John Lyly (1555?-1606). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

John Lyly (1555?-1606). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. John Lyly (1555?–1606) John Lyly, 1554–1606. Born, in Kent, 1554. Student of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 1569; matric., 8 Oct. 1571; B.A., 27 April 1573; M.A., 1 June 1575. Incorp. M.A., Cambridge, 1579. Settled in London, and engaged in literary work. Wrote plays for Children of the Revels. M.P. for Hindon, Feb. to March 1589; for Aylesbury, Feb. to April 1593; for Appleby, Sept. 1597 to Feb. 1598; for Aylesbury, Oct. to Dec. 1601. Married, 1595 (?). Died, in London, Nov. 1606; buried in Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Less, 30 Nov. Works: “Euphues,” pt. i., 1579 (2nd edn. same year); pt. ii., 1580 (2nd. edn. same year); “Alexander and Campaspe,” 1584 (another edn., called “Campaspe,” same year); “Sapho and Phao” (anon.), 1584; “Pappe with a Hatchet” (anon.), [1589]; “Endimion,” 1591; “Gallathea” (anon.), 1592; “Midas” (anon.), 1592; “Mother Bombie” (anon.), 1594; “The Woman in the Moone,” 1597; “Love’s Metamorphosis,” 1601. Collected Works: “Six Court Comedies,” 1632; “Dramatic Works,” ed. by F. W. Fairholt (2 vols.), 1858.—Sharp, R. Farquharson, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 176.    

1 Euphues

  A manifest example thereof, may bee the great good grace and sweete vayne, which Eloquence hath attained in our speeche, because it hath had the helpe of such rare and singuler wits, as from time to time myght still adde some amendment to the same. Among whom I thinke there is none that will gainsay, but Master Iohn Lilly hath deserued moste high commendations, as he hath stept one steppe further therein than any either before or since he first began the wyttie discourse of his “Euphues.” Whose workes, surely in respecte of his singuler eloquence and braue composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and make tryall thereof thorough all the partes of Rethoricke, in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speeche, in plaine sence, and surely in my iudgment, I think he wyll yeelde him that verdict, which Quintilian giueth of bothe the best Orators Demosthenes and Tully, that from the one, nothing may be taken away, to the other, nothing may be added. But a more neerer example to prooue my former assertion true, (I meane ye meetnesse of our speeche to receiue the best forme of Poetry).—Webbe, William, 1586, A Discourse of English Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 46.    

2   A neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well and in fashion: practiseth by his glass how to salute; speaks good remnants, notwithstanding the base viol and tobacco: swears tersely, and with variety; cares not what lady’s favour he belies, or great man’s familiarity: a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man’s horse to praise, and backs him as his own. Or, for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the gingle of his spur, and, the jerk of his wand.—Jonson, Ben, 1599, Every Man out of His Humour, Preface.    

3   “Euphues” is the title of a romance, wrote by one Lilly, that was in the highest vogue at this time. The court ladies had all the phrases by heart. The language is extremely affected; and … consists chiefly of antithesis in the thought and expression.—Whalley, Peter, 1756, ed., Ben Jonson’s Works, vol. I, p. 286.    

4   Lillye was a man of great reading, good memory, ready faculty of application and uncommon eloquence; but he ran into a vast excess of allusion: in sentence and conformity of style he seldom speaks directly to the purpose; but is continually carried away by one odd allusion or similie or other (out of natural history,—that yet is fabulous and not true in nature) and that still overborne by more, thick upon the back of one another, and thro’ an eternal affectation of sententiousness keeps to such a formal measure of his periods as soon grows tiresome, and so by confining himself to shape, his sense so frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious or harmonious, abridges that variety which the style should be admired for.—Oldys, William, c. 1761, MS. note to Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 328.    

5   This romance, which Blount, the editor of the six plays, says introduced a new language, especially among the ladies, is in fact a most contemptible piece of affectation and nonsense: nevertheless it seems very certain, that it was in high estimation by the women of fashion of those times, who, we are told by Whalley the editor of Ben Jonson’s works, had all the phrases by heart. As to Lilly’s dramatic pieces, I have not seen any of them; but from the style of this romance, I have no doubt but they are wretched performances.—Berkenhout, John, 1777, Biographia Literaria, vol. I, p. 377, note.    

