires of Sir James Melvil," London, 1683, fol., p. 51. 
 
240 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 interludes are consecrated to fetes of chivalry. As 
 much as in Italy, France or England, the knights of 
 Arcady challenge each other, and in brilliant tourna- 
 ments break lances in honour of their mistresses. 
 Sidney himself was very skilful at these sports ; he 
 proved it about this time in the festivities of May, 1 58 1, 
 by attacking with his companions, the Castle of perfect 
 Beauty, which was reputed .to contain the grace and 
 attractions of the Queen, a treasure as may well be 
 believed, most allegorical. His sonnets more than 
 once refer to his prowess in the lists : 
 
 ; " Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance 
 
 . Guided so well that I obtain'd the prize, 
 Both by the judgment of the English eyes. 
 And of some sent from that sweet enemie France . 
 
 Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 
 Towne-folks my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
 His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise ; 
 Some luckie wits impute it but a chance . . . 
 Stella lookt on. . . . " ^ 
 
 In his letters to his brother Robert, he is most 
 particular as to the every-day exercise by which the 
 young man should improve his fencing. He could 
 not help giving his tastes to his Arcadian knights. 
 P They would, otherwise, have been considered by his 
 
 l^ Via^dy-re.aders, uninteresting barbarians. He therefore 
 allowed them good spurs and a ready lance ; this 
 meant civilization. On a certain day every knight 
 appears in the vale of Arcady, with drawn sword, and 
 carrying a portrait of his fair lady ; the painting is 
 
 ^ Sonnet 41. See also Sonnet 53. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 241 
 
 to become the prey of the conqueror. The order of 
 merit of the various beauties is thus determined by- 
 blows of the lance. Pyrocles, who, dressed as a 
 woman, cannot take part in the fighting, has the 
 mortification of seeing the champion of Philoclea bite 
 the dust and give up her portrait. He goes imme- 
 diately and secretly puts on some wretched armour, 
 lowers his visor, and like a brave hero of romance, 
 runs into the lists, throws every one to the ground, 
 regains the portrait, and^ all the others as well. He 
 is proclaimed conqueror of the tourney, and the first 
 of knights, while at the same time, Philoclea becomes 
 again the most beautiful of women. 
 
 In this Arcadia of chivalry it must not be thought 
 that only cottages and huts are to be found ; some- 
 times the heroes sleep soundly in the open air, but 
 seldom. In this country there are palaces like those 
 of the rich English lords. The dwelling of the noble 
 Kalander is of this number. The park is magnificent, 
 and quite in the style of the Elizabethans, that style 
 which is so minutely described in Bacon's " Essay on 
 gardens." It did not difl^er much from the park at 
 Kenil worth, a place well known to Sidney : " whearin, 
 hard all along the castell wall iz reared a pleazaunt 
 terres of a ten foot hy and a twelve brode, even under 
 foot, and fresh of fyne grass : as iz allso the side thear- 
 of toward the gardein, in whiche by sundry equall dis- 
 tauncez, with obelisks, sphearz and white bearz [bears], 
 all of stone, upon theyr curiouz basez, by goodly shew 
 wear set ; too theez, too fine arbers redolent by sweete 
 trees and floourz, at ech end one, the garden plot 
 under that, with fayr alley z green by grass." There 
 
242 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 were fountains with marble Tritons, with Neptune on 
 his throne, and " Thetis on her chariot drawn by her 
 Dollphins," ^ with many other gods and goddesses. 
 
 Kalander's gardens in Arcady were of the same sort ; 
 their adornments were not very sober, and many 
 
 eccentricities are presented as 
 beauties ; thus the fashion of the 
 day would have it ; Versailles 
 in comparison is simplicity itself. 
 Kalander and his guest go round 
 the place, and " as soone as the 
 descending of the staires had 
 delivered them downe, they 
 came into a place cunningly set 
 with trees of the most taste- 
 pleasing fruits : but scarcely they 
 had taken that into considera- 
 tion, but that they were suddenly 
 stept into a delicate greene ; of 
 each side of the greene a thicket, 
 and behind the thickets againe 
 new beds of flowers, which being 
 under the trees, the trees were to 
 them a pavilion, and they to the 
 trees a mosaicall floore. . . . 
 
 " In the middest of all the 
 
 place was a faire pond, whose 
 
 shaking cristall was a perfect mirrour to all the 
 
 other beauties, so that it bare shew of two gardens, 
 
 one in deed, the other in shadowes. And in one of 
 
 A SHEPHERD OF ARCADY, 
 FROM THE TITLE-PAGE 
 
 OF Sidney's *'arcadia." 
 
 Captain Cox his ballads 
 
 or Robert Laneham's Lettci 
 
 1575," ed. Furnivall, London, 1871, 8vo, p. 49. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 243 
 
 the thickets was a fine fountaine made thus : a naked 
 Venus of white marble, wherin the graver had used 
 such cunning that the natural blue veins of the marble 
 were framed in fit places to set forth the beautifull 
 veines of her body. At her breast she had her 
 babe ^neas, who seemed, 
 having begun to sucke, to 
 leave that, to look upon 
 her faire eyes, which 
 smiled at the babe's folly, 
 meane while the breast 
 running."^ The effect pro- 
 duced must undoubtedly 
 have been very pleasant, 
 but scarcely more *^ na- 
 tural " than the embellish- 
 ments recommended by 
 Bacon, who declares that 
 hedges and arbours ought 
 to be enlivened by the 
 songs of birds ; and that 
 to make such enlivening 
 sure and permanent, the 
 birds should be secured in 
 cages. A good example 
 of a garden in Sidney's 
 time with beds of flowers, 
 
 arbours, pavilions, and covered galleries is to be seen 
 in his own portrait by Isaac Oliver, of which we give 
 a reproduction. It must be noticed that only the 
 lower part of the long gallery at the back is built ; 
 ' Book i. p. 8 (edition of 1633). 
 
 A PRINCESS OF ARCADY, FROM 
 
 THE TITLE-PAGE OF SIDNEYS 
 
 "ARCADIA." 
 
244 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 the vault-shaped upper portion is painted green, being 
 supposed to be made of actual leaves and foliage. 
 Except for such books as Sidney's it could not be said 
 of those gardens that " they too were once in Arcady." 
 Costumes and furniture are of the same style, and 
 accord with such gardens much more than with 
 shepherd life. They are pure Renaissance, half Italian 
 and half English. Musidorus disguised as a shepherd, 
 dresses his hair in such a way as to look much more 
 like one of the Renaissance Roman Emperors at 
 Hampton Court than like a keeper of sheep : we see 
 him while receiving a lesson on the use of the " sheep- 
 hooke," wearing *^ a garland of laurell mixt with cypres 
 
 \ leaves on his head." ^ The glowing descriptions of 
 the private apartments of the heroes suit modern 
 palaces better than Greek cottages ; while represen- 
 tations of ladies recumbent on their couches are obvious 
 reminiscences of Tintoretto or Titian, whose newly 
 painted works Sidney had admired in Italy. Here is 
 a description of the beautiful Philoclea, resting in her 
 bedroom ; it shows unmistakable signs of Sidney's 
 
 I acquaintance with the Italian painters : " She at that 
 time lay, as the heate of that country did well suffer, 
 upon the top of her bed, having her beauties eclipsed 
 with nothing, but with her faire smocke, wrought all 
 in flames of ash-colour silk and gold ; lying so upon 
 her right side, that the left thigh down to the foot, 
 yielded hir delightfull proportion to the full view, which 
 was scene by the helpe of a rich lampe, which thorow 
 the curtaines a little drawne cast forth a light upon her, 
 as the moone doth when it shines into a thinne wood." ^ 
 ^ Book ii. p. 99. ^ Book iii. p. 382. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 245 
 
 Sidney, according to his friend Fulke Greville, Lord 
 Brooke, had the highest moral and political purposes, 
 in writing his " Arcadia " : " In all these creatures of . / 
 his making, his interest and scope was, to turn the 
 barren philosophy precepts into pregnant images of 
 life ; and in them, first on the monarchs part, lively 
 to represent the growth, state and declination of 
 princes, changes of government and lawes. . . Then 
 again in the subjects case, the state of favour, dis- 
 favour, prosperitie, adversity . . . and all other moodes 
 of private fortunes or misfortunes, in which traverses, 
 I know, his purpose was to limn out such exact 
 pictures of every posture in the minde, that any man 
 might see how to set a good countenance upon all 
 the discountenances of adversitie/' ^ When Greville 
 wrote thus, Sidney was dead, and in his retrospect of 
 his friend's life he was with perfect good faith dis- 
 covering high, not to say holy motives, for all his 
 actions. Sidney's own explanation suits his work _ 
 better; he was delivering his '^ young head" of \^ 
 *^many, many fancies," and their main object was 
 not politics, but love. He described it as it was _i 
 known and practised in his time. Most of the 
 heroes in the " Arcadia," talk like Surrey, Wyatt, 
 Watson, and all the " amourists " of the century, like 
 Sidney himself when he addressed another than Stella. 
 The modesty of their characters is equal to their 
 tenderness ; valiant as lions before the enemy, they 
 tremble like the leaf before their mistresses ; they 
 feed on smiles and tender glances ; when they have to 
 suffer a scarcity of this heavenly food they can only 
 ^ "Life of Sidney," London, 1652, izmo, p. 18. 
 
246 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 die : *' Hee dieth : it is most true, hee dieth ; and he 
 in whom you live dieth. Whereof if though hee 
 plaine, hee doth not complaine : for it is a harme 
 but no wrong which hee hath received. He dies, 
 because in wofull language all his senses tell him, that 
 such is your pleasure." Fair Pamela feels deeply 
 moved when reading this, and confesses her harshness ; 
 she denied him a look : " Two times I must confess," 
 says she to her sister, not without a pretty touch of 
 humour of a very modern sort, " I was about to take 
 curtesie into mine eyes, but both times the former 
 resolution stopt the entrie of it : so, that hee departed 
 without obtaining any further kindenesse. But he was 
 no sooner out of the doore, but that I looked to the 
 doore kindly ! '' The poor lover who did not see 
 this change in his lady's countenance went away 
 fainting, " as if he had beene but the coffin that carried 
 himselfe to his sepulchre ! " ^ 
 
 Happiness produces the same effect on these heroes. 
 Pyrocles-Zelmane when present in his false quality of 
 woman at the bath of his mistress in the Ladon is 
 on the point of swooning with admiration. 2 His friend. 
 Prince Musidorus, in the ecstasies of his passion, falls 
 " downe prostrate," uttering this prayer to the awful 
 god who reigns paramount in Arcady : " O thou, celes- 
 tial! or infernall spirit of Love, or what other heavenly 
 or hellish title thou list to have (for effects of both 
 I find in my selfe), have compassion of me, and let 
 
 ^ Book ii. p. 117. 
 
 2 *' Zelmane would have put to her helping hand, but she was 
 taken with such a quivering, that she thought it was more 
 wisdome to lean her selfe to a tree and look on " (book ii. p. 138). 
 
\ 
 
 PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 247 
 
 thy glory be as great in pardoning of them that be 
 submitted to thee as in conquering them that were 
 rebellious." ^ 
 
 But Sidney painted also amours of another sort, and 
 one of the great attractions of his book is the variety ^ 
 in the descriptions of this passion. Never had the 
 like been seen before in any English novel, and as for 
 France, it must be remembered, that d'Urfe's " Astree," 
 which has kept its place in literature for the very same 
 quality, for its inconstant Hylas and its faithful ' 
 Celadon, for its Astree and its Madonte, was yet to 
 be written. Sidney has, among several others, created 
 one character which, forgotten as it is now, would 
 be enough to give a permanent interest to this too 
 much neglected romance ; it is the Queen Gynecia, 
 who is consumed by a guilty love, and who is the 
 worthy contemporary of the strongly passionate heroes 
 of Marlowe's plays. With her, and for the first time, 
 the dramatic power of English genius leaves the stage 
 and comes to light in the novel ; it was destined to 
 pass into it entirely. 
 
 Gynecia does not allow herself to be blinded by any 
 subterfuge ; love has taken possession of her ; the 
 rules of the world, the laws of blood, the precepts of 
 virtue that she has observed all her life, are lost sight 
 of; she is conscious of nothing but that she loves, 
 and is ready, like Phasdra of old, to trample everything 
 under foot, to forsake everything, the domestic hearth, 
 child, husband : and it is very interesting to see, about 
 the time of Shakespeare, this purely dramatic character 
 develop itself in a novel. 
 
 ^ Book i. p. 65. 
 
248 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 " O vertue," she cries, in her torment, " where doest 
 thou hide thy selfe ? What hideous thing is this which 
 doth eclipse thee ? or is it true that thou wert never 
 but a vaine name, and no essentiall thing ; which 
 hast thus left thy professed servant, when she had 
 most neede of thy lovely presence? O imperfect 
 proportion of reason, which can too much foresee, 
 and too little prevent : Alas, alas, said she, if there 
 were but one hope for all my paines, or but one 
 excuse for all my faultinesse ! But wretch that I am, 
 my torment is beyond all succour, and my evill 
 deserving doth exceed my evill fortune. For nothing 
 else did my husband take this strange resolution to 
 live so solitarily : for nothing else have the winds 
 delivered this strange guest to my countrey : for 
 nothing else have the destinies' reserved my life to this 
 time, but that onely I, most wretched I, should become 
 a plague to my selfe and a shame to woman-kind. Yet 
 if my desire, how unjust soever it be, might take 
 effect, though a thousand deaths followed it, and 
 every death were followed with a thousand shames, 
 yet should not my sepulchre receive me without some 
 contentment. But, alas, so sure I am, that Zelmane 
 is such as can answer my love ; yet as sure I am, 
 that this disguising must needs come for some foretaken 
 conceit : and then, wretched Gynecia, where canst 
 thou find any small ground plot for hope to dwell 
 upon.? No, no, it is Philoclea his heart is set upon, 
 it is my daughter I have borne to supplant me : but 
 if it be so, the life 1 have given thee, ungratefull 
 Philoclea, I will sooner with these hands bereave thee 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 249 
 
 of, than my birth shall glory she hath bereaved me of 
 my desires." ^ 
 
 We see with how little reason the " x\rcadia" is 
 sometimes placed in the category of bedizened pastorals, 
 where the reader is reduced to regret the absence of a 
 *^ little wolf," and whether Gynecia, in spite of the 
 oblivion which has gathered over her, does not deserve 
 a place by the side of the passionate heroines of Mar- 
 lowe and Webster rather than in a gallery of Lancret- 
 like characters. 
 
 Sidney, thus possesses the merit, unique at that time 
 with prose writers, of varying his subjects by marking its 
 nuances and by describing in his romance different kinds 
 of love. Side by side with Gynecia's passion, he has 
 set himself to paint the love of an old man in Basilius, 
 of a young man in Pyrocles, of a young girl in Pamela. 
 This last study led him to portray a scene which was 
 to be represented again by one of the great novelists 
 of the eighteenth century. Richardson borrowed from 
 Sidney, with the name of Pamela, the idea of the 
 adventure that shows her a prisoner of her enemies, 
 imploring heaven that her virtue may be preserved. 
 The wicked Cecropia who keeps Sidney's Pamela shut 
 up, laughs heartily at her invocations : *' To thinke," 
 she says, "that those powers, if there be any such, 
 above, are moved either by the eloquence of our 
 prayers, or in a chafe at the folly of our actions, 
 carries as much reason, as if flies should thinke that men 
 take great care which of them hums sweetest, and 
 
 ^ Book ii. p. 95. The daughter's speeches though she believes 
 Zelmane to be a woman and cannot understand her own 
 feelings are scarcely less intemperate (book ii. p. 112). 
 
 15 
 
250 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 which of them flies nimblest." Pamela, " whose 
 cheeks were dyed in the beautifullest graine of vertuous 
 anger," replies by speeches which yield in nothing as 
 regards nobility and dignity, and length also, to those 
 of her future sister, and which are followed as in 
 Richardson, by an unexpected deliverance. These 
 speeches are famous for yet another reason ; they are 
 said to have been recited in one of the most terrible 
 crises of the history of England and were not this time 
 followed by a deliverance. Charles I., it is reported, 
 had copied out, and recited a short time before his death, 
 the eloquent prayers to God, of the young heroine of 
 Sidney's novel. It seems that Pamela's prayer figured 
 among the papers that he gave with his own hand, at 
 the last moment, to the prelate who was attending him: 
 and the Puritans, Milton especially, uttered loud cries, 
 and saw in this reminiscence of the artist-prince, an 
 insult to the divine majesty. " This King," writes 
 the poet, " hath as it were unhallowed and unchris- 
 tened the very duty of prayer itself, by borrowing to a 
 Christian use prayers offered to a heathen god. Who 
 would have imagined so little fear in him of the true 
 all-seeing deity, so little reverence of the Holy Ghost, 
 whose office is to dictate and present our Christian 
 prayers, so little care of truth in his last words, or 
 honour to himself or to his fi-iends, or sense of his 
 afflictions or of that sad hour which was upon him, as 
 immediately before his death to pop into the hand of 
 that grave bishop who attended him, for a special 
 relique of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for 
 word from the mouth of a heathen woman, praying to 
 a heathen god, and that in no serious book, but in the 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 251 
 
 vain amatorious poem of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia/* ^ 
 Here is this prayer which is a very grave and eloquent 
 one, and in no way justifies the bitter reproaches 
 addressed to Charles by his enemies : 
 
 '' Kneeling down, even where she stood, she thus 
 said : O All-seeing Light, and eternall Life of all things, 
 to whom nothing is either so great, that it may resist, 
 or so small that it is contemned : looke upon my 
 misery with thine eye of mercy, and let thine infinite 
 power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of 
 deliverance unto mee, as to thee shall seeme most con- 
 venient. Let not injurie, O Lord, triumph over mee, 
 and let my faults by thy hand bee corrected, and make 
 not mine unjust enemy the minister of thy Justice. 
 But yet, my God, if, in thy wisedome, this be the aptest 
 chastisement for my unexcusable folly ; if this low 
 bondage be fittest for my over-high desires ; if the 
 pride of my not enough humble heart, be thus to be 
 broken, O Lord, I yeeld unto thy will, and joyfully 
 embrace what sorrow thou wilt have me suffer. Onely 
 thus much let me crave of thee. . . let calamity be 
 the exercise, but not the overthrow of my vertue : let 
 their power prevaile, but not prevaile to destruction : 
 let my greatnesse be their prey : let my paine be the 
 sweetnesse of their revenge : let them, if so it seem good 
 unto thee, vexe me with more and more punishment. 
 But, P Lord, let never their wickednesse have such a 
 hand, but that I may carry a pure minde in a pure 
 
 ^ And in order that no doubt may exist, Milton refers his reader 
 to the page in Sidney and in Dr. Juxon's book of, " 'Etsoj/o- 
 /cXa(Tn;c," "Prose Works," London, 1806, 6 vols., 8vo, vol. ii. 
 p. 407. 
 
252 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 body. And pausing a while : And, O most gracious 
 Lord, said shee, what ever become of me, preserve 
 the vertuous Musidorus." ^ 
 
 Thus incidents, showing much diversity, but little 
 order, follow each other in great variety. There are 
 touching episodes, ludicrous and, to our modern ideas,, 
 even shocking episodes, brilliant adventures, fine pas- 
 toral scenes, and much pleasant description ; Sidney 
 had been perfectly frank and true when he had 
 spoken of *' his young head " and his '^ many many 
 fancies.'* He allows his imagination to wander ; fancies 
 are swarming in his mind, and he is no more capable of 
 restraining or putting them into logical order than a 
 man can restrain or introduce reason into a dream. 
 Arcadia is sometimes in England and sometimes in 
 Greece ; Basilius' cottage sometimes becomes Hampton 
 Court ; there are temples and churches also ; heroes are 
 Christians, but they believe in Mars ; they act according 
 to the Gospel and also according to the oracles ; they 
 are before everything men of the Renaissance. Follow- 
 ing his vein^ Sidney, after innumerable adventures, 
 pastoral and warlike scenes, disappearances, unexpected 
 meetings, scenes of deep love, of criminal, sweet or 
 foolish love, comes at last to a sort of conclusion. 
 King Basilius drinks a soporific draught ; he is given up 
 
 " ^ "Arcadia," book iii. p. 248. In the "EiKwj/^a(rtXtK:^,the portraiture 
 of his sacred majesty in his solitude and sufferings," 1648, 8vo, 
 towards the end of the book, where are to be found "praiers used 
 by his majestie in the time of his sufferings, delivered to Dr. Juxon, 
 bishop of London, immediately before his death," the end of the 
 prayer of course is altered : " . . . so that at the last, I may com to 
 thy eternal kingdom through the merits of thy son our alone 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen." 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 253 
 
 as dead. Queen Gynecia is accused of being the author 
 of the deed ; Zelmane, who has been found out to be 
 a man is adjudged an accomphce ; both are about to be 
 executed. At that point, fortunately, the dead king 
 springs to his feet ; there are explanations, embracings, 
 and a general pardon. Good Basilius, who alone seems 
 to have understood nothing of all that happened, asks 
 pardon of his wife and of the world at large for his 
 silly love for Pyrocles-Zelmane, and proclaims, un- 
 asked. Queen Gynecia the most virtuous woman that 
 ever was. The Queen blushes deeply and says nothing, 
 but finding that the ties of her passion are now broken, 
 she inwardly pledges herself to live in order to justify 
 her husband's praise. She becomes the " example and 
 glory of Greece : so uncertain are mortall judgements, 
 the same person most infamous and most famous, and 
 neither justly." 
 
 This might be taken as a sufficient conclusion in so 
 loose a tale ; but in that case it would mean giving up 
 many heroes whose fates are yet in suspense. In fact, an 
 " Arcadia " of this sort might be continued till dooms- 
 day. Unless the hand of the writer grew tired, there 
 is no reason why it should ever end. This is, in fact, 
 the one and only reason Sidney puts forth as an excuse 
 for taking his leave ; he makes no pretence of having 
 finished, just the reverse ; for when he has married his 
 princes he concludes thus : " But . . . the strange stories 
 of Artaxia and Plexirtus, Erona and Plangus, Hellen 
 and Amphialus, with the wonderfiall chances that 
 befell them ; the shepheardish loves of Menalcas with 
 Kaloduhis daughter ; the poore hopes of the poor 
 Philisides," that is, Sidney himself, " in the pursuit of 
 
254 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 his affections ; the strange continuance of Klaius and 
 Strephons desire ; lastly the sonne of Pyrocles named 
 Pyrophilus, and Melidora the faire daughter of Pamela 
 bv Musidorus, who even at their birth entred into 
 admirable fortunes, may awake some other spirit to 
 exercise his pen in that wherwith mine is already 
 dulled." From generation to generation the tale 
 might as we see, have been continued for ages : so 
 numerous were the wonderful adventures still to be 
 told. 
 
 The style of the book is scarcely less fanciful than 
 the stories it tells. It is only now and again that the 
 charming prose of the " Apologie for Poetrie " is to 
 be found in the " Arcadia." Sidney wished to remain 
 faithful to his theories, and he believed it possible to 
 write a poem in prose. ^ Here and there some speeches, 
 passionate like those of Gynecia, or noble like Pamela's 
 prayer, some brilliant repartee, a few observations of 
 exquisite charm are lasting: beauties, always in their 
 place in all kinds of writing. Thus we meet the witty 
 Sidney of the " Apologie " in the description of a 
 spaniel, coming out of a river, who shakes off the 
 water from his coat "as great men doe their friends ;" 
 Sidney, the poet and lover, appears in the description of 
 ^ Philoclea entering the water " with a prettie kind of 
 ' shrugging . . . like the twinkling of the fairest among 
 the fixed stars ; " or in this expression in reference to the 
 fair hair of one of his heroines : " her haire — alas too 
 
 ^ His contemporaries agreed in his belief: "Sir Philip Sidney 
 writ his immortal poem ' The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia ' in 
 prose; and yet our rarest poet " (F. Meres " Paladis Tamia,'' 1598). 
 
^ 
 
 PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 255 
 
 poore a word, why should I not rather call them her 
 beams ! " ^ 
 
 But, by the side of these graceful flowers, how many 
 others are faded ! What concessions to contemporary 
 taste for tinsel and excessive ornament ! Sidney forgets 
 the rules of enduring beauty, and with the excuse that 
 he will never be printed, he only seeks to please his one 
 reader. To charm the Countess, his sister, like most 
 women of his time, it was necessary to put his phrases 
 in full dress, to place ruffs on his periods, and to make 
 them walk according to the rules followed in courtly 
 pageants. When, in spite of Sidney's earnest desire, his 
 book was published after his death, people were enrap- 
 tured with his ingeniously dressed out phrases. Lyly 
 might shake with envy without having however the right 
 to complain, for Sidney did not imitate him. Sidney 
 never liked euphuism, quite the contrary, he formally 
 condemns it in his " Apologie " : " Now for similitudes 
 in certain printed discourses I think all herberists, all 
 stories of beasts, fowles and fishes, are rifled up, that 
 they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our 
 conceits, which certainely is as absurd a surfet to the 
 eares as is possible." But his own style is scarcely less^ 
 artificial than that of Lyly, and consequently, its rules 
 are quite as easy to discover. i 
 
 They consist firstly in the antithetical and cadencedl 
 repetition of the same words in the sentences written j 
 merely for effect ; secondly, In persistently ascribing life ' 
 and feeling to inanimate objects. Sidney, it is true, as 
 Lyly with his euphuism, happily only employs this style ' 
 on particular occasions, when he intends to be especially 
 ^ Pp. 138 and 51. 
 
256 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 attractive and brilliant. A few specimens will afford 
 means of judging, and will show how difficult it was in 
 Shakespeare's time, even for the best educated and most 
 sensible men, for the sincerest admirers of the ancients, 
 to keep within the bounds of good taste and reason. 
 They might appeal to the Castalian virgins in their 
 invocations, but William Rogers' Elizabeth was the 
 Muse that rose before their eyes. 
 
 Here is an example of the first sort of embellish- 
 ment : *' Our Basilius being so publickly happy, as to 
 be a prince, and so happy in that happiness, as to be a 
 beloved prince ; and so in his private estate blessed, as 
 to have so excellent a wife, and so over-excellent chil- 
 dren, hath of late taken a course which yet makes him 
 more spoken of than all these blessings." In another 
 passage Sidney wishes to describe the perfections of a 
 woman ; and " that which made her fairness much the 
 fairer, was, that it was but a fair ambassador of a most 
 fair mind." Musidorus considers it " a greater greatness 
 to give a kingdome than get a kingdome." ^ Phalantus 
 challenges his adversary to fight " either for the love of 
 honour or honour of his love." In many of these sen- 
 tences the same words are repeated like the rhymes of 
 a song, taken up firom strophe to strophe, and the 
 sentence twists and turns, drawing and involving the 
 readers in its spiral curves, so that he arrives at the 
 
 ^ On this and other occasions Sidney combines alliteration with 
 the repetition of words. Here is another example : " Is it to be 
 imagined that Gynecia, a woman, though wicked, yet witty, would 
 have attempted and atchieved an enterprise no lesse hazzardous 
 than horrible without having some counsellor in the beginning and 
 some comforter in the performing ?" (book v. p. 466). 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 257 
 
 €nd all bruised, and falls half stunned on the full 
 stop. I 
 
 The other kind of elegance that Sidney affects is to 
 be found in very many authors, and it is, so to say, of 
 all time ; poets especially indulge in it without measure ; 
 but Sidney surpasses them all in the frequent use he 
 makes of it ; this peculiar language is more apparent 
 and has still stranger effect in a prose writer than in a 
 poet. In his Arcady, the valleys are consoled for their 
 Jowness by the silver streams which wind in the midst 
 of them ; the ripples of the Ladon struggle with one 
 another to reach the place where Philoclea is bathing, but 
 those which surround her refuse to give up their fortu- 
 nate position. A shepherdess embarks : " Did you not 
 marke how the windes whistled, and the seas danced for 
 joy ; how the sales did swell with pride, and all because 
 they had Urania } " Here is a description of a river : 
 " . . . The banks of either side seeming amies of the 
 loving earth, that faine would embrace it ; and the river 
 a wanton nymph which hill would slip from it. . . 
 There was ... a goodly cypres, who bowing her faire head 
 over the water, it seemed she looked into it and dressed 
 her green locks by that running river." One of the 
 heroines of the romance appears, and immediately the 
 flowers and the fruits experience a surprising commo- 
 tion ; the roses blush and the lilies grow pale for envy ; 
 
 ^ Pp. 10, 17, 129, 267, &c. The same curious repetition of 
 words is sometimes to be noticed in Sidney's poetry : 
 
 " Nor faile my faith in my fayling fate ; 
 Nor change in change, though change change my state." 
 
 (" The Smokes of melancholic.") 
 
258 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 the apples perceiving her breast fall down from the trees 
 out of vexation, unexpected vanity on the part of this 
 modest fruit. ^ 
 
 Similar conceits v^ere at that time the fashion not only 
 in England, but also in Italy, in Spain, and in France. 
 There might still be found in France, even in the 
 seventeenth century, authors who described in these 
 terms the appearance of flowers in spring : '' There 
 perhaps at the end of the combat, a pink all bleeding 
 falls from fatigue ; there a rosebud, elated at the ill- 
 success of her antagonist, blooms with joy ; there the 
 lily, that colossus among the flowers, that giant of 
 curdled cream, vain of seeing her image triumph at the 
 Louvre, raises herself above her companions, and looks 
 at them with contemptuous arrogance." The same 
 author, who is Cyrano de Bergerac, calls ice " an har- 
 dened light, a petrified day, a solid nothing." ^ But 
 contrary to what was the case in England, this style was 
 in France, even before Boileau and in the preceding 
 century, the style of bad authors. In England it is 
 frequently adopted by the most eminent writers, since 
 on many occasions it is even that of Shakespeare himself. 
 Besides, the combinations of sound obtained by means 
 of the repetition of words, added to the turgidness 
 
 ' Pp. 2, 137, 51. 
 
 2 " La, possible au sortir du combat, un oeillet tout sanglant 
 tombe de lassitude ; la un bouton de rose, eiiflc du mauvais succes 
 dc son antagoniste, s'epanouic de joie ; la le lys, ce colosse entre 
 les fleurs, ce geant de lait caille, glorieux de voir ses images 
 triompher au Louvre, s'elcve sur ses compagnes et les regarde de 
 haut en bas." Ice is for Cyrano : " une lumiere endurcie, un jour 
 petrifie, un solide neant " (" Lettre pour le printemps"; ** Lettre 
 \ M. le Bret"). 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 259 
 
 of the images, give to Sidney's language in the passages 
 written for effect, a degree of pretension and bad taste 
 that Cyrano himself, in spite of his natural disposition, 
 could never have equalled. When both kinds of 
 Sidney's favourite embellishments are combined in the 
 same sentence, it becomes impossible to keep serious, 
 and it is difficult to recognize the author of the 
 " Apologie." Sidney thus describes wreckage floating 
 on the water after a sea-fight : ''Amidst the precious 
 things were a number of dead bodies, which likewise 
 did not onely testifie both elements violence, but that 
 the chiefe violence was growne of humane inhumanity : 
 for their bodies were full of grisly wounds, and their 
 blood had, as it were, filled the wrinkles of the sea's 
 visage ; which it seemed the see would not wash away, 
 that it might witnesse it is not always his fault, when 
 we do condemne his cruelty." ^ There is indeed in 
 French literature a dagger celebrated for having rougi 
 le traitre I but what is it in comparison, and ought it 
 not in its turn to grow pale with envy at the thought 
 of this sea that will not wash itself? 
 
 Thus men wrote in the time of Shakespeare, guilty 
 himself of having made many a dagger blush and weep 
 in his bloody dramas : " See how my sword weeps for 
 the poor king's death ! " says Gloucester in " Henry 
 VI." When Brutus stabs Cassar the blood followed the 
 dagger 
 
 "As rushing out of doors, to be resolv'd 
 If Brutus so unkindly knocked or no." 
 
 Such was the irresistible power of fashion. Sidney who 
 ^ Book i. p. 4. 
 
26o THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 in his " Apologie " had laughed at these extravagances 
 in the poets and dramatists, could not himself avoid 
 them when he wrote his romance. When they concern 
 themselves with criticism, nearly all, Shakespeare, 
 Sidney, and their contemporaries, are to be admired for 
 their moderation, wisdom, and good sense ;. but as soon 
 as they take up the pen to write their imaginative 
 works, intoxication overcomes their brain, a divine 
 intoxication that sometimes transports them to heaven, 
 an earthly intoxication that sometimes leads them into 
 bogs and gutters. 
 
 III. 
 
 These surprising embellishments were in no way 
 harmful, quite the contrary, to the success of the 
 " Arcadia." From the first it was extremely popular 
 and widely read ; Sidney, who has kept his high repute 
 as a knight and a poet to our day, was still more famous 
 at first, and indeed for a long time, as a novelist. He 
 was before all the author of the " Arcadia." ^ His 
 influence as such was very great, if not always very 
 beneficial ; for his examples, as often happens, were more 
 readily followed than his precepts. Until the practical 
 Defoe worked his great reform in style, the language of 
 the novel was encumbered with images and unexpected 
 metaphors, or distorted by a pompous verbosity ; 
 romance writers mostly looked at life and realities 
 
 ^ Here is an example among many others. Sidney's portrait, 
 now belonging to Earl Darnley, bears the following inscrip- 
 tion painted on its canvas : " S"" Phillip Sidney, who writ the 
 Arcadia" (Tudor Exhibition, 1890). 
 
 ^ 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 261 
 
 through painted glass. For this, Sidney is in some 
 degree responsible. 
 
 His book was, so to speak, a standard one ; every- 
 body had to read it ; elegant ladies now began to talk 
 " Arcadianism " as they had been before talking 
 " Euphuism." Dekker, in 1609, advises gallants to go 
 to the play to furnish their memories with fine sayings, 
 in order to be able to discourse with such refined young 
 persons : " To conclude, hoarde up the finest play-scraps 
 you can get, upon which your leane wit may most 
 savourly feede for want of other stufFe, when the 
 Arcadian and Euphuized gentlewomen have their ton- 
 gues sharpened to set upon you." ^ When he has to 
 represent *' a court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a 
 light wit, admired by herself, and one more," her lover, 
 Ben Jonson, in his ''Every man out of his humour," 
 makes her talk " Arcadianism." Her lover, who is 
 quite the man to appreciate these elegancies of speech, 
 being " a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears 
 clothes well and in fashion, practiseth by his glass how 
 to salute . . . can post himself into credit with his mer- 
 chant, only with the gingle of his spur and the jerk of 
 his wand," thus describes the Arcadian music which 
 falls from the lips of the lady Saviolina : " She has the 
 most harmonious and musical strain of wit that ever 
 tempted a true ear ... oh ! it flows from her like 
 nectar, and she doth give it that sweet quick grace and 
 exornation in the composure, that by this good air, as 
 I am an honest man, would I might never stir, sir, but 
 — she does observe as pure a phrase and use as choice 
 
 ^ *' The Guls Horne-booke," " Works," ed. Grosart, vol. ii, 
 p. 254. 
 
 y" 
 
262 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 figures in her ordinary conference as any be in the 
 ^ Arcadia/ '' i 
 
 The demand for Sidney's book continued long 
 unabated. It was often reprinted during the seven- 
 teenth century,2 and found imitators, abbreviators 
 and continuators. Among its early admirers it had 
 that indefatigable reader of novels, William Shake- 
 speare, who took from it several hints, especially 
 from the story of the " Paphlagonian unkind king," 
 which he made use of in his " King Lear." 3 Books 
 were published under cover of Sidney's name, as 
 "Sir Philip Sydney's Ourania";4 others were given 
 away bearing as an epigraph an adaptation of two well- 
 known verses : 
 
 " Nee divinam Sydneida tenta 
 Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora,"5 
 
 no insignificant compliment, considering the word 
 
 ^ Act ii. sc. I, performed 1599, printed 1600.. See also in 
 "Bartholomew fair," performed in 1614, act iv. sc. 2, how 
 Quarlous chooses the word " Argalus " to try his luck in a love 
 affair. 
 
 2 The British Museum, which does not possess a complete 
 collection, has editions of 1590, 1598, 1599, 1605, 1613, 1621, 
 1623, 1627, 1629, 1633, 1638, 1655, 1662, 1674. 
 ^ 3 From book ii. of the "Arcadia." It resembles the episode of 
 Gloucester and his sons, and shows the old King of Paphlagonia 
 dispossessed, become blind and led by his son Leonatus. See 
 "Shakespeare's Library," ed. Collier and Hazlitt, London, 1875, 
 6 vol. 8vo., "King Lear." 
 