6   In the romance of “Euphues” there are chiefly three faults, which indeed pervade all the novels of the same school. 1. A constant antithesis, not merely in the ideas, but words, as one more given to theft than to threft. 2. An absurd affectation of learning, by constant reference to history and mythology. 3. A ridiculous superabundance of similitudes.—Dunlop, John, 1814–45, The History of Fiction, p. 403.    

7   This production is a tissue of antithesis and alliteration, and therefore justly entitled to the appellation of affected; but we cannot with Berkenhout consider it as a most contemptible piece of nonsense. The moral is uniformly good; the vices and follies of the day are attacked with much force and keenness; there is in it much display of the manners of the times, and though, as a composition, it is very meretricious, and sometimes absurd in point of ornament, yet the construction of its sentences is frequently turned with peculiar neatness and spirit, though with much monotony of cadence.—Drake, Nathan, 1817, Shakspeare and His Times, vol. I, p. 441.    

8   These notable productions were full of pedantic and affected phraseology, (as Whalley truly says), and of high-strained antitheses of thought and expression. Unfortunately they were well received at court, where they did incalculable mischief, by vitiating the taste, corrupting the language, and introducing a spurious and unnatural mode of conversation and action, which all the ridicule in this and the following drama (Ben Jonson’s “Cynthia’s Revels,” acted in 1600) could not put out of countenance.—Gifford, William, 1816, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson, vol. II.    

9   Notwithstanding all exaggeration, Lylly was really a man of wit and imagination, though both were deformed by the most unnatural affectation that ever disgraced a printed page.—Scott, Sir Walter, 1820, The Monastery, vol. II, p. 44.    

10   He it was that took hold of the somewhat battered and clipped but sterling coin of our old language, and, minting it afresh, with a very sufficient quantity of alloy, produced a sparkling currency, the very counters of court compliment.—Knight, Charles, 1849, Studies of Shakspere, bk. i, ch. vi, p. 33.    

11   In spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as man need look into.—Kingsley, Charles, 1855, Westward Ho!    

12   The success of “Euphues” was very great. The work was long a vade-mecum with the fashionable world, and considered a model of elegance in writing and the highest of authorities in all matters of courtly and polished speech. It contains, with all its affectations, a great multitude of acute observations, and just and even profound thoughts; and it was these striking qualities, not less than the tinsel of its style, which commended it to the practical good sense of contemporary England.—Marsh, George P., 1862, The Origin and History of the English Language, etc., p. 546.    

13   John Lyly, distinguished both as a dramatist and a poet, laid aside the very tradition of English style for a style modeled on the decadence of Italian prose. Euphuism, as the new fashion has been styled from the prose romance of “Euphues” in which Lyly originated it, is best known to modern readers by the pitiless caricature with which Shakspeare quizzed its pedantry, its affectation, the meaningless monotony of its far-fetched phrase, the absurdity of its extravagant conceits. Its representative, Armado, in “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” is “a man of fire-new words, fashion’s own knight,” “that hath a mint of phrases in his brain; one whom the music of his own vain tongue doth ravish like enchanting harmony.” But its very extravagance sprang from the general burst of delight in the new resources of thought and language which literature felt to be at its disposal; and the new sense of literary beauty which its affectation, its love of a “mint of phrases” and the “music of its own vain tongue” disclose—the new sense of pleasure in delicacy or grandeur of phrase, in the structure and arrangement of sentences, in what has been termed the atmosphere of words—was a sense out of which style was itself to spring.—Green, John Richard, 1874, A Short History of the English People, ch. vii, sec. v.    

14   The story lacks definite outline and strong colouring, but it was of a kind which won acceptance in that age. The popularity of Greene’s novels and Sidney’s “Arcadia” is not less inexplicable to a modern reader than the fascination exercised by “Euphues.” The thought—except, perhaps, in one tractate upon education, entitled “Euphues and his Ephœbus”—is rarely pregnant or profound. Yet Lyly’s facile handling of grave topics, his casuistry of motives and criticism of life, exactly suited the audience he had in view…. “Euphues” entranced society in the sixteenth century, because our literature, in common with that of Italy and Spain and France, was passing through a phase of affectation, for which Euphuism was the national expression. It corresponded to something in the manners and the modes of thinking which prevailed in Europe at that period. It was the English type of an all but universal disease. There would have been Euphuism, in some form or other, without “Euphues;” just as the so-called æsthetic movement of to-day might have dispensed with its Bunthorne, and yet have flourished. Lyly had the fortune to become the hero of his epoch’s follies, to fix the form of fashionable affectation, and to find the phrases he had coined in his study, current on the lips of gentlemen and ladies.—Symonds, John Addington, 1884, Shakspere’s Predecessors in the English Drama, pp. 502, 505.    

15   Made his fame by a book, which grew out of suggestions (not only of name but largely of intent and purpose) in the “Schoolmaster” of Roger Ascham; and thus it happens over and over in the fields of literature, that a plodding man will drop from his store a nugget, over which some fellow of lively parts will stumble into renown…. Yet there was a certain good in this massing of epithets, and in this tesselated cumulation of nice bits of language, from which the more wary and skilful of writers could choose—as from a great vocabulary—what words were cleanest and clearest. Nor do I wish to give the impression that there were no evidences of thoughtfulness or of good purpose, under Lyly’s tintinnabulation of words. Hazlitt thought excellently well of him; and Charles Kingsley, in these later times, has pronounced extravagant eulogy of him. Indeed he had high moral likings, though his inspirations are many of them from Plato or Boethius; it is questionable also if he did not pilfer from Plutarch; certainly he sugar-coats with his language a great many heathen pills.—Mitchell, Donald G., 1889, English Lands, Letters, and Kings, From Celt to Tudor, pp. 245, 247.    

16   Euphuism is no singular or arbitrary phenomenon; it is a natural and recurrent feature in the development of great literatures. Moreover, it is not exactly the “euphuism” of “Euphues” that fatigues us; it is the poverty and pettiness and pretentiousness of his euphuism. We owe Lyly a debt on account of the smart and bold title which he has furnished for expressing the occasional outbreak of æstheticism in literary diction. When a genius has seized the passing wave-crest of such a modish enthusiasm, he has left to all time a conspicuous work of art. This I take to be the true account of that distinction which marks the styles of two great Roman historians, Sallust and Tacitus. We have ourselves had other exhibitions of this kind, which have been more genuinely “euphuistic” than that Elizabethan display which set the name. For Lyly’s euphuism was only so far a genuine example as it testified to the preparedness of the soil. The manner itself seems to have been borrowed from Spanish literature, especially from the poet Gongora, after whom Spanish euphuism was called Gongorism. But the quaintness of the seventeenth century was also a euphuism, and that was a true home product; so was the euphuism of Johnsonese, which perhaps we may consider the last fully developed display of the kind, although there was at one time an appearance as if Carlylese would engender a nineteenth century euphuism.—Earle, John, 1890, English Prose, p. 437.    

17   There is no possibility of error; with Lyly commences in England the literature of the drawing-room, that of which we speak at morning calls, productions which, in spite of vast and many changes, still occupy a favourite place on the little boudoir tables. We must also notice what pains Lyly gives himself to make his innovation a success, and so please his patronesses, and how he ornaments his thoughts and engarlands his speeches, how cunningly he imbues himself with the knowledge of the ancients and of foreigners, and what trouble he gives himself to improve upon the most learned and the most florid of them. His care was not thrown away. He 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 précieux. He created a school, and the name of his hero served to baptize a whole literature. This particular form of bad style was called euphuism.—Jusserand, J. J., 1890, The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, p. 105.    

18   There is, perhaps, no single book the reading of which is more necessary to anyone who is thoroughly to understand the age of Elizabeth from the literary side than “Euphues;” but there are not many more difficult to read. The merely literary characteristics of it, though they have often been strangely misunderstood, are not hard to sum up.—Saintsbury, George, 1895, Social England, ed. Traill, vol. III, p. 335.    

19   The honor of being the first Englishman to raise fiction above the level of a mere tale must undoubtedly be assigned to Lyly, although the term novel can hardly be applied to his “Euphues.” It is too plainly a hand-book of etiquette, made a little more palatable to the public by the employment of a hero and by a few indications of the trend of the hero’s affections, to be treated under any other head than that of didactic fiction…. Lyly was too much concerned with the ways of polite society, and too little with his plot or characters to be openly admitted to the sacred pale of novelists. Yet he very likely paved the way for more ambitious successors.—Warren, F. M., 1895, A History of the Novel Previous to the Seventeenth Century, p. 336.    