 '^ A philosophical and scientific poem by N. Baxter, dedicated 
 to the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Mary Wroth, &c., and pub- 
 lished in 1606, 4to. 
 
 5 " Theophania or severall modern histories, represented by way 
 of Romance ... by an English person of quality," London, 
 1655, 4to. 
 
l^ 
 
 PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 263 
 
 which had to make room for *' Sydneida." Works 
 without number were dedicated to the Countess of 
 Pembroke, not only because she was what she was, and 
 a poetess of some renown, but because she was the 
 Mary Sidney of Arcadian fame. 
 
 As Sidney had stated that he did not consider his 
 novel finished with the marriage of his heroes, and the 
 reconciliation of his royal couple, continuations were 
 not wanting ; writers who did not consider their pen 
 ^* dulled" as he had declared his own to be, volunteered 
 to add a further batch of adventures to the *' Sidneyd." 
 Thus we have the '' English Arcadia alluding his 
 beginning to Sir Philip Sidnes ending," by Gervase 
 Markham, 1 607 ; a " Sixth booke to the Countesse of 
 Pembrokes Arcadia, written by R[ichard] B[eling] of 
 Lincoines Inne," 1624; or again a "Continuation of 
 Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia : wherein is handled the 
 loves of Amphialus and Helena . . . written by a — S 
 young gentlewoman, Mrs. A. W./' 1651. Dramas 
 were built upon incidents in the *^ Arcadia " ; Shake- 
 speare we have seen made use of it in his " King 
 Lear " ; John Day wrote after Sidney's tale, '' The 
 He of Guls," 1606, "the argument being a little 
 string or rivolet drawne from the full streme of the 
 right worthy gentleman. Sir Phillip Sydneys well 
 knowne Archadea." ^ Some years later, in 1640, 
 Shirley put Basilius and his court again on the stage 
 in his " Pastorall called the Arcadia." 2 
 
 ^ *' The He of Guls, as it hath been often played in the blacke 
 fryars by the children of the revels" (reprinted by Bullen, 
 *' Works of John Day," 1881, 4to.) 
 
 2 "Works," ed. Dycc, vol. vi. All the main incidents of Sidney's 
 
264 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Authors of poems also took their plots from stories 
 in Sidney's novel, one of the most popular among 
 those stories was the adventures of Argalus and 
 Parthenia ; it was constantly reprinted in a separate 
 form, and was the subject of a long poem by the well- 
 known Francis Quarles, the author of the '^ Emblemes." 
 " It was," says he in his preface, " a scion taken out of 
 the orchard of Sir Philip Sidney of precious memory, 
 which I have lately graffed upon a crab-stock in mine 
 own. . . . This book differs from my former as a 
 courtier from a churchman." Not less did it differ 
 from his later books, among which the '' Emblemes " 
 were to figure ; but the pious author eases his conscience 
 about it by alleging " precedents for it." It cannot be 
 denied that if Quarles' "churchman " was very devout 
 his." courtier " was very worldly. He goes far beyond 
 Sidney in his descriptions of love, of physical love 
 especially, and uses in this matter a freedom of speech 
 and a bantering tone which remmds us much more of 
 the Reine de Navarre ' than of the author of the 
 " Embiemes." Such as it is, however, this poem 
 remains, so far as literary merit goes, one of the best 
 Quarles ever wrote. He scarcely ever reached again 
 this terseness and vivacity of style, and this entrain. 
 Having for once shut himself out of the church, and 
 not for long, he wanted it seems to do the best with 
 his time,' and if he was sinning, at least to enjoy his 
 sin. 
 
 novel are reproduced by Shirley except the quarrel with Cecropia, 
 and as the romance might very well have ended where Sidney left 
 it, the dramatist did not go further and did not use any of the 
 continuations. See also " Zelmane," by W. Mountfort, 1705, 
 "Parthenia, an Arcadian Drama," 1764, &c. 
 
ARGALUS AND PARTHENIA READING A BOOK IN THEIR GARDEN, 1656. 
 
 [/>' 265. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 C'4LIF0R^^^ 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 267 
 
 His contemporaries enjoyed it greatly ; " Argalus 
 and Parthenia " .went through an extraordinary number 
 of editions ; ^ some of them were very fine, and were 
 even illustrated with cuts. We give an example of 
 them showing, the newly married couple sitting in 
 their garden to read a story : 
 
 " Upon a day as they were closely seated, 
 Her ears attending whilst his lips repeated 
 A story treating the renown'd adventures 
 And famous acts of great Alcidcs, enters 
 A messenger whose countenance did bewray 
 A haste too serious to admit delay." 
 
 Is there any necessity for reminding the reader of 
 the cause of the messenger's haste .^ Is it possible that 
 such world-famous adventures can be now forgotten '^. 
 The messenger was sent by King Basilius, who was 
 sorely pressed by his arch-enemy Amphialus. The 
 young hero rushes to the rescue of the Arcadian king, 
 but he is piteously slain in a duel with Amphialus. 
 Then Parthenia dresses herself as a knight, and 
 fights her husband's conqueror. With more verisimi- 
 litude than is usually the case, she too is piteously 
 slain. And this is the en4 of Argalus and Parthenia. 
 
 But there was still more than this, and like Lyly, 
 Sidney had direct imitators who copied him in prose, 
 and tried to fashion novels after his model. All the 
 peculiarities of his style and of his way, or rather want, 
 
 ^ It was published in 1622. The British Museum possesses 
 editions of the years 1629, 1632, 1647, 165 1, 1656, 1677, 1684, 
 1687, 1700, 1708, 1726. Grosart (Ouarles' " Complete Works," 
 1876) mentions one more of the year 1630. 
 
 16 
 
268 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 of composition, are to be found minutely reproduced 
 in : " The countesse of Mountgomeries Urania ; written 
 by the Rt. Hon. the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter of 
 the Rt. noble Robert earle of Leicester, and neece to 
 the ever famous and renowned S'' Phillips Sidney Kt. 
 and to y^ most excelent Lady Mary Countesse of 
 Pembroke late deceased." ^ This pedigree-shaped title 
 is enough in itself to show what we may expect from 
 the performance. It is a complete and pious imitation 
 of Sidney's manner, especially of his defects, for they 
 were more easily attained. Thus we have those 
 repetitions of the same words which were so pleasant 
 to Sidney's ear, and Lady Mary Wroth has a feli- 
 city of her own in twisting the idea into the words, 
 screw-wise, with a perfection her model had scarcely 
 ever attained : ** All for others grieved ; pittie extended 
 so, as all were carefull, but of themselves most carelesse : 
 yet their mutual care made them all cared for." A 
 very true and logical observation. Lady Mary is also 
 fond of giving sense and feeling to inanimate objects, 
 and scarcely, again, can Sidney, with his sea that will 
 not wash, or Cyrano with his proud giant of curdled 
 milk, suffer comparison with this description of a 
 burning tower into which a woman throws the head 
 of her enemy : " For her welcome [Dorileus] presented 
 her with the head of her enemy, which he then cut off 
 and gave unto her, who like Tomeris of Sithia, held it 
 by the haire, but gave it quickly another conclusion, 
 for she threw it into the midst of the flaming tower, 
 which then, as being in it selfe enemy to good, because 
 wasting good, yet hotly desiring to embrace as much 
 ^ London, 1621, fol. (a very curious engraved title). 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 269 
 
 ill, and so headlongly and hastily fell on it, either to 
 grace it with the quickest and hottest kisses, or to 
 conceale such a villanous and treacherous head from 
 more and just punishments." ^ 
 
 As to the story, it is, like the " Arcadia," a tale of 
 shepherds who are princes, and of shepherdesses with 
 royal blood in their veins ; there are eclogues, dialogues, 
 and if not much poetry at least much verse. The 
 events take place in Greece and in the Greek islands ; 
 people go to the temple of Diana and to the temple of 
 Venus. In the last-named place they get m.arried. 
 These worshippers of the deities of old are dressed 
 as follows. Here is the description of a man's 
 costume : " Then changed he his armour taking one 
 of azure colour, his plume crimson, and one fall of 
 blew in it ; the furniture to his horse being of those 
 colours, and his device onely a cipher, which was made 
 of all the letters of his misstrisses name, delicately com- 
 posed within the compasse of one." Here is now a 
 description of the costume women wore in Lady Mary's 
 Greek land : " She was partly in greene too ; as her 
 upper garment, white buskins she had, the short sleeves 
 which she wore upon her armes and came in sight 
 from her shoulders were also white, and of a glistering 
 stuffe, a little ruffe she had about her neck, from which 
 came stripps which were fastned to the edges of her 
 gowne, cut downe equally for length and breadth to 
 make it square ; the strips were of lace, so as the skinne 
 came steallinglie through, as lif desirous but afraide to 
 bee seane, knowing that little joy would moove desire 
 to have more." This clever young person had been 
 
 ^ Pp. 39 and 519. 
 
270 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 " sworn a nymph," which prevented her getting 
 married for some years. Waiting for that auspicious 
 date a Jover was offering his addresses to her, and as 
 Lady W roth's Arcadia is an Arcadia with a peerage, 
 we are informed that this sworn nymph's lover was 
 " the third sonne of an earle." ^ 
 
 No less a man than Ben Jonson proclaimed himself 
 an admirer of Lady Mary ; he dedicated one of his 
 masterpieces, "the Alchemist," to "the lady most 
 deserving her name and blood, Lady Mary Wroth," 
 and in his "Epigrams " he addressed her as follows, his 
 only but sufficient excuse being that the "Urania " was 
 not yet written : 
 
 " Madam, had all antiquity been lost, 
 All history seal'd up and fables crost. 
 That we had left us, nor by time nor place, 
 Least mention of a Nymph, a Muse, a Grace, 
 But even their names were to be made anew 
 Who could not create them all from you ? " ^ 
 
 The eighteenth century began, and Sidney's romance 
 was not yet forgotten ; his book was still alive, if 
 one may say so, when the novel assumed its definite 
 shape, style and compass with Defoe, Richardson and 
 Fielding. Addison notices its presence in the fair 
 Leonora's library, among " the some few which the 
 lady had bought for her own use." 3 It continued 
 
 ^ Pp. 295, 298. 
 
 ^ In Jonson's " Masque of Blackness," 1605, Lady Mary Wroth 
 played the part of Baryte, and Lady Rich, Sidney's Stella of many 
 years before, personated Ocyte. 
 
 3 " Spectator," April 12, 171 1. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 271 
 
 then to be fashionable, and a subject of conversation. 
 No wonder, therefore, that between the date of 
 ''Robinson Crusoe" and the date of "Pamela" 
 two more editions of the " Arcadia " were given to 
 the public. One of them contained engravings 
 afrer drawings by L. Cheron.^ The other was 
 *' moderniz'd " and was published by subscription 
 under the patronage of the Princess of Wales. 2 
 Sidney's novel continued to act on men's minds, and 
 many proofs of its influence on eighteenth-century 
 literature might be pointed out. That Sidney was 
 Richardson's first teacher in the art of the novel is 
 well known; that Cowper read the "Arcadia" with 
 delight is well known too, and he confers no mean 
 praise on our author when he speaks of 
 
 " those golden times 
 And those arcadian scenes that Marc sings 
 And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose." 3 
 
 Examples of Sidney's style are also to be found in 
 several authors of that time. Consciously or not, Young 
 
 ^ " The Works of the honourable S' Philip Sidney," London, 
 1725, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 2" Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia," modernized by Mrs. [D.] Stanley, 
 London, 1725, fol. It is a very fine volume with wide margins. 
 One of the "improvements" due to Mrs. Stanley, is the suppression 
 of all the verses. She did so, she says, at the invitation of her 
 subscribers. The list of them which prefaces the book contains 
 many Leonoras, who even at this late period desired to have a copy 
 of the " Arcadia " for "their own use." In our century an abbre- 
 viated edition of the same work was published by Mr. Hain 
 Friswell, London, 1867, 8vo. 
 
 3 "The Task, bk. iii. 1. 514. 
 
2 7 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 sometimes adopts all the peculiarities of Sidney ; for 
 example, when he writes : 
 
 " Sweet harmonist ! and beautiful as sweet ! 
 And young as beautiful ! and soft as young ! 
 And gay as soft ! and innocent as gay ! 
 And happy (if aught happy here) as good ! 
 For fortune fond had built her nest on high." ^ 
 
 Sidney's popularity did not, of course, last so long 
 without encountering some opposition. For Milton, 
 and no wonder, the " Arcadia" was nothing but " a 
 vain amatorious poem," though he is fair enough to 
 add that it is *^ in that kind, full of worth and wit." 2 
 Horace Walpole was very hard upon our novelist : 
 " We have a tedious, lamentable, pedantic pastoral 
 romance," says he, in his " Royal and Noble Authors,'' 
 " which the patience of a young virgin in love cannot 
 now wade through." 3 It is sad to think that the once 
 famous " Castle of Otranto," though twenty times 
 shorter, requires now no smaller dose of patience. 
 
 None the less, the " Arcadia " was popular in the 
 last century, and, at the same time as it attracted the 
 attention of fair Leonoras, it also interested and de- 
 lighted a much commoner sort of readers. It was 
 several times printed in an abbreviated form, and circu- 
 lated, with engravings, as a chap-book. Sometimes 
 the whole of the " Arcadia " was compressed into a 
 small volume, sometimes only an episode was given to 
 the public. The story of Argalus and Parthenia was 
 
 • ^ Night iii. " Narcissa." 
 
 2 "'EiKovofcXaffn^c," "Prose Works," 1806, vol. ii. p. 408. 
 
 3 Ed. of 1806, 5 vols., 8vo, "Life of Fulke Greville," vol. ii. 
 p. 231. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 273 
 
 especially popular. ^ The engravings, it is needless to 
 say, were very coarse ; and if Sidney had taken little 
 
 " See the fond youth ! he burns, he loves, he dies, 
 He wishes as he pines and feeds his famish'd eyes." 
 
 ^ "The unfortunate lovers : the history of Argalus and Par- 
 thenia," London, izmo. The date, 1700 (?), given for this edition 
 in the British Museum catalogue, is obviously too early, as the 
 publisher advertises at the beginning of this volume "Robinson 
 Crusoe," "Jonathan Wild," &c. There were (not to mention 
 earlier versions of "Argalus," e.g.^ one of 1691) other editions of 
 (about) 1710, 171 5, 1750, 1770, 1780, 1788, &c. These little 
 books had sometimes very long descriptive titles, such as those 
 Defoe has made us familiar with : " The famous history of heroic k 
 acts of the honour of chivalry, being an abstract of Pembrokes* 
 ' Arcadia,' with many strange and wonderful adventures, the whole 
 being a compleat series interwoven with the heroick actions of 
 many valiant men, as kings, princes, and knights, of undoubted 
 fame, whose matchless deeds, ..." &c., &c. London, 1701, 
 i2mo, "Bound, is." 
 
 ? 
 
2 74 TIJE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 trouble to be historically or geographically accurate, the 
 wood-block makers took even less, and they offer to 
 our eyes an extraordinary medley of fifteenth-century 
 knights, Roman soldiers, gentlemen in flowing wigs and 
 court swords, all of them supposed to have at one time 
 adorned with their presence the groves of Arcady. A 
 few specimens of these engravers' art are here given ; 
 no doubt the reader will be pleased to know what the 
 famous Argalus and Parthenia were supposed to have 
 been like, how the bathing of Philoclea in the Ladon 
 was represented, and the sorts of fetes and courtly 
 dances that enlivened the marriage of that princess. 
 More striking even than these tributes to Sidney's 
 merits as a novelist is the treatment awarded him in 
 France. The famous Du Bartas in his second "Week " 
 names Sidney as one of the " three firm pillars of the 
 English Speech." This speech, according to the French 
 poet, is mainly supported by Thomas More and Bacon, 
 
 "Et le milor Cydnc qui cygne doux-chantant 
 Va les flots orgueilleux dc Tamisc flatant ; 
 Ce fleuve gros d' honncur cmporte sa faconde 
 Dans le sein de Thetis et Thetis par le monde.'" ^ 
 
 Besides this, Sidney's romance received in France an 
 
 ' Second day of the second Week, " Oeuvres," Paris, 1611, fol., 
 p. 211. After Sidney, Du Bartas thus addresses the Queen : 
 
 *' Claire perle du nort, guerriere domte-Mars, 
 Continue a cherir les muses et les arts, 
 Et si jamais ces vers peuvent, d'une aile agile, 
 Franchissant 1' ocean voler jusqu' a ton isle, 
 Et tomber, fortunez, entre ces blanches mains 
 Qui sous un juste frein regissent tant d'humains, 
 Voy les d'un ceil bcnin et, favorable, pense 
 Qu' il faut, pour te loner, avoir ton eloquence." 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 275 
 
 homage very rare at that epoch : it was translated. 
 A Frenchman possessing a knowledge of the English 
 language was then an extraordinary phenomenon. 
 As late as the year 1665, no less a paper than the 
 *^ Journal des Scavans " printed a statement to the 
 following effect : " The Royal Society of London 
 publishes constantly a number of excellent works. 
 But whereas most of them are written in the 
 
 HOW THE TWO PRIN-CESSES PAMELA AND HER SISTER PHILOCLEA 
 WENT TO BATH THEMSELVES . . . AND WHAT AFTER HAPNED." 
 
 English language, 
 to review them in 
 
 we have been unable till now 
 our pages. But we have at last 
 found an English interpreter through whose offices 
 it will be henceforth possible for us to enrich our 
 publication with the best things appearing in England." 
 As for Sidney, not only was he translated, but what is 
 not less strange, the fact provoked in France one of the 
 most violent literary quarrels of the time. Two trans- 
 lations of the " Arcadia," now entirely forgotten, were 
 
2 7 6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 published simultaneously, both in three volumes, both 
 adorned with engravings. ^ As soon as a volume 
 appeared, each of the translators profited by the occa- 
 sion to write a new preface, and to repeat that his rival 
 was a mere plagiarist and did not know a word of 
 English. The other replied offering to prove such a 
 rare knowledge ; had it been a question of Chinese or 
 of Hindustani they could not have boasted more noisily 
 of their unique acquaintance with so mysterious an 
 idiom. Each appealed to his patroness, who was, in 
 either case, no ordinary woman : the one had dedicated 
 his work to Diane de Chateaumorand (D'Urfe's Diane), 
 who had indeed the right to judge of Arcadias ; the 
 other invoked the authority of the Queen-mother, 
 Marie de Medicis, by whose express command he had 
 carried on his work. 
 
 ^ "L'Arcadie de la Comtesse de Pembrok, mise en nostre langue," 
 by J. Baudoin ; Paris, 1624, three vol. 8vo. It contains fancy 
 portraits of Sidney and of his sister. The second translation ap- 
 peared at the bookseller's, Robert Fouet, in 1625, in the same size ;. 
 it is ornamented with pretty engravings. Of its three parts the 
 first was the work of " un brave gentilhomme," and the two others 
 of Mdlle. Genevieve Chappelain. It is needless to observe that 
 the great success of D'Urfe's "Astree" had much to do with this 
 zeal for translating Sidney's pastoral novel. 
 
 Baudoin, who died in 1650, was the translator of various other 
 foreign works, among which part of the works of Bacon. Sir 
 Kenelm Digby, whose fondness for romances was great, had in his 
 library a copy of the " Arcadia " in French ; this was Baudoin's 
 translation, and it is one of the items of the catalogue drawn in 
 view of the sale of his library (" Bibliotheca Digbeiana," London,. 
 1680, 4to). There was, a little later, a translation in German : "Arca- 
 dia . . . inunser Hochteutsche Sprach. . . ubersetzt," by Theocritus- 
 von Hirschberg [z>., Martin Opitz], Francfort, 1629, 4to. 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 277 
 
 Baudoln, who had been the first to turn the 
 *' Arcadia" into French, published it In 1624, pre- 
 fixing to it this remark, flattering to Sidney's memory, 
 but which shows how very little his language was 
 known in France : " Merely the desire of understand- 
 ing so rare a book caused me to go to England, 
 where I remained for two years in order to gain a 
 knowledge of it." 
 
 THE GLORIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS THAT GRACED 
 THE HAPPY NUPTIALS." 
 
 Two years ! immediately retorts the publisher of 
 the other translation ; we can do better than that : 
 the author of the work that we publish is Mademoiselle 
 Genevieve Chappelain, and what guarantees does she not 
 offer ! '^ She has the honour to have lived more than 
 seven years at the court of the King of Great Britain, 
 in the suite of the Countess of Salisbury, who esteemed 
 her as no ordinary young girl, but as a very well-bred 
 demoiselle who had been presented to her with good 
 credentials, and who was descended fi-om a race that has 
 
2 78 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 given us great men : verily, and women, too, that the 
 muses have deigned to favour." This is a little like the 
 argument of Scudery, boasting, ten years later, of his 
 noble birth in order to prove to poor Pierre Corneille 
 that he is the better poet of the two, and that the 
 " Cid " is worth nothing. 
 
 But something better still follows, and here the 
 worthy publisher somewhat betrays himself : "If she 
 has not been able to learn the language of the 
 country in which she has lived for more than seven 
 years, and nearly always with great ladies : how, I beg 
 of you, could those who have only lived there two 
 years, and among the common people, know the 
 language } I do not wish to offend any one by this 
 notice, which I thought it necessary to make only to 
 defend a young lady who is my near relation!^ 
 
 Baudoin maintains his statement, and defies his rivals 
 to translate Sidney's verse, and he enumerates the pre- 
 cautions he himself has taken, precautions which 
 certainly ought to satisfy the reader as regards his 
 accuracy. Not only did he live for two years in Eng- 
 land, but, he says, " I secured the assistance of a French 
 gentleman of merit and learning, who has been good 
 enough to explain to me the whole of the first book. 
 I have acted in such a way as to procure two different 
 versions of it in order to produce one good one." And 
 he has done even something more : " I have always had 
 near me one of my friends to whom this tongue was as 
 familiar as our own ; he has taken the trouble to eluci- 
 date for me any doubts I may have had." In truth, he 
 could hardly have surrounded himself wdth more light, 
 but then, what an arduous task to translate from English ! 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 279 
 
 Baudoin's adversaries were in no way intimidated by 
 this display ; firstly, they had had the assistance of 
 exactly the same gentleman ; it appears that a second 
 equally learned was not to be found; secondly, Mdlle. 
 Chappelain also showed her translation to persons who 
 knew both languages, and they found her work perfect ; 
 lastly, and v/hat more can be required? she sends a 
 challenge to Baudoin and his accomplices, and in- 
 vites them to a decisive combat : " She is ready to 
 show that she knows the English language better than 
 they, and they would not dare to appear in order to 
 speak it with her in the presence of persons capable of 
 judging." Baudoin does not appear, indeed, to have 
 accepted this challenge, but neither does it seem to have 
 discouraged him. He closes the preface of his last 
 volume with this poetical apostrophe to those who are 
 envious of his reputation : "By the mouth of good 
 wits — Apollo holds you in contempt, — Troop so igno- 
 rant and bold : — For you profane his beauteous gifts, — - 
 And cause thistles to spring up — In the midst of your 
 Arcady." ^ 
 
 What astonishes us now, when we follow the vicissi- 
 tudes of the long-forgotten dispute of these two 
 writers is that so much passion should have been 
 expended over Sidney's romance, however great might 
 be its merit ; while the attention of no one in France 
 was attracted by Shakespeare and the inimitable group 
 
 ^ " Par la bouche des bons esprits 
 Apollon vous tient a mespris 
 Troupe ignorante et trop hardie, 
 Car vous prophanez ses beaux dons 
 Et faites naistre des chardons 
 Au milieu de vostre Arcadie." 
 
2 8o THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 of dramatists of his time. No Baudoin, no Genevieve 
 Chappelain disputed the honour of translating " Hamlet," 
 and a century was still to elapse before so much as 
 Shakespeare's name should figure in a book printed in 
 France. I 
 
 This double translation of the '' Arcadia " did not, 
 however, pass unnoticed, far from it ; and fi-om time to 
 time we find the name of Sidney reappearing in French 
 books, while the giants of English literature con- 
 tinued entirely unknown on the continent. When 
 Charles Sorel satirized the long-winded romances of his 
 time in his " Berger Extravagant,'' he did not forget 
 Sidney, who figures among the authors alternately 
 praised and criticized in the disputation between Clari- 
 mond and Philiris. The criticism is not very severe, 
 and compared with the treatment inflicted on other 
 authors, it would seem that Sorel wished to show 
 courtesy to a foreigner who had been invited, so to say, 
 as a visitor to France by his translators.^ Copies of 
 
 ^ And then it was spelt Chaksper, " La critique du theatre 
 anglois," translated from the English of Collier, Paris, 171 5, 8vo. 
 In the *' Journal des Scavans " for the year 17 10 it appears under 
 the shape " Shakees Pear," p. no. 
 
 2 Thus speaks Clarimond in his harangue against romances : 
 " L'Angleterre n'a pas manque d'avoir aussi son Arcadie, laquelle 
 ne nous a este montree que depuis peu par la traduction qui en a 
 este faite. Je ne trouve point d'ordre la dedans et il y a beaucoup 
 de choses qui ne me peuvent satisfaire. ... II est vrai que 
 Sidney, etant mort jeune, a pu laisscr son ouvrage imparfait." In 
 his defence of romances, Philiris answers : " Quant a I'Arcadie de 
 Sidney, apres avoir passe la mer pour nous venir voir, je suis 
 marry que Clarimond la re9oive avec un si mauvais compliment. 
 S'il n'entend rien aux amours de Strephon et de Clajus, il faut qu'il 
 -s'en prenne a luy, non pas a I'autheur qui a rendu son livre Tun 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE, 281 
 
 Sidney's original " Arcadia " crept into France, and are 
 to be found in rather unexpected places. Thus a copy 
 of the edition of 1605 is to be seen in the National 
 Library in Paris, with the $ $ of surintendant Fou- 
 quet on the cover. The way in which the letters are 
 interlaced shows that the book did not come from Fou- 
 quet's own library, but from the library of the Jesuits, ^ 
 to whom he had given a yearly income of 6,000 livres, 
 
 des plus beaux du monde. II y a des discours d'amour et des 
 discours d'estat si excellens et si delectables que je ne me lasserois 
 jamais de les lire" ("Le Berger extravagant, ou, parmy des 
 fantaisies amoureuses, Ton void les impertinences des romans et de 
 la poesie," vol. iii., Paris, 1628, pp. 70 and 134). Sorel's work was 
 translated into English : " The extravagant shepherd. The anti- 
 romance, or the history of the shepherd Lysis," by John Davies, of 
 Kidwelly; London, 1653, fol. The book has very curious plates; 
 Davies in his preface is extremely hard upon Sidney, and heaps 
 ridicule especially on the head of King Basilius. See infra^ 
 chap. vii. 
 
 ^ Fouquet, however, was very fond of foreign books ; the cata- 
 logue (dated 1665) of his library, drawn up after his committal, 
 shows that he had a fairly large number of English books. He 
 was the earliest known French possessor of a Shakespeare. The 
 catalogue, it is true, reveals the fact that he preserved it " in his 
 garret": 
 
 " Livres in folio qui se trouvent dans le grenier : 
 Comedies de Jazon [z>., Ben Jonson] en anglois, 
 
 2 vol., London, 1640 ... ... ... ... 3/. 
 
 Idem, comedies angloises ... ... ... ... loj. 
 
 Shakespeares comedies angloises ... ... ... i/. 
 
 Fletcher commedies angloises ... ... ... i/." 
 
 (MS. 9,438 fran9ais, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.) 
 The second in date of the French possessors of copies of Shake- 
 speare was, strange to say, no less a person than the patron or 
 Racine and Boileau, the Roi-Soleil himself. Looking over, some 
 
282 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 and who, in memory of their benefactor, stamped thus 
 books purchased from this fund. 
 
 In France, too, as well as in England, the '* Arcadia " 
 was turned into a play. Antoine Mareschal, a contem- 
 porary of Corneille and the author of such dramas as 
 " La genereuse AUemande ou le triomphe de Tamour," 
 1631, the " Railleur ou la satyre du temps," 1638 
 the *' Mauzolee,'' 1642, derived a tragi-comedy, in 
 five acts, and in verse from the " Arcadia." The piece, 
 which, if the author is to be believed, made a great 
 sensation in Paris, was called the '* Cour Bergere," and 
 was dedicated to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, 
 ambassador of England to France, and brother to Sir 
 Philip. It appeared in 1640 ; it was thus later than 
 the " Cid." None the less, it exhibits the phenomenon 
 of several deaths on the stage ; but the ridiculous 
 manner in which these deaths are introduced could only 
 strengthen Corneille in his scruples. The wicked 
 Cecropia, standing on a terrace at the back of the 
 stage, moves without seeing the edge, and falls head 
 foremost on the boards, exclaiming : 
 
 time ago, at the Biblioth^que Nationale, the original manuscript 
 slips made in 1684 by the royal librarian, Nicolas Clement, for 
 his catalogue of the books confided to his care, I found one in- 
 scribed : "'Will. Shakspeare, poeta Anglicus. Opera poetica, con- 
 tinentia tragoedias, comoedias et historiolas, Anglice, Londres, Th. 
 Cotes, 1632, fol." And to this, considering that he had to deal 
 with a thoroughly unknown person, Clement was careful to add 
 a note that people might be informed what was to be thought 
 of the poet. This is (so far as now known) the earliest French 
 allusion to Shakespeare : " Ce poete anglois a I'imagination asses 
 belle, il pense naturellement ; mais ces belles qualitez sont 
 obscurcies par les ordures qu'il mele dans ses comedies." 
 
PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL ROMANCE. 283 
 
 "Ah ! je tombe, et I'enfer a mon corps entraine . . . 
 Je deteste le ciel ! Ah ! je meurs enragee ! " 
 
 In the following century Sidney was still remem- 
 bered in France. In his " Memoires pour servir a 
 I'histoire de la Republique des lettres," Niceron men- 
 tions the " Arcadia " as " a romance full of intelligence 
 and very well written in the author's language." ^ 
 Florian knew him and held him in great honour ; he 
 names him with D'Urfe, Montemayor, and Cervantes, 
 as being, as it were, one of his Uterary ancestors,^ and 
 the fact is not without importance ; for Florian, con- 
 tinuing, as he did, Sidney's tradition, and trying in his 
 turn to write poems in prose, stands as a link between 
 the pastoral writers of the sixteenth century and the 
 author who was the last to compose prose epics m 
 our time : the author of " Les Martyrs " and of that 
 American Arcadia called '' Atala" — Chateaubriand. 
 
 ^ Vol. XV. published in 173 i. 
 
 ^ "Essai sur la pastorale," prefacing " Estelle." 
 
 SAGITTARIUS. 
 
 17 
 

 AN INTERIOR VIFAV OF A THEATRE IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THE SWAN THEATRE, 1 596. [/. 286. 
 
ELIZABETHAN GAIETIES. KEMP'S DANCE FROM LONDON TO NORWICH. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THOMAS NASH ,* THE PICARESQUE AND REALISTIC 
 
 NOVEL. 
 
 I. 
 
 " A I AHERE is nothing beside the goodnesse of God, 
 X that preserves health so much as honest mirth, 
 especially mirth used at dinner and supper, 
 and mirth toward bed. . . . Therefore, considering this 
 matter, that mirth is so necessary a thing for man, 
 I published this booke ... to make men merrie. 
 . . . Wherefore I doe advertise every man in avoiding 
 pensivenesse, or too much study or melancholic, to 
 be merrie with honesty in God and for God, whom I 
 
288 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 humbly beseech to send us the mirth of heaven. 
 Amen." ^ Such was the advice attributed to a man 
 whose opinion should carry weight, for he had been 
 a " doctor of physicke " and had published with great 
 success a '' Breviary of helth " which was a household 
 book in his time. 
 
 The pensive Sir Philip Sidney was, as we have seen, 
 of a very different turn of mind. He did not live 
 to read the above wise counsels, but he had had the 
 opinion of his friend Languet on this subject, and that 
 had been of no avail. His propensity to overthinking 
 is apparent in many places in his writings, especially 
 in his ^' Arcadia," where he made so little use of the 
 comical elements he had himself introduced into it. 
 The main incident in his book, the assignation given 
 by Zelmane to both Basilius and Gynecia and the 
 " mistakes of a night " which follow, would have been 
 from any other pen, only too comical. It is, in fact, 
 the character it bears in Shirley's drama, and it has 
 the same in the many modern plays founded on similar 
 mistakes, plays which serve to improve, according to 
 Andrew Borde's prescription, if not the morals, at least 
 the health of the " Palais Royal " audiences of to-day. 
 With Sidney, the comic is a vulgar style ; he very 
 
 ^ " The first and best part of Scoggins lests . . . being a pre- 
 servative against melancholy, gathered by Andrew Boord," London, 
 1626, 8vo. Many of the jests, tricks, and pranks recounted here 
 are to be found in other collections of such anecdotes, English as 
 well as foreign. For example, the coarse story explaining " how the 
 French king had Scogin into his house of office, and shewed him the 
 King of England's picture" appears in Rabelais, where however 
 the two kings play exactly opposite parts. Andrew Borde died 
 in 1549. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 289 
 
 rarely risks any jests, a portrait of a cowardly peasant, 
 or of an injured husband. ^ One of his best attempts 
 in this style is a character in his masque of the " Lady 
 of May," the pedant Rombus, who gives quotations 
 which are always wrong and like Rabelais' scholar, who 
 belongs to " the alme, inclyte and celebrate academy, 
 which is vocitated Lutetia," is careful to make use of 
 nothing but quasi-Latin words. In order to relate 
 how he has been unmercifully whipped by shepherds 
 he declares : " Yet hath not the pulchritude of my 
 vertues protected me from the contaminating hands of 
 these Plebeians ; for comming, solummodo to have parted 
 their sanguinolent fray, they yeelded me no more 
 reverence, than if I had beene some pecorius asinus.'' ^ 
 But that is an easy way to amuse, and, even at that 
 epoch, not very new. Rabelais had made a better use 
 of it before Sidney, and after him, without mention- 
 ing Shakespeare, Cyrano de Bergerac furnished more 
 laughable specimens. No phrase of Rombus equals 
 the order given by the Pedant to his son when sending 
 him to Venice to engage in commerce : '' Since thou hast 
 
 ^ One of the few passages which would raise a laugh even 
 to-day is the rapturous speech with which good Basilius greets the 
 morning after his " mistakes of a night " : " Should fancy of 
 marriage keep me from this paradise ? or opinion of I know not 
 what promise bind me from paying the right duties to nature and 
 affection ? O who would have thought there could have been such 
 difference betwixt women ? Be jealous no more O Gynecia, but 
 yield to the preheminence of more excellent gifts," &c. (bk. iv. p. 
 410). See also the ridiculous fight between Clinias and Dametas 
 pp. 276 et ie^.; and a story told in verse, bk. iii. p. 390. Moliere 
 built his "Ecole des maris" upon a similar plot. 
 
 2 "Arcadia," ed. of 1633, p. 610. 
 
290 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 never desired to drink of the pool engendered by the 
 hoof of the feathered horse, ^ and as the lyric harmony 
 of the learned murderer of Python has never inflated 
 thy speech, try if in merchandise Mercury will lend 
 thee his Caduceus. So may the turbulent ^olus be 
 as affable to thee as to the peaceful nests of halcyons. 
 In short, Chariot, thou must go." Sidney kept entirely 
 to these ineffectual attempts, and had no desire to go 
 further in his examination of the ridiculous side of 
 ordinary men. 
 
 This study was undertaken by several of his con- 
 temporaries. One of the peculiarities of this first 
 awakening of the novel in England, is that it was 
 nearly complete and produced, if not standard master- 
 pieces, at least curious examples of nearly all the 
 different kinds of novel with which later writers have 
 made us familiar. We have seen already how Lyly 
 depicted courtly life, and tried to use the novel as a 
 vehicle for wise and philosophical advice ; how Greene, 
 Lodge and Sidney busied themselves with romantic 
 tales ; how Greene tried to describe the realities of 
 life in some of his autobiographical stories. There 
 was something more to do in this line, and the Eliza- 
 bethan drama offers innumerable examples of it ; but 
 it is not so well known that in the time of Shake- 
 speare, there were in circulation, besides romantic and 
 
 ^ That is to drink of the fountain of Hippocrene, to write verse. 
 '* Puis done que tu n'as jamais voulu t'abreuver aux marais ills de 
 I'ongle du cheval emplume et que la lyrique harmonie du savant 
 meurtrier de Python n'a jamais enfle ta parole, essaye si dans la 
 marchandise Mercurc te pretera son Caducce. Ainsi le turbulent 
 Eole te soit aussi affable qu'aux pacifiques nids des alcyons. Enfin, 
 Chariot, il faut partir " (" Pedant jouc," 1654). 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 291 
 
 chivalrous tales, regular realistic novels, the main 
 object of which was to paint to the life ordinary men 
 and characters. These are the least known, but not 
 the least remarkable of the attempts made by Shake- 
 speare's contemporaries in the direction of the novel as 
 we understand it. 
 
 Works of this kind took for the most part the 
 shape to which has been applied the name oi picaresque. 
 This was, like the pastoral, imported into England 
 from abroad : in the sixteenth century it shone with 
 particular brilliance in Spain. The incessant wars of 
 that vast empire on whose frontiers the sun never set, 
 had favoured the multiplication of adventurers, to-day 
 great lords, to-morrow beggars ; one day dangerous, 
 another day contemptible or ridiculous. " Such 
 people there are living and flourishing in the world, 
 Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless : let us have at them, 
 dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, 
 and very successful too, mere quacks and fools : and 
 it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt 
 that Laughter was made." So wrote in our time 
 William Thackeray,^ who seems to have considered 
 that the age of the picaro had not yet passed away, 
 and that the novelist might still with advantage turn 
 his attention to him. However that may be the great 
 time for the rascal, the rogue, the knave, for all those 
 persons of no particular class whom adventures had 
 left poor and by no means peaceable, for the picaro 
 in all his varieties, was the sixteenth century. A 
 whole literature was devoted to describing the fortunes 
 of these strange persons ; Spain gave it its name 
 ^ " Vanity Fair," chap. viii. 
 
292 THE EISIGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 of picaresque and spread it abroad but did not 
 altogether invent it. The rogue, who plays tricks 
 which deserve a hanging, had already filled and en- 
 livened tales in several languages. Master Reynard, in 
 that romance of the Middle Ages of which he is the 
 hero, is something like a picaro. Another of them 
 is Til Eulenspiegel, whose adventures related in 
 German furnished, in 15 15, the subject of a very 
 popular book ; ^ even Panurge could at need be placed 
 in this great family. Only, with Master Reynard we 
 live in the world of animals and the romance is 
 allegorical ; with Til Eulenspiegel we find no truth, 
 no probability, merely tricks for tricks' sake, and how 
 coarse they are ! With Panurge, we are distracted 
 from the picaro by all the philosophic and fantastic 
 digressions of an extensive tale in which he is not the 
 principal hero. But with the Spaniards, with Lazarillo 
 de Tormes, Guzman d'Alfarache 2 and the rest, the 
 
 ^ Many of his adventures are made up of old anecdotes which 
 were current in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which the 
 success of Eulenspiegel again put into circulation. The very- 
 coarse anecdote connected with the death of Til (chap, xcii.) is 
 the subject of Chaucer's Sompnoures tale. The story in chapter 
 Ixxx. of the innkeeper who asks payment for the smell of his 
 dishes, and who is paid with a tinkling of coins, is also very old, 
 and was afterwards made use of by Rabelais. "Til" was very 
 popular in France and in England. It was translated in both 
 countries ; in the latter one, under the title : " Here beginneth a 
 merye Jest of a man that was called Howleglas," London, Copland, 
 [1528?], 4to. 
 
 ^ "Guzman de Alfarache," by Mateo Aleman appeared in 1598 
 or 1 599. The first edition of " Lazarillo de Tormes " was published 
 a few years before the middle of the sixteenth century. All efforts 
 to ascertain its authorship have proved fruitless. See Alfred Morel 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 293 
 
 picaro holds a place in literature which is peculiarly 
 his own. Faithless, shameless, if not joyless, the 
 plaything of fortune, by turn valet, gentleman, beggar, 
 courtier, thief, we follow him into all societies. From 
 hovel to palace he goes first, opens the doors and 
 shows us the characters. There is no plot more 
 simple or flexible, none that lends itself better to the 
 study of manners, of abuses, of social eccentricities. 
 The only defect is that, in order to abandon himself 
 with necessary good will to the caprices of Fate, and 
 in order to be able to penetrate everywhere, the hero 
 has necessarily little conscience and still less heart ; 
 hence the barrenness of the greater part of the 
 picaresque romances and the weak role., entirely inci- 
 dental, reserved in these works for sentiment. 
 
 The success of these Spanish romances was imme- 
 diate and lasting throughout Europe. ** Lazarillo " 
 and '^ Guzman " were translated into several languages, 
 and were greatly appreciated here and abroad. *' What ! 
 sir," says the Burgundian lord in " Francion," ^ '' is 
 it thus that you cruelly deprive me of the narration 
 of your more amusing adventures.? Do you not know 
 that these commonplace actions are infinitely entertain- 
 ing, and that we take delight in listening even to those 
 of scoundrels and rascals like Guzman d'Alfarache 
 
 Fatio "Lazarille de Tormes," Paris, 1886, Introduction. As to 
 the antiquity of some of tlie adventures in "Lazarillo," see 
 Athenceum, Dec. 29, 1888, p. 883. 
 
 ^ "Histoire comique de Francion," par M. de Moulinet (/>., 
 Charles Sorel), Paris, 1622 (?), 8vo. It was translated into English 
 " by a person of honour," probably Robert Loveday : *' The comical 
 history of Francion," London, 1655, fol. 
 
2 94 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 and Lazarillo de Tormes? " " Guzman " had in France 
 several illustrious translators ; the ponderous author of 
 *' La Pucelle " and famous academician, Chapelain, was 
 one of them ; another was Le Sage who, before 
 penning this translation, had revived and doubled the 
 popularity of the picaresque novel in publishing his 
 " Gil Bias." I In Germany, Grimmelshausen, following 
 the same models, wrote in the seventeenth century 
 his " Simplicissimus." In England " Guzman " was 
 several times translated ; " Lazarillo " was continually 
 reprinted during two centuries, and original romances 
 of this kind were published here, among others, by 
 Thomas Nash, in the sixteenth, by Richard Head in the 
 seventeenth, by Defoe and Smollett, in the eighteenth 
 century. The initiative of Nash and his group 
 was all the more important and meritorious because 
 before them the comic element was greatly wanting in 
 the English prose romance ; amusing stories in the 
 manner of the French had found translators sometimes, 
 but not imitators ; the authors of Arcadias were espe- 
 cially concerned in depicting noble sentiments, and the 
 gift of observation possessed by the English people ran 
 the risk of being for a long time exercised nowhere 
 but on the stage, or in metrical tales, or in moral 
 essays. 
 
 ^ "Le Gueux ou la vie de Guzman d'Alfarache, image de la 
 vie humaine," translated by J. Chapelain, Lyon, 1630. Le Sage pub- 
 lished his " Gil Bias "in 1 7 1 5, and his translation of " Guzman " in 
 1732. "Guzman" was several times translated into English, 
 once by J. Mabbe : "The Rogue, or the Life of Guzman de 
 Alfarache," London, 1623, fol. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 295 
 
 II. 
 
 Thomas Nash made one of that group of young 
 men, full of spirit, fire and imagination, who shone 
 during the first part of Shakespeare's career, who 
 fancied they could live by their pen, and who died 
 prematurely and miserably. Nash was about thirty- 
 three years old when he died in 1600 ; Marlowe was 
 twenty-nine, Peele thirty, Greene thirty-two. 
 
 Nash was born at Lowestoft in 1567 : ^ " The head 
 towne in that iland is Leystofe, in which, bee it 
 knowne to all men, I was borne ; though my father 
 sprung from the Nashes of Herefordshire ; " a family 
 that could "vaunt longer petigrees than patrimonies. " 
 He studied at Cambridge, in St. John's College, *' in 
 which house once I tooke up my inne for seven yere 
 together lacking a quarter, and yet love it still, for it 
 is and ever was, the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all 
 that university." 2 " Saint Johns in Cambridge," says 
 he at another place, " at that time was an universitie 
 within it selfe . . . having, as I have hearde grave men 
 of credite report, more candles light in it everie winter 
 morning before foure of the clocke than the foure of 
 clocke bell gave stroakes." 3 Like Greene and Sidney, he 
 
 ^ He was baptized in November of that year. The discovery is 
 due to Dr. Grosart. Memorial Introduction to the "Works" of 
 Nash, vol. i. p. xii. 
 
 2 "The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe ... for the first 
 time collected," ed. Grosart, London, 1883-4, ^ ^'^^- 4^° '•> "Nashe's 
 lenten stufFe," 1599, vol. v. p. 277 ; "Have with you to Saffron 
 Walden," vol. ii. p. 256 ; "Lenten StufFe," v. p. 241. 
 
 3 Nash's letter " to the Gentlemen Students," prefacing his 
 friend Greene's " Menaphon," 1589. 
 
296 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 imbibed early a passionate taste for literature ; he learnt 
 the classical languages and foreign ones too, at least 
 French and Italian, and enjoyed much miscellaneous 
 reading ; old English literature, Mandeville, Chaucer, 
 Gower, Skelton, were not forgotten. Following then the 
 usual course, he seems to have travelled on the continent, 
 to have visited Italy and Germany, i and to have come 
 home, also according to custom, to rush into literature : 
 by which word was then habitually understood fame, 
 poverty, quarrels, imprisonment, and an early death. 
 Not one of these items was wanting in Nash's career. 
 A prolific and easy writer, he tried his hand at all 
 kinds of work, composing them rapidly and with 
 visible pleasure, always ready to laugh at the follies of 
 others, sometimes at his own, not melancholy like 
 Sidney, nor downcast like Greene. He very rarely 
 alludes to his miseries without a smile, though he could 
 not help regretting the better things he might have 
 done if Fortune had not been so adverse, " had 
 I a ful-sayld gale of prosperity." But " my state is so 
 tost and weather-beaten, that it hath nowe no anchor- 
 holde left to cleave unto." 2 Having said thus much, he 
 immediately resumes his cheerful countenance and in 
 the best of spirits and in perfect good humour goes on 
 
 ^ This has been doubted, for the statement was considered 
 mainly to rest upon the dedication of "An almond for a parrat," 
 and Nash's authorship of this work is no longer accepted (Grosart, 
 i. p. 4). But as good evidence, at least, for Nash's probable travels, 
 is derived from his " Jack Wilton," in which more than one state- 
 ment comes, to all appearance, from an actual eye-witness. 
 
 2 "Lenten Stuffe," "Works," vol. v. p. 204. The first time he 
 appeared in print was when he prefaced with the above-mentioned 
 letter Greene's "Menaphon" in \^'^^. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL, 297 
 
 describing the great city of Yarmouth, the metropolis 
 of the Red Herring. 
 
 With this turn of mind and an inexhaustible fund 
 of wit, satire, and gaiety, he published numerous 
 pamphlets, threw himself impetuously into the Martin 
 Marprelate controversy (in which another novelist, 
 Lyly, was also taking part) ; sustained a rude warfare 
 against Gabriel Harvey ; ^ wrote a dissertation on 
 social manners : the " Anatomie of absurditie," 1589; 
 a disquisition with an autobiographical turn, which 
 may be compared with those Greene has left ; " Pierce 
 Penilesse his supplication to the Divell," 1592 (it had 
 great success/ and was even translated into French, 
 " maimedly translated," says Nash, 2 probably with 
 great truth) ; a novel "The unfortunate traveller or the 
 life of Jack Wilton," 1594, which has most un- 
 deservedly remained until now the least known of 
 his works; a drama, "The Isle of dogs," i597> 
 which is lost, and for which the author was sent to 
 prison ; a curious and amusing discourse " in praise 
 of the red herring," 1599 ; and many other books, 
 pamphlets, and works of all kinds.3 
 
 ^ In his "Quip for an upstart courtier," 1592, Greene had 
 spoken irreverently of Harvey's low extraction. Harvey heaped 
 abuse upon Greene, being rather encouraged than stopped by the 
 death of his opponent. In the same year, Nash, with great 
 courage, rushed to the rescue of his friend and of his memory ; 
 when this was done he continued the war on his own account 
 with great success, till the authorities interfered and stopped both 
 combatants. 
 
 2 " My Piers Penilesse . . . being above two yeres since 
 maimedly translated into the French tongue." "Have with you 
 to Saffron Walden," " Works," vol. iii. p. 47. 
 
 3 His principal writings are distributed as follows in Dr. 
 
298 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Constantly entangled in quarrels, in such a way some- 
 times that the authorities had to interfere — for example, 
 in his war with Gabriel Harvey, when the destruction 
 of the books of both was ordered — he preserved to the 
 last his good humour and his taste for people and 
 authors who knew what it was to laugh. Curiously 
 enough, he combined this taste with an intense fond- 
 ness for pure literature and for lyrical poetry. Rabelais 
 is among his masters, and so is Aretino, " one of 
 the wittiest knaves that ever God made." Tarleton 
 the jester is among his friends, and so is Kemp, 
 the Dogberry of Shakespeare's " Much Ado," the 
 Peter of " Romeo and Juliet," the famous dancer who 
 performed a morris dance from London to Norwich. 
 And at the same time he bestows with unbounded 
 enthusiasm heartfelt praises upon Spenser, " heavenly 
 
 Grosart's edition: — I. "Anatomic of Absurditie," 1589; various 
 Martin Marprelate tractates. II. "Pierce Penilesse," 1592; 
 "Strange newes," 1593, and other writings against Harvey. 
 III. "Have with you to Saffron Walden," 1596 (against Harvey) ; 
 "The terrors of the night or a discourse of apparitions," 1594, in 
 which Nash on many points anticipates Defoe. IV. " Christ's tears 
 over Jerusalem,"! 593, a long pious discourse. V. "The unfortunate 
 traveller," 1594 ; "Lenten Stuffe," 1599. VI. "The tragedie of 
 Dido," 1594 (in collaboration with Marlowe); "Summers last 
 will and testament," a play by Nash alone. 
 
 His " Isle of dogs " is lost, having been suppressed as soon as 
 performed. The troubles Nash got into on account of this un- 
 lucky play are thus commemorated by him: "The straunge 
 turning of the He of Dogs from a commedie to a tragedie two 
 summers past, with the troublesome stir which hapned about it is 
 a generall rumour that hath filled all England, and such a heavie 
 crosse laide upon me as had well neere confounded mee " 
 (" Lenten Stuffe," vol. v. p. 199). 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 299 
 
 Spenser"; upon "immortal" Sidney, whose "i^strophel 
 and Stella" he himself published in 1591; and upon 
 Marlowe, as the author of the exquisite Hero and 
 Leander poem, " Leander and Hero of whome divine 
 Mussus sung and a diviner muse then him, Kit 
 Marlow." i 
 
 With all his fondness for merry authors, Nash can 
 discern true poetry, and he adores it. If by chance, 
 in the midst of an angry satirical disquisition, the v^ord 
 poetry comes to his pen, he is suddenly transformed, he 
 smiles, he melts ; nothing is left in him but human 
 sympathies. " Nor is poetry an art where of there is 
 no use in a man's whole life but to describe dis- 
 contented thoughts and youthfull desires, for there is 
 no study but it dooth illustrate and beautifie. . . . To 
 them that demaund what fruites the poets of our time 
 bring forth, or wherein they are able to approve them- 
 selves necessarie to the state, thus I answere : first 
 and formost, they have cleansed our language from 
 barbarisme, and made the vulgar sort, here in London^ 
 which is the fountaine whose rivers flowe round about 
 England, to aspire to a richer puritie of speach than is 
 communicated with the comminalty of any nation 
 under heaven." ^ When a man like Nash could write 
 in such a strain, with a passion for vernacular literature 
 scarcely equalled at any time, there was obviously 
 groiwing among that " vulgar sort, here in London," a 
 public for any great man that might appear, a public 
 for William Shakespeare himself, who was just then 
 
 ^ "The unfortunate Traveller," vol. v, p. 93 ; "Lenten StufFe/* 
 vol. V. p. 262. 
 
 2 " Pierce Penilesse," "Works," vol. ii. pp. 60, 61. 
 
300 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 beginning to* reach celebrity. Nash does not doubt 
 that it is possible for English to become a classical lan- 
 guage, however rude the garb it first bore. According to 
 Nash, Surrey was " a prince in content because a poet 
 without peere. Destinie never defames her selfe but 
 when she lets an excellent poet die : if there bee any 
 sparke of Adams paradized perfection yet emberd vp 
 in the breasts of mortall men, certainely God hath 
 bestowed that his perfectest image on poets." Differing 
 from Francis Bacon and a few of the grave- dignitaries 
 of literature, he has faith in that group of artists in 
 the first rank of whom he placed heavenly Spenser, 
 who can well bear comparison with any author of 
 France, Italy, or Spain. " Neither is he the only 
 swallow of our summer.'* ^ 
 
 This fondness for pure literature, for musical verse 
 and lyrical poetry, explains how, satirist as he was, 
 Nash had numerous friends whose feelings towards him 
 were nothing short of tenderness. ''Sweet boy," 
 " Sweet Tom," are not usual expressions towards a 
 satirist ; they are, however, applied to Nash both by 
 Greene and by Francis Meres, because there was in 
 Nash's mind something besides the customary rancour 
 of born satirists. " The man," said Shakespeare, 
 
 " The man that has no music in himself 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; 
 
 ' " The unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," 
 *' Works," vol. V. p. 60, and Prefatory letter to Greene's "Mena- 
 phon." 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 301 
 
 The motions of his spirit are as dull as night, 
 And his affections dark as Erebus ; 
 Let no such man be trusted."^ 
 
 A very diiFerent sort of a man was Nash ; his friends 
 found that he could be " mov'd with concord of sweet 
 sounds," and that he could be trusted. As he sur- 
 vived Sidney at a time when a few years meant much 
 for English literature, he could form a far more 
 favourable judgment of the drama than the well- 
 known one in the " Apologie." The ridiculous per- 
 formances noticed by Sidney had not disappeared, but 
 they were not the only ones to be seen on the stage ; 
 dramas of the highest order were being played ; actors 
 rendered them with becoming dignity, and, curiously 
 enough to our ideas, Nash adds as a special praise that 
 women were excluded from among their number : 
 " Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort 
 of squirting baudie comedians, that have whores and 
 common curtezans to play womens parts, and forbeare 
 no immodest speech or unchast action that may procure 
 laughter ; but our sceane is more stately furnisht than 
 ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations 
 honorable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting 
 like theirs of a Pantaloun, a whore and a Zanie, but of 
 emperours, kings and princes whose true tragedies, 
 Sophocleo cothurno they do vaunt." ^ In the next 
 century, women were allowed to replace on the English 
 stage the newly-shaven young fellows who used to play 
 Juliet and Titania ; we are happy to say that so indecent 
 
 ^ Greene's "Groats-worth," "Works," vol. i. p. 143; Mere's 
 " Paladis Tamia " ; " Merchant of Venice," act v. sc. i. 
 "^ "Pierce Penilesse," " Works," vol. ii. p. 92. 
 
 18 
 
302 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 a practice was due to foreign influence. We have 
 Prynne's authority for believing that the first women 
 who had the audacity to appear before a London 
 audience were French. This happened in 1629 at the 
 Blackfi-iars theatre. It is true that not long after, 
 to make up, as it were, for lost time, plays were 
 performed in England in which all the parts were taken 
 by women ; it is not known whether on that occasion 
 they were French. ^ 
 
 Another very important characteristic in Nash is the 
 high ideal he has shaped for himself of the art of 
 writing, not only in verse, but in plain prose. At a 
 time when English prose was scarcely acknowledged 
 to be capable of artistic treatment, and when rules, 
 regulations and theories had, as is generally believed, 
 very little hold upon writers, it is interesting to notice 
 that such an author as Nash, with his stirring style and 
 unbridled pen, with his prison and tavern life, under- 
 / stood that words had a literary value of their own. 
 They were not to be taken at random, but chosen with 
 care. His theory may on some points be disputed, but 
 it is certainly interesting to note that he had a theory 
 at all. First, he desires that a man shall write in his 
 own vein and not copy others, especially those who by 
 their vogue and peculiarities, such as Lyly or Greene, 
 
 ^ '* Histrio-mastix," 1633, 4to, p. 215. Coryat reports on 
 hearsay (1608) that women had already appeared at that date on 
 the English stage ; but he is careful to note that he had never 
 personally witnessed this extraordinary phenomenon ; and he adds 
 that he was greatly astonished to see in Italy women perform their 
 parts in a play " with as good a grace, action and gesture and what- 
 soever convenient for a player as ever I saw any masculine actor" 
 ("Crudities," London, 1.776, vol. ii. p. 16). 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 303 
 
 were easiest of reach and the most tempting to imitate. 
 He strongly defends himself from having ever done 
 anything of this sort ; on the contrary, more than 
 once appeals were made to him to give judgment in 
 literary matters : 
 
 *' Is my style like Greenes, or my j easts like Tarle- 
 tons ? 
 
 " Do I talke of any counterfeit birds, or hearbes 
 or stones? . . . This I will proudly boast . . . that the 
 vaine which I have ... is of my own begetting and 
 cals no man father in England but myselfe, neither 
 Euphues, nor Tarlton, nor Greene. 
 
 " Not Tarlton nor Greene but have beene contented 
 to let my simple judgment overrule them in some 
 matters of wit. Euphues I read when I was a little ape 
 in Cambridge, and I then thought it was i'pse Hie: it 
 may be excellent still for ought I know, but I lookt 
 not on it this ten yeare : but to imitate it I abhorre." ' 
 
 His vocabulary is very rich ; he has always a variety 
 of words at his disposal and uses often two or three the 
 better to impress our minds with the idea in his own. 
 He coins at need new words or fetches them from 
 classical or foreign languages. He does not do this in 
 an off-hand way, but on purpose and wilftilly ; he 
 possessed much of that curious care for and delight 
 in words which is one of the characteristics of the 
 men of the Renaissance. To deal with words was 
 in itself a pleasure for them ; they liked to mould, 
 to adopt, to combine, to invent them. Word paint- 
 ing delighted them ; Nash has an extreme fondness 
 
 ^ "Strange nevves of the intercepting certaine letters," 1592, 
 " Works," vol ii. p. 267. 
 
304 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 for it, and satirical and comical as he is, he often 
 astonishes us by the poetic gracefulness of his combi- 
 nations of words. In this as in many other particulars 
 he imitates, longe sequens, the master he seems to have 
 admired above others, Rabelais, who, in the tempestuous 
 roll of his diverse waters, sometimes washes up on to 
 the sand pearls fit to adorn the crown of any lyrical poet. 
 Fishes appear in Nash's otherwise unpoetical prose as 
 *' the sea's finny freeholders ; " the inhabitants of a port 
 town do not sow corn, " their whole harvest is by sea ;" 
 they plough "the glassy fieldes of Thetis." He has an 
 instinctive hatred for abstract terms ; he wants ex- 
 pressive words, words that shine, that breathe, that 
 live. Instead of saying that Henry III. granted a char- 
 ter and certain privileges in a particular year of his 
 reign^ he will write that " he cheard up their blonds 
 with two charters more, and in Anno 1262 and forty- 
 five of his courte keeping,, he permitted them to wall 
 in their town&." ^ The pleasure of replacing stale, 
 common-place expressions by rare, picturesque, live 
 ones, and in lieu of a plain sentence to give an allegorical 
 substitute, has so much attraction for Nash, that clear- 
 sighted as he is, he cannot always avoid the or- 
 dinary defects of this particular style, defects which 
 he has in common with many of his contemporaries, 
 not excluding Shakespeare himself, namely, obscurity 
 and sometimes bad taste. 
 
 Another of Nash's tendencies, which he has most 
 
 decidedly in common with Rabelais, consists in the 
 
 use of a number of expressions in the same sentence 
 
 for the same idea. Of course one carefully chosen 
 
 ^ "Lenten StufFe," vol. v. pp. 226, 244, 216. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 305 
 
 word would be enough ; such a man as Merimee, to 
 take an example at the other extremity of the line, 
 picks out the one term he wants, puts it in its place ; 
 word and place fit exactly ; there is nothing to add or 
 desire. Not so Rabelais ; not so either his admirer 
 Nash ; the newly-awakened curiosities of the Renais- 
 sance were too young as yet, too fresh and strong upon 
 them, to be easily kept down by rule and reflection. 
 Literature too was young then, and young things are 
 endowed with eyes that stare and admire more easily 
 than old ones. When entering their word-shop, writers 
 of the sixteenth century were fain to take this word, 
 and this other too, and yet that one more ; and when 
 on the threshold, about to go, they would turn and 
 take two or three again. There are pages in Rabelais 
 and pages in Nash where most of the important words 
 are supplemented and fortified with a number of others 
 placed there at our disposal as alternatives or substitutes, 
 for the pleasure of our ears and eyes, in case we might 
 like them better. Nash has to express this very simple 
 idea : Look at Yarmouth, what a fine town it is ! Well, 
 it owes all it is to the red herring. This he formulates 
 in the following manner with quite a Rabelaisian 
 mixture of native and half Latin words and iterations 
 for most terms of importance : " Doe but convert, 
 said hee, the slenderest twinckling reflexe of your eye- 
 sight to this flinty ringe that engirtes it, these towred 
 walles, port-cullizd gates, and gorgeous architectures that 
 condecorate and adorne it, and then perponder of the 
 red herringes priority and prevalence, who is the onely 
 inexhaustible mine that hath raised and begot all this, 
 and, minutely, to riper maturity, fosters and cherisheth 
 
 it." I 
 
 ^ "Works," vol. V. p. 231. 
 
3o6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Some critics of his time abused Nash for the liberties 
 he took with the vocabulary, especially for his foreign 
 and compound words. He was ready with this half- 
 serious, half-jocose answer : " To the second rancke of 
 reprehenders, that complain of my boystrous compound 
 wordes, and ending my Italionate coyned verbes all in 
 izcy' such as " tympanize ; tirannize," says he elsewhere ; 
 ** thus I replie : That no winde that blowes strong but 
 is boystrous ; no speech or wordes of any power or 
 force to confute or perswade, but must be swelling and 
 boystrous. For the compounding of my wordes, 
 therein I imitate rich men, who having gathered store 
 of white single money together, convert a number of 
 those small little scutes into great peeces of gold, such 
 as double Pistoles and Portugues. Our English tongue 
 of all languages, most swarmeth with the single money 
 of monosillables, which are the onely scandall of it. 
 Bookes written in them and no other seeme like shop- 
 keepers* bookes, that containe nothing else save halfe- 
 pence, three-farthings, and two-pences. Therefore what 
 did me I , but having a huge heape of those worth lesse 
 shreds of small English in my pa maters purse, to 
 make the royaller shew with them to men's eye, had 
 them to the compounders immediately, and exchanged 
 them foure into one, and others into more, according to 
 the Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian." ^ 
 
 Nash had a particular literary hatred for mere 
 empty bombast. His love for high-sounding words 
 with a meaning was not greater than his aversion for 
 big sounds without one. Even his friend Marlowe 
 
 ^ Preface to " Christ's teares," edition of 1594, " Works,'' vol. iv. 
 p. 6. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 307 
 
 does not escape his censure for having trespassed in this 
 particular beyond the limits of good taste. Nash 
 wonders " how eloquent our gowned age is growen of 
 late," and he has nothing but contempt for those "vain- 
 glorious tragoedians who contend not so seriously to 
 excel in action, as to embowell the clowdes in a 
 speach of comparison ; thinking themselves more than 
 initiated in poets immortalitie, if they but once get 
 Boreas by the beard and the heavenlie bull by the 
 deaw-lap." i 
 
 His ideas regarding the art of novel writing are very 
 liberal, and he accepts as belonging to literature many 
 specimens we should sternly reject. The one point to 
 remember, however, is that he does not accept them 
 all ; he draws the line somewhere, and in that age when 
 the novel was in its infancy, there was merit in 
 doing even no more than this. He is very hard upon 
 the old mediaeval romances, which it is true he seems 
 to have known only through the abridged and degene- 
 rate texts circulated in his time, for the amusement of 
 idle readers. He readily endorses the moral views of 
 Ascham about them, adding however, what is more 
 interesting for us, some literary criticism : " What els. 
 I pray you, doe these bable booke-mungers endevor 
 but to repaire the ruinous wals of Venus court, to 
 restore to the worlde that forgotten legendary licence of 
 lying, to imitate a fresh the fantasticall dreames of those 
 exiled Abbie-lubbers [/.^., the monks] from whose idle 
 pens proceeded those worne out impressions of the 
 feigned no where acts of Arthur of the rounde table,. 
 Arthur of litle Brittaine, Sir Tristram, Hewon of Bur- 
 ^ Prefatory letter to Greene's " Menaphon." 
 
3o8 THE ENGLISH NO VEL, 
 
 deaux, the Squire of low degree, the four sons of 
 Anion, with infinite others. . . . Who is it that reding 
 Bevis of Hampton, can forbeare laughing, if he marke 
 what scambling shyft he makes to end his verses a Rke? 
 I will propound three or foure payre by the way for the 
 readers recreation : 
 
 The porter said : By my snout, 
 It was Sir Bevis that I let out." ^ 
 
 Every reader will agree with Nash, I suppose, in 
 condemning this as balderdash. 
 
 Endowed thus with artistic theories of his own, with 
 an intense love of literature, with an inborn gaiety and 
 faculty of observation, Nash added to the collection of 
 novels of the Shakespearean era, not another Bevis of 
 Hampton, but his "Jack Wilton," 2 the best speci- 
 men of the picaresque tale in English literature 
 anterior to Defoe. His romance, written in the form of 
 r memoirs, according to the usual rule of the picaresque, 
 is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, under whose 
 patronage Shakespeare had already placed his " Venus 
 and Adonis." It has the defect of all the romances of 
 the time, in England as elsewhere : it is incoherent and 
 badly put together. But it contains excellent fragments, 
 two or three capital portraits of individuals which show 
 careful observation, and a few solidly constructed scenes 
 like the vengeance of Cutwolfe which allow us to fore- 
 see that one day the dramatic power of the English 
 genius, worn out doubtless by a too long career on the 
 
 ^ " Anatomie of Absurditie," 1589, "Works," vol. i. p. 37. 
 
 "^ " The unfortunate Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," 1 594, 
 " Works," vol. V. 
 
\ 
 
 THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 309 
 
 stage, instead of dying altogether, will be revived in 
 the novel. 
 
 Nash, after the manner employed by More in his 
 " Utopia," by Greene in his '' Ciceronis amor," and 
 in our age, with a splendour of fame to which several 
 generations have already borne testimony, by Sir Walter 
 Scott, introduces historical personages in his fiction. 
 The page Jack Wilton, the hero of the tale, a little 
 superior by his rank to the ordinary picaro has, like 
 Gil Bias, little money in his pocket and a few odds 
 and ends of Latin in his head ; he distributes in his 
 conversation the trite quotations that have remained 
 by him, skilfully enough to persuade the vulgar that 
 he does not belong to their tribe. *' Tendit ad sidera 
 virtus — Paulo majora canamus — Secundum formam 
 statuti," &c., and from time to time, when he is 
 greatly elated and wishes to show himself in all his 
 magnificence, he adopts the elegances and similes proper 
 to the euphuistic style : " The sparrow for his lecherie 
 liveth but a yeere," &c.i 
 
 Wilton is present first with the royal court of 
 England at the siege of Tournay, under Henry VIII. 
 What my credit was at this court '' a number of my 
 creditors that I coosned can testifie." He lives on the 
 resources of his wits, playing tricks worthy a whipping 
 if not a hanging on respectable persons of limited 
 
 ^ In these cases, Nash, or rather his hero (for Nash does not 
 himself" make use of this language which he in no way admired, 
 but only puts it into the mouth of his self-confident good-for- 
 nothing as the finishing touch to his portrait), adopts Lyly's style 
 entirely, alliteration and all : " The sparrow for his lecherie liveth 
 but a yeere, he for his trecherie was turned on the toe." 
 
3 lo THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 capacity. His most notable victim is the purveyor of 
 drink or victualler to the camp, a tun-bellied coward, 
 proud of his pretended noble descent, a Falstaff grown 
 old, whose wit has been blunted, who has ended by marry- 
 ing Mistress Quickly, and has himself become tavern 
 keeper in partnership with her. In old days he drank 
 on credit : now the good fellows tipple at his expense. 
 Such is the end of all the FalstafFs and all the Scapins. 
 " This great Lorde, this worthie Lord," relates the 
 wicked page, '' thought no scorne. Lord have mercy 
 upon us, to have his great velvet breeches larded with 
 the droppings of this dainty liquor," that is, the cider 
 that he sold ; *' and yet he was an olde servitor, a 
 cavelier of an ancient house, as it might appeare by the 
 armes of his ancestrie, drawen very amiably in chalk, 
 on the in side of his tent doore." ^ 
 
 The scene between the fat, ruddy host, open- 
 mouthed, blear-eyed, and the frolicking slender page, 
 who delights in his tricks and covers his victim with 
 jesting compliments, is extremely well described. 
 Wilton finds his man '* counting his barrels, and 
 setting the price in chalke on the head of everie 
 one of them." He addresses him his " duty verie 
 devoutly," and tells him he has matters of some 
 secrecy to impart to him for which a private audience 
 is necessary : 
 
 *' With me, young Wilton } quoth he, marie and 
 shalt. Bring us a pint of syder of a fresh tap into the 
 * Three Cups ' ^ here ; wash the pot ! 
 
 '* So into a backe roome he lead mee, where after hee 
 
 had spit on his finger, and picked off two or three 
 
 I " Works," vol. V. pp. 1 5 et seq, ^ Name of a room in the tavern. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PIC ARE SQ UE NO VEL. 3 1 1 
 
 moats of his olde moth eaten velvet cap, ... he badde 
 me declare my minde, and there upon he dranke to me 
 on the same." 
 
 Jack is careful not to touch at once on the matter in 
 his head : he knows his man and attacks him first by 
 that vanity of a noble descent which he possesses in 
 common with Falstaff. Jack has always borne him 
 affection, " partly for the high discent and linage fi-om 
 whence he sprung, and partly for the tender care and 
 provident respect he had of poore soldiers ... he 
 vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualer to the 
 campe : a rare example of magnificence and courtesie ; 
 and diligently provided, that without farre travel, every 
 man might have for his money syder and cheese his 
 bellyfull. Nor did he sell his cheese by the way onely, 
 or his syder by the great, but abast himselfe with his 
 owne hands to take a shoomakers knife : a homely 
 instrument for such a high personage to touch, and cut 
 it out equally like a true justiciarie in little penny^ 
 worthes that it would doo a man good for to looke 
 upon. So likewise of his syder, the pore man might 
 have his moderate draught of it (as there is moderation 
 in all things) as well for his doit or his dandiprat as the 
 rich man for his halfe souse or his denier . . . ** 
 
 Jack goes on irrepressible, overflowing ; it is his 
 best moment ; he does not want the sport to end too 
 quickly : '* Why, you are everie childs felow : any man 
 that comes under the name of a souldier and a good 
 fellowe, you will sitte and beare companie to the last 
 pot, yea, and you take in as good part the homely 
 phrase of: ' Mine host heeres to you,' as if one saluted 
 you by all the titles of your baronie. These considera- 
 
3 1 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 tions, I sale, which the world suffers to slip by in the 
 channel 1 of carelesnes, have moved me in ardent zeale 
 of your welfare, to forewarne you of some dangers that 
 have beset you and your barrels. 
 
 " At the name of dangers hee start up, and bounst 
 with his fist on the boord so hard, that his tapster 
 overhearing him cried : 'Anon ! anon ! sir/ and entering 
 with a bow askt him what he wanted. 
 
 " Hee was readie to have stricken his tapster for 
 interrupting him in attention of this his so much 
 desired relation, but for feare of displeasing me he 
 moderated his furie, and onely sending him for the 
 other fresh pint, wild him looke to the barre, and come 
 when he is cald with a devilles name. 
 
 " Well, at his earnest importunitie, after I had mois- 
 tned my lips, to make my lie run glib to his journies 
 end, forward I went as followeth ..." And the good 
 apostle stops again ; the cider and his own words have 
 moved him ; he is a little fuddled, so is mine host ; they 
 both fall to weeping. The innkeeper is ready to believe 
 anything, and at this moment, which is the right one, 
 the page at length determines to inform him that in an 
 assembly where he was present, he heard mine host, 
 the purveyor of the camp, accused of connivance with 
 the enemy, by giving information to the besieged 
 through letters hidden in his empty barrels. High 
 treason is suspected ! How are these dangerous rumours 
 to be dissipated } There is only one way of doing it, 
 that is in becoming popular in the army, very popular ; 
 he must make himself beloved by all ; he must dis- 
 tribute cider freely and for a time suppress in his shop 
 the unbecoming custom of paying. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL, 313 
 
 The victualler follows this advice, but soon the trick 
 is discovered ; the page is roundly whipped, but being 
 to the core a true picaroon, Wilton does not for all that 
 feel his spirit in any way lessened : " Here let me 
 triumph a while, and ruminate a line or two on the 
 excellence of my wit ! " This is all the sorrow and 
 repentance the whip extracts from him. 
 