20   Looking broadly at the early prose of Elizabeth’s reign, it is surely impossible not to recognise that a new element of richness, of ornament, of harmony, an element by no means wholly admirable, but extremely noticeable, was introduced by Lyly; that, in short, the publication of “Euphues” burnishes and suddenly animates—with false lights and glisterings, if you will, but still animates—the humdrum aspect of English prose as Ascham and Wilson had left it. Splendour was to be one of the principal attributes of the Elizabethan age, and “Euphues” is the earliest prose book which shows any desire to be splendid.—Gosse, Edmund, 1897, A Short History of Modern English Literature, p. 80.    

21 Dramas

  The spring is at hand, and therefore I present you a Lilly growing in a Groue of Lawrels. For this Poet sat at the Sunnes Table. Apollo gaue him a wreath of his own Bayes, without snatching. The Lyre he played on, had no borrowed strings…. Our Nation are in his debt, for a new English, which hee taught them. Euphues and his England began first, that language: All our Ladies were then his Schollers; And that Beautie in Court, which could not Parley, Euphueisme was as little regarded; as she which now there, speaks not French.—Blount, Edward, 1632, ed., Lyly’s Six Court Comedies.    

22   John Lilly, a writer of several old-fashioned Comedies and Tragedies, which have been printed together in a volume, and might perhaps when time was, be in very good request.—Phillips, Edward, 1675, Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, ed. Brydges, p. 199.    

23   His comedy in prose, “Campaspe,” is a warning example of the impossibility of ever constructing, from ancedotes and epigrammatic sallies, any thing like a dramatic whole. The author was a learned witling, but in no respect a poet.—Schlegel, Augustus William, 1809, Dramatic Art and Literature, tr. Black, Lecture xiii.    

24   Worthy of their names [“Midas” and “Endymion,”] and of the subject. The story in both is classical, and the execution is for the most part elegant and simple. There is often something that reminds one of the graceful communicativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from whom one of the stories is borrowed. Lyly made a more attractive picture of Grecian manners at second-hand than of English characters from his own observation.—Hazlitt, William, 1820, Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, Lecture II.    

25   Whose dramas are distinguished by an exquisite grace and Grecian purity of construction, and whose songs in particular are models of airness and music.—Shaw, Thomas B., 1847, Outlines of English Literature, p. 103.    

26   The general character of Lilly’s prose, in his dramas, consists only in a superabundance of poetic and witty language, in far-fetched similes and curious images on every occasion, however unsuitable; at the same time his prose, like that of all other conceit-writers, acquires by continual antitheses and epigrammatic allusions, somewhat of a sharpness, piquancy, and logical perspicuity, the worth of which, as regards the development of the language, was acknowledged with praise by such contemporaries as Webster. From no other of his predecessors has Shakespeare, therefore, especially as regards the dexterous play of words in the merry parts of his comedies and dramas, learned and obtained so much as from Lilly. The witty conversation, the comic demonstrations, the abundance of similes and startling repartees, are here prefigured; his quibs, which Lilly himself defines as the short expressions of a sharp wit, with a bitter sense lying in a sweet word, were a school to Shakespeare.—Gervinus, G. G., 1849–62, Shakespeare Commentaries, tr. Bunnètt, p. 76.    

27   Of the dramatic works of Marston and Lilly it is enough to say that they are truly works to the reader, but in no sense dramatic, nor, as literature, worth the paper they blot. They seem to have been deemed worthy of republication because they were the contemporaries of true poets; and if all the Tuppers of the nineteenth century will buy their plays on the same principle, the sale will be a remunerative one.—Lowell, James Russell, 1858–64–90, Library of Old Authors, Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. I, p. 254.    

28   Lilly is known in dramatic literature as the author of eight comedies written to be performed at the court of Elizabeth. They are in all respects opposed to the genius of the English drama. They do not even pretend to be representations of human life and human character, but are pure fantasy pieces, in which the personages are a heterogeneous medley of Grecian gods and goddesses, and impossible, colorless creatures with sublunary names, all thinking with one brain, and speaking with one tongue—the conceitful, crotchety brain and the dainty, well-trained tongue of clever, witty John Lilly. They are all in prose, but contain some pretty, fanciful verses called songs, which are as unlyrical in spirit as the plays in which they appear are undramatic. From these plays Shakespeare borrowed a few thoughts; but they exercised no modifying influence upon his genius, nor did they at all conform to that of the English drama, upon which they are a mere grotesque excrescence.—White, Richard Grant, 1865, ed., The Works of William Shakespeare, Rise and Progress of the English Drama, vol. I, p. clxxviii.    