 Shakespeare, two years later, fused the two characters 
 into one, caused the wit of the page to enter the brain 
 of the fat man, and the blending, animated by his 
 genius, produced the inimitable customer of the 
 *' Boar's Head" tavern. 
 
 After various adventures, Wilton returns to London, 
 and struts about in fine clothes, whose originality he 
 describes with an amusing rush of language : " I had 
 my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top ; 
 . . . my cape cloake of blacke cloth, over-spreading 
 my backe like a thornbacke or an elephantes ca- 
 res, . . . and in consummation of my curiositie my hands 
 without gloves, all a mode French." The sense of the 
 picturesque, the careful observation of the effect of a 
 pose, of a fold of a garment, were, before Nash, entirely 
 unknown to English novel writers, and it was not until 
 the eighteenth century, until the time of Defoe, Field- 
 ing, and, above all, Sterne, that the author of " Jack 
 Wilton " was excelled in this special talent. 
 
 Soon the page takes up the course of his adventures 
 again, and travels anew on the continent. He visits 
 Venice, Florence, Rome, refraining with a care for 
 which he is to be thanked from trite descriptions. 
 What's the good of describing the monuments of 
 Rome } he says ; everybody knows them : "he that 
 
314 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 hath but once drimke with a traveller, talkes of them." 
 Sir Thomas More contemplating his ** Utopia," John 
 of Leyden dragged to the scaffold, the Earl of Surrey 
 jousting for the fair Geraldine " against all commers," 
 Francis I., conqueror at Marignan, Erasmus, Aretino, 
 *' one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made," and 
 other personages of the Renaissance, figure in the nar- 
 rative. Faithflil to the picaresque plot, Nash conducts 
 his reader into all societies, from the tavern to the 
 palace, from the haunt of robbers to the papal court, 
 and makes his hero no better than he should be. At 
 Marignan, Wilton occupies himself especially in dis- 
 covering quickly who is likely to be the strongest, in 
 order to attach himself ardently to the winner. At 
 Venice he runs away with an Italian lady, deserts his 
 master, the Earl of Surrey, and passes himself off as 
 the Earl. 
 
 All this is too much at length for honest Nash, and 
 feeling not less displeased than ourselves with the wicked 
 actions of his hero, he himself interposes at times, not 
 without disadvantage to his plot, and, in spite of the 
 improbability of placing such remarks in Wilton's 
 mouth, introduces his own opinions on the persons and 
 incidents of the romance. This is an effect of the 
 impetuosity of his temperament, blameable undoubtedly 
 from an artistic point of view. We shall be indulgent 
 to him if we remember that no author of the time was 
 entirely master of himself and faithful to his plot. 
 Even Shakespeare rarely resists like temptation, and 
 when a poetic image comes into his mind, little matters 
 it to him what character is on the stage ; he makes of 
 him a dreamer, a poet, and lends to him the exquisite 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL, 315 
 
 language of his own emotion. Let us remember how 
 the murderers hired to assassinate Edward's children 
 describe the scene of the murder. They saw " the 
 gentle babes . . . girdling one another 
 
 Within their alabaster innocent arms : 
 
 Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, 
 
 And, in their summer beauty, kiss'd each other." 
 
 A very improbable remark, it will be admitted, on the 
 part of the murderers. But, then, it -is Shakespeare 
 who talks aloud, forgetting that he is supposed not to 
 be there. 
 
 Nash, with like heedlessness, often interposes in his 
 own person, and takes the words out of his page's 
 mouth ; and his bold, characteristic and concise 
 opinions are very curious in the history of manners 
 and literature. For example, when he describes the 
 war of the Anabaptists and the execution of John of 
 Leyden, he sums up thus in a short pithy sentence the 
 current opinion of his day among literary people and 
 men of the world, on the already formidable sect of 
 the Puritans : " Heare what it is to be Anabaptists, 
 to bee puritans, to be villaines : you may be counted 
 illuminate botchers for a while, but your end wil be : 
 Good people pray for me." 
 
 His open admiration of the charity of the Catholics 
 at Rome reveals in him great independence of mind and 
 much courage : " Yet this I must say to the shame of 
 us Protestants, if good workes may merit heaven they 
 doo them, we talke of them. Whether superstition or 
 no makes them unprofitable servants, that let pulpets 
 decide : but there, you shall have the bravest Ladies in 
 
3i6 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 gownes of beaten gold, washing pilgrimes and poore 
 souldiours feete, and dooing nothing they and their 
 wayting mayds all the yeare long, but making shirts 
 and bandes for them against they come by in distressed* 
 At Wittenberg, Wilton sees "Acolastus" performed, 
 an old play that was as popular in England as on the 
 continent, I and Nash's severe criticism on the actors 
 shows how well the difference between good comedians 
 and common players was understood in London. Nash 
 shared Shakespeare's opinion of the actors who " out- 
 heroded Herod," and he would have been of Moliere's 
 way of thinking about the performances at the Hotel de 
 Bourgogne : " One as if he had beene playning a clay 
 floore, stampingly troade the stage so harde with his 
 feete, that I thought verily he had resolved to doe the 
 carpenter that sette it uppe some utter shame. Another 
 floung his armes lyke cudgelles at a peare tree, inso- 
 much as it was mightily dreaded that hee woulde strike 
 the candles that hung above theyr heades out of their 
 sockets, and leave them all darke." This severe criti- 
 cism may serve to reassure us about the way in which 
 the great English dramas were interpreted at that 
 period. 2 And indeed they deserved that some trouble 
 
 ^ It was translated into English from the Latin by John Pals- 
 grave : "Acolastus," London, 1540, 4to. As to this play and its 
 author, Gulielmus Gnapheus (Fullonius) of the Hague, who had it 
 represented in 1529, see C. H. Herford, "Studies in the Literary 
 Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century," 
 Cambridge, 1886, 8vo, pp. 84 et seq., 108 et seq. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 71. Cf. "Returne from Parnassus," 1601, ed. 
 Macray, Oxford, 1886, act iv. sc. 3, pp. 138 et seq.^ where the rules 
 of good acting are also under discussion. Shakespeare's opinions 
 on the same are well known ("Hamlet," act iii. sc. 2, a.d. 1602). 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 317 
 
 should be taken with them, for in London it was 
 the time of " Romeo and Juliet/' of " Midsummer 
 Night's Dream," of " Richard III." 
 
 In fact, Nash does not only possess the merit of 
 knowing how to observe the ridiculous side of human 
 nature, and of pourtraying in a full light picturesque 
 figures now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot ; 
 some fat and greasy, others lean and lank ; he pos- 
 sesses a thing very rare with the picaresque school, the 
 faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen 
 the immense field of study which was to be opened 
 later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, 
 as Lyly and Sidney appear to us to be distant ancestors 
 of Richardson, he understands that a picture of active 
 life, reproducing only, in the Spanish fashion, scenes of 
 comedy, is incomplete and departs from reality. The 
 greatest jesters, the most arrogant, the most venture- 
 some have their days of anguish ; no brow has ever 
 remained unfurrowed from the cradle to the grave, and 
 no one has been able to live an impassive spectator and 
 not feel his heart sometimes beat the quicker, nor bow 
 his head in sorrow. Nash caught a glimpse of this, 
 and therefore mingled serious scenes with his pictures 
 of comedy, in order that his romance might the more 
 closely resemble life. Sometimes they are love scenes as 
 when the Earl of Surrey describes to us his awakening 
 passion for Geraldine, and how he met her at Hampton 
 Court: "Oh thrice emperiall Hampton Court, Cupids 
 inchaunted castle, the place where I first sawe the perfect 
 omnipotence of the Almightie expressed in mortalitie ! " 
 Sometimes they are tragic scenes full of blood and tor- 
 tures. It is true that Nash then falls into melodrama 
 
 19 
 
3 1 8 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 and conducts his Wilton to a sort of Tour de Nesles 
 where the Countess Juhana, the Pope's mistress, gives 
 herself up to excesses, by the side of which those of Mar- 
 garet of Burgundy are but child's play. Murders, rapes, 
 and scenes of robbery multiply under cover of the plague 
 that rages at Rome, and the horrors resulting from the 
 pestilence are described with a vigour that reminds us 
 of Defoe, without however equalling him. Carts con- 
 taining the dead go up and down the streets, and 
 lugubrious cries resound : " Have you anie dead to 
 burie } Have you anie dead to burie ? " The carts 
 " had manie times of one house their whole loading." 
 
 Wilton is accused of murders committed in his house ; 
 the rope almost about his neck, he is saved by an 
 English earl, in exile, who seems to have been imbued 
 with Ascham's teaching, and who reproaches him for 
 travelling, especially - in Italy, where morals are 
 so corrupt and where immorality is so dangerous. 
 " Take care," said the earl, *' if thou doest but 
 lend halfe a looke to a Romans or Italians wife, thy 
 porredge shall bee prepared for thee, and cost thee 
 nothing but thy life." The earl, who proves to be a 
 rather pedantic nobleman, passes in review all nations, 
 and proves that they are not worth the trouble of going 
 to see. Wilton, whose personal experience does not justify 
 such unfavourable prognostications, especially now that 
 he is out of danger, is wearied by this talk, and, pretend- 
 ing important business, gives his chattering benefactor 
 the slip. He is soon punished ; he is captured by the 
 Jews of Rome ; his adventures become more and more 
 mysterious and alarming, and more and more does 
 melodrama invade the story. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL, 319 
 
 Sometimes, however, in the midst of these abomina- 
 tions, Nash's tone rises ; his language becomes eloquent 
 and his emotion infectious ; he shudders himself, horror 
 penetrates him and seizes us ; the jests of the picaroon 
 are very far from our mind, the drama is then as terrible 
 as with the most passionate romanticists of our century 
 in their best moments. 
 
 Few stories of our day are better contrived to give 
 the sense of the horrible than the story of the vengeance 
 of Cutwolfe related by himself just as he is going to be 
 tortured. After a prolonged search, Cutwolfe at last 
 finds his enemy, Esdras of Granada, alone, in his shirt, 
 and far from all help. The unfortunate man implores 
 Cutwolfe, whose brother he had killed, to make it 
 impossible for him to do any more harm, to mutilate 
 him, but to spare his life. His enemy replies : 
 *' Though I knewe God would never have mercie on 
 mee except I had mercie on thee, yet of thee no mercie 
 would I have. ... I tell thee, I would not have under- 
 tooke so much toyle to gaine heaven, as I have done 
 in pursuing thee for revenge. Divine revenge, of 
 which, as one of the joies above, there is no fulnes or 
 satietie. Looke how my feete are blistered with follow- 
 ing thee from place to place. I have riven my throat 
 with overstraining it to curse thee. I have ground my 
 teeth to powder with grating and grinding them 
 together for anger, when anie hath nam'd thee. My 
 tongue with vaine threates is bolne, and waxen too big 
 for my mouth. . . . Entreate not, a miracle maye not 
 reprive thee." 
 
 The scene is prolonged. Esdras continues to beg 
 for his life ; he will become the slave, the chattel of 
 
320 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 his enemy. An idea comes into the mind of the latter : 
 Sell thy soul to the devil, and I will pardon thee. 
 Esdras immediately utters horrible blasphemies. 
 
 " My joints trembled and quakt," continues Cut- 
 wolfe, '' with attending them, my haire stood upright, 
 and my hart was turned wholly to fire. . . . The veyne 
 in his left hand that is derived from his heart with no 
 faint blow he pierst, and with the bloud that flowd from 
 it, writ a hil obligation of his soule to the divell : yea 
 more earnestly he praied unto God never to forgive 
 his soule than manie Christians doo to save theyr 
 soules. These fearfull ceremonies brought to an end, 
 I bad him ope his mouth and gape wide. He did so : 
 as what wil not slaves doo for feare ? Therwith made 
 1 no more adoo, but shot him fill into the throat with 
 my pistol : no more spake he after ; so did I shoote 
 him that hee might never speak after, or repent him. 
 His body being dead lookd as black as a toad." ^ 
 
 This conversation and the sight of Cutwolfe's 
 horrible punishment, recall Jack Wilton to himself 
 He regrets his irregular life, but not to the point of 
 refimding the money stolen from the Countess Juliana; 
 rich as Gil Bias, he can now, like him, take rank 
 among peaceable and settled folk ; he marries his 
 Venetian lady, and returns to the king of England's 
 army, occupied in giving a grand reception to Francis I. 
 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. There ends the 
 most complete career furnished in England, before 
 Defoe, by a character of fiction. 
 
 The primary if not only result of the publication of 
 " Jack Wilton " was, so far as the author himself was 
 ^ '* Works," vol. V. p. 183. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 321 
 
 concerned, to place him in new difficulties. His well- 
 known satirical vein, his constant use and abuse of 
 allusions, which often render him obscure, were so well 
 known that it was considered improbable that he had 
 been writing this time with a merely artistic aim. He 
 had been careful to state in his dedication that readers 
 would merely find in his book " some reasonable con- 
 veyance of historic and varietie of mirth," and that he 
 was attempting a kind of writing new to him ; it was 
 to no purpose. Readers were on the look-out for 
 allusions ; they took his historical heroes for living 
 people but thinly disguised, and lined Nash's story with 
 another of their own invention. The author, who well 
 knew the dangers of such interpretations, never ceased 
 to protest that, in this work at least, there was no 
 place for them. When once the public is started upon 
 such a track, it is no easy matter to make them turn 
 round. Nash had recourse to his usual revenge, that 
 is, to laugh at his interpreters. " I am informed," he 
 wrote, shortly after his " Wilton " was printed, " there 
 be certaine busie wits abrode that seeke to anagram- 
 matize the name of Wittenberge to one of the Univer- 
 sities of England ; that scorn to be counted honest, 
 plaine meaning men, like their neighbours, for not so 
 much as out of mutton and potage, but they will 
 construe a meaning of kings and princes. Let one but 
 name bread, but they will interpret it to be the town 
 of Bredan in the Low countreyes ; if of beere he talkes, 
 then straight he mockes the countie Beroune in France ; 
 if of foule weather or a shower of raine, he hath relation 
 to some that shall raigne next.'* ^ 
 
 ^ "Chrises teares " (preface of the edition of 1594), "Works," 
 
3 2 2 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 His remonstrances seem to have had very indifferent 
 success, and Nash, to our great loss, did not again 
 attempt novel writing. But the vein was in him, 
 and it constantly reappears in the variety of pamphlets 
 he has left behind him. Fine scenes of comedy, good 
 portraits of ridiculous characters to be met in everyday 
 life, amusing anecdotes, nearly all the elements of a 
 sound comic novel are scattered through his writings. 
 The familiar portraits of the upstart, of the false poli- 
 tician, of the inventor of new sects, portraits at which 
 many observers of human nature in the time of Shake- 
 speare tried their hand, are to be seen in the gallery 
 Nash painted in his " Pierce Penilesse." ^ Conformably 
 to the fitness of things, Nash described himself under 
 the name of Pierce,^ as Sidney had given his high moral 
 tone, his melancholy and loving soul to the shepherd 
 Philisides, as Greene had told his own miseries under 
 the name of poor Roberto. Here is Nash's portrait of 
 the upstart who has travelled abroad and has brought 
 back from his journey nothing more valuable than scorn 
 for his own country : " Hee will bee humorous forsooth 
 and have a broode of fashions by himselfe. Somtimes, 
 because Love commonly wears the liverie of wit, hee will 
 be an Inamorato poeta^ and sonnet a whole quire of paper 
 in praise of Ladie Manibetter, his yeolowfac'd mistres. . . . 
 
 vol. iv. p. 5. He recurs again to the same topic in his " Lenten 
 StufFe " (1599), ^^^ complains that when he talks of rushes it is 
 taken to mean Russia, &c. 
 
 ' " Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the Divell" (1592), 
 "Works," vol. ii. 
 
 2 Nash speaks of himself as being Pierce : "This is a predesti- 
 nate fit place for Pierse Pennilesse to set up his staff on." "Lenten 
 Stuffe," "Works," vol. v. p. 201. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NO VEL, 323 
 
 All Italionato is his talke, and his spade peake \i.e.y his 
 beard] is as sharpe as if he had been a pioner before 
 the walls of Roan. Hee will dispise the barbarisme of 
 his owne countrey, and tell a whole legend of lyes of 
 his travayles unto Constantinople. If he be challenged 
 to fight . . . hee objects that it is not the custome 
 of the Spaniard or the Germaine to looke backe to 
 everie dog that barks. You shall see a dapper Jacke 
 that hath beene but once at Deepe, wring his face 
 round about, as a man would stirre up a mustard pot 
 and talke English through the teeth, like Jaques Scabd- 
 hams, or Monsieur Mingo de Moustrapo ; when, poore 
 slave, he hath but dipt his bread in wylde boares greace 
 and come home againe, or been bitten by the shinnes by 
 a wolfe ; and saith he hath adventured uppon barricadoes 
 of Gurney or Guingan, and fought with the yong 
 Guise hand to hand." 
 
 Like Benjonson, Nash met on his way some Politick 
 Would-Bes that ^' thinke to be counted rare politicians 
 and statesmen, by beeing solitarie : as who should say, 
 I am a wise man," ^ — " and when I ope my lips," would 
 have added Shakespeare, " let no dog bark ! " He 
 has met inventors of sects, and has heard of pre- 
 Darwinian '^ mathematicians " who doubt the fact that 
 there were no men before Adam and are inclined to 
 
 I "Works," vol. ii. Cf. Ben Jonson : "Sir Politick (speaking 
 to Peregrine) : 
 
 " First for your garb, it must be grave and serious, 
 Very reserv'd and lock'd; not tell a secret 
 On any terms, not to your father ; scarce 
 A fable, but with caution " (" The Fox," act iv. sc. i). 
 
324 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 think there are no devils at all. Nash strongly con- 
 demns these inventors and mathematicians, drawing at 
 the same time a curious picture of the state of confusion 
 in religious matters which was then so conspicuous in 
 England : " They will set their self love to study to 
 invent new sects of singularitie, thinking to live when 
 they are dead, by having their sect called after their 
 names: as Donatists of Donatus, Arrian[s] of Arrius, 
 and a number more of new faith founders, that have 
 made England the exchange of innovations and almost 
 as much confusion of religion in everie quarter, as there 
 was of tongues at the building of the Tower of 
 Babel 
 
 *' Hence atheists triumph and rejoyce and talke as 
 prophanely of the Bible as of Bevis of Hampton. 
 I heare say there are mathematicians abroad that will 
 proove men before Adam ; and they are harboured in 
 high places, who will maintayne to the death that there 
 are no di veils." ^ 
 
 Scenes of light comedy abound in Nash ; they are 
 especially numerous in his " Lenten Stuff," 2 a queer 
 little book, his last work, and one which he seems to 
 have written con amove. Never was he in better 
 humour than when, the year before his death, he betook 
 himself to singing " the praise of the red herring," 
 Monsieur Herring, Solyman Herring, Sacrapant Her- 
 ring, Red Herring of Red Herring hall, Pater Patriae, 
 as he is fond of calling him, inventing on each page a 
 
 ^ "Works," vol. ii. 
 
 2 "Nashe's Lenten StufFe, containing the description ... of 
 Great Yarmouth . . . with a . . . praise of the Red Herring," 
 1599, "Works," vol. V. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 325 
 
 new title for his hero. There is no event in ancient 
 or modern history where he does not discover that 
 " Caesarean Charlemaine Herring " has had a part to 
 play ; no person of however mean or exalted rank who 
 has not had to deal with " Gentleman Jacke Herring." 
 The fishes made him their king, and the Pope made 
 him a saint. The first time he appeared at the Pope's 
 court was a great event in Christendom. An English 
 sailor had sold him for three hundred ducats to the 
 purveyor of the papal kitchen, and *' delivered him the 
 king of fishes, teaching hym to geremumble It, sauce 
 it, and dresse it, and so sent him away a glad man. 
 All the Pope's cookes in their white sleeves and linnen 
 aprons met him middle way to enter taine and receyve 
 the king of fishes, and together by the eares they went, 
 who shoulde first handle him or touch him. But the 
 clarke of the kitchin appeased that strife, and would 
 admit none but him selfe to have the scorching and 
 carbonadoing of it, and he kissed his hands thrice, 
 and made as many humhlessos before he woulde finger 
 it ; and, such obeysances performed, he drest it as he 
 was enjoyned, kneeling on his knes, and mumbling 
 twenty Ave Maryes to hymselfe, in the sacrifizing of 
 it on the coales, that his diligent service in the broyling 
 and combustion of it, both to his kingship and to his 
 fatherhood might not seeme unmeritorious." ^ 
 
 However careful Thomas Nash had been to act 
 according to the views attributed to Dr. Andrew Borde 
 concerning the cultivation of mirth as a preservative 
 of health, he reached what this authority calls " the 
 mirth of heaven," with much more rapidity than might 
 ^ "Lenten StufFe," vol. v. p. 280. 
 
326 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 have been expected. His mirth diet was obviously 
 adulterated and mingled with wrath and sorrow. He 
 had been born in 1567, and we read about him in a 
 
 TOM NASH HIS GHOST. 
 
 comedy performed at Cambridge in 1601, these verses 
 which are friendly if not very poetical : 
 
 '* Let all his faultes sleepe with his mournfull chest, 
 And there for ever with his ashes rest, 
 His style was wittie, though it had some gall, 
 Some things he might have mended, so may all, 
 Yet this I say, that for a mother witt. 
 Few men have ever seen the like of it." ^ 
 
 ^ " The Returne from Pernassus," ed. W. D. Macray, Oxford, 
 886, p. 87. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 327 
 
 The manner in which his friend Dekker represents 
 him, shortly after, reaching the Elysian fields, leaves 
 little doubt that his life was shortened not only by his 
 angry passions, but by sheer want : ^'Marlow, Greene and 
 Peele had got under the shades of a large vyne, laughing 
 to see Nash, that was but newly come to their colledge, 
 still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that 
 followed him heere upon earthe : for Nash inveyed 
 bitterly, as he had wont to do against dryfisted patrons, 
 accusing them of his untimely death, because if they 
 had given his Muse that cherlshment which she most 
 worthily deserved, hee had fed to his dying day on fat 
 capons, burnt sack and sugar, and not so desperately 
 have venturde his life and shortned his dayes by 
 keeping company with pickle herrings." ^ 
 
 III. 
 
 Some of Shakespeare's contemporaries attempted to 
 give their readers " the like " of Nash's wit, and tried 
 their hand either at the picaresque novel or at the 
 reproduction of scenes taken fi-om ordinary life, of 
 which Greene also had left some examples. The comic 
 school was far from equalling the fecundity of its 
 romantic rival ; it existed however, and though abso- 
 lutely forgotten now, it helped to keep up and improve 
 the natural gift of observation which belonged to 
 the English race. 
 
 One of the most extraordinary ventures ever at- 
 
 ^ "A Knights Conjuring," 1607, "Works," ed. Grosart, vol. v. 
 
 p. XX. 
 
328 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 tempted in the picaresque style was made by Henry 
 Chettle, another member of the group to which Greene, 
 Nash, and the others belonged. He was, like Nash 
 himself, a personal friend of Greene, and published after 
 his death his " Groats-worth of wit," 1592, for which, 
 as we have seen, he had to offer in his next pamphlet 
 explanations and apologies, among others, to Shake- 
 speare. Chettle seems to have followed the literary 
 career usual in his time ; he composed many dramas 
 alone ^ or in collaboration ; he was perpetually borrow- 
 ing money from the notorious Henslowe, and he was 
 occasionally lodged in Her Majesty's prisons. In 1595 
 he published his " Piers Plainnes seaven yeres pren- 
 tiship," 2 in which we find, mingled together, Sidney's 
 Arcady, Greene's romantic heroes, and the customary 
 incidents of picaresque novels. The scene is laid in 
 Tempe ; there are Menalcas and Corydons ; there are 
 sheep who are poetically invited by their keeper to eat 
 their grass : 
 
 " Sport on faire flocke at pleasure 
 Nip Vestaes flouring treasure." 
 
 There is too Piers Plain, now a shepherd but 
 formerly nothing short of a picaro, who has seen much 
 and has followed many trades, and served many masters. 
 His companions asked for his story, and he very 
 willingly agreed to tell them what he had been, " and 
 
 ^ Only one of this sort has been preserved : "The tragedy of 
 Hoffman or a revenge for a father," published in 163 1. Chettle 
 died about 1607. 
 
 ^ London, 1595, 4to. It has never been reprinted ; only one 
 copy belonging to the Bodleian Library is known to exist. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL, 329 
 
 what the world is," no mean subject to be sure, and 
 no wonder that he " cravde pardon to sit because the 
 taske was long, which they willingly graunted." Piers, 
 according to the picaresque traditions, had been the 
 servant of many masters ; he tells his experience of them 
 in the first person, following also in this the rules of the 
 picaresque tale. He first introduces us to a swaggering 
 and cowardly courtier, and plays his part in intrigues 
 and conspiracies. Then he describes the " vertuous 
 and famous virgin ^liana," Queen of Crete, who 
 delighted in hunting, and went to the woods " Diana- 
 like." To be " Diana-like," she dressed as follows : 
 
 ^' On her head she wore a coronet of orlentall pearle ; 
 on it a chaplet of variable flowers perfuming the ayre 
 with their divers odors, thence carelessly descended 
 her amber coloured hair . . . Her buskins were 
 richly wrought like the Delphins spangled cabazines ; 
 her quiver was of unicornes home, her darts of yvorie ; 
 in one hand she helde a boare speare, the other guided 
 her Barbary jennet, proud by nature, but nowe more 
 proude in that he carried natures fairest worke, the 
 Easterne worlds chiefe wonder." In a somewhat similar 
 style Zucchero painted the Queen, not of Crete, but 
 of England, and when dressed in this fashion. Her 
 Majesty too, was supposed to be represented " Diana- 
 like." 
 
 Of the misrule in Crete, and of the dangers ^Eliana 
 runs from the incestuous passions of her uncle, and 
 of her escape through the providential intervention 
 of Prince ^milius, we shall say nothing ; nor of the 
 " frolicke common-wealth " established in Thrace, feel- 
 ing as we do some sympathy with Cory don, who 
 
330 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 interrupts the speaker, saying : *' Reach hither thy 
 bottle that we may drinke round ; I am sure thou 
 must needes be dry with talking when I am so a thirst 
 with hearing." Piers passes from the court to the 
 shop of a dealer in old clothes and an usurer. He 
 leads a very miserable life, and we have sordid de- 
 scriptions of scenes in low life with which Chettle 
 was better acquainted than with the loves of ^milius 
 and ^liana. Princes and princesses come in again ; 
 there are revolutions, awful dangers and marvellous 
 deliverances. All ends happily, and Piers and his 
 hearers agree to meet " at theyr ploughman's holidaye. 
 Where what happened, if Piers Plainnes please, shall 
 per adventure be published." This " adventure " 
 never took place. The incoherent mixture of the 
 picaresque, romantic, and Arcadian tale resulted in 
 such an unpalatable compound that even novel-readers 
 of Shakespeare's time objected to a narration of this 
 kind, and did not trouble Chettle with a demand for its 
 continuation. 
 
 His reputation therefore rests mainly on his dramas. 
 One of his most frequent associates in writing them, 
 and one of the most prolific and gifted, Thomas 
 \j Dekker, was also something of a novelist. He has 
 left, besides a great quantity of plays, a number of 
 pamphlets written very much in Nash's veln,i in which 
 there is some excellent realism, together with the 
 
 ^ Some also are in Greene's and Harman's vein ; for example, his 
 ''* Belman of London," 1608, and his " Lanthorne and candle-light," 
 1608, in which he describes, with no less success than his pre- 
 decessors, " the most notorious villanies that are now practised in 
 the kingdome." 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 331 
 
 most amusing and whimsical fancies. ^ His biography 
 is a mere repetition of his friend's life, and the words : 
 Henslowe, drama, penury, pamphlets, prison, quarrels, 
 put together, will give a sufficient idea of the sort of 
 existence led by him as well as by so many of his 
 associates. 2 He wrote some of his plays alone, many 
 others with numberless collaborators, such as Chettle, 
 Drayton, Wilson, Ben Jonson (with whom he after- 
 wards had a violent quarrel), Haughton, Day, Munday, 
 Hathaway, Middleton, Webster, Heywood, Wentworth 
 Smith, Massinger, Ford, Rowley, and even others, for 
 
 ^ "Dramatic Works, now first collected," London (Pearson), 
 1873,4. vol. ^^^' '•> "Non-Dramatic Works," ed. Grosart, London, 
 1884, 5 vol. 4to, which non- dramatic works are the following : 
 
 L " Canaans Calamite, Jerusalem's misery," 161 1 (a poem on 
 the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans) ; " The 
 wonderfull yeare 1603" (on the plague of London); "The 
 Batchelars banquet," 1603 (an adaptation of the " Quinze joyes 
 de mariage"). II. "The seven deadly sinnes of London . . . 
 bringing the plague with them," 1606; "Newes from Hell," 1606, 
 shortly after reprinted as " A Knights conjuring "; " The double 
 P.P., a papist in armes," 1606 (in verse); "The Guls Horne- 
 booke," 1609; "Jests to make you merie," 1607. III. " Dekker 
 his dreame," 1620 (in verse); "The Belman of London," 1608 ; 
 " Lanthorne and candle-light," 1609; "A strange horse race, 
 at the end of which comes in the catch-poles masque," 161 3. 
 
 IV. " The dead tearme or ... a dialogue betweene the two 
 cityes of London and Westminster," 1608 ; "Worke for armourers 
 . . . open warres likely to happin," 1609 ; "The ravens Alma- 
 nacke, foretelling of a plague," &c., 1609 ; " A rod for run-awayes, 
 in which . . . they may behold many fearefull Judgements of God . . . 
 expressed in many dreadfull examples of sudden deVth," 1625. 
 
 V. " Fourebirdes of Noahs Arke," 161 3; "The pleasant comodie 
 of Patient Grissil," 1603 (with Chettle and Haughton). 
 
 "^ Only there was this notable difference, he died old, at about 
 seventy years of age, probably in 1641. 
 
332 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 the dramatic faculty was then so very common that 
 any one, so to say, was good enough to act as a 
 collaborator in writing plays. 
 
 He had many traits in common with Nash : the 
 same excellent faculty of observation, the same gaiety 
 and entrain^ with powers of his own to associate it 
 with the most exquisite tenderness and pathos ; the 
 same love for literature and for the poets, for Chaucer, 
 for Spenser, whose arrival in the Elysian fields he 
 describes in a way to tempt the pencil of a painter : 
 " Grave Spenser was no sooner entred into this 
 chappell of Apollo, but these elder fathers of the 
 divine furie gave him a lawrer and sung his welcome ; 
 Chaucer call'd him his sonne and plac'd him at his 
 right hand. All of them, at a signe given by the 
 whole quire of the Muses that brought him thither, 
 closing up their lippes in silence, and turning all their 
 eares for attention to heare him sing out the rest of 
 Fayrie Queenes prayses." ^ 
 
 But a marked difference between Dekker and Nash 
 resulted from the fact that Dekker had not only a love 
 of poetry, but a poetical faculty of a high order. He 
 went far beyond the picturesqueness of Nash's word- 
 painting, and reached in his prose as well as in his 
 verse true lyrical emotion and pathos ; he had, said 
 Lamb, " poetry enough for anything ; " ^ and while 
 
 ^ "A Knights conjuring," 1607. In the same happy retreat 
 Dekker, gives a place to Watson, Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, 
 Nash, Chettle, who comes in " sweating and blowing, by reason of 
 his fatness" ("Non-Dramatic Works," vol. v. p. xx.). 
 
 2 " Notes on the Elizabethan Dramatists " ; " Philip Massinger ; 
 Thomas Dekker." 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 333 
 
 Nash's gaiety, true and hearty as it is, takes often and 
 naturally a bitter satirical turn, Dekker's gaiety though 
 sometimes bitter, more usually takes a pretty, graceful, 
 and fanciful turn. " Come, strew apace, strew, strew : 
 in good troth tis a pitty that these flowers must be 
 trodden under feete as they are like to be anon . . . 
 
 DEKKER HIS DREAM. 
 
 " Pitty ? come foole, fling them about lustily ; 
 flowers never dye a sweeter death than when they are 
 smoother'd to death in a Lovers bosome, or else pave 
 the high wayes over which these pretty, simpering, 
 setting things call'd brides must trippe." ^ 
 
 ^ " Satiro-mastix or the untrussing of the humorous poet," 1602. 
 
 20 
 
334 ' THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Intimate literary ties, however, existed between Nash 
 and Dekker ; many passages in the one remind us of 
 similar things in the other, the result sometimes of 
 actual imitation, sometimes of involuntary reminis- 
 cences. Dekker was well aware of the family likeness 
 between the two, so much so that we see him once call- 
 ing Nash*s ghost to his assistance, as one from whom 
 he might most naturally gain help : " And thou into 
 whose soule . . . the raptures of that fierie and i neon- 
 finable Italian spirit were bounteously and boundlesly 
 infused ; thou sometimes secretary to Pierce Pennylesse 
 and master of his requests, ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, 
 facetious T. Nash, from whose aboundant pen hony 
 flowed to thy friends, and mortall aconite to thy 
 enemies ; thou that madest the doctor a flat dunce ^ 
 . . . sharpest satyre, luculent poet, elegant orator, get 
 leave for thy ghost to come from her abiding and 
 to dwell with me awhile." 2 
 
 Nash's ghost was most certainly hovering about 
 Dekker when he was writing the pamphlet from which 
 this apostrophe is taken ; it taught him how to disrobe 
 for our amusement the heroes of antique legends of 
 their dignified looks and dresses, and place their haloed 
 selves in the open daylight of the street below our 
 window. With all his admiration for Marlowe's 
 performance Nash had told, in very ludicrous fashion 
 
 "Dramatic Works " vol. i. p. 186. This is the play Dekker wrote 
 as a revenge for Ben Jonson's '^ Poetaster," 1601, in which he was 
 himself ridiculed under the name of Demetrius. 
 
 ^ /.^., Gabriel Harvey, Nash's obstinate adversary. 
 
 '^ "Newes from Hell," "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. pp. 
 102-103. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 335 
 
 indeed, the story of Hero and Leander, associating in 
 a manner unwarranted by ancient historians their fate 
 with the vicissitudes of Great Yarmouth and the red 
 herring. In the same way Dekker makes choice of 
 that exquisite tale of Orpheus which reads so patheti- 
 cally in the prose of King Alfred, and he tells it thus : 
 
 " Assist mee therefore, thou genius of that ventrous 
 but zealous musicion of Thrace, Euridice's husband, 
 who being besotted on his wife, of whiche sin none 
 but . . . should be guiltie, went alive with his fiddle 
 at's backe, to see if he could bail her out of that 
 adamantine prison. The fees he was to pay for her 
 were jigs and countrey-daunces : he paid them ; the 
 forfeits if he put on yellow stockings and lookt back 
 upon her, was her everlasting lying there, without 
 bayle or mayne-prize. The loving coxcomb could not 
 choose but look backe, and so lost her : perhaps hee did 
 it because he would be rid of her. The morall of 
 which is, that if a man leave his owne busines and 
 have an eie to his wives dooings, sheele give him the 
 slip though she runne to the divell for her labour." i 
 
 Dekker did not write novels properly so called, but 
 his prose works abound with scenes that seem detached 
 from novels, and that were so well fitted for that kind 
 of writing that we find them again in the works of 
 professional novelists of his or of a later time. His 
 " Wonderfull yeare 1603," from which Defoe seems 
 to have taken several hints, abounds in scenes of this 
 sort. 2 It is a book " wherein is shewed the picture 
 
 ^ "Newes from Hell," "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. p. loi. 
 2 " Non-Dramatic Works,*' vol. i, Cf. Defoe's " Journal of the 
 phgue year . , . 1665," London, 1722. 
 