29   The classicism of Lyly was indeed neither profound in its depth nor extensive in its range; and though he was ever drawing bucket after bucket from the stream for his literary needs, he had never bathed in its waters and imbued himself with their influence…. Neither industry, nor ingenuity, nor wit, can be denied to him; in addition to which he possessed a lyric gift of no common kind, though he unfortunately only very rarely availed himself of it. For most of his lyrical passages are trivial both in subject and in execution, and in fact mere perfunctory transitions in the action of the play. His real service to the progress of the drama, which has not perhaps generally received sufficient attention, is to be sought neither in his choice of subjects nor in his imagery—though to his fondness for fairy-lore and the whole phantasmagoria of legend, classical as well as romantic, his contemporaries, and Shakspere in particular, were indebted for a stimulative precedent. It lies in his adoption of Gascoigne’s innovation of writing plays in prose; and in his having, though under the fetters of an affected and vicious style, given the first example of brisk and vivacious dialogue.—Ward, Adolphus William, 1875, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. I, pp. 156, 159.    

30   Lyly brought to the composition of his plays the same qualities which he had displayed in his romance—learning, fancy, and wit. All that characterises the style and diction of “Euphues” characterises the style and diction of these dramas: the same excess of smoothness, sententiousness, and epigram, of alliteration and assonance, the same studied antithesis, not merely in the arrangement of the words and clauses, but in the ideas and sentiments, the same accumulation of superfluous similes and illustrations, drawn sometimes from the facts but more frequently from the fictions of natural history, the same affectation of continuous references to ancient mythology and history pedantically piled up for the sake of learned display, the same plethora of wit as distinguished from humour, and of fancy as distinguished from imagination.—Collins, John Churton, 1895, Essays and Studies, p. 186.    

31   The great dramatist shows traces of his predecessor’s influence in the remarkable frequency of the allusions to animals—sometimes of a fabulous nature—which occur in the early plays and poems, as well as in the later works like “Lear” and “Coriolanus.” Moreover, though Shakspere mocked at the artifices of Euphuism, he must have appreciated its incisive force, its lucidity and refinement. These are the qualities which specially distinguish his own colloquial prose, and when we listen to the brilliant sallies of Falstaff or Benedick, Beatrice or Rosalind, we should remember that they have their prelude in the witty dialogue of “Campaspe” or “Endimion.” Lyly too set the fashion which Shakspere followed of introducing lyrics, as a musical relief; and his imaginative type of comedy, with its supernatural framework and allegorical design, pointed the way to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest.”—Boas, Frederick S., 1896, Shakspere and his Predecessors, p. 73.    

32   Lyly’s plays, like his person, stand quite apart from those of the rest of the group, with which they have nothing in common except the strong classicism, the presence of “University wit,” the striking breach with the old tradition of horseplay interlude or wooden tragedy, the exquisite lyric which sometimes diversifies them, and their influence on the greatest dramatist of the next or any age. Written not for the public stage but as court amusements (or “abridgments,” as Thesus would say), they have a good deal in common with the Masque. The very marked, not to say conceited, style and the strong, almost bitter, satirical spirit which appear in “Euphues” are also visible. But their most interesting historical characteristic is the way in which, uncertainly and tentatively, they strike out the way of Romantic Comedy, the most arduous and least frequently trodden of all dramatic ways, but when trodden successfully the way to the rarest and choicest of dramatic paradises.—Saintsbury, George, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 283.    

33 General

  He is but a little fellow, but he hath one of the best wits in England.—Nashe, Thomas, 1592, Pierce Pennilesse.    

34   Diuine wits, for many things as sufficient as all antiquity (I speake it not on slight surmise, but considerate iudgement)…. Lilly, the famous for facility in discourse.—Lodge, Thomas, 1596, Wit’s Miserie and the World’s Madness, p. 57.    

35   Always averse to the crabbed studies of logic and philosophy. For so it was that his genie being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry, (as if Apollo had given to him a wreath of his own bays, without snatching or struggling,) did in a manner neglect academical studies, yet not so much but that he took the degrees in arts, that of master being compleated 1575. At which time, as he was esteemed in the university a noted wit so afterwards was he in the court of Q. Elizabeth, where he was also reputed a rare poet, witty, comical, and facetious.—Wood, Anthony, 1691–1721, Athenæ Oxonienses, vol. I, p. 295.    