336 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 of London lying sicke of the plague. At the ende 
 of all, like a mery epilogue to a dull play sundry 
 tales are cut out in sundry fashions of purpose to 
 shorten the lives of long winters nights that lye 
 watching in the darke for us." Some of these tales 
 are extremely well told, for Dekker is more successful 
 in describing the humours than the terrors of the 
 plague. In one of them we find another copy of the 
 fat hostler so well described already by Nash and, as 
 it seems, inspired by a reminiscence of the picture in 
 " Jack Wilton." Dekker's man is not thinner, cleaner, 
 nor braver than Nash's victualler. He is a country 
 innkeeper : '' a goodly fat burger he was, with a belly 
 arching out like a beere-barrell, which made his legges, 
 that were thicke and short like two piles driven under 
 London bridge. ... In some corners of [his nose] 
 there were blewjsh holes that shone like shelles of 
 mother of pearle .... other were richly garnisht with 
 rubies, chrisolites, and carbunckles, which glistered so 
 orient ly, that the Hamburgers offered I know not 
 how many dollars for his companie in an East-Indian 
 voyage, to have stoode a nightes in the poope of their 
 Admirall, onely to save the charge of candles. 
 
 ^' In conclusion he was an host to be ledde before 
 an Emperour, and though he were one of the greatest 
 men in all the shire, his bignes made him not proude, 
 but he humbled himself to speake the base language 
 of a tapster, and uppon the Londoners first arrival, 
 cried : ' Welcome ! a cloth for this gentleman ! ' The 
 linnen was spread and furnisht presently with a new 
 cake and a can, the roome voided, and the guest left, 
 like a French Lord, attended by no bodie." ^ 
 
 ^ "Non -Dramatic Works," vol. i. pp. 138 et seq. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NO VEL. 337 
 
 This new-comer, freshly arrived from London was 
 flying on account of the plague ; but it so happened 
 that he had himself already contracted the disease ; 
 he was scarcely seated before it grew upon him and 
 he fell dead. Great was the terror in the inn. The 
 host, the maids, all the Inmates ran from the corpse 
 and left the house ; the terror spread in the borough ; 
 no one would even walk near the place. 
 
 '^ At last a tinker came sounding through the towne, 
 mine hosts being the auncient watring place where he 
 did use to cast anchor. You must understand he was 
 none of those base rascally tinkers that with a ban- 
 dog and a drab at their tayles and a picke stafFc at their 
 necks will take a purse sooner then stop a kettle. No 
 this was a devout tinker, he did honor God Pan ; a 
 musicall tinker, that upon his kettle-drum could play 
 any count rey-dance you cald for, and upon Holly-dayes 
 had earned money by it, when no fidler could be heard 
 of. Hee was onely feared when he stalkt through 
 some towns where bees were, for he strucke so sweetely 
 on the bottome of his copper instrument that he would 
 emptie whole hives and leade the swarmes after him, 
 only by the sound." 
 
 These two beings, the host and tinker, depicted as 
 vividly by Dekker as Callot would have drawn them, 
 meet in the open air, and the former offers the tinker 
 a crown if he undertakes to bury the dead man. The 
 tinker haggles for better payment and they agree for 
 ten shillings. " The whole parish had warning of this 
 presently . . . therefore ten shillings were leveyed 
 out of hand, put into a rag, which was tyed to the 
 ende of a long pole and delivered, in sight of all the 
 
338 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 parish, who stood aloofe stopping their noses, by 
 the head boroughs owne selfe in proper person." 
 Nothing dismayed by this awful array, the tinker sits 
 at table, drinks deep, takes the corpse on his back 
 and carries it to a field. Before committing it to the 
 earth he carefully searches its pockets and empties 
 them ; he then makes a parcel of the clothes " and 
 carrying that at the end of his staiFe on his shoulder, 
 with the purse of seven pounds in his hand, backe 
 againe comes he through the towne, crying aloud : 
 * Have you any more Londoners to bury ; Hey downe 
 a downe dery ; Have you any more Londoners to 
 bury ? ' The Hobbinolls running away from him as if 
 he had beene the dead citizens ghost, and he marching 
 away from them in all the hast he could, with that 
 song still in his mouth." 
 
 Another sort of writing congenial to Dekker's 
 temperament, and which novelists of a later date con- 
 tinued to cultivate after him, are those series of 
 counsels or praises in which, with due seriousness, the 
 thing is recommended or praised which ought to be 
 avoided. An example of this kind of satirical com- 
 position is the famous " Quinze joye& de mariage," 
 in which the pleasant humours of a young wife are 
 described in such a way as to deter even a Panurge 
 from marrying. Another example is the " Grobianus " ^ 
 
 ' " Grobianus. De morum simplicitate, libri duo. In gratiam 
 omnium rusticitatem amantium conscripti," Francfort, 1549, 
 8vo. It was translated into English by " R. F.," a little before 
 Dekker adapted it : "The schoole of slovenrie : or Cato turned 
 wrong side outward ... to the use of all English Christendome," 
 London, 1605, 4to. In the same category of works may be 
 placed Erasmus's famous: " Moriae Encomium," Antwerp, 15 12, 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 339 
 
 Latin poem of the German F. Dedekind, which enjoyed 
 an immense reputation throughout Europe in the six- 
 teenth century ; it contains ironical advice to a gallant 
 with regard to his behaviour so that in any given 
 circumstances he may be as objectionable and improper 
 as possible. 
 
 Dekker translated both works into English, but 
 with many alterations, so numerous indeed, especially 
 in the last, that his book may be considered almost 
 original. I He called it " The Guls Horne-booke," or 
 alphabet. He gives in it a lively description of the 
 humours of gallants in the time of Shakespeare, of the 
 places they used to frequent, and the company they 
 liked to meet. Grobianism differs from the picaresque 
 tale by the absence of a story connecting the various 
 scenes, but it resembles it in the opportunity it affords 
 for describing a variety of characters, humours, and 
 places. In the same way as we follow the picaro in 
 the houses of his several masters, we here follow the 
 gallant from his rooms to his ordinary, and from St. 
 Paul's to the play. We climb with him to the top of 
 the cathedral, we show our new garments in the walks, 
 meet courtiers, soldiers and poets at dinner, stroll at 
 night in the dark streets of the city and fall in with 
 
 4to, translated by Sir T. Chaloner : " The Praise of Folic," 
 London, 1549, 4to. Many scenes in the comedies of the period 
 are written in a style akin to Grobianism. They are especially 
 to be found in Ben Jonson ; see, for example, his satire of cour- 
 tiers in "Cynthia's revels," act iii. sc. i and 3, &c. ; note how 
 their elegancies of speech are mostly derived from plays and novels. 
 ^ "The Bachelars banquet . . . pleasantly discoursing the 
 various humours of women," 1603; "The Guls Horne-booke," 
 1609; "Non-Dramatic Works," vols. i. and ii. 
 
340 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 the watch. Here, again, Dekker paints from life scenes 
 with which he was familiar, and we have but to follow 
 his footsteps to become acquainted with the haunts of 
 the Bohemians of his time, and of the great men too, 
 of Jonson and Shakespeare themselves. 
 
 The scene at the theatre is the most original and 
 lively of all. The serio-comic advice to the gallant 
 how he '* should behave himself in a playhouse " Ms a 
 perfect picture of what was daily taking place, be the 
 play Shakespeare's " Hamlet " or Dekker's '' Patient 
 Grissil." - Of course the gallant must sit on the 
 stage and '' on the very rushes," which in the theatre, 
 and also in palaces and houses, continued as in the 
 Middle Ages to serve for carpets ; 3 he will not care for 
 the disapprobation of the groundlings, but must plant 
 himself valiantly, " beating downe the mewes and hisses 
 of opposed rascality. 
 
 " For do but cast up a reckoning ; what large 
 commings-in are pursd up by sitting on the stage ? 
 First a conspicuous eminence is gotten ; by which 
 meanes, the best and most essencial parts of a 
 gallant (good cloathes, a proportionable legge, white 
 hand, the Persian lock, and a tollerable beard), are 
 perfectly revealed." 
 
 Of course you must choose with the greatest care 
 
 ^ " Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. pp. 246 et seq. 
 
 2 1603 ; with Chettle and Haughton. 
 
 3 A scene at court. '•'• Amorphus (to the prentice courtier Asotus) : 
 If you had but so far gathered your spirits to you as to have 
 taken up a rush when you were out, and wagged it thus, or cleansed 
 your teeth with it ; or but turn'd aside . . ." &c. Ben Jonson, 
 "Cynthia's Revels," act iii. sc. i. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 341 
 
 your time to come in. " Present not your selfe on 
 the stage especially at a new play until the quaking 
 Prologue hath, by rubbing, got [colour] into his 
 cheekes and is ready to give the trumpets their cue 
 that hees upon point to enter : for then it is time, as 
 though you were one of the properties, or that you 
 dropt out of ye hangings, to creepe from behind the 
 arras, with your tripos or three-footed stoole in one 
 hand and a teston (/.^., six pence) mounted betweene 
 a forefinger and a thumbe in the other ; for if you 
 should bestow your person upon the vulgar when the 
 belly of the house is but halfe full, your apparell is 
 quite eaten up, the fashion lost . . /' ^ 
 
 When the play is well begun, there is also a special 
 behaviour to observe : " It shall crowne you with rich 
 commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the 
 most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; 
 and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high 
 that all the house may ring of it : your lords use it ; 
 your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too . . . 
 be thou a beagle to them all. . . . [At] first, all the 
 eyes in the galleries will leave walking after the players 
 and onely follow you ; the simplest dolt in the house 
 snatches up your name, and when he meetes you in 
 the streetes, . . . heele cry : ' hees such a gallant.' . . . 
 Secondly you publish your temperance to the world, 
 in that you seeme not to resort thither to taste vaine 
 
 ^ Cf. Ben Jonson : " Why, throw yourself in state on the stage, 
 as other gentlemen use, sir." — "Away, wag; what, would'st thou 
 make an implement of me ? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of 
 perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the 
 stage here" ("Cynthia's Revels," Induction). 
 
342 THE' ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 pleasures with a hungrie appetite ; but only as a 
 gentleman to spend a foolish houre or two, because 
 you can doe nothing else ; thirdly you mightily dis- 
 relish the audience and disgrace the author." Perhaps 
 the next time he will be wise enough to offer you a 
 dedication sonnet " onely to stop your mouth." 
 
 The getting away must not be less carefully 
 performed than the getting in. If you owe the 
 author a particular grudge, mind you leave just in 
 the middle of his play : " bee it Pastoral or Comedy, 
 Morall or Tragedie, you rise with ► a screwd and 
 discontented face from your stoole to be gone : no 
 matter whether the scenes be good or no ; the better 
 they are, the worse you distast them. And being on 
 your feet, sneake not away like a coward ; but salute 
 all your gentle acquaintance, that are spred either on 
 the rushes or on stooles about you ; and draw what 
 troope you can from the stage after you. The 
 mimicks are beholden to you for allowing them 
 elbow roome ; their poet cries perhaps, ' A pox go 
 with you * ; but care not for that ; there is no musick 
 without frets." 
 
 But the rain outside may deprive you of the benefits 
 of this carefully laid plan. In that case, and this is the 
 last piece of advice, here is what you must do : " If 
 either the company or indisposition of the weather binde 
 you to sit it out, my counsell is then that you turne 
 plain ape : take up a rush, and tickle the earnest eares 
 of your fellow gallants to make other fooles fall a 
 laughing ; mewe at passionate speeches ; blare at merrie ; 
 find fault with the musicke ; whew at the children's 
 action, whistle at the songs." 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 343 
 
 Dekker knew only too well such gallants as those 
 he describes, and if his picture of a theatre in 
 Shakespeare's time seems now somewhat exaggerated, 
 if we cannot conceive ''Hamlet" or "Rgmeo" 
 performed while gallants on the stage tickle each 
 other's ears with rushes picked from the stage boards, 
 let us remember as a confirmation of his accuracy that 
 such customs were prevalent, not only in England, but 
 in Europe. In France especially, even in the time of 
 the Grand Roi, when Moliere and Corneille were 
 shining in al? their glory, we have Moliere's cor- 
 roborating evidence that these customs had not been 
 abolished. Moliere was annoyed by the same mal- 
 practices as Shakespeare, only he did not, like 
 Shakespeare, who never complained of anything or 
 anybody, keep his displeasure to himself He recurs 
 in more than one of his plays to the indecent behaviour 
 of marquesses sitting on the stage, and there is scarcely 
 one of the particulars mentioned by Dekker which 
 does not find place in Moliere's angry pictures of 
 ill-bred gallants : 
 
 " The actors began ; every one kept silence ; when 
 ... a man with large rolls entered abruptly crying 
 out : ' Hulloa, there, a seat directly ! ' and disturbing 
 the audience with his uproar, interrupted the play in 
 its finest passage. . . . 
 
 " Whilst I was shrugging my shoulders, the actors 
 attempted to continue their parts. But the man made 
 a fresh disturbance in seating himself, and again 
 crossing the stage with long strides, although he might 
 have been quite comfortable at the wings, he planted 
 his chair full in front, and, defying the audience with 
 
344 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 his broad back, hid the actors from three-fourths of 
 the pit. 
 
 " A murmur arose, at which any one else would have 
 felt ashamed ; but he, firm and resolute, took no 
 notice of it, and would have remained just as he had 
 placed himself if, to my misfortune, he had not cast his 
 eyes on me. . . . 
 
 " He began asking me a hundred frivolous questions, 
 raising his voice higher than the actors. Every one 
 was cursing him ; and in order to check him, I said, 
 * I should like to listen to the play.* 
 
 *' ' Hast thou not seen it, marquis ? Oh ! on my 
 soul I think it very funny, and I am no fool in those 
 matters. I know the canons of perfection and Corneille 
 reads me all that he writes.* 
 
 '^ Thereupon he gave me a summary of the piece, 
 informing me, scene after scene, of what was about 
 to happen ; and when we came to any lines which he 
 knew by heart, he recited them aloud before the actor 
 could say them. It was in vain for me to resist ; he 
 continued his recitations, and towards the end rose a 
 good while before the rest. For those fashionable 
 fellows, in order to behave gallantly, especially avoid 
 to listen to the conclusion." ^ 
 
 Grobianism and the picaresque novel, long sur- 
 vived both Nash and Dekker. English, Spanish, and 
 French rogues, invented or imitated, swarmed in the 
 English literature of the seventeenth century, without, 
 however, in any case reaching the level attained 
 by "Jack Wilton." Both kinds of writing had to 
 
 ^ "Les Facheux,"'act i. sc. i (Van Laun's translation, vol. ii. 
 P- 97) » ^f' " Critique de I'Ecole des Femmes," sc. vi. 
 
THOMAS NASH AND PICARESQUE NOVEL. 345 
 
 wait for the time of Swift and Defoe to reach their 
 highest point. Defoe has left the best examples of the 
 picaresque tale extant in English literature, and Swift 
 revived Grobianism with unparalleled excellence in his 
 "Directions to Servants" and his "Complete Collec- 
 tion of genteel and ingenious conversation, according 
 to the most polite mode and method now used at court 
 and in the best companies of England." ^ 
 
 As for the " Quinze joyes," turned also into English 
 by Dekker, its popularity was equally great in Eng- 
 land ; a new and different translation was published 
 in the seventeenth century and had several editions. 
 It was prefaced with a note " to the Reader," in which 
 the satirical aims of the author in this study of woman's 
 foibles is accentuated by a tone of pretended praise, 
 savouring of Grobianism and anticipating the sort of 
 ridicule which was to be relished by Pope and the 
 critics of Queen Anne's time. '* This treatise . . . will 
 at least shake, if not totally explode, that common 
 opinion, viz., that women are the worst piece of the 
 Hexameron creation. . . . This is the composition of 
 some amorous person, who, animated with the same 
 spirit and affection as I am, hath undertaken, and 
 judged it his duty too, to satisfie you, and he hopes so 
 far as to work upon you a persuasion that the modesty > 
 
 ^ The connection of Swift with Grobianism was noticed in his 
 time, and a new translation of Dedekind's poem, " Grobianus or 
 the compleat Booby," 1739, was dedicated by Roger Bull " to the 
 Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, . . . who first introduced into these 
 kingdoms ... an ironical manner of writing, to the discourage- 
 ment of vice, ill-manners and folly." To come to even nearer 
 times, Flaubert's "Bouvart et Pecuchet" maybe taken as a branch 
 of Grobianism. 
 
346 
 
 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 bashfulness, debonairete and civility, together with all 
 qualifications that adorn and beautifie the soul, are as 
 exemplarily eminent in women of this age as ever they 
 were in any of the former ; and instruct you to set a 
 value on their actions as the best creatures in the worst 
 of times, whose vertue must needs shine with the 
 greater lustre, being subject to the vain assaults and 
 ineffectual temptations of men grown old, like the 
 times, in wickednes, malice and revenge." ^ 
 
 ^ *' The fifteen comforts of rash and inconsiderate marriage . . . 
 done out of French," London, 1694, i2mo, fourth edition. 
 
 CAPRICORN us. 
 
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 UN 
 
 5RSITY 
 
Hc]io6IHijardin 
 
 KATHERINE PHILIPS 
 
 THE MATCHLESS ORINDA 
 /horn 6/w mexxvtinf 6y Bb'CA'/:T7\ 
 
 Imp Willmann Pans 
 
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 tJti.S 
 
 IIEROICAL DEEDS IN A HEROICAL NOVEL, 1665. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 
 I. 
 
 IN the works of Nash and his imitators, the diiFerent 
 parts are badly dovetailed ; the novelist is in- 
 coherent and incomplete ; the fault lies in some 
 degree with the picaresque form itself. Nash, how- 
 ever, pointed out the right road, the road that was to 
 lead to the true novel. He was the first among his 
 compatriots to endeavour to relate in prose a long- 
 sustained story, having for its chief concern : the 
 
348 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 truth. He leaves to his real heroes, Surrey, More, 
 Erasmus, Aretino, their historical character, and he 
 gives to his fictitious ones caprices and qualities 
 which make of them distinct and living beings like 
 those of e very-day life. He gives us no more languid 
 shepherds, no more romantic disguises, no more pre- 
 tended warriors whose helmets cover, as in Ariosto, 
 a woman's fair locks. His style is flexible, animated, 
 suited to the circumstances, free from those ornaments 
 of language so sought after in his time ; no one, 
 Ben Jonson excepted, possessed at that epoch, in so 
 great a degree as himself, a love of the honest truth. 
 With Nash, then, the novel of real life, whose invention 
 in England is generally attributed to Defoe, begins. 
 To connect Defoe with the, past of English literature, 
 we must get over the whole of the seventeenth century 
 and go back to " Jack Wilton," the worthy brother of 
 " Roxana," " Moll Flanders," and " Colonel Jack." 
 
 But shepherds were not yet silenced, nor had 
 romantic heroes spoken their last. On the con- 
 trary, their best time was still to come ; in the 
 seventeenth century they resumed their hardly inter- 
 rupted speeches, conversations, correspondence, exploits 
 and adventures, and flourished mightily in the world. 
 We come to the time of the heroic romance and 
 heroic drama. The main originality of the romance 
 literature in England during this century was the 
 increase and over-refinement of heroism in works of 
 fiction. For many among the reading public of that 
 age, Shakespeare was barbarous and Racine tame ; 
 but Scudery was the "greatest wit "that ever lived. 
 
 This kind of writing was thus partially renovated 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 349 
 
 through certain superadded characteristics, the part 
 allotted to " heroism '* being the foremost ; but the 
 groundwork was as old as the very origin of the nation. 
 For this new species of novel was mainly a development 
 of the old chivalrous romances of early and mediaeval 
 times. These romances, as we know, had continued in 
 Elizabethan times to enjoy some reputation, and under 
 an altered shape to have a public of their own. Even 
 in the seventeenth century they had not passed entirely 
 out of sight. Palmerins, Dons Belianis and Esplandians 
 continued to be written, translated, adapted, para- 
 phrased, printed, purchased, and read. There was still 
 a brisk trade in this sort of literature. People con- 
 tinued to read " the auncient, famous and honourable 
 history of Amadis de Gaule, discoursing the adventures 
 loves and fortunes of many princes ; " ^ or again " the 
 famous history of Hercules of Greece, with the manner 
 of his encountering and overcoming serpents, lyons, 
 monsters, giants, tyrants and powerful armies." 2 Guy 
 of Warwick, our friend of former chapters, still carried 
 on, with undaunted energy, his manifold exploits 
 throughout the world. Only, as time passes, we find 
 that he has become civilized ; he has taken trouble 
 to improve his mind, he has read books ; he has even 
 gone to the play. And his choice shows him a man 
 of taste and feeling ; a man with a memory too ; for 
 reaching a cemetery somewhere in his travels he " took 
 
 ^ London, 16 19, foL, translated by Anthony Munday (first 
 edition of first part, 1590, 4to). Another translation of the same 
 romance was made by F. Kirkman, and published in 1652, 4to. 
 
 ^ Advertised by Ch. Bates at the end of " the history of Guy 
 earl of Warwick," London, 1680 (?), 4to (illustrated). 
 
 21 
 
350 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 up a worm-eaten skull, which he thus addressed : 
 Perhaps thou wert a prince or a mighty monarch, a 
 King, a Duke or a Lord. But the King and the 
 beggar must all return to the earth ; and therefore 
 man hath need to remember his dying hour. Perhaps 
 thou mightest have been a Queen or a Dutchess, or a 
 Lady varnished with much beauty ; but now thou art 
 worms meat, lying in the grave, the sepolchre of all 
 creatures." We are only surprised that " Alas poor 
 
 SIR GUY OF WARWICK ADDRESSING A SKULL. 
 
 Yorick " does not come in. The page is beautifully 
 adorned with an engraving representing Sir Guy in 
 cocked hat, addressing a skull he carries in his hand.^ 
 The same phenomenon was taking place in France, 
 and from France were to come the first examples of 
 the regular heroic romance. " I have read [Lancelot] " 
 says Sarasin, in a conversation reported by the well- 
 known Jean Chapelain, the author of " La Pucelle," 
 and " I have not found it too unpleasant. Among the 
 things that have pleased me in it I found that it was 
 
 ^ From a chap-book of the eighteenth century : *' History of 
 Guy earl of Warwick," i75o(?) 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 351 
 
 the source of all the romances which for four or ^y^ 
 ■centuries have been the noblest entertainment of all 
 the courts of Europe and have prevented barbarism 
 from encompassing the whole world." ^ But as well 
 as Guy of Warwick, Lancelot wanted some " rajeunisse- 
 ment." His valour was still the fashion, but his 
 manners, after so many centuries, and his dress too, 
 ^were a little out of date. The new heroism was to 
 pervade the whole man, and, in order to make him 
 acceptable, to influence his costume as well as his mind. 
 
 BURIAL OF SIR GUY OF WARWICK. 
 
 There was to be something Roman in him, and some- 
 thing French ; he was to be represented in the style 
 of Louis the Fourteenth's statues, where the monarch 
 appears in a Roman tunic and a French wig. 
 
 The transformation occurred first in France, and was 
 received with great applause. The times indeed were 
 most propitious for a display, not of the barbaric 
 Jieroism of olden times, but of courtly heroism ; of an 
 
 ^ "De la Lecture des vieux romans," by Jean Chapelain, ed. 
 JFeillet, Paris, 1870, 8vo. 
 
352 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 heroism which plumes, wigs and ribbons well fitted^ 
 and which, with scarcely any change, could be transferred 
 from the battle-field to the drawing-room, from Rocroy 
 to the Hotel de Rambouillet : no mean heroism, how- 
 ever, for all its ribbons. At this period, in France, 
 manly and lofty virtues, as well as worldly ones, were 
 worshipped in life, in literature and in art. From the 
 commencement to the end of the century, examples 
 of undoubted heroes were not lacking ; Henri IV., 
 Richelieu, Mme. de Longueville, Conde, Louis XIV., 
 Turenne, now by their good qualities, now by their 
 caprices, now by their deeds and now by their looks, 
 resembled heroes of romance, and popularized in 
 France an ideal of nobleness and greatness. In order 
 to please and to be admired, it was necessary to show 
 a lofty character ; men must be superior to fortune,, 
 and women must appear superior to the allurements 
 of passion ; the hero made a display of magnanimity, 
 the heroine of chastity. The hero won the battle of 
 Fribourg, and the heroine had Montausier to pay court 
 to her for thirteen years before she consented to be 
 united to him in the bonds of wedlock. Such were 
 the persons most admired in real life ; such were the 
 characters of romance and tragedy whom the public 
 liked best, without, however, distinguishing between 
 them. The Cid, Alceste, Artaban, Nicomede, as well 
 as Julie d'Angennes, Montausier and Conde, were all 
 members of the same family, and not any one of them 
 more than another appeared comic or ridiculous : that 
 is why Montausier was very far from being offended 
 that traits of the character of Alceste were thought 
 to be found in him, and that is why Mme. de 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 353 
 
 Sevigne, a passionate admirer of Corneille, becomes 
 as honestly enthusiastic over the extravagant heroes of 
 the new romances as over those of the great Cornelian 
 tragedies. "1 am mad for Corneille ; everything must 
 yield to his genius . . . My daughter, let us take good 
 care not to compare Racine with him. Let us feel 
 the difference ! " ^ She writes elsewhere with regard 
 to the heroes of La Calprenede : " The beauty of the 
 sentiments, the violence of the emotions, the grandeur 
 of the incidents and the miraculous success of their in- 
 vincible swords, all that delights me like a young girl."^ 
 This change, which consisted, not of course in the 
 introduction of heroism into novels, where it had 
 in all times found place, but in the magnifying, to 
 an extraordinary degree, of this source of interest, 
 and in a transformation of costume and of tone of 
 speech, appeared not only in romances, but in the 
 drama also, and even in history. Everything worthy 
 of attention was for many years to be heroical. 
 Heroes defy earth and heaven ; they do not, like 
 Aucassin, with a temper of ironical submission, give 
 up Paradise in the hope of joining Nicolete in the 
 
 ^ Edition of the " Grands Ecrivains de la France," vol. ii. pp. 
 529 and 535. 
 
 2 i2th July, 1671, " Grands Ecrivains," vol. ii. p. 277. A few- 
 days before, on the 5th, she had been writing : " Je suis revenue 
 a ' Cleopatre ' . . . et par le bonheur que j'ai de n'avoir point 
 de memoire, cette lecture me divertit encore. Cela est epouvan- 
 table, mais vous savez que je ne m'accommode guere bien de toutes 
 les pruderies qui ne me sont pas naturelles, et comme celle de 
 ne pas aimer ces livres la ne m'est pas encore entierement arrivee, 
 je me laisse divertir sous le pretexte de mon fils qui m'a mise en 
 train." 
 
354 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 nether world ; they make the nether world itself 
 tremble on its foundations : for nothing can resist 
 them. Even in serious historical works the old 
 rulers of the French nation appear under an heroical 
 garb. King Clovis is tlius described by Scipion 
 Dupleix, historiographer royal, in his " Histoire 
 Generale de France," 1634 : " The hour of Easter-eve 
 at which the King was to receive the baptism at the 
 hands of St. Remy having come, he appeared with a 
 proud countenance, a dignified gait, a majestic port, 
 very richly dressed, musked and powdered ; his flowing 
 wig was curiously combed, curled, frizzed, undulated 
 and perfumed, according to the custom of the old 
 french Kings ; " ^ but much more it seems according 
 to the custom of less ancient sovereigns ; and there 
 is at the Louvre, a portrait of Louis XIII. bare-legged,, 
 periwigged, ermine-cloaked, which corresponds far better 
 to this description than anything we know of Clovis. 
 
 The same characteristics appear in the epic and the 
 drama. Antoine de Montchrestien, besides having 
 written the earliest treatise of political economy, and 
 thus having stood, if nothing more, godfather to a 
 new science,^ wrote a number of plays, flavoured 
 most of them with a grandiloquence and heroism which 
 give us a foretaste of Dryden. In his " Aman ou 
 
 ^ " L'heure de la veille de Pasques, a laquelle le Roy devoit 
 recevoir le baptesme de la main de S. Remy estant venue, il 
 s'y presenta avec une contenance relevee, une demarche grave,, 
 un port majestueux, tres richement vestu, musque, poudre, la 
 perruque pendante, curieusement peignee, gaufFree, ondoiante, 
 crespee et parfumee, selon la coustume des anciens rois Fran9ois '*' 
 (" Histoire Generale de France," Paris, 1634, vol. i. p. 58). 
 
 2 " Traicte de I'Economie politique," Rouen, 161 5, 4to. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 355 
 
 la vanlte/' he treats the same subject as Racine in his 
 " Esther," but he has nothing in common with his 
 successor, and much with the dramatists of the heroical 
 school. In order, doubtless, to justify from the first 
 the title of the play, Aman indulges his "vanite" in an 
 opening monologue to the following effect : 
 
 " Whether fair Phoebus coming out of the hollow 
 waters brings back colour to the face of the world, 
 whether with his warmer rays he sets day ablaze or 
 departs to take his rest in his watery bower, he cannot 
 see in all the inhabited world a single man to be 
 compared with me for successes of any sort. My glory 
 is without peer, and if any of the gods were to ex- 
 change heaven for earth and dwell under the lunar 
 disc, he would content himself with such a brilliant 
 fortune as mine." ^ 
 
 Nearly all the dramas of Scudery are made up of 
 such speeches, and they were the rage in Paris before 
 Corneille arose, Corneille in whom something of this 
 style yet lingers. Each of Scudery 's heroes, be it in 
 his dramas, in his epics, in his romances, is like his 
 
 ^ "Soit que le blond Phoebus, sortant du creux de Tonde 
 Vienne recolorer le visage du monde ; 
 Soit quede rays plus chauds il enflame le jour, 
 Ou qu'il s'aille coucher en I'humide sejour, 
 II ne void un seul homme en ce monde habitable 
 Qui soit en tout bon-heur avec moi comparable : 
 Ma gloire est sans pareille, et si quelqu'un des Dieux 
 Vouloit faire a la terre un eschange des cieux, 
 Et venir habiter sous le rond de la lune, 
 II se contenteroitde ma belle fortune." 
 
 "Aman ou la vanite"; "Tragedies d'Antoine de Mont- 
 chrestien," Rouen, 1601, 8vo. 
 
356 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Alaric, nothing less than " le vainqueur des vainqueurs 
 de la terre " ; and having conquered all the world is in 
 his turn conquered by Love. To write thus was sup- 
 posed to be following the noble impulse given by the 
 Renaissance, to be Roman, to outdo Seneca. ^ 
 
 In the novel especially this style shone in all its 
 lustre and beauty. All the heroes of the interminable 
 romances of the time, by Gomberville, George and 
 Madeleine de Scudery, La Calprenede and many others, 
 be they Greek, Roman, Turk or French, are all of 
 them the conquerors of the world and the captives of 
 Love. " I can scarcely believe," wrote wise censors, 
 "that the Cyrus and the Alexanders have suddenly 
 become, as I hear it reported, so many Thyrsis and 
 Celadons." 2 But their protests were of no avail, for 
 a time, and romance heroes continued to reign in 
 France, having had from the first for their palace and 
 chief place of resort the famous Hotel de Rambouillet. 
 
 ^ " Outre qu'on m'a vu naistre avec une couronne, 
 La fortune qui m'aime est celle qui les donne, 
 Et sans prendre la leur, ce bras a le pouvoir 
 De m'en acquerir cent, si je les veux avoir. 
 Mais soufFrez mon discours, il est pour votre gloire ; 
 Je suy, je suy I'Amour et non pas la Victoire." 
 ("L'amour tirannique," 1640. Speech by Tiridate.) 
 
 " Je tiens en mon pouvoir les sceptres et la mort ; 
 Je t'arracherais Tun, je te donnerais Fautre . . . 
 Mais j'ay cette faiblesse," &c. (" Ibrahim," 1645.) 
 
 2 Boileau, "Les heros de romans, dialogue a la maniere de 
 Lucien," written in 1664, published 171 3, but well known before 
 in literary drawing-rooms, where Boileau used himself to read it 
 aloud. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE, 357 
 
 This hotel had been building from 16 10 to 16 17 in 
 the Rue St.Thomas-du-Louvre. Polite society began 
 to gather there soon after its completion, and began to 
 desert it only thirty years later. The heroic romances 
 of the period were among the chief topics of conversa- 
 tion ; and this is easily understood : they were meant 
 as copies of this same polite society, and of its chiefs ; 
 under feigned names people recognized in Cyrus the 
 Grand Conde ; in Mandane, Madame de Longueville ; 
 in Sapho, the authoress herself, Mdlle. de Scudery ; 
 in Aristhee, the poet Jean Chapelain. Persons thus 
 designated often continued in real life to be called by 
 their romance appellations ; thus Madame de Sevigne 
 is wont to subscribe herself " the very humble servant 
 of the adorable Amalthee." ^ Men and women con- 
 sidered it a great honour to have their portraits in a 
 romance ; they felt sure then of going down to the 
 remotest posterity, a fond belief to which posterity 
 has already given the lie. Much intrigue went on to 
 obtain such a valuable favour. While we are scarcely 
 able now to plod on for a few chapters along the 
 winding road which led Cyrus to his victories, these 
 volumes were awaited with intense interest and dis- 
 cussed with passion as soon as published. Neither the 
 expectation of the next number of the '' Revue des 
 deux Mondes," when it contains some important new 
 study of actual life, nor the discussion about the last 
 play of Dumas, can give us now an adequate idea of 
 the amount of interest concentrated in Paris at that 
 
 ^ I.e.^ Mme. du Plessis Guenegaud, who figures in " Clelie 
 under this name. "Letter to Pompone, Nov. 18, 1664." 
 
358 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 time upon those heroical, grandiloquent, periwigged- 
 figures. 
 
 And sometimes it was a very long time before the 
 end of the adventures, and the answers of the lovers- 
 were known. These books were not written without 
 care and thought and some attention to rules and 
 style. In the preface to his *' Ibrahim " Scudery gives, 
 us a sort of "Ars poetica" for heroic romance writers ;. 
 he states what precepts it is necessary to follow, and those 
 which may sometimes be dispensed with ; he informs us. 
 that attention is to be paid to the truth of history, 
 and that manners must be observed. For example,, 
 in '^ Ibrahim" he has thought fit to use some Turkish 
 words, such as " Alia, Stambol " ; these he calls. 
 -*' historical marks," and they correspond to what goes 
 now under the name of local colour ; according to 
 his way of thinking they give a realistic appearance to- 
 his story. His heroes in this particular romance are- 
 not kings, he confesses ; his excuse is that they are 
 worthy to be such, and that besides they belong to very 
 good families. He has been careful to use an easy,, 
 flowing style, and to avoid bombast '' except in 
 speeches." He has something to say about the unities,, 
 which have their part to play even in romances. 
 Nothing must be left to chance in those works ; and 
 as for himself, he would have refused, he declares,, 
 the praise bestowed upon the Greek painter who, by 
 throwing his brush against his work, obtained thus the 
 finest effect in his picture. In Scudery 's picture every- 
 thing is drawn with a will and a purpose, everything is 
 the result of thought and calculation, and, if we are to 
 believe him, much art was thus spent by the gallant 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 361 
 
 Gouverneur de Nostre Dame ; much art that is now 
 entirely concealed from the dim eyes of posterity. ^ 
 
 Speeches, with descriptions, letters (which are always 
 given in full as if they were documents of state), 
 conversations and incidental anecdotic stories, were 
 among the most usual means employed to fill up 
 the many volumes of an ordinary heroical romance. 
 For the volumes were many : '' There never shone 
 such a fine day as the one which was to be the eve of 
 the nuptials between the illustrious Aronce and the 
 admirable Clelie." Such is the beginning of the first 
 volume of " Clelie, histoire romaine," by Madeleine de 
 Scudery, published in January, 1649. It happens that 
 the marriage thus announced is delayed by certain little 
 incidents, and is only celebrated towards the end of the 
 tenth and last volume pubhshed in September, 1654. 
 Volume I. contained the famous " Carte du Tendre," to 
 show the route from " Nouvelle amitie " to " Tendre," 
 with its various rivers, its villages of " Tendre-sur- 
 Inclination," " Tendre-sur-Estime," with the ever-to-be- 
 avoided hamlets of Indiscretion and Perfidy, the Lake 
 of Indifl^erence and other frightful countries. Let us 
 turn away from them and go back to our heroes. 
 
 One of their chief pleasures was to tell their own 
 stories. Of this neither they nor their listeners were 
 ever tired. Whenever in the course of the tale a new 
 person is introduced, the first thing he is expected to^ 
 do is to tell us who he is and what he has seen of the 
 world. Sometimes stories are included in his own, and 
 when the first are finished, instead of taking up again 
 
 ^ Scudery's preface to "Ibrahim, or the illustrious bassa . . . 
 englished by Henry Cogan," London, 1652, fol. 
 
.362 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 the thread of the main tale, we merely resume the 
 hearing of the speaker's own adventures : a custom 
 Avhich sometimes proves very puzzling to the in- 
 attentive frivolous reader of to-day. As for the 
 supposed listeners in the tale itself, the men or women 
 the hero has secured for his audience, they well knew 
 what to expect, and took their precautions accordingly. 
 We sometimes see them go to bed in order to listen 
 more comfortably. In " Cassandre," the eunuch Tireus 
 has a story to tell to Prince Oroontades : " The prince 
 went to his bedroom and put himself to bed ; he then 
 had Tireus called to him, and having seats placed in 
 the ruelky he commanded us to sit," and then the story 
 begins ; and it goes on for pages ; and when it is 
 finished we observe that it was included in another 
 story told by Araxe ; wherefore, instead of finding our- 
 selves back among the actors of the principal tale, we 
 alight only among those in Araxe's narrative. ^ These 
 stories are thus enclosed in one another like Chinese 
 boxes. 
 
 II. 
 
 This literature as soon as imported into England 
 realized there the most complete success. To find 
 a parallel for it we must go back to the time when 
 mediaeval Lancelot and Tristan were sung of by 
 French singers, and afterwards by singers of all 
 countries. Cyrus and Mandane, Oroontades and 
 Tireus, Grand Scipio and Illustrious Bassa, Astree and 
 Celadon, our heroes and our shepherds once more began 
 
 ^ " Cassandre,"' vol. i. book v. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 365 
 
 the invasion and conquest of the great northern island. 
 As was to be expected from such unparalleled con- 
 querors, they accomplished this feat easily, and their 
 work had consequences in England for which France 
 can scarcely offer any perfect equivalent. Through 
 their exertions there arose in this country a dramatic 
 literature in the heroical style which, thanks especially 
 to Dryden, has still a literary interest. But in France 
 our heroes of fiction were curtailed of much of their 
 glory by the inexorable Boileau. They left, it is true, 
 some trace of their influence in the works of Corneille 
 and even of Racine, but the heroic drama, properly so 
 called, was restricted to the works of the Scuderys and 
 Montchrestiens, which is saying enough to imply that 
 it was not meant to survive very long. 
 
 During the greater part of the century French 
 romances were in England the main reading of people 
 who had leisure. They were read in the original, for 
 French was a current language in society at that time, 
 and they were read in translations both by society and 
 by the ordinary public. Most of them were rendered 
 into English, and so important were these works con- 
 sidered that sometimes several translators tried their skill 
 at the same romance, and published independently the 
 result of their labours, as if their author had been 
 Virgil or Ariosto, or any classical writer. French 
 ideas in the matter of novels were adopted so cordially 
 that not only under Charles I., but even during the 
 civil war and under Cromwell this rage for reading 
 and translating did not abate. The contrary, it is 
 true, has often been asserted, without inquiry, and as 
 a matter of course ; but this erroneous statement was 
 
^64 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 due to a mere a 'priori argument, and had no other 
 ground than the improbability of the same fashion 
 predominating in the London of the Roundheads and 
 the Paris of the Precieuses. What likelihood was 
 there of any popularity being bestowed upon heroes 
 who were nothing if not befeathered heroes, heroes 
 a panaches at a time when Puritans reigned supreme, 
 staunch adversaries as we know of panaches^ curls, vain 
 talk, and every sort of worldly vanity ? Was it not 
 the time when books were published on *' The un- 
 lovelinesse of Love-lockes," being " a summarie dis- 
 •course prooving the wearing anu nourishing of a locke 
 or love-locke to be altogether unseemely, and un- 
 lawfiill unto Christians. In which there are likewise 
 some passages collected out of Fathers, Councells and 
 sundry authors and historians against face-painting, the 
 wearing of supposititious, poudred, frizled or extra- 
 ordinary long haire, the inordinate affectation of 
 corporall beautie, and womens mannish, unnaturall, 
 impudent, and unchristian cutting of their haire" ? ^ 
 So early in the century as 1628 it was thus discovered 
 that women's short hair and men's long wigs were 
 -equally unchristian. What was to be the fate of our 
 well-curled heroes? They were received with open 
 arms. *' Polexandre," for example, was published in 
 English in 1647; "Ibrahim ou Tillustre Bassa," 
 " Cassandre," and " Cleopatre " in 1652 ; '' Le Grand 
 Cyrus" in 1653, the very year in which Cromwell 
 became Protector ; the first part of " Clelie " in 
 .1656 ; *'Astree" in 1657 ; " Scipion " in 1660, &c. 
 The English prefaces to these French novels plainly 
 ^ By William Prynne, London, 1628, 410. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 365 
 
 -showed that, notwithstanding the puritanical taunts of 
 the party in power, publishers felt no doubt as to the 
 success of their undertaking. These works were not 
 spread timidly among the public ; they were announced 
 noisily in the most pompous terms : 
 
 " I shall waste no time to tell you how this book 
 hath sold in France where it was born : since nothing 
 falls from Monsieur de Scudery's hand, but is received 
 there as an unquestionable piece, by all that have a 
 taste of wit or honour. The translator hath inserted 
 no false stitches of his own, having only turn'd the 
 wrong side of the Arras towards us, for all translations, 
 you know, are no other." ^ 
 
 The translator of " Astree " was fain to inform his 
 readers of a judgment passed, as he pretends, on this 
 work by " the late famous Cardinall of Richelieu. 
 That he was not to be admitted in the Academy of 
 wit who had not been before well read in Astrea." 
 And he claims for his author a highly beneficial 
 purpose, that could be condemned by none except ob- 
 durate Puritans : " These are the true designs and ends 
 of works of this nature : these are academies for the 
 lover, schools of war for the soldier, and cabinets for 
 the statesman ; they are the correctives of passion, the 
 restoratives of conversation, ... in a word, the most 
 delightful accommodations of civill life." 2 
 
 ^ Preface to "Artamenes, or the Grand Cyrus," London, 1653- 
 1654, five vols. fol. 
 
 "^ " Astrea . . . translated by a person of quality," i.e.^ J. 
 D[avies ?], London, 1657-8, 3 vols. fol. ; prefaces to vols, i and ii. 
 Dramas with their plots taken from "Astree" were written in 
 England and in France, such as " Tragi-comedie pastorale ou les 
 
366 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Another goes so far as to give the lie direct to the 
 Puritans, to *' those morose persons " who condemn 
 novels ; in truth, " delight is the least advantage re- 
 dounding from such compositions." French romances 
 (which seem to have altered somewhat in this respect) 
 are nothing but a school of morality, generosity, and 
 self-restraint : " Not to say anything concerning the 
 ground work which is generally some excellent piece 
 of ancient history accurately collected out of the 
 records of the most eminent writers of old, . . . the 
 addition of fictitious adventures is so ingenious, the 
 incident discourses so handsome, free and fitted for 
 the improvement of conversation (which is not un~ 
 deservedly accounted of great importance to the 
 contentment of human life), the descriptions of the 
 passions so lively and naturally set forth ; yea the 
 idea of virtue, generosity and all the qualifications- 
 requisite to accomplish great persons so exquisitely 
 delineated that ... I must speak it, though I believe 
 with the envy and regret of many, that [the French] 
 have approved themselves the best teachers of a noble 
 and generous morality that are to be met with." ^ 
 
 Sometimes both the engravings and the story were 
 imported from France. As the illustrations to Har- 
 ington's translation of " Ariosto " had been originally 
 made by an Italian artist, so now French engravings 
 began to be popularized in England. For example, 
 
 amours d'Astree . . . par le Sieur de Rayssiguier," Paris, 1632, 
 8vo .; " Astrea, or true love's mirrour, a pastoral," by Leonard 
 Willan, London, 165 1, 8vo. 
 
 ^ '* The Grand Scipio ... by Monsieur de Vaumoriere^ 
 rendered into English by G. H.," London, 1660, fol. 
 
E.NDYMION I'LUNGED INTO THE RIVER IX THE PRESENCE OV DIANA. 
 
 {French Engraving used in an English hook.) [p. 367. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 369 
 
 when a translation appeared of *' Endimion," the 
 curious mythological novel of Gombauld, with its 
 pleasant descriptions and incidents, half dreamy, half 
 real, the plates from drawings by C. de Pas were 
 sent over to England and used in the English edition. 
 Sometimes, too, the English copies had original plates 
 or engraved titles ; but even in these the French 
 style was usually apparent. Robert Loveday, who 
 translated La Calprenede's " Cleopatre," prefaces his 
 book with one such plate ; and it is curious to notice 
 when reading his published correspondence that the 
 engraving was made according to his own minute 
 directions. The bookseller '* ofFer'd to be at the charge 
 of cutting my own face for the frontispiece, but I 
 refused his offer." As, however, the publisher insisted 
 on having something, " I design'd him this which is 
 now a-cutting : Upon an altar dedicated to Love, 
 divers hearts transfixd with arrows and darts are to 
 lye broiling upon the coals ; and upon the steps of it, 
 Hymen ... in a posture as if he were going to light 
 [his taper] to the altar ; when Cupid is to come 
 behind him and pull him by the saffron sleeve, with 
 these words proceeding from his mouth : Nondum 
 peracta sunt prasludia " ; ^ a statement that is only too 
 true and in which Loveday summarizes unawares the 
 truest criticism levelled at these romances. You may 
 read volume after volume, and still " nondum peracta 
 sunt praeludia," you have not yet done with pre- 
 liminaries. 
 
 But this constant delaying of an event, sometimes 
 
 ^ "Loveday's letters, domestick and foreign," seventh impression, 
 London, 1684, 8vo, p. 146 (first edition 1659). 
 
370 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 announced, as in " Clelie," at the top of the first page, 
 was not in the" least displeasing to seventeenth-century 
 readers. ' The lengthy episodes,- the protracted con- 
 versations, enchanted them ; it was an age when 
 conversation was at its height in France, and from 
 France the taste spread to other countries; Translators, 
 as we have seen, expressly mentioned as an attraction 
 in 'their books the help they would give to conversa- 
 tion. . Numberless examples of this polite pastime are 
 provided in the heroic romances ; in " Almahide, or 
 the Captive Queen," ^ among others, we read discus- 
 sions :as to whether it is better for a man to court 
 a lady in verse or in prose, whether an illiterate lover is 
 better than a learned one, &c., &c. 
 
 Such topics, and many more of a higher order, 
 which •> were the subject of persistent debate in the 
 drawing-rooms of the Hotel de Rambouillet, were also 
 discussed in England ; there was, it is true, no Hotel 
 de Rambouillet, but there was the house of the Philips 
 at Cardigan. There was no Marquise, but there was 
 Catherine Philips, the " matchless Orinda," who did 
 much to acclimatize in England the refinements, 
 elegancies, and heroism a panache of her French neigh- 
 
 ^ Bv Scudery, translated by J. Philips, London, 1677, fol. 
 part ii. bk. ii. p. 166. Books entirely made up of "conversations" 
 were published by Mdlle. de Scudery, treating of pleasures, of 
 passions, of the knowledge of others and of ourselves, &c. They 
 read yery, much like dialogued essays; and it is interesting to 
 compare them with Addison's essays which treat sometimes of the 
 same subjects. They were received with great applause ; 
 Madame de Sevigne highly praises them. They were translated 
 into English : " Conversations upon several subjects, . . . done into 
 English by F. Spence," London, 1683, 2 vol. izmo. 
 
imilM 'Miiimiil'HIiwninMil 
 
 "hymen's pr.^ludia." [p. 371. 
 
 {Frontispiece of the translation of La Calprenede's *' Cleopatre.'') 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 373 
 
 l)Ours. With the help of her friends she translated 
 some of the plays of Corneille, not without adding 
 something to the original to make it look more 
 heroical. The little society gathered round her imi- 
 tated the feigned names bestowed upon the habitues 
 of the Parisian hotel. While she went by the name of 
 Orinda, plain Mr. Philips, her husband, was re-baptized 
 Antenor ; her friend Sir Charles Cotterel, translator of 
 '** Cassandre," was Poliarchus ; a lady friend, Miss 
 Owen, was Lucasia ; ^ fine names, to be sure, which 
 unfortunately will remind many a reader not only of 
 matchless Arthenice, of the Hotel de Rambouillet, but 
 of Moliere's Cathos and Madelon, who, too, had chosen 
 to imitate the Marquise, and insisted on being called 
 Aminte and Polixene, to the astonishment of their 
 honest father.^ 
 
 The high morality and delicacy, both of the 
 '^^ Hotel," and, alas, of Moliere's " Precieuses," were 
 also imitated at Cardigan. To get married was a 
 thing so coarse and vulgar that people with refined 
 souls were to slip into that only at the last extremity. 
 " A fine thing it would be," says the Madelon of the 
 " Precieuses," " if from the first Cyrus were to marry 
 Mandane and if Aronce were all at once wedded to 
 Clelia ! " We have seen that such is not the case, and 
 that ten volumes of adventures interpose between their 
 love and their marriage. In the same way an eternal 
 
 ^ About this curious little society see Mr. Gosse's *' Seventeenth 
 Century Studies," 1883, pp. 205 et seq. 
 
 ^ " Cathos : Le nom de Polixene que ma cousine a choisi et 
 celui d'Aminte que je me suis donne ont une grace dont il faut 
 que vous demeuriez d'accord " (" Precieuses Ridicules," sc. v.). 
 
374 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 friendship, a marriage of soul to soul, having been 
 sworn between Orinda and Lucasia, it was a matter of 
 great sorrow, shame and despair for the first when the 
 second, after thirteen years of this refined intercourse 
 proved frail and commonplace enough to marry a lover 
 of appropriate age, fortune and position. 
 
 Another centre for heroic thoughts and refined 
 morality was the country house of the pedantic but 
 pretty Duchess of Newcastle, a prolific writer of essays, 
 letters, plays, poems, tales, and works of all kinds. To 
 her, literature was a compensation for the impossibility, 
 through want of opportunity, of performing with her 
 own hand heroical deeds : " I dare not examine," says 
 she, " the former times, for fear I should meet with such 
 of my sex that have out-done all the glory I can aime 
 at or hope to attaine ; for I confess my ambition is 
 restless, and not ordinary ; because it would have an 
 extraordinary fame. And since all heroick actions, 
 publick employments, powerfuU governments and 
 eloquent pleadings are denyed our sex in this age 
 or at least would be condemned for want of custome, 
 is the cause I write so much." ^ 
 
 She wrote a great deal, and not without feeling a 
 somewhat deep and naively expressed admiration for 
 her own performances. The epithet '^restless" which 
 she applies to her ambition, well fits her whole mind ; 
 there is restlessness about everything she did and 
 wrote. She is never satisfied with one epistle to the 
 reader ; she must have ten or twelve prefaces and under- 
 prefaces, which forcibly remind us of her contemporary, 
 Oronte, in his famous sonnet scene with Alceste. Her 
 ^ "Natures pictures," London, 1656, fol., preface No. 2. 
 
A FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION. 
 
 I/- 375- 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 377 
 
 ** Natures pictures drawn by Fancies pencil to the life " 
 is preceded by several copies of commendatory verses and 
 a succession of preambles, entitled : " To the reader — 
 An epistle to my readers — To the reader — To the 
 ^eader — To my readers — To my readers"; each being 
 iuly signed " M. Newcastle." It seems as if the sight 
 of her own name was a pleasure to her. These 
 prefaces are full of expostulations, explanations and 
 apologies, quite in the Oronte style : ** The design of 
 these my feigned stories, is to present virtue, the muses 
 leading her and the graces attending her. . . . Perchance 
 my feigned stories are not so lively described as they 
 might have been. ... As for those tales I name 
 romancicall, I would not have my readers think I 
 write them either to please or to make foolish whining 
 lovers. ... I must entreat my readers to understand, 
 that though my naturall genius is to write fancy, yet 
 . . . Although I hope every piece or discourse in my 
 book will delight my readers or at least some one, and 
 some another . . . yet I do recommend two as the 
 most solid and edifying." Great is the temptation to 
 answer with Alceste : " Nous verrons bien ! " ^ But 
 how could one say so when she was so pretty } The 
 best preface to her volumes is in fact the charming 
 engraving representing a party meeting at her house to 
 tell and hear tales round the fire, and of which we give 
 a reproduction. The only pity is that the figure meant 
 as her portrait, though laurel-crowned, looks much 
 more plain and commonplace than we might have 
 expected. 
 
 ^ Her "Playes," 1662, are preceded by two dedications, one 
 prologue, and eleven prefaces. 
 
3 7 8 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 She wrote ithen abundantly " romancicall " tales, as 
 she called them, with a touch of heroism ; edifying tales 
 in which she prescribes *'that all young men should be 
 kept to their studies so long as their ejffeminate 
 beauties doth last ; " dialogues " of the wise lady, the 
 learned lady and the witty lady," the three being only 
 too wise ; plays in which she depicts herself under the 
 names of Lady Sanspareile, of Lady Chastity, &:c.,. 
 unpardonable sins, no doubt, to give oneself such 
 names ; but it is reported she was so beautiful ! 
 
 Among the mass of her writings, it must be added, 
 ideas are scattered here and there which were destined 
 to live, and through which she anticipated men of true 
 and real genius. To give only one example, she too 
 may be credited with having anticipated Richardson in 
 her *' Sociable Letters," in which she tries to imitate 
 real life, to describe scenes, very nearly to write an 
 actual novel : " The truth is," she writes, " they are 
 rather scenes than letters, for I have endeavoured under 
 cover of letters to express the humors of mankind, and 
 the actions of man's life by the correspondence of two 
 ladies, living at some short distance from each other, 
 which make it not only their chief delight and pastime, 
 but their tye in friendship, to discourse by letters as 
 they would do if they were personally together." i 
 Many collections of imaginary letters had, as we have 
 seen, been published before, but never had the use to 
 which they could be put been better foreseen by any 
 predecessor of Richardson. 
 
 The Duchess lived till 1674, surrounded by an ever- 
 
 ^ '-'CCXI. Sociable Letters," London, 1664, fol. 
 
CONVERSATION AND TELLING OF STORIES AT THE HOUSE OF THE 
 
 DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, 1656. [/. 370. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 381 
 
 increasing group of admirers, deaf to the jokes of 
 courtly people concerning her old-fashioned chastity ; 
 more than consoled by the firm belief she had as 
 to the strength of her mind and genius. In this 
 persuasion " she kept," wrote Theophilus Gibber, " a 
 great many young ladies about her person, who oc- 
 casionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept 
 in a room contiguous to that in which Her Grace lay, 
 and were ready at the call of her bell to rise any hour 
 of the night to write down her conceptions, lest they 
 should escape her memory. The young ladies no doubt 
 often dreaded Her Grace's conceptions, which were 
 frequent." ^ Here, again, her restless spirit was in 
 some manner anticipating unawares another great writer, 
 namely, Pope. 
 
 Thus, in spite of Cromwell and the Puritans on the 
 one side, and Charles II. and his courtiers on the other, 
 French ideas as to the possible dignity and purity of 
 lives in which the worldly element was not wanting 
 grew to some extent on the English soil, though, it is 
 true, with less success, being as we see mainly relegated 
 at that time to the country. The true hour for virtues 
 not the less real because sociable, virtues such as they 
 were understood by Madame de Sevigne or Madame 
 de Rambouillet, had not yet come. They were to be 
 thoroughly acclimatized only in the next century, 
 principally through the exertions of Steele and Addison. 
 
 But the strictly heroical part of French tastes was 
 accepted immediately and with great enthusiasm. The 
 extraordinary number of folio heroical romances still 
 
 ^ " Lives of the Poets ... to the time of Dean Swift," London, 
 J753> 5 vols. i2mo ; vol. ii. p. 164. 
 
382 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 to be seen in old English country houses testifies 
 at the present day to their extraordinary hold upon 
 the polite society of the time. The King gave the 
 example. Charles I. had been a reader of such novels ; 
 on the eve of his death he distributed a few souvenirs 
 to his most faithful friends, and we see him give 
 away, besides Hooker s " Ecclesiastical Polity " and 
 Dr. Andrews' sermons, the romance of " Cassandre," 
 which he left to the Earl of Lindsey. During the 
 troublous times of the civil war, Dorothy Osborne 
 constantly alludes, in her letters to Sir William Temple, 
 to the books she reads, and they are mostly these same 
 French novels. While troops are marching to and fro ; 
 while rebellions and counter-rebellions are preparing or 
 breaking out, the volumes of " Cleopatre " and " Grand 
 Cyrus " go to and fro between the lovers and are the 
 subject of their epistolary discussions. " Have you read 
 
 * Cleopatre ' } I have six tomes on't here that I can 
 lend you if you have not ; there are some stories in't 
 you will like, I believe." — " Since you are at leisure 
 to consider the moon, you may be enough to read 
 
 * Cleopatre,' therefore I have sent you three volumes. 
 , . . There is a story of Artimise that I will recom- 
 mend to you ; her disposition I like extremely, it 
 has a great deal of practical wit ; and if you meet 
 with one Brittomart, pray send me word how you like 
 him." — " I have a third tome here [of '' Cyrus "] against 
 you have done with that second ; and to encourage 
 you, let me assure you that the more you read of 
 them, you will like them still better," i and so on. 
 
 ^ "Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 
 1652-4," ed. Parry, London, 1888, 8vo. Letter ix. p. 60 ; Letter 
 X. p. 64 ; Letter xxiv. p. 124, year 1653. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE, 383 
 
 The wife of Mr. Pepys was not less fond of PVench 
 romances than Dorothy Osborne, and we sometimes 
 find her husband purchasing copies at his bookseller's 
 to bring home as presents. But he himself did not 
 like them very much ; he seems to have been deterred 
 from this kind of literature by his wife's habit of 
 reciting stories to him out of these works ; some quarrel 
 ev^en took place between the couple about " Cyrus," 
 though it seems that "Cyrus" was in this case more the 
 pretext than the reason of the discussion, as honest Pepys 
 with his usual frankness gives us to understand : "At 
 noon home, where I find my wife troubled still at my 
 checking her last night in the coach in her long stories 
 out of ' Grand Cyrus,' which she would tell, though 
 nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner. 
 This she took unkindly, and I think I was to blame 
 indeed ; but she do find with reason that in the 
 company of Pierce, Knipp, or other women that I love 
 I do not value her as I ought. However very good 
 friends by and by." As a penance doubtless we see 
 him buying for her later " L'lllustre Bassa in four 
 volumes " and " Cassandra and some other French 
 books." I 
 
 III. 
 
 But reading and translating was not enough for a 
 society so enamoured of heroical romances ; some 
 original ones were to be composed for English readers 
 and the composing of them became a fashionable 
 pastime. " My lord Broghill," writes again Dorothy 
 
 ^ May 13, 1666 ; Feb. 24, 1667-8; Nov. 16, 1668. 
 
384 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Osborne to her future husband, Sir William Temple^ 
 the patron hereafter of the yet unborn Jonathan Swift, 
 " sure will give us something worth the reading. My 
 Lord Saye, I am told, has writ a romance since his- 
 retirement in the isle of Lundy, and Mr. Waller they 
 say is making one of our wars, which if he does not 
 mingle with a great deal of pleasing fiction, cannot 
 be very diverting, sure, the subject is so sad." ^ 
 
 The following year, that is 1654, the English public 
 received, according to Dorothy's previsions, the first 
 instalment of the most noticeable heroical romance 
 composed in their language. It was called '' Par- 
 thenissa," 2 and had for its author Roger Boyle, Lord 
 Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery, one of the match- 
 less Orinda's great friends. 3 
 
 In this heroic romance, the imitation of France is 
 as exact as possible ; the few literary qualities percep- 
 tible in the vast compositions of Mdlle. de Scudery and 
 of La Calprenede, do not shine with any brighter lustre 
 in " Parthenissa." As in France ancient history is put to 
 the torture, though Scudery, as we have seen, had set up 
 as a rule that the truth of history was to be respected in 
 romances ; of observation of nature there is little or none,, 
 and the conversations of the characters are interminable. 
 " Turning over the leaves of the large folio," wrote 
 
 ^ Letter xxxiv. p. 162. Year 1653. 
 
 * " Parthenissa, that most fam'd romance," London, 1654. 
 
 3 He assisted her in getting her translation of Corneille's 
 "Pompee" represented at Dublin with embellishments, consisting 
 in dances, music, songs, &c. He was born in 1621 and was held 
 in great esteem both by Cromwell and by the Stuarts. He left 
 dramas and other works and died in 1679. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 385 
 
 one of the last critics who busied themselves with this 
 work, " I perceived that . . . the story some-how or 
 other brought in Hannibal, Massinissa, Mithridates, 
 Spartacus, and other persons equally well known. . . . 
 How they came into the story or what the story is 
 I cannot tell you ; nor will any mortal know any 
 more than I do, between this and doomsday ; but 
 there they all are, lively though invisible, like carp 
 in a pond." ^ We must make bold, though doomsday 
 has not yet come, to draw forth some of these carp 
 out of the water, and, after all, this is not the darkest 
 pond in which we shall have fished. 
 
 At the commencement, Boyle introduces us to a 
 young and handsome stranger who comes to Syria 
 in order to consult the oracle of Venus. The priest 
 Callimachus appears before him, and quite suddenly 
 asks for his history. The stranger is very willing to 
 tell it. His name is Artabanes and he is the son of 
 the King of Parthia ; he is in love with the Princess 
 Parthenissa and has proved his affection for her in the 
 manner of Sidney's heroes : he met on one occasion 
 an Arab prince, who was travelling with a collection 
 of twenty-four pictures, representing the mistresses 
 of twenty-four famous champions overthrown by him. 
 Artabanes in his turn measured swords with the Arab 
 and got possession of the twenty-four paintings, and 
 one in addition, which represented the mistress of his 
 adversary : whence it results that Parthenissa is the 
 most beautiful woman in the world, exactly what the 
 hero intended to prove. 
 
 ^ "British Novelists," by David Masson, Cambridge, 1859, ^'^°>- 
 p. 72. 
 
386 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Artabanes has a rival, Surena ; he fancies that Surena 
 is the happy man, leaves Parthenissa and goes to live 
 in solitude. Pirates carry him off, and sell him at Rome 
 for a slave. Then under the name of Spartacus, he stirs 
 up a revolt and accomplishes exploits attributed by 
 ancient writers to that rebel ; however he does not die 
 as in history, but returns to Asia. There, Parthenissa, 
 rather than surrender to a lover, swallows a drug and 
 dies ; but hers is only an apparent death and she returns 
 to life. Artabanes, in the same way, stabs himself, but 
 he is cured ; and then it is that he comes to consult the 
 oracle. 
 
 Callimachus thanks him for his interesting but 
 somewhat lengthy story, and revenges himself by 
 relating his own. Unfortunately he is interrupted : 
 they see a lady who looks exactly like Parthenissa 
 herself enter a neighbouring grove ; she is accompanied 
 by a young cavalier ; they embrace and disappear 
 among the trees. Artabanes' anguish at this sight 
 cannot be described. But here Roger Boyle found 
 that he was tired and wrote no more. His romance, 
 which already comprised five parts, was published by 
 him in this unfinished form. 
 
 For a long time the public was left in suspense. 
 The Protector was dead, his son had fallen, the Stuarts 
 had again ascended the throne, and no one knew the 
 €nd of the loves of Prince Artabanes. The continua- 
 tion of the romance is due to the charming Henrietta 
 of England, Duchess of Orleans. Ten or twelve years 
 after the appearance of the first volume, she was curious 
 to know what Parthenissa was doing in the wood, and 
 begged Roger Boyle to bring her out of it. He 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 387 
 
 wrote a sixth part In four books and dedicated it to 
 her. 
 
 Are we to imagine that the author is now going to 
 lead his impatient readers in search of the heroine? 
 Not at all. Caliimachus, who was unfairly interrupted 
 in his tale, proposes to his companions to leave one of 
 them, Symander, on guard, and to go and refresh 
 themselves. When they were rested, " they conjur'd 
 him to prosecute his story, though what they had seen 
 and heard gave them impatiences which nothing but 
 their desires of knowing so generous a friend's fortunes 
 could have dispensed with." The four books of the 
 sixth part are devoted to this narrative ; Boyle, as he 
 said in his preface, had thought at first of concluding 
 everything in this supplement ; but he was forced to 
 recognize that it was impossible to " confine it within 
 so narrow a compass." This statement will be found 
 on page 808 of his folio volume. Why Parthe- 
 nissa entered the grove was never to be known nor 
 what she had to say in her justification. Boyle, who 
 had taken up his pen again at the instance of the 
 young duchess, had very soon no reason to continue : 
 Bossuet was callin g on the court of the Grand Roi 
 to weep with him for the loss of this charming woman, 
 whose beauty and grace had only blossomed " for one 
 morning." 
 
 As soon as the book was out, Dorothy Osborne had 
 a copy sent to her, but she did not like it so much as 
 the French models. She writes to Temple : "Til . . . 
 tell you that ' Parthenissa ' is now my company. My 
 brother sent it down and I have almost read it. 'Tis 
 handsome language ; you would know it to be writ by a 
 
388 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 person of good quality though you were not told it ; 
 but on the whole I am not very much taken with it. 
 All the stories have too near a resemblance with those 
 of other romances ; there is nothing new and surprenant 
 in them ; the ladies are all so kind they make no 
 sport/' I 
 
 Boyle, it is said, besides his dramas and other works, 
 again tried his fortune as a novel writer, and published 
 in 1676 '^English Adventures by a person of honour." 
 It is in a style so absolutely different from his former 
 romance that it is scarcely credible that both came from 
 the same pen. " English Adventures " tell the story 
 of the amours of King Henry VIII., of Brandon, and 
 others. All the reserve in " Parthenissa " 'has entirely 
 disappeared, and scenes are presented to the eye which, 
 except at the time of the Restoration, have usually been 
 veiled. Love is in this novel the subject of many dis- 
 cussions, and so it was in heroic romances, but while it 
 was spoken of there with decency and dignity, it is 
 never mentioned in " English Adventures " but in a 
 tone of banter and raillery. The discourses about this 
 passion recall Suckling's ideas much more than those 
 of Madeleine de Scudery. " Pardon me, madam, Wil- 
 more reply'd, if I think you mistake . the case, for I 
 never said I was for a siege in Love : that is the dull 
 method of those countries whose discipline in amours I 
 abominate. I am for the French mode, where the first 
 day, I either conquer my mistress or my passion." 
 Whether or not this be according to " the French 
 mode," we are obviously very far fi-om the Montausier 
 ideal. The author continues : " Nor indeed did I ever 
 ^ Letter LI. p. 236, year 1654. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE, 389 
 
 see any woman (I mean in France) cry up constancy, 
 but she was decaying ; for when any thing but love is 
 to maintain love 'tis a proof Beauty cannot do it, and 
 then, alas, nothing else can." i If this and the very 
 licentious adventures which follow are really Boyle's, it 
 must be conceded that the change worked upon him by 
 the new Restoration manners was indeed vast and com- 
 prehensive. 
 
 Other original attempts at the heroical romance were 
 made in England at this period. It will be enough 
 to mention one more. The two main defects of the 
 heroical dramas of Dryden and his contemporaries are 
 bombast in the ideas and bad taste in the expressions. 
 In Crowne's heroical novel of " Pandion and Amphige- 
 nia " - both defects are pushed to an extreme which, 
 incredible as it may seem to the readers of Dryden, was 
 never at any time reached by the laureate. 
 
 The story is the usual heroical story of valorous 
 deeds and peerless loves ; the author is careful to assert 
 that he is perfectly original: "All. . .is genuine, 
 nothing stole, nothing strained." He has been especially 
 careful to avoid imitating the French and the elegancies 
 of " that ceremonious nation." After such a declara- 
 tion we are rather surprised to hear Periander thus 
 answer a lady who, in the usual way, had asked him for 
 his inevitable story : '' Madam," said he, " your expres- 
 sions speak you no less rich in virtue than beauty. . . . 
 
 ^ P. 54. Part of the tale, viz. : the adventures of Brandon, 
 supplied Otway with the plot of his " Orphan " (performed 1680). 
 
 ^ *' Pandion and Amphigenia, or the history of the coy lady of 
 Thessalia adorned with sculptures," London, 1665, 8vo. Crowne 
 died about 1703 ; his dramatic works have been published in four 
 vols., 1873. 
 
390 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 I should be more savage then the beasts that Orpheus 
 charmed into civility, should I remain inexorable to the 
 intreaties of so sweet an orator, whose perfections are 
 such that I cannot but account it as great a glory to 
 obey you, as it would make me sensible of shame to 
 refuse any thing you should command, though it were ta 
 sacrifice my life and honour, which are the only jewels 
 I ever prized in my prosperity, and which is all that 
 Fortune hath left to my disposal in my adversity." 
 Then he tells his story, which we had better not 
 listen to, for it begins : " Know vou then that in the 
 city of Corinth, there dwelt a gentleman called 
 Eleutherius . . .," and we know full well what such 
 beginnings threaten. The romance goes on describing- 
 bloody feuds and matchless beauties. Here is in charac- 
 teristic style a portrait of a matchless beauty : 
 
 " The pillow blest with a kiss from her cheeks, as 
 pregnant with delight, swelled on either side. ... A 
 lock that had stollen from its sweet prison, folded in 
 cloudy curls, lay dallying with her breath, sometimes 
 striving to get a kiss, and then repulsed flew back, 
 sometimes obtaining its desired bliss, and then as rapt 
 with joy, retreated in wanton caperings. . . . Her breasts 
 at liberty displayed were of so pure a whiteness as if 
 one's eye through the transparent skin, had viewed the 
 milky treasures they inclosed." 
 
 Oh ! for a Boileau, shall we exclaim, to cut off the 
 flowers of such paper gardens ! for a Defoe to show 
 how prose fiction should be written ! But Boileau is 
 abroad and Defoe's time is yet to come. Wait, besides, 
 for this is nothing and we have better in store ; that 
 was love, here is war : 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 391 
 
 " The signal for the battail being given, there began 
 such a terrible conflict, as that within a short time 
 thousands lay dead in the place, both sides maintaining 
 their assaults with such impetuous rage as if the Gyants 
 had been come to heap mountains of carcasses to assail 
 heaven and besiege the gods ; nothing but fury reigned 
 in every breast, some that were thrust through with 
 lances would yet run themselves farther on to reach 
 their enemies and requite that mortal wound . . . the 
 earth grew of a sanguine complexion, being covered 
 with blood, as if every soldier had been Death's herald, 
 and had come to emblazon Mars's arms with a sword 
 Argent on a field Gules. ... In one place, lay heads 
 deposed from their sovereignties, yawning and staring 
 as if they looked for their bodies." ^ One refreshing 
 thought is the remembrance of the pure, deep pleasure 
 Crowne must have found in fastening together such an 
 unparalleled series of conceits. " Peste," is he sure to 
 have said with Sosie : 
 
 " Peste ! ou prend mon esprit toutes ces gentillesses ? " 
 
 As for the final result of these wars and love-makings, 
 it is a very airy one ; for Crowne seems to have enter- 
 tained a higher ideal of purity than even Montausier 
 and Orinda. His ladies bestow upon their lovers 
 nothing at all, not even marriage, and the author, after 
 having been at some trouble to re-establish order in 
 Thessaly and other countries, gives up all idea of 
 getting Pandion and Amphigenia wedded, this lady, she 
 of the pillow above described, being as he says so very 
 " coy.'* 
 
 ' Pp. 140, 141. 
 23 
 
392 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 Though not quite a match for Crowne's it must be 
 conceded that neither is Dryden's bombast of a mean 
 order. The following passage which very nearly bears 
 comparison with the above, will show how heroism 
 appeared when transferred to the stage. In one of the 
 dramas, the plot of which Dryden took from the French 
 romances, Almanzor thus addresses a rival : 
 
 . . " If from thy hands alone my death can be, 
 I am immortal and a god to thee, 
 If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low 
 That I must stoop ere I can give the blow : 
 But mine is fixed so far above thy crown. 
 That all thy men. 
 
 Piled on thy back, can never pull it down : 
 But at my ease, thy destiny I send. 
 By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend. 
 Like heaven, I need but only to stand still. 
 And not concurring to thy life, I kill." ^ 
 
 Any number of speeches of this sort are to be 
 found in the heroical dramas of Dryden, Settle, Lee, 
 and their contemporaries. Roman, Arab, Turk, Greek 
 or Moorish heroes, pirates or princes, when they mean 
 • to set anything at defiance, choose nothing less than 
 heaven and earth as their object ; they divide the 
 world between them as if it were an orange ; they rush 
 to the fight or stop for a speech with a fine shake of 
 the head which sends a majestic undulation round the 
 wig worn by them, even by the Moors, as we may 
 see in one of the very rare dramas then published with 
 
 ^ "Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada," per- 
 formed (with great success) in the winter, 1669-70, act iii. sc. i.. 
 