36   Sackville has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were once the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely known even by name.—Irving, Washington, 1819–48, The Mutability of Literature, Sketch-Book.    

37   John Lyly was an ingenious scholar, with some fancy; but if poetry be the heightened expression of natural sentiments and impressions, he has little title to the rank of a poet. His thoughts and his language are usually equally artificial, the results of labour and study; and in scarcely a single instance does he seem to have yielded to the impulses of genuine feeling.—Collier, John Payne, 1831, History of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. III, p. 172.    

38   On the whole, Lyly was a learned, elegant, and witty writer, a bel esprit in the manner of the sixteenth century, but no poet. Accordingly, his pieces can by no means be called popular. Nevertheless, his style of writing exercised so great an influence on the language of the age, that whatever in Shakspeare’s diction appears far-fetched and affected,—his sharp-shooting, for instance, with antithesis and sententious pomp of phrase, his play of words, and occasionally artificial wit,—are to be laid to Lyly’s account, and to be regarded as the echo of the prevailing tone of his day. That Shakspeare studied Lyly’s pieces is clear, both from certain maxims and witticisms, which he must have borrowed from him, and from certain passages in which he has closely imitated him. Such passages, however, are only occasional, and therefore while Tieck is right in maintaining that the commentators of Shakspeare have much to learn from Lyly, the assertion of Schlegel is equally true, that Shakspeare himself can have learned little if any thing from him.—Ulrici, Hermann, 1839, Shakspeare’s Dramatic Art, p. 36.    

39   Lyly himself, so fantastic that he seems to write purposely in defiance of common sense, is at times a genuine poet, a singer, a man capable of rapture, akin to Spenser and Shakspeare.—Taine, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. van Laun, vol. I, bk. ii, ch. i, p. 163.    

40   The airy mirthful plays and pretty little songs of the “witty, comical, facetiously quick and unparalleled John Lyly,” as his publisher described him, are a standing refutation of M. Taine’s picture of England in the Elizabethan age as a sort of den of wild beasts. No Frenchman in any age was ever more light and gay than Queen Elizabeth’s favourite writer of comedies, and the inventor or perfecter of a fashionable style of sentimental speech among her courtiers. The epithet “unparalleled” applied to Lyly was more exact than puffs generally are. Though he is said to have set a fashion of talk among the ladies of the Court and their admirers, he found no imitator in letters; his peculiar style perished from literature with himself.—Minto, William, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. I, p. 394.    

41   It is his quickness of wit that is his strength. He knows the utmost that can be done with his resources, and he is satisfied with nothing short of the utmost. It is this unfailing certainty about his own faculties and his aims that preserves, even now, a certain grace in Lyly’s moral story, though its day is so long passed over. In his comedy his aim was more distinct, his faculty less encumbered. His songs have a value not comparable with anything in his prose.—Ker, W. P., 1893, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. I, p. 378.    

42   Exhausts the animal and vegetable kingdom to enhance a truism.—Tovey, Duncan C., 1897, Reviews and Essays in English Literature, p. 39.    

43   Lyly had made a discovery which was of permanent value, and for which he ought to receive full credit. While the language of philosophy and criticism was still in a fluid state, he had perceived the advantage of clearness, correctness, and precision, in the arrangement of words. It was not altogether his fault if his age was more favourable to the development of language than to the expression of thought. He at least showed the nation the possibilities of balance and harmony in English prose composition; and the form which he established in the structure of the English sentence has never been entirely lost sight of by his successors. Addison and Steele, while they aimed at something much beyond the “fit phrases, pithy sentences, and gallant tropes,” which gratified the taste of Webbe, learned from Lyly how to present genuine thoughts in an artistic form; and Burke, Johnson, and Macaulay, avoiding the petty particularity of his contrasted words, followed his example in working up sentences and periods to the climax required for the just and forcible presentation of the argument.—Courthope, William John, 1897, A History of English Poetry, vol. II, p. 201.    

44   In his grave and poetic moments there is a prim charm about Lyly, and a frosty moonlight glitter which is attractive. His snatches of song are among the best in an age of lyric poetry.—Hannay, David, 1898, The Later Renaissance, p. 237.    

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