HEROES (MOORISH ONES) AS THEY APPEARED ON THE STAGE, FROM 
 
 settle's *' EMPRESS OF MOROCCO," 1673. [A 3£I3» 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 395 
 
 engravings. They are represented there with embroi- 
 dered justaucorps, wigs and ribbons. ^ 
 
 Crowne besides his romance wrote several dramas that 
 secured him a wide, if temporary, popularity. He also 
 adapted Racine's " Andromaque " for the English stage, 
 but he was very much disgusted with this work ; the 
 French original, though not "the worst " of French plays, 
 was after all so mean and tame ! " If the play be barren 
 of fancy, you must blame the original author. I am as 
 much inclined to be civil to strangers as any man ; but 
 then they must be strangers of merit. I would no more 
 be at the pains to bestow wit (if I had any) on a 
 French play, than I would be at the cost to bestow 
 cloaths on every shabby Frenchman that comes over." 
 Here we have Racine put in his proper place ; 
 what claim had he to be considered ^' a stranger of 
 merit " } True, some crabbed English critics seem to 
 have taken his part against the translator, and, in- 
 credible as it may seem, they have expressed a thought 
 that " this suffered much in the translation. — I cannot 
 tell in what," answers Crowne, " except in not 
 bestowing verse upon it, which I thought it did not 
 deserve. For otherwise, there is all that is in the 
 French play, verbatim, and something more, as mav 
 be seen in the last act, where what is dully recited 
 in the French play is there represented, which is nc 
 small advantage." 2 And true, it is, Pyrrhus is slain 
 
 ^ Settle's "Empress of Morocco," London, 1673, 4to. The 
 engraving we reproduce represents the interior of a Moorish prison, 
 with Muley Labas, son of the Emperor of Morocco, and the 
 Princess Morena. 
 
 2 " Andromache, a tragedy, as it is acted at the Dukes Theatre," 
 London, 1675, 4to. 
 
396 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, 
 
 before our eyes ; there are " alarums " and other lively, 
 if customary, ornaments. 
 
 In this age obviously Racine could not please. Nor 
 would Shakespeare have pleased a French audience, 
 but as we know no attempt in that direction was made 
 in Paris. The two nations lent one another, if anything, 
 their defects. "Alaric" was named with praise by Dryden ; 
 Scudery and La Calprenede continued to be most popular 
 French authors during the century. Even in the next 
 we find something remaining of their fame. Among 
 the books in the library of the fashionable Leonora, 
 Addison notices : "* Cassandra,' * Cleopatra,' ' Astrasa' . . . 
 the * Grand Cyrus,' with a pin stuck in one of the 
 middle leaves . . . ' Clelia,' which opened of it self 
 in the place that describes two lovers in a bower," ^ &c. 
 The passions in them which seem to us now so in- 
 credibly frigid, had not yet cooled down ; their warmth 
 was still felt : so much so that in one of Farquhar's 
 plays, " Cassandra " is mentioned as greatly responsible 
 for Lady Lurewell's first and greatest fault, the begin- 
 ning of many others : " After supper I went to my 
 chamber and read ' Cassandra,' then went to bed and 
 dreamt of it all night, rose in the morning and made 
 verses ..." 2 We cannot follow her in her account 
 of the consequences. 
 
 All that was truly noble and simple in French literature 
 was known, but at the same time generally misunder- 
 stood in England. To make French authors acceptable, 
 grossness was added to Moliere, bombast to Racine ; 
 
 ^ Spectator^ April 12, 171 1. 
 
 ^ "The Constant Couple, or a trip to the Jubilee," 1700,. 
 act iii., last scene. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 397 
 
 even Otway, when translating '' Berenice," transformed 
 Racine's " Titus " into a bully of romance who, in order 
 to assuage his grief, goes to overrun " the Universe " 
 and make " the worlds " as wretched as he is.^ Madame 
 de la Fayette had shown how it was possible to copy 
 from life, in a novel, true heroism and true tenderness 
 without exaggeration ; her exquisite masterpiece was 
 translated of course as was everything then that was 
 French ; but oblivion soon gathered round the 
 " Princess of Cleve," and the only proof we have 
 that it did not pass unnoticed is a clumsy play by 
 Lee, in which this best of old French novels is merci- 
 lessly caricatured. 2 There was no attempt to imitate 
 the Comtesse's pure and perfect style and high train of 
 thought. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Reaction against the heroical romances did not wait, 
 however, till the eighteenth century to assert itself in 
 England ; it set in early and very amusingly : but it 
 remained powerless. As the evil had chiefly come from 
 
 ^ "Titus and Berenice ; a tragedy,'' 1677. 
 
 2 "The Princess of Montpensier," 1666; "The Princess of 
 Cleve . . . written by the greatest wits of France, rendred 
 into English by a person of quality at the request of some friends," 
 i688 : " Zayde," 1688. Nat. Lee's play is entitled, ** The Princess 
 of Cleve," London, 1689, 4to. As to the popularity of this novel 
 in France, it will be enough to notice Madame de Sevigne's 
 allusion to " ce chien de Barbin," who does not fulfil her orders 
 when she wants books, because she does not write "des Princesses 
 de Cleves." 
 
398 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 France, so did the remedy ; but the remedy in France 
 proved sufficient for a cure. In that country at all times 
 the tale had flourished, and at all times in the tale, to the 
 detriment of chivalry and heroism, writers had prided 
 themselves on seeking mere truth. Thus, in the charming 
 preface of the Reine de Navarre's *' Heptameron," Dame 
 Parlamente establishes the theory of these narratives, 
 and relates how, at the court, it had been decided to 
 write a series of them, but to exclude from the number 
 of their authors '' those who should have studied and be 
 men of letters ; for Monseigneur the Dauphin did not 
 wish their artifice to be introduced into them, and was 
 also afraid lest the beauty of rhetoric should in some 
 place injure the truth of the tale." 
 
 In the seventeenth century, the tradition of the old 
 story-tellers is carried on in France in more developed 
 writings, in actual novels, such as the " Baron de Foe- 
 neste " of D'Aubigne, 1617 ; the '' Francion " of Charles 
 Sorel, 1622 (.?) ; the " Berger extravagant " of the same, 
 1628 ; the "Roman Comique" of Scarron, 1651 ; the 
 "Roman bourgeois" of Furetiere, 1666, and many 
 others. Scarron, who had travestied Virgil, was not the 
 man to spare La Calprenede, and he does not lose his 
 opportunity. " I cannot exactly tell you," he writes of 
 one of his characters, " whether he had sup'dthat night, 
 or went to bed empty, as some Romance-mongers use 
 to do, who regulate all their heroes' actions, making 
 them rise early, and tell on their story till dinner time, 
 then dine lightly, and after their meal proceed in the 
 discourse ; or else retire to some shady grove to talk by 
 themselves, unless they have something to discover to 
 the rocks and trees." 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 399' 
 
 Furetiere, writing in the same spirit, declares that he 
 wishes to concern himself with '' persons who are neither 
 heroes nor heroines, who will neither raise armies nor 
 overturn kingdoms ; but who will be good people of 
 middling rank who quietly go on their usual way, of 
 whom some are handsome and others plain, some wise 
 and others foolish ; and the latter have the appearance 
 indeed of forming the greatest number." ^ 
 
 Without speaking of the more important works of 
 Cervantes and Rabelais,^ most of these novels were 
 translated into English, and in the same spirit as they 
 had been written, that is, to be used as engines of war 
 against heroes and heroism. " The French themselves," 
 writes one of the translators, " our first romantique 
 masters . . . have given over making the world other- 
 wise than it was ; are now come to represent it to us as 
 
 ^ "Je ne vous dirai pas exactement s'il avait soupe et s'il se 
 coucha sans manger comme font quelques faiseurs de romans qui 
 reglent toutes les heures du jour de leurs heros, les font se lever de 
 bon matin, conter leur histoire jusqu' a I'heure du diner, reprendre 
 leur histoire ou s'enfoncer dans un bois pour y aller parler tout 
 seuls, si ce n'est quand ih ont quelque chose a dire aux arbres et 
 aux rochers " (" Roman comique," chap. ix. ed. 1825). 
 
 "Je vous raconteray sincerement et avec iidelite' plusieurs his- 
 toriettes et galanteries arrivees entre des personnes qui ne seront 
 ny heros ny heroines, qui ne dresseront point d'armees, ny ne 
 renverseront point de royaumes, mais qui seront de ces bonnes gens 
 de mediocre condition, qui vont tout doucement leur grand chemin, 
 dont les uns seront beaux et les autres laids, les uns sages et les 
 autres sots; et ceux-cy ont bien la mine de composer le plus grand 
 nombre " (" Roman bourgeois," ed, Janet, p. 6). 
 
 2 Rabelais by Urquhart, London, 1653, 8vo ; Cervantes in 1612 j 
 and again by T. Shelton in 1620 and. by J. Philips, 16S7. 
 
40O THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 it is and ever will be." ^ " Among all the books that 
 ever were thought on," writes another, who curiously 
 enough had about the same opinion of the favourite 
 novels of his time as Sidney had had of the drama a 
 century earlier, *' those of knight errantry and shep- 
 herdry have been so excellently trivial and naughty, 
 that it would amuse a good judgment to consider into 
 what strange and. vast absurdities some imaginations 
 have straggled ... the Knight constantly killing the 
 gyant, or it may be whole squadrons ; the Damosel 
 certainly to be relieved just upon the point of ravishing ; 
 a little childe carried away out of his cradle after some 
 twenty years discovered to be the sone of some great 
 prince ; a girl after seven years wand ring and co- 
 habiting and being stole, confirmed to be a virgin, 
 either by. a panterh, fire or a fountain, and lastly all 
 ending in marriage. . . These are the noble enter- 
 tainments of books of this kinde, which how profitable 
 they are, you may judge ; how pernicious 'tis easily 
 
 ^ Scarron's "Comical romance : or a facetious history of a company 
 of strowling stage-players," London, 1676, fol. Preface to the 
 continuation. The translator is at some pains to anglicize his 
 original ; when Scarron speaks of Paris, the translator puts 
 London ; Ragotin is heard defending Spenser (chapter xv.). The 
 poet in Scarron brags of his acquaintance with Corneille and Rotrou, 
 and in the English text, with Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson 
 (chap, viii.). There were other translations of Scarron: "The 
 whole comical works of M. Scarron," translated by Mr. T. Brown, 
 Mr. Savage, and others, London, 1700, 8vo ; '* The comic 
 romance," translated by O. Goldsmith, Dublin, 1780 (?) 2 vol. 
 izmo. His shorter novels or stories were separately translated by 
 Johft Davies, who states in the preface of "The unexpected Choice," 
 London, 1670, that he did so at the suggestion of the late Catherine 
 Philips, the matchless Orinda. 
 
A poet's dream realized, from "the extravagant shepherd," 1653. 
 
 [/• 401. 
 

 V^ 
 
 calif< 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 403 
 
 seen, if they meet but with an intentlve melancholy and 
 a spirit apt to be overborn by such follies ; " ^ a spirit, 
 in fact, such as Lady Lurewell's, whose reading of 
 *' Cassandra " had, as we have seen, such remarkable 
 consequences. 2 
 
 Efforts made in England to imitate this style and to 
 lead, by means of the romance itself, a reaction against 
 the false heroism that the romance had introduced, 
 proved sadly abortive. These attempts have fallen into 
 a still more profound oblivion than those of the story- 
 tellers of Shakespeare's time. The English were not 
 yet masters of the supple, crisp and animated language 
 which suited that kind of tale, and which the French 
 possessed from the thirteenth century. A few original 
 minds like Sidney in his " Apologie " had employed it ; 
 but they formed rare exceptions, and in the seventeenth 
 century most men continued to like either the pompous 
 prose with its Latin periods, held in highest honour 
 by Bacon, or the various kinds of flowery prose used 
 by Lodge, Greene, Shakespeare and Sidney. So the 
 romance writers who attempted to bring about a re- 
 action received no encouragement and were forgotten 
 
 ^ " The extravagant Shepherd, the anti-romance, or the history 
 of the shepherd Lysis," London, 1653, another edition 1660. 
 Strange to say, besides some adaptations from Spanish authors 
 {"La Picara," 1665; "Donna Rosina," 1700?), a translation of 
 Voiture's Letters, 1657, the same John Davies of Kidwelly, who had 
 written this eloquent appeal against heroical romances, translated 
 ^* Clelia," 1656, and part of "Cleopatra" in conjunction with 
 Loveday. 
 
 2 See also in Furetiere's " Roman bourgeois" how the reading of 
 *'Astree" made of Javotte "la plus grande causeuse et la plus 
 coquette fille du quartier " (Ed. Janet, i. p. 173). 
 
404 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 Jess from want of merit than because even their con- 
 temporaries paid no attention to them. Thinking to 
 open up a new path, they got entangled in a blind 
 alley where they were left. The ground was to be 
 broken anew by more robust hands than theirs, the 
 hands of Defoe. 
 
 Some of these attempts however are worthy of atten- 
 tion, notably one in which imitation of Scarron and 
 Furetiere is to be found, entitled '' The Adventures of 
 Co vent Garden." i The scene is laid in London among 
 the cultivated upper middle class : life is so realistically 
 represented, that this work, now entirely unknown, is 
 one of those that best aid us to re-constitute that 
 society in which Dryden, Wycherley and Otway 
 lived. 
 
 Peregrine, the hero of the tale, spends his evenings 
 at the "Rose'' or at "Will's," Drydens favourite 
 coffee-house, or at the theatre, where the " Indian Em- 
 peror," one of Dryden's heroic dramas, was being played. 
 With the Lady Selinda, in whose box he sits, he 
 discusses the merits of the play, the value of the French 
 rules and the license of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. 
 Many interesting remarks occur in these conversations 
 which seem put in writing after nature, and are very 
 curious in the history of literature. If they do not 
 exactly recall the Moliere of the " Critique de I'Ecole 
 
 ^ " The Adventures of Covent Garden, in imitation of Scarron's 
 city romance," London, 1699, i6mo. *' Scarron " is here evidently 
 for " Furetiere." This work, the author of which is unknown, 
 has long been forgotten, though deserving a better fate. It is 
 dedicated "to all my ingenious acquaintance at Will's coffee- 
 house." 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 405 
 
 des Femmes," they will recall Furetiere, no insignificant 
 praise. It is, besides, a compliment difficult to apply 
 to any other English novelist of the period. Here is a 
 specimen of literary criticism if not deep, at least lively, 
 such as was going on at the play, or in the drawing- 
 rooms at the time of the Restoration : 
 
 " You criticks, said Belinda, make a mighty sputter 
 about exactness of plot, unity of time, place and I know 
 not what, which I can never find do any play the least 
 good (Peregrine smiled at her female ignorance). But, 
 she continued, I have one thing to offer in this dispute, 
 which I think sufficient to convince you. I suppose the 
 chief design of plays is to please the people,^ and get 
 the playhouse and poet a livelihood } 
 
 " You must pardon me, madam, replyed Peregrine, 
 Instruction is the business of plays. 
 
 *' Sir, said the lady, make it the business of the 
 audience first to be pleased with instruction, and then I 
 shall allow you it to be the chief end of plays. 
 
 " But, suppose, madam, said he, that I grant what 
 you lay down. 
 
 " Then sir, answered she, you must allow that 
 whatever plays most exactly answer this aforesaid end 
 are most exact plays. Now I can instance you many 
 plays, as all those by Shakespeare and Johnson, and the 
 most of Mr. Dryden's which you criticks quarrel at as 
 
 ^ Cf. Moliere : " Je voudrais bien savoir si la grande regie de 
 routes les regies n'est pas de plaire, et si une piece de theatre qui 
 a attrape son but n'a pas suivi un bon chemin. ... Laissons nous 
 aller de bonne fbi aux choses qui nous prennent par les entrailles 
 et ne cherchons point de raisonnements pour nous empecher 
 d'avoir du plaisir " (" Critique de I'Ecole des Femmes," sc. 7). 
 
4o6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 irregular, which nevertheless still continue to please the 
 audience and are a continual support to the Theatre„ 
 There is very little of your unity of time in any of 
 them, yet they never fail to answer the proposed end 
 very successfully. . . . Certainly, these rules are ill 
 understood, or our nature has changed since they were 
 made, for we find they have no such effects now as they 
 had formerly. For instance, I am told the ' Double 
 Dealer ' and * Plot and no Plot ' are two very exact 
 plays, as you call them, yet all their unity of time, 
 place and action neither pleased the audience nor got 
 the poets money. A late play called ' Beauty in 
 distress,' ^ in which the author no doubt sweat as much 
 in confining the whole play to one scene, as the scene- 
 drawers should, were it to be changed a hundred times, 
 this play had indeed a commendatory copy from Mr. 
 Dryden, but I think he had better have altered the 
 scene and pleased the audience ; in short, had these 
 plays been a little more exact as you call it, they had 
 all been exactly damn'd." 
 
 Further, some traits of character almost worthy of 
 Fielding are to be remarked in the course of the tale, 
 though, it is true, it grows confused towards the end, 
 and touches the melodramatic in the same way as Nash's 
 novel. Thus the above conversation is interrupted 
 by the entrance of the coquette Emilia, long before 
 loved by Peregrine who had vainly asked for her hand. 
 " Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck by the 
 sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain 
 a lady mask'd who had given him the nudg. He 
 
 ^ " Double Dealer," by Congreve ; " Plot and no Plot," by Dennis ; 
 Beauty in distress," by Motteux. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 407 
 
 presently knew her to be Emilia, who whispered him 
 in the ear : I find sir, what Guyomar said just now is 
 very true : 
 
 That love which first took root will first decay ; 
 That of a fresher date will longer stay. 
 
 Peregrine tho surprised was pleased with her pretty 
 reprimand, being delivered without any anger, but in 
 murmuring^ complaining accents^ which never fail to 
 move. . ." 
 
 Thus again, Peregrine goes to the famous St. Bar- 
 tholomew fair, which was still, as in Ben Jonson's 
 time, a place of general meeting. '* Lord C." is 
 there discovered, who had a masked lady with him ; 
 she pulls off her mask and smiles at Peregrine, who 
 again recognizes Emiha. The mixed impressions that 
 this sight makes on the hero are analysed in these 
 terms : 
 
 " He took a secret pride in rivalling so great a man, 
 and it confirmed his great opinion of Emilia's beauty to 
 see her admir'd by so accomplish't a person and absolute 
 a courtier as my lord C. These considerations aug- 
 menting his love increased his jealousy also, and every 
 little familiarity that my Lord us'd, heighiti^ned his love 
 to her and hatred to his Lordship ; he lov'd her for 
 being admir'd by my Lord, yet hated my Lord for 
 loving her." 
 
 The vain woman for her part is sufficiently interested 
 in Peregrine to put a stop to a dawning passion which 
 she discovers in him for another woman, and which 
 might have ended in a marriage ; but not at any 
 rate enough to repay his sacrifice by true love. Emilia's 
 
4o8 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 artifices are studied with much skill, and the author 
 seems, here too, to be imitating nature, and recount- 
 ing personal experiences : " ^orum pars magna fui^' 
 as he says on the title-page of his book. At one time 
 Emilia feels that Peregrine is escaping her ; what does 
 she conceive will keep him attached to her ? At such a 
 crisis she is shrewd enough not to resort to vulgar 
 coquetries, feeling that they are no longer in season. 
 With excellent instinct she guesses that the only means 
 of recovering possession of honest Peregrine is to appeal 
 to his good heart : instead of promising him her favours, 
 she asks of him a service. Peregrine would have de- 
 spised himself had he not rendered it, and it is only 
 afterwards that he perceives his chain is by this means 
 newly forged. Emilia has fixed ideas on the usefulness 
 of men of this sort, and puts them very clearly before 
 Lord C. Only unsubstantial favours must ever be 
 granted them, in order that the favours by which they 
 see their rivals profit, may not give them too gloomy 
 suspicions. They are very useful for defending publicly 
 their mistress* honour ; they must if possible be men 
 of a lofty and refined mind, for only such persons are 
 simple enough to feed their passions on nothing. 
 
 The direct satire and caricature of heroical novels in 
 the style of Scudery and La Calprenede, which had 
 been also practised in France, is to be found in a 
 few English tales, of which the best, as entirely for- 
 gotten as the worst, is entitled " Zelinda, an excellent 
 new romance, translated from the French of Monsieur 
 de Scudery." i With an amusing unconcern, and a 
 
 ^ By T. D., perhaps T. DufFet (Bullen), London, Bentley, 1676, 
 izmo. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 409 
 
 very lively pen, the author hastens, on the first page, 
 to give the He to his title, and to inveigh against the 
 impertinences of publishers in general. " Book-sellers 
 too are grown such saucy masterly companions, they 
 do even what they please ; my friend Mr. Bentley calls 
 this piece an excellent romance ; there I confess his 
 justice and ingenuity. But then he stiles it a transla- 
 tion, when (as Sancho Panca said in another case) 'tis 
 no more so then the mother that bore me. Ingrateful 
 to envy his friend's fame. . . . But I write not for 
 glory, nor self-interest, nor to gratifie kindness nor 
 revenge. Now the impertinent critical reader will be 
 ready to ask, for what then } For that and all other 
 questions to my prejudice, I will borrow Mr. Bays's 
 answer and say. Because — I gad sir, I will not tell 
 you — I desire to please but one person in the world, 
 and, as one dedicates his labours and heroes to Calista, 
 another to Urania, &C.3 at the feet of her my adored 
 Celia, I lay all my giants and monsters.'* 
 
 There follows a story in the manner of Scudery, the 
 plot of which, however, is drawn not from Scudery, but 
 from Voiture,! and which is treated in a playful accent, 
 and with an air of persiflage that reminds us of Byron's 
 tone when relating the adventures of Don Juan. It is 
 Voiture indeed, but Voiture turned inside- out. As 
 with Byron, the raillery is from time to time inter- 
 
 ^ From his " Histoire d'Alcidalis et Zelide." Voiture had begun 
 it in 1633 iri the style fashionable at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and 
 even, as he pretends, with the help of Mdlle. de Rambouillet, to 
 whom it is dedicated. It was left unfinished and was published after 
 his death, being completed by Desbarres. A regular translation of 
 it was published in English in 1678. 
 
4 lo THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 rupted by poetical flights, and, as with him, licentious 
 scenes abound and are described with peculiar com- 
 placency. 
 
 Alcidalis and Zelinda, both pursued by a contrary 
 fate, adore one another, but at a distance : for tempests, 
 pirates, family feuds separate them, according to the 
 classical standard of the grave romances of the day. 
 They mutually seek one another ; Alcidalis, who only 
 dreams of Zelinda, has every good fortune he does 
 not want. He believes his fiancee has been married 
 to an elderly Italian duke distractedly in love with 
 the young princess : ''As we are never so fond of 
 flowers, as in the beginning of spring, or towards the 
 end of autumne ; the first for their novelty, and the 
 others because we think we shall see them no more : 
 so the pleasures of love are at no time so dear to us as 
 in the beginning of our youth and the approaches of 
 our age." Alcidalis, deceiving the jealous vigilance of 
 the duke, makes the tour of a promontory in a boat by 
 night, climbs to a window by means of a rope-ladder, 
 and in the second visit gains the favour of the duchess, 
 who was not at all the lady whom he thought to find. 
 " Ye gods ! do I again behold the fair Zelinda.^ cries 
 Alcidalis in his joy (a very pertinent question, for it 
 is to be remembred there was no light)." 
 
 Very unseasonably the husband arrives ; Alcidalis has 
 as much difficulty in escaping as Don Juan ; and the 
 duchess, just like the first mistress of Byron's hero, 
 bursts out into reproaches against her bewildered hus- 
 band, who has much trouble to obtain her pardon. " O 
 woman ! woman ! " continues the author in an apo- 
 strophe Byron would not have disowned ; " thou dark 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 411 
 
 abysse of subtility ; 'tis easier to trace a wandring 
 swallow through the pathless air, then to explicate 
 the crafty wyndings of thy love or malice." 
 
 During this time, Alcidalis in flight, comes " to the 
 sea side, where a ship being just ready to leave the 
 port (for that must never be wanting to a hero upon 
 a ramble),*' he gets on board and resumes his search 
 for the true Zelinda. He encounters many new adven- 
 tures, and in a battle dangerously wounds a warrior. 
 This warrior is a woman, Zelinda herself. The lovers 
 recognize one another, embrace, and relate their ad- 
 ventures. Alcidalis omits nothing except the episode 
 of the duchess, and shows himself as fond a lover as at 
 starting : " Were I racked to ten thousand pieces, as 
 every part of a broken mirrour presents an entire face, 
 in every part of Alcidalis would appear the bright 
 image of my adored Zelinda." At length they are 
 married ; the couple recline at their banquet of love, 
 " and if no other pen raises them, they shall lye there 
 till Doomsday." 
 
 V. 
 
 Thus in two different ways a reaction showed itself 
 against the literature in fashion, and the merits of those 
 who attempted it only made its failure the more felt. 
 The caricature of the heroic romance and the attempt 
 at the novel of common life were without effect. Their 
 authors had come too soon, and remained isolated ; the 
 false heroism now scoffed at in France continued in 
 England until the eighteenth century. The writers 
 under Queen Anne, in order to destroy it, were obliged 
 
 24 
 
412 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 to recommence the whole campaign. Addison, as we 
 have seen, found heroism still in fashion, and the great 
 romances in their places in ladies' libraries. They were 
 still being reprinted. There is, for example, an Engl- 
 ish edition of "Cassandra" dated 1725, and one of 
 "Cleopatra" dated 1731. Fielding saw heroism still 
 in possession of the stage, and he satirized it in his 
 amusing " Tom Thumb." Carey attacked it in his 
 " Chrononotontologos." ^ 
 
 The hundred years which follow Shakespeare's 
 death are, therefore, taken altogether, a period of little 
 invention and progress for romance literature. The 
 only new development it takes, consists in the 
 exaggeration of the heroic element, of which there was 
 enough already in many an Elizabethan novel ; it 
 consists, in fact, in the magnifying of a defect. The 
 imitation of France only resulted in absurd productions 
 which were so successful and filled the literary stage so 
 entirely that they left no space for other kinds of 
 romances. In vain did a few intelligent persons, such as 
 the authors of " The Adventures of Covent Garden " 
 and of " Zelinda," attempt to bring about a reaction ; 
 their words found no echo. The other kinds of novels 
 started in Shakespearean times continued to be culti- 
 vated, but were not improved. The picaresque 
 romance as Nash had understood it, includes in the 
 seventeenth century no original specimen but Richard 
 
 ^ These two pieces which appeared in 1730 and 1734 are not, 
 as is often stated, caricatures of classical tragedy. In the same way 
 as the Duke of Buckingham in his "Rehearsal" (1671), Fielding 
 and Carey ridicule heroic drama, born of romance a la Scudery, as 
 Dryden and his followers had understood it. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 413 
 
 Head's " English Rogue," i one of the worst compo- 
 sitions in this style to be found in any literature. The 
 allegorical, social, and political novel, as inaugurated 
 by Sir Thomas More, continued by Bacon, by Joseph 
 Hall, Bishop of Norwich, and by Godwin,^ that novel 
 which was to gain new life in the hands of Swift and 
 Johnson, is, if we except Bunyan's eloquent manual of 
 devotion, mainly represented in the second half of the 
 century by barren allegories, such as Harrington's 
 "Oceana," 1656, and Ingelow's " Bentivolio and 
 Urania," 1 660 ; or by short stories like '^The perplex'd 
 Prince," " The Court Secret," &c.3 When we have read 
 
 ^ " The English Rogue described in the life of Meriton 
 Latroon," London, 1665, 8vo, continued by F, Kirkman, 1661, 
 et seg., 4 vols, (reprinted by Pearson). 
 
 ^ The "Mundus alter et idem," by Hall, was written about 
 1600, and appeared some years later on the continent, without 
 date. "The Man in the Moon or a discourse of a voyage thither," 
 by F. Godwin, appeared in 1638, and was translated into French, 
 which allowed Cyrano de Bergerac to become acquainted with it : 
 " L'Homme dans la Lune ou le voyage chimerique fait au monde 
 de la Lune" . . . *by Dominique Gonzales (pseud.), Paris, 1648, 
 8vo. The translation is by that same Baudoin who had already 
 turned Sidney's "Arcadia" into French. Barclay's "Argenis" 
 belongs to European rather than to English literature. 
 
 3 "The perplex'd Prince," by T. S. In this romance Westenia 
 is Wales; Otenia, England; Bogland, Scotland; the amours of 
 Charles IL and those of the Duke of York (the Prince of Purdino) 
 are related in it under fictitious names. " The Court Secret," 
 1689 ; Selim L and Selim IL represent Charles I. and Charles IL ; 
 Cha-abas, Louis XIV., &c. In " Oceana," Parthenia is Queen 
 Elizabeth ; Morpheus, James I. ; in Ingelow's work, Bentivolio 
 represents "Good will," and Urania "Heavenly light." "Oceana" 
 and " Bentivolio " are didactic treatises rather than romances ; 
 the first is a political treatise, and the second a religious treatise, 
 
4 1 4 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 ten pages of these it is difficult to speak of them with 
 coohiess and without an aggressive animosity towards 
 their authors. 
 
 Persistent and close analysis of human emotion and 
 of the passion of love in the way in which Sir Philip 
 Sidney had caught sight of it, disappeared from the novel 
 until the day when a second "Pamela" was to figure on 
 the literary stage, and to fill with emotion all London 
 and Paris, down even to Crebillon fils, who was to write 
 to Lord Chesterfield : " Without * Pamela ' we should 
 not know what to read or to say/' And at reading it, 
 the author of " The Sopha " was " moved to tears." 
 
 One work alone was published towards the end of 
 the century in which an original thought is to be 
 found, the " Oroonoko " ^ of Mrs. Behn. The senti- 
 ment that animates it is of another epoch, and 
 belongs to a quite peculiar class of novel ; with her 
 begins the philosophical novel, crowded with dis- 
 sertations on the world and humanity, on the vanity 
 of religions, the innocence of negroes, and the purity 
 of savages. These are the ideas of Rousseau before 
 Rousseau : other ideas of Rousseau had been, as we 
 
 an enormous morality in prose. "The Pilgrim's Progress" must 
 be placed among religious literature properly so-called, as being 
 its master-work in England. 
 
 ^ ''The plays histories and novels of the ingenious Mrs. Aphra 
 Behn," London (Pearson's reprint), 1871, 6 vols., 8vo, vol. i. 
 "Oroonoko or the royal slave," first printed, 1698. The adven- 
 tures and virtues of Oroonoko made him very popular ; his story was 
 transferred to the stage by Th. Southern ; his life was translated 
 into German, and into French (by La Place, 1745). Mrs. Behn's. 
 other novels show much less originality. She died in 1689. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 415 
 
 have seen, anticipated, in the history of the novel, by 
 
 Remains of the ordinary heroic style are of course 
 not wanting. Being love-struck Oroonoko, an African 
 negro, well read in the classics, refuses to fight, and 
 following Achilles' example, retires to his tent. " For 
 the world, said he, it was a trifle not worth his care. 
 Go, continued he, sighing, and divide it amongst you, 
 and reap with joy what you so vainly prize ! " In try- 
 ing to carry out this advice his companions are utterly 
 routed, until after two days Oroonoko consents to 
 take up his arms again, and the victors are at once all 
 put to flight. Oroonoko's death is also in the heroical 
 style, but a peculiar sort of heroism which recalls 
 Scudery, and at the same time Fenimore Cooper. 
 
 But more striking are the parts in which the man- 
 ners of the savages are compared to those of civilized 
 nations. " Everything is well," Rousseau was to say 
 later, " when it comes fresh from the hands of the 
 Maker of things ; everything degenerates in the hands 
 of man." ^ Mrs. Behn expressed many years before 
 the very same ideas ; her Oroonoko has been educated 
 by a Frenchman who '' was a man of very little religion, 
 yet he had admirable morals and a brave soul," an 
 ancestor obviously of Rousseau himself, and a fit tutor 
 for this black " Emile." The aborigines of Surinam 
 live in a state of perfection which remi-nds Mrs. Behn 
 of Adam and Eve before the fall : " These people 
 represented to me an absolute idea of the first state 
 of innocence, before man knew how to sin : and 'tis 
 
 ^ Beginning of " Emile." 
 
4i6 THE ENGLISH NO VEL. 
 
 most evident and plain that single nature is the most 
 harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress. 'Tis she 
 alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the 
 world than all the inventions of man. Religion would 
 here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by 
 ignorance, and laws would but teach 'em to know 
 offences of which now they have no notion. They 
 made once mourning and fasting for the death of the 
 English governor who had given his hand to come on 
 such a day to 'em and neither came nor sent ; believing 
 when a man's word is past, nothing but death could or 
 should prevent his keeping it." 
 
 The words *' humanity," " mankind," are repeated 
 also with a frequency worthy of Rousseau, and the 
 religion of humanity is set in opposition to the religion 
 of God with a clearness foreshadowing the theories of 
 Auguste Comte. When the sea captain refuses to take 
 the word of Oroonoko as a pledge equivalent to his 
 own, *' which if he should violate, he must expect 
 eternal torments in the world to come," — " Is that all 
 the obligations he has to be just to his oath ? replyed 
 Oroonoko. Let him know, I swear by my honour ; 
 which to violate, would not only render me contemptible 
 and despised by all brave and honest men, and so give 
 me perpetual pain, but it would be eternally offending 
 and displeasing to all mankind, harming, betraying, cir- 
 cumventing and outraging all men." ^ 
 
 Most of these ideas, including an embryo-taste for 
 landscape painting, were to be cherished and eloquently 
 defended by Rousseau. Mrs. Behn, as a novelist, can 
 
 ^ " Oroonoko,"'|/(^?V., pp. 121, 79, 135. 
 
AFTER SHAKESPEARE. 417 
 
 only be studied with the authors of the middle of the 
 eighteenth century ; she carries us at once beyond the 
 times of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, and takes 
 us among the precursors of the French Revolution. 
 With the change she foreshadows, philosophy and social 
 science are perhaps more concerned than the novel 
 proper. 
 
 It can, all things considered, be stated with truth that, 
 between the age of Elizabeth, and the age of Anne and 
 the Georges, there is in the history of the novel a long 
 period of semi-stagnation. The seventeenth century, 
 which furnishes hardly any important name, added 
 very little, apart from an exaggerated heroism, to the 
 art of the novel. Defoe, Richardson and Fielding are, 
 as novelists, more nearly related to the men of the time 
 of Shakespeare than to the men of the time of Dryden. 
 They have been thus so completely separated from their 
 literary ancestors that the connection has been usually 
 forgotten. It cannot, however, be doubted. 
 
 Now that we have carried so far this sketch of the 
 history of the early English novel, as far indeed as the 
 time of writers whose works are still our daily reading, 
 we have to take leave of our heroes, picaroons, and 
 monsters, of Arthur and Lancelot, Euphues and 
 Menaphon, Pyrocles and Rosalind, Jack Wilton and 
 Peregrine, Oroontades and Parthenissa ; nor let us for- 
 get to include in this farewell our Lamias, Mantichoras, 
 dragons, and all the menagerie of Topsell and of Lyly. 
 Mummified, buried and forgotten as most of these 
 romances have long been, they managed somehow not 
 to die childless, but left behind them the seed of better 
 
4i8 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 
 
 things. '^ No, those days are gone away," says Keats, 
 thinking of the legends of early times, 
 
 " And their hours are old and grey, 
 And their minutes buried all 
 Under the down trodden pall 
 Of the leaves of many years. . . . 
 Gone, the merry morris din ; 
 Gone, the song of Gamelyn ; 
 Gone, the tough-belted outlaw ; 
 All are gone away and past." 
 
 With them many reputations are gone. White fingers 
 circled with gold no longer turn over the pages of 
 "Euphues" or ''Arcadia." But the writings of the 
 descendants of Greene and Nash and Sidney afford 
 endless delight to-day. And that is why these old 
 authors deserve not the lip-tribute of cold respect, but 
 the heart's offering of warmest gratitude ; for they have 
 had the most numerous and the most brilliant posterity, 
 perhaps the most loved, that literary initiators have 
 ever had in any time or country. 
 
 AQUARIUS. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 A. 
 
 Acolastus, 316 
 
 Actors, Nash on, 316; as play- 
 wrights, 156-158 
 
 Addison, 25, 381, 396, 412 
 
 *' Adventures of Covent Garden," 
 404-408 ; 412 
 
 "Alcida," Greene's, 112, 155 
 
 Alexander, poem imitated from 
 the French romance, 39 
 
 Alfarache, Guzman d', 292, 293, 
 294 
 
 Alfred, literature under, 33 
 
 " Almahide," 370 
 
 *' Almanzor and Almahide," 392 
 
 Amadis of Gaul, Munday's trans- 
 lation of, 349 
 
 Amourists, The, 245 
 
 " Anatomic of Absurditie," Nash's, 
 169 note^ 279 
 
 Andrews, Dr., Sermons by, 382 
 
 " Andromaque," Racine's, English 
 translation of, 395, 396 
 
 Angennes, Julie d', 352 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, songs and legends 
 of the, 32 ; gloom of the litera- 
 ture of the, 33, 34 
 
 "Apologie for Poetrie," Sidney's, 
 229-233; 235, 254, 255, 301 
 
 Apulccus, 86 
 
 "Arbasto," 155 ; 175-178 
 
 "Arcadia," Sidney's, 226, 229 ; 
 account and criticism of, 234- 
 262 ; popularity, imitations and 
 translations of, 262-283 ; criti- 
 cised in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury by Addison, Cowper and 
 Young, 270-272 ; Milton's and 
 Horace Walpole's criticism of, 
 272; Niceron on, 283; draw- 
 ings from editions of, 16, 17, 
 
 273, 275» '2-11 
 " Arcadianism," Dekker and Ben 
 
 Jonson on, 261 
 Arcady, land of, 218, 219 
 Architecture, Elizabethan, 12, 99, 
 
 100, loi, 102 
 Aretino, 298, 348 
 "Argalus and Parthenia," Quarks', 
 
 16, 264, 267; as a chap-book, 
 
 271-275 
 D'Argenson's opinion of England, 
 
 24 
 "Ariosto,"43, 173,237,363; Ha- 
 
42 2 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 rington's translation of, 13, ']6^ 
 
 77, 79» 80, 366 
 "Arisbas," Dickenson's, 146 
 Arthur, the Celtic hero, 39; and 
 
 his knights, 35 
 Arundel, Earl of, 159 
 Ascham, Roger, denounces foreign 
 
 travel and literature, 71, 72, 
 
 73, 74, 75, 79 ^^^^, 85, 318; 
 condemns Morte d'Arthur, 63, 
 74 ; on the study of Greek and 
 Latin, 87, 88 ; his views on the 
 old romances endorsed by Nash, 
 307, 308 
 " Astree," d'Urfe's, 205, 247, 364, 
 
 365 
 "Astrophel and Stella," 229, 233, 
 
 234 
 D'Aubigne, 398 
 "Aucassin and Nicolete," 36, 37, 
 
 59, 60, 353 
 
 B. 
 Bacon, Francis, 24, 43 ; " New 
 
 Atlantis," 50 ; and English 
 
 prose, 52 ; essay on Gardens, 
 
 241 ; 300,403, 413 
 Bacon, Friar, stories about, 28 
 Bandello, 81 note, 86, 147 
 " Baron de Foeneste," 398 
 Baudoin, translation of Sidney's 
 "Arcadia" into French, 276-280 
 Baxter's "Sir Philip Sidney's 
 
 Ourania," 262 
 Beattie, 26 
 Beckett, engraver, 19 
 Behn, Mrs., 414-417 
 Bell's " Theatre," engraving from, 
 
 H, 97 
 
 Belleforest's tales translated and 
 imitated by Paynter, 86 ; "His- 
 toires tragiques," 147 
 
 "Bentivolio and Urania," Inge- 
 low's, 413 
 
 "Beowulf," the oldest English 
 romance, 1 1 ; facsimile of the 
 beginning of the MS., 31 ; 33, 
 34; want of tenderness in, 35 
 
 " Berenice, ' Racine's, translated 
 by Otway, 397 
 
 " Berger extravagant," 21, 280, 
 398, 401 
 
 Bergerac, Cyrano de, his " Etats 
 et empires de la lune et du 
 soleil," 50; his " Pedant joue," 
 128 note; style of, 258; 
 humour of, 289, 290 
 
 Berncrs, Lord, 106-107 
 
 Bestiaries, 108, iii, 112, 115, 
 116, 119 
 
 Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy, 
 Earl of Devonshire, 227 
 
 Blount, Edward, publisher of 
 Lyly's comedies, 137, 138 
 
 Boccaccio, 43 ; "Filocopo," 
 "Amorous Fiammetta," "De- 
 cameron," English translations 
 of, 75, jG ; 86 
 
 Boileau, 258, 356 note, 363, 390 
 
 Borde, Dr. Andrew, 288, 289, 326 
 
 Bossuet, 387 
 
 Bovon of Hanstone, poem imitated 
 from a French romance, 39 
 
 Boyle, Roger, Lord Broghill, 384- 
 
 389 
 Bozon, Nicole, 1 1 1 
 Breton, Nicholas, 192, 198-202 
 Brunne, Robert Manningde, 38,39 
 
INDEX. 
 
 423 
 
 BuUen, 22 
 
 Bunyan, John, 159, 413 
 Burghley House, 12, loi, 102 
 Byron's " Don Juan," 409, 410 
 
 C. 
 
 Caesarius, 48, 49 
 Callot, 317, 337 
 Camden Society, 18 
 " Campaspe," Lyly's, 138 
 Carey, 412 
 
 "Carte du Tendre," 19, 359, 361 
 
 "Cassandra," 396, 403, 412; 
 
 " Cassandre," 362, 364, 382, 
 
 383 _ 
 Castiglione's " Courtier," 76 
 Caxton's woodcut of Chaucer's 
 
 pilgrims, 12, 45 j his editions 
 
 of Chaucer and work as a 
 
 printer, 52-55 ; 60 
 " Cent Nouvelles," 47, 48 
 Cervantes, 43, 88, 399 
 Chappelain, Mdlle. G., translator 
 
 of Sidney's "Arcadia," 277-280 
 Chapelain, Jean, author of " La 
 
 Pucelle," 294, 350, 357 
 Characters, books of, 201-2 note 
 Charlemagne, poem imitated from 
 
 French romance of, 39 
 Charles I., 84; 250, 252 ; 366, 
 
 382 
 Charles II., 381 
 Charles IX., 220 
 C hartley, 223 
 Chateaubriand, 231, 283 
 Chateaumorand, Diane de, 276 
 Chatterton, 26 
 Chaucer, Caxton's engraving of 
 
 his pilgrims, 12, 45 ; a story- 
 
 teller, but with small influence 
 on the Elizabethan novel, 43, 
 44 ; homage of Pope and Dry- 
 den to, 44; faculty of observa- 
 tion in, 49 ; and mediseval 
 story - tellers, 89 ; " Cooke's 
 Tale," 204 ; read by Nash, 
 296 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 414 
 
 Chettle's edition of " Groats- 
 worth of Wit," 165 note^ 321 ; 
 "Piers Plain," 328, 330, 331 
 
 " Chrononotontologos," 412 
 
 Cibber, Theophilus, 381 
 
 "Civile Conversation," Guazzo's, 
 72, 1% 76 
 
 "Clarissa Harlowe," 25, 26, 31 
 
 "Clelie," 361, 364, 370; frontis- 
 piece of "La Fausse," 20, 375 
 
 "Cleopatra," 412; Queen, as 
 represented on the English 
 stage, 14, 97; "Cleopatre," 
 364, 369 ; frontispiece of, 20, 
 
 371 
 Clovis, 354 
 
 Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, 87 
 Comte, Auguste, 416 
 Conde, 352, 357 
 
 " Contes Moralises " Bozon's, 1 1 1 
 Cooper, Fenimore, 415 
 Copland, 12 
 Corneille, 278, 282, 343, 355, 
 
 363, 373 
 
 Coryat, 302 note 
 
 Cotterel, Sir Charles, translator 
 of "Cassandre," 373 
 
 " Cour Bergere," play derived by 
 Mareschal from Sidney's " Ar- 
 cadia," 282 
 
424 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Court Secret," 41 3 
 
 Cowper, on Sidney's "Arcadia," 
 271 
 
 Coxon (or Cockson), Thomas, en- 
 graver, portraits by, I 3 
 
 Crebillon //j, 414 
 
 Cromwell, 84, 363, 381 
 
 Crowne's " Pandion and Amphi- 
 genia," 19,389-391 5 39^, 395 
 
 D. 
 
 Davenport, 173 
 
 Davies, John, drawing from his 
 translation of Sorel's " Berger 
 extravagant," 21 
 
 Day, John, " He of Guls," 263 ; 
 collaborator of Dekker, 331 
 
 "Debat de folic et d'amour," 173 
 
 Dedekind, 339 
 
 Defoe, 25, 26; protest against 
 the abbreviation of " Robinson 
 Crusoe," 123, 124; 199,260, 
 270, 294, 313, 320, 335, 345, 
 348, 390, 404,417 
 
 Dekker, portrait of, 19; on Ar- 
 cadianism 2ind. Euphuis?n, 261 ; on 
 Nash in the Elysian fields, 327 ; 
 plays and pamphlets by, 330- 
 346 ; love of literature, 332 ; 
 gaiety, 333; Lamb on, 332 ; 
 Nash and, 334; " Wonderfull 
 Yeare," 335-338; advice on 
 behaviour at a play-house, 340- 
 
 343 
 Desperriers, Bonaventure, 86 
 Devereux, Penelope, afterwards 
 Lady Rich, Sidney's " Stella," 
 223, 224, 225, 227, 228 
 Dickens, Charles, 124 
 
 Dickenson, imitator of Lyly, 145, 
 146, 161 note 
 
 Disguises, fondness for, in Eliza- 
 bethan times, 237-239 
 
 "Don Simonides," Rich's, 146, 
 
 147 
 Drayton, 331 
 I Dryden, 354, 363, 389, 392,396, 
 
 ! 404,417 
 
 Du Bartas, 271 
 
 Du Bellay, 70 
 
 Duplcix, Scipion, historiographer 
 
 royal, 354 
 Dyce, reprint by, 18 
 
 " Ecclesiastical Polity," Hooker's, 
 382 
 
 Eliot, George, 36, 124 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, portrait by 
 Rogers, 11, 96, 256; by Zuc- 
 chero, 14 ; in pastoral romance, 
 218 ; manners of, 91-96; learn- 
 ing of, 92 ; toilettes of, 92 ; 
 Hentzner on, 96 
 
 Elizabethan houses, loi, 102 ; 
 dress, 128 ; literary men, 161 ; 
 amusements, 18, 287, 298 
 
 " Emile," Rousseau's, 415 
 
 " Empress of Morocco," Settle's, 
 
 393, 395 
 " Endimion," Lyly's, 138, 139; 
 
 Gombauld's, 19, 367, 369 
 English, ancestry of the, 40, 41,42; 
 
 effect of the French conquest 
 
 on the literature of the, 43 
 "English Adventures," Boyle's, 
 
 388, 389 
 "English Rogue," Head's, 413 
 
INDEX. 
 
 425 
 
 Erasmus, 51, 87, 88, 348 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 159 
 
 "Euphues," Lyly's, 103-142; 
 written for women, 104, 105 ; 
 on women in, 127-130, 133; 
 natural history in, 107, 108- 
 120; moral teaching in, 123, 
 124, 127; bringing up of 
 children in, 130-132; popu- 
 larity of, 137-142 ; Nash on, 
 139, 140 ; abbreviation of, 141 
 
 " Euphues his censure to Phi- 
 lautus," Greene's, 146, 168 
 
 Euphuism^ Lyly and, 105 ; accli- 
 matization of, in England, 106, 
 107; Shakespeare on, 140 ; 
 Dekker and, 261 
 
 Exeter, Joseph of, 38 
 
 Exeter, Marquis of, seat of the, 
 12 ' 
 
 F. 
 
 Fayette, Mme. de la, 397 
 
 Fenelon's, " Telemaque," 50 ; 
 "Lettre a FAcademie," 229 
 
 Fenton's, " Tragicall Discourses," 
 80, 81 
 
 Fielding, 25, 124, 270, 313, 317, 
 406, 412, 417 
 
 Floire and Blanchefleur, 36 
 
 Florio's Montaigne, 227 
 
 Ford, Emanuel, disciple of Lyly, 
 192; "Parismus," 193-198; 
 collaborator of Dekker, 331 
 
 Fortescue's, " Foreste," 81 
 
 Fouquet, 281 
 
 Fournival, Richard de, 107, 108 
 
 Fox, George, the Quaker, 158 
 
 " Francesco's Fortunes," drawings 
 from, 1 1 
 
 "Francion," 293, 398 
 
 French, gaiety of the literature 
 
 of the, 33, 34 
 Froissart, 43, 47, 86 
 Furetiere, 398, 399, 404, 405 
 Furnivall, F. J., 39, 90, 102, 140, 
 
 162, 223 
 
 G. 
 
 Gaedertz, of Berlin, 17 
 
 "Gallathea," Lyly's, 139 
 
 " Gamelyne," tale of, 204 
 
 Gargantua and Pantagruel, story 
 of, 50 
 
 Gascoigne, "Adventures passed 
 by Master F. T.," 81 
 
 Gawain, a metrical romance imi- 
 tated from the French, 89 
 
 " Genereuse Allemande," Mares- 
 chal's, 282 
 
 Gheeraedts, 16 
 
 Gil Bias, 24 
 
 Godwin, F., 413 
 
 " Golden boke of Marcus Aure- 
 lius," translated by Lord Berners 
 and Sir Thomas North, 106, 
 107 
 
 Gomberville, 356 
 
 Gosse, 373 
 
 Gower, 296 
 
 "Grand Cyrus," romance of, 364, 
 
 383, 396 
 
 Green Knight, metrical romance 
 from the French, 39 
 
 Greene, Robert, illustrations to 
 his work, 11, 15; stories of, 
 translated into French, 27 ; 
 denounces foreign travel, 73 
 note ; natural history of, 112 ; 
 
426 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 imitator of Lyly, 145, 146, 
 170, 171 note; Warner on, 
 149, 150 ; character, birth, 
 and education, 152, 153, 154; 
 travels, 74, 1 54 ; writings, 
 151, 155; "Groats-worth of 
 Wit," 156, 157, 158; "Re- 
 pentances," 158, 159, 162; 
 marriage, 159, 160, 166, 167; 
 Nash on, 160, 161 ; complaint 
 against plagiarists, 163 ; abuse 
 of Shakespeare, 164, 165 ; ill- 
 ness and death, 162, 163, 165, 
 166, 167; Ben Jonson on, 
 166 ; contributions to the novel 
 literature of Elizabethan times, 
 167-192; Euphuis7n of, 170- 
 173; "Penelope," 174; imi- 
 tated by Breton, 198, 199, 
 201 ; by Lodge, 202 ; style of 
 his novels, 290 ; 295, 296, 300, 
 418 
 
 Greville Fulke, Lord Brooke, 220, 
 226, 245 
 
 Grimestone's translation of tales 
 by Goulart, 8 1 
 
 " Groats- worth of Wit," 156, 157, 
 165 note^ 328 
 
 Grobianism, 339, 344, 345, 346 
 
 " Grobianus," 338, 339 
 
 Guazzo's " Civile Conversation," 
 translation of, 76 
 
 Guevara, 86, 106 
 
 "Gulliver's Travels," 50, 51 
 
 "Guls Horne-booke," Dekker's, 
 28, 261, 339, 340, 341, 342, 
 
 343 
 " Gwydonius," Greene's, 155 
 
 H. 
 
 Hall, Joseph, bishop of Norwich, 
 
 73 note, 413 
 Hampole, Rolle de, story of a 
 
 scholar of Paris, 48, 49 
 Harington's translation of 
 
 " Ariosto," 13, ^e, J J, 79, 80, 
 
 366 
 Harrington's " Oceana," 413 
 Harrison's " Description of 
 
 Britaine," loi 
 Hartley, Mrs., as Cleopatra, 14, 
 
 97 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel, Nash and, 297, 
 298 
 
 Hastings, battle of, results of, 33 
 
 Hathaway, 331 
 
 Haughton, 331 
 
 Havelock the Dane, a metrical 
 romance, 39 
 
 Head, Richard, writer of a picares- 
 que novel, 294, 412, 413 
 
 Henri IV., 352 
 
 Henrietta of England, Duchess 
 of Orleans, 386, 387 
 
 Henry VIIL, learning of, 87 
 
 Henslowe, 328, 331 
 
 Hentzner on Elizabeth, 96 
 
 " Heptameron," Reine de Na- 
 varre's, 398 
 
 Herbert, William, Shakespeare's 
 friend, 234 
 
 " Hercules of Greece," romance, 
 
 349 
 Heroical novels and plays in 
 
 England and France, 347-397; 
 
 reaction against, 397-412 
 Heywood, T., 331 
 " History of the Ladye Lucres," 
 
INDEX, 
 
 427 
 
 81 ; drawing from German 
 
 edition of, 14, 82 
 Hood, Robin, stories about, 28 
 Hooker, Richard, 382 
 Hurst, Richard, drawing from his 
 
 version of Gombauld's " Endi- 
 
 mion," 19 
 " Hystorie of Hamblet," 81 
 
 I. 
 
 " Ibrahim ou I'illustre Bassa," 364 
 "He of Guls," Day's, 263 
 Ingelow's " Bentivolio and Ura- 
 
 nia,"4i3 , 
 
 " Isle of Dogs," Nash's, 297, 298 ■ 
 
 note 
 
 ]■ \ 
 
 "Jack Wilton," Nash's novel of, 
 297 ; account of, 308-321 } 
 
 Jessopp, Dr., 218 j 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 151, 413 
 
 Jones, Inigo, sketches by, 14, 
 100 ; architecture of, 100, loi 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 151, 261, 270, 331, 
 341 note, 348, 404, 407 
 
 K. 
 
 Keats, 418 
 
 Kemp, the actor, 18, 287, 298 
 
 Kenil worth, festivities at, 223 ; 
 
 park of, 241, 242 
 King Horn, a metrical romance, 39 
 "Knight of the Swanne," frontis- 
 piece of, 12, 61, 64 
 
 Labe, Louise, "Debat de Folie et 
 d' Am our," 173 
 
 La CalprenMe, 356, 369, 384, 
 
 398, 408 ; Mme. de Sevigne 
 
 on, 353 
 " Lady of May," Sidney's masque 
 
 of, 229, 289 
 La Fontaine, 232 
 Landmann, Dr., 106, 123 note 
 Laneham, Robert, account of the 
 
 Kenilworth Festivities, 85 
 Languet, Hubert, the French 
 
 Huguenot and friend of Sidney, 
 
 on English manners, 136, 137; 
 
 correspondence with Sidney, 
 
 221, 223, 288 ; poem on, in the 
 
 "Arcadia," 222 
 "La Pucelle," 294, 350 
 Layamon, 39, 40 
 Lee, 392, 397 
 Leicester, Earl of, 91, 96, 159, 
 
 223 
 "Lenten Stuff," Nash's, 324, 325 
 Le Sage, style of, 47 ; " Gil 
 
 Bias," 294 
 " Le Sopha," 24 
 " Lettre a I'Academie," Fenelon's, 
 
 229 
 "Life and Death of Ned Browne," 
 
 Greene's, 187, 188 
 Lindsey, Earl of, 382 
 Lodge, Thomas, imitator of 
 
 Lyly» I45» 150^ 151 J birth, 
 education, travels, 202 ; novels, 
 203; "Rosalynde," 144, 204, 
 205, 206, 207-215; 290, 403 
 Longueville, Mme. de, 352, 357 
 " Looking Glasse for London and 
 England," by Greene and Lodge, 
 215 
 Louis XIII., 354 
 
 25 
 
428 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Louis XIV., 352 
 
 Loveday, Robert, translator of La 
 Calprenbde's "Cldopatre," 369 ; 
 frontispiece of, 20, 369, 371 
 
 Ludlow Castle, 219, 220 
 
 Lyly, John, editions of " Euphues," 
 27 ; denounces foreign travel, 
 73 note ; writes for women, 104, 
 105 ; his style, 107 ; know- 
 ledge of plants and animals, 
 119, 120; the moral teaching 
 ofLyly's "Euphues," 126-135; 
 comedies by, 137-139; imita- 
 tors of, 145-215; Sidney's style 
 compared with, 255 ; kind of 
 novel, 290 ; and the Martin 
 Marprelate Controversy, 297 ; 
 an ancestor of Richardson, 
 317; anticipates Rousseau, 131, 
 415 
 
 M. 
 
 Malory's '' Morte d' Arthur," 54- 
 
 57, 60-63 
 " Mamillia," Greene's, 154, 155, 
 
 168 
 Mandeville, 296 
 Map, Walter, 38 ; his faculty of 
 
 observation, 49 
 Mareschal, Antoine, 282 
 "Margarite of America," Lodge's, 
 
 202, 203 
 " Marianne," 24 
 Marlowe, heroes and heroines of, 
 
 247, 249 ; dies young, 295 ; 
 
 Nash's criticisms of, 299, 306, 
 
 307 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 92 
 Massinger, 331 
 
 Master Reynard, 292 
 
 "Matchless Orinda," The, 384, 
 391 
 
 Medicis, Marie de, 276 
 
 Melbancke, imitator of Lyly, 145 
 
 Melville, Sir James, ambassador 
 of Mary Queen of Scots to the 
 English court, on the manners 
 of the English, 91-95 ; on the 
 liking of the Elizabethans for 
 disguises, 239 
 
 " Menaphon," Greene's, 146, 155, 
 160, 185-187 
 
 Meres, Francis, 198 note^ 254 note, 
 300 
 
 Merim^e's style, 305 
 
 "Midas" comedy by Lyly, 139 
 
 Middleton, 331 
 
 Milton's "Comus," 220, 221 ; 
 opinion of Sidney's "Arcadia," 
 250, 251 
 
 Molicre, his love for old songs, 
 232 ; his denunciation of the 
 behaviour of gallants at the 
 playhouse, 343, 344 ; the 
 " Precieuses ridicules," 373 ; 
 English translations of, 397 ; 
 the "Critique de I'Ecole des 
 Femmes," 405 
 
 Monmouth, Geoffrey of, 38, 41 
 
 Montaigne, 43 
 
 Montausier, 352, 388, 391 
 
 Montchrestien, Antoine de, 354, 
 
 355 
 Montemayor's " Diane," '](i ; 
 
 translation of, 227 ; style of, 
 
 229; imitated by Sidney, 236 
 Montesquieu's *' Lettres persanes,'* 
 
 132 
 
INDEX. 
 
 429 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, writes in 
 Latin; the "Utopia," 50, 51 ; 
 Erasmus' opinion of, 87 ; hero 
 in Nash's novel, 348 ; his " Uto- 
 pia," a political novel, 413 
 
 Morris, William, 63 
 
 " Morte d'Arthur," Malory's, 54- 
 59 ; Ascham on, 63 
 
 Munday, Anthony, imitator of 
 
 Lyly, 145, 193, 331. 349 
 
 Miirger's " Scenes de la vie de 
 
 Boheme," 150, 151 
 " Myrrour of Modesty," Greene's, 
 
 15s, 168, 349 
 
 N. 
 
 Nash, Thomas, portrait of, 18 ; 
 his stories translated into 
 French, 27 ; initiator of the 
 pica7-esque novel, 294; birth, 
 education, studies, and travels, 
 295, 296 ; w^orks of, 297 ; love 
 of poetry, 299, 300 ; style and 
 vocabulary of, 302-307 ; Dekker 
 on, 327, 334; begins the novel 
 of real life, 347, 348; 406,412, 
 418 
 
 Navarre, Queen of, 86 
 
 Newcastle, Duchess of, drawing 
 from "Nature's Pictures," 20, 
 379 ; literary works of the, 
 374-381 
 
 Newton, 24 
 
 North, Sir Thomas, 106, 107 
 
 Novels, in Tudor times, 80-102; 
 as sermons, 123, 124, 127 ; 
 pastoral, 235-283 ; picaresque, 
 291-346; heroical, 348-414; 
 philosophical, 414-416 
 
 Nucius, Nicander, on the study 
 of Italian and French in 
 England, 87 ; on the manners 
 of English women, 91 
 
 O. 
 
 " Oceana," Harrington's, 413 
 Octavian, romance imitated from 
 
 the French, 39 
 Oliver, Isaac, miniature of Sir 
 
 Philip Sidney, 15, 221, 243; 
 
 drawing by, 69 
 "Oroonoko," Mrs. Behn's, 414- 
 
 417 
 " Orlando Furioso," Ariosto's, yS, 
 
 77, 79, 80 
 Osborne, Dorothy, letters to Sir 
 
 William Temple, 382-384, 
 
 387, 388 
 Otway, 389 note, 397, 404 
 Owen, Miss, 373 
 
 Padua, John of, architect, 12, loi 
 "Pamela," Richardson's, 127, 249, 
 
 250, 414 
 " Pandion and Amphigenia," 
 
 Crowne's heroical novel of, 389, 
 
 390» 391 
 
 " Pandosto," Greene's, 155, 168, 
 169, 175, 178-185 
 
 "Parismus," Ford's, 193 ; com- 
 pared with " Romeo and 
 Juliet," 194-198 
 
 " Parthenissa," Lord Broghill's, 
 384, 385; Dorothy Osborne 
 on, 386, 387 
 
 Pas, C. de, drawings by, 19, 369 
 
 Paynter, translations of tales by, 
 
430 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 28 ; "Palace of Pleasure," 80; 
 
 tales by, 86 
 Peek, 295 
 
 "Penelopes Web," Greene's, 155 
 Penshurst, Sidney's birthplace, 
 
 Ben Jonson's description of, 
 
 16 ; drawing of, 217 
 Pepys, Mr., 383 
 Percival, romance imitated from 
 
 the French, 39 
 Percy, 26 
 
 " Perimedes," Greene's, 155 
 "Perplexed Prince," 413 
 " Petit Jehan de Saintre," 47 
 Petrarca, 43 
 Pettie, George, on English prose, 
 
 72, 73 ; " Pettie Pallacc," 81 
 Philips, Catherine, " matchless 
 
 Orinda," 19 ; 370-373 
 Philips, Mr., husband of "match- 
 less Orinda," 373 
 "Philomela," Greene's, 171-173 
 " Philotimus," Melbancke's, 148 
 "Pierce Penilesse," Nash's, 322- 
 
 3H 
 
 "Piers Plain," Chettle's, 328-330 
 
 "Pilgrimage to Parnassus," 140 
 
 Pinturicchio, 174 
 
 Pius II., 83 
 
 " Planecomachia," Greene's, 155 
 
 " Polexandre," 364 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 218, 237, 381 
 
 Porro, Girolamo, engraver, 13 
 
 Poussin, Gaspard, 237 
 
 " Princesse de Cleves," 24, 397 
 
 Prose, little cultivated in Eng- 
 land, 50 
 
 Prynne, 382 
 
 Puritans, and Charles I., 250; 
 
 manners of, 364, 366 ; and 
 Cromwell, 381 
 Pytheas, an old traveller, 33 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quarles, Francis, drawings from 
 his "Argalus and Parthenia,'' 
 16 ; "Emblemes," 264, 267 
 
 " Quinze joyes de Mariage," 338, 
 
 345» 346 . 
 " Quip for an upstart Courtier," 
 Greene's, frontispiece of, 15, 
 265 ; description of, 189-192 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabelais, 43 ; and the " Utopia," 
 
 51^52; 
 
 2«, 2l 
 
 297, 304. 
 
 305, 399 
 
 Racine, 355, 363, 395, 396, 397 
 
 Racine, Louis, 123 
 
 "Railleur ou la Satyrc du Temps," 
 Mareschal's, 282 
 
 Raleigh, 218 
 
 Rambouillet, Hotel de, 352, 356, 
 357, 370-373; Mme. de, 381 
 
 Renaissance, tentative, of the 
 fourteenth century, 43 ; short' 
 stories, outcome of, 47 ; period 
 of the, 60, 68 ; effects of the, 
 69, 70 \ art of the, 79 ; women 
 at the time of the, 133; cos- 
 tumes and furniture in Sidney's 
 "Arcadia " pure, 244 ; charac- 
 teristics of, 303 
 
 "Returne from Parnassus," 140 
 note^ 316 note^ 326 
 
 Rich, " Farewell to militarie pro- 
 fession," 81 ; imitator of Lyly, 
 145 ; works of, 146, 147 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 Rich, Lord, husband of Sidney's 
 "Stella," 223, 227 
 
 Richardson, 25, 26, 123, 124, 127, 
 131 ; " Pamela" and " Clarissa 
 Harlowe," 169, 202 ; borrows 
 from Sidney, 249, 250; 270, 
 317, 378, 417 
 
 Richelieu, 352 
 
 Rivers, Lord, 134 
 
 Robert the Devil, drawing of, 57 
 
 "Robinson Crusoe," 123, 124, 
 
 159 
 
 Robinson, Ralph, translator of 
 
 More's " Utopia," 50, 51 
 Rogers, William, engraving by, 
 
 11,256 
 " Roland," poem imitated from a 
 
 French romance, 34, 39 
 " Roman bourgeois," 398 
 " Roman comique," 398 
 Romances, end of chivalrous, 25 ; 
 
 pastoral, 217-283 ; heroical, 
 
 reaction against, 397, 398,411 ; 
 
 French, translated and read in 
 
 England, 363-384 
 Ronsard, 43, 88 
 "Rosalynde," Lodge's, compared 
 
 with " As you like it," 202- 
 
 213 
 Rousseau's " Emile," 130, 131 ; 
 
 "Social contract," 221; and 
 
 Mrs. Behn, 414-416 
 Rowley, 331 
 
 S. 
 Sainte More, Benoit de, poems 
 
 by, 34> 35 
 SaintDunstan, literature under, 33 
 Salisbury, John of, 38 
 
 "Sapho and Phao," Lyly's, 138 
 
 Sarasin, 350 
 
 Scarron, 398, 400 note^ 404 
 
 "Scipion," 365 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 26, 36 
 
 Scudery, George de, 278, 348, 355, 
 356; preface to "Ibrahim," 
 358, 408, 409, 415 ; Madeleine 
 de, "Clelie," 20; 355-357; 
 361, 384, 388, 396 
 
 Settle's "Empress of Morocco," 
 20, 21, 293; 392-395 
 
 Sevigne, Mme. de, admirer of 
 heroism in romances and plays, 
 
 352, 353, 357, 381 
 
 Shakespeare, interior view of a 
 
 theatre in time of, 17, 18, 286 ; 
 
 24 ; glory of, 26 ; editions of 
 
 the plays of, 27 ; 43 ; his daily 
 
 reading, 85 ; outcome of his 
 
 age, 88 ; Cleopatra, 97, 99, 
 
 156 ; source of " Twelfth 
 
 Night," 147; of "Winter's 
 
 Tale," 155, 178-185; "Paris- 
 
 mus " compared with " Romeo 
 
 and Juliet," I94-198 ; of "As 
 
 you like it," 202-213; source 
 
 of part of " Lear," 262 ; source 
 
 ' of " Two Gentlemen of 
 
 ' Verona," 149, 150, 236 note; 
 
 little known in France, 279 ; 
 
 j a copy of, in Louis XIV.'s 
 
 ! library, 281; earliest French 
 
 criticism on, 282 ; humour of, 
 
 289 ; beginning of career of, 
 
 299, 300; on music, 300, 301 ; 
 
 interposes himself in his plays, 
 
 I 314, 315; and Molicre, 343 ; 
 
 I style of, 403, 404 
 
432 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Shirley, 288 
 
 Sidney, Mary, Countess of Pem- 
 broke, portrait of, 16; fame 
 of, 234, 235; works dedicated 
 to, 263 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 217-283; 
 miniature and portraits of, 
 221,222; "Arcadia," 16, 17, 
 226, 229, 234-283 ; stories of, 
 translated, 27; birth, 219 ; 
 education and travels, 74, 220, 
 221; love for "Stella," 222- 
 
 225 ; "Shepheardes Calender," 
 dedicated to, 225; at Wilton, 
 
 226 ; Marriage and death, 226, 
 227; literary work and style, 
 228-263 ; "Apologie," 229- 
 233, 235, 254, 255, 301 ; Du 
 Bartas on, 274 ; known to 
 Florian, 283 ; humour of, 288- 
 290 ; Nash on, 299 ; ancestor 
 of Richardson, 317; prose of, 
 403 ; analysis of feeling by, 
 414 
 
 " Sir Charles Grandison," 31 
 Smith, Wentworth, 331 
 Smollett, 294 
 Smyth's " Straunge and tragicall 
 
 histories," 81 
 " Sociable letters," Duchess of 
 
 Newcastle's, 378 
 " Sopha," 414 
 Sorel, Charles, 280, 298 
 Spenser, Edmund, 43 ; Nash on, 
 
 298, 299' 300 
 Steele, Richard, 25, 381 
 "Stella," books dedicated to, 227, 
 
 228 
 Sterne, 313 
 
 " Strange Fortunes," Breton's, 199, 
 
 200 
 Suckling, Sir John, 388 
 Surrey, Earl of, 74, 245 ; Nash 
 
 on, 300; 348 
 Swift, 345, 384, 413 
 Swinburne, 63 
 Sylvius, ^neas (Piccolomini), 81 
 
 T. 
 
 Tacitus' opinion of the English, 
 
 123 
 Tarleton, 298 
 Tasso, 43 ; translations in English 
 
 of, 76 
 "Tel^maque," 50 
 Temple, Sir William, 382, 384, 
 
 387, 388 
 "Tendre" country. Map of, 19, 
 
 20, 359» 361 
 Teniers, 317 
 Tennyson, 63 
 Thackeray, 124; "Vanity Fair," 
 
 291 
 Thorpe, John, architect, 12, loi 
 " Til Eulenspiegel," 292 
 Tintoretto, 244 
 Titian, 244 
 
 "Tom Thumb," Fielding's, 412 
 Tom-a-Lincoln, stories of, 28 
 "Tom Jones," 26 
 Topsell's Natural History, 14, 15, 
 
 103, 109, 111-113 ; 115-117; 
 
 119, 121, 125, 145, 171, 417 
 Tormes, Lazarillo de, 292-294 
 "Tragicall Discourses," 80, 81 
 Tristan, tales of, 25 
 " Trojan War," romance imitated 
 
 from the French, 39 
 
INDEX. 
 
 433 
 
 Turberville, drawings from his 
 "Booke of Faulconrie,** and 
 " Noble Art of Venerie,** 1 5 
 
 Turenne, 352 
 
 U. 
 
 Universities, Lyl/s experience o^ 
 
 153 
 D'Urfe, 247 
 " Utopia," More's, 50, 5 1 
 
 Villemain's lectures on the eigh- 
 teenth century, 31, 32 
 Vinci, 231 
 Virgil, 363, 398 
 Voiture, 409 
 Voltaire's prose tales, 47, 51 
 
 W. 
 
 Wace, 39 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 272 
 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 220, 
 
 226 
 Warner, imitator of Lyly, 145 ; 
 
 " Pan his Syrinx,** and 
 
 "Albion's England," 148, 149 
 Warwick, Guy of^ metrical 
 
 romance from the French, 19, 
 
 39, 67, 349-351 
 Watson, Thomas, 139, 245 
 Webster, heroines of, 249 ; 331 
 Wentworth, 331 
 Whetstone, collections of tales 
 
 translated by, 28 ; " Heptame- 
 ron," 81 
 
 William the Silent, 226 
 
 Wilson, 331 
 
 Wilt, John 0-, drawing by, 17 
 
 Wireker, Nigel, 38, 49 
 
 Women, their learning and man- 
 ners in Tudor times, 89, 90, 
 91 ; Ascham and Harrison on, 
 90, 91 ; Caiton on, 133, 134 ; 
 English and Italian compared, 
 133, 134; Rich's stories for, 
 147 ; excluded from the stage, 
 ' 301, 302 
 
 " Wonderfull Yeare," 335-338 
 
 Worde, Wynkyn de, 12, 64 
 
 Wroth, Lady Mary, "Urania," 
 268-270; Ben Jonson on, 270 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 74, 245 
 
 Wycherlej, 404 
 j Wylc, Nicolaos vcm, 82 
 
 Xenophon, 86 
 
 Young, on die 
 
 272 
 
 Arcadia," 271, 
 
 Z. 
 
 " Zclauto, the Fountain of Fame," 
 Munda/s, 146, 147, 148 
 
 " Zelinda," adaptation of V«- 
 ture's, 408-412 
 
 Zucchero's portrait of Elizabeth, 
 
 14^ 329 
 
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