It was as the author of Euphues that Lyly made most mark upon the Elizabethan world. His plays amused the court circle, but the "new English" of his novel threatened to change the course of English style. The plot is extremely simple. The hero, whose name may very possibly have been suggested by a passage in Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster, is, in the beginning, in bondage to the follies of youth, "preferring fancy before friends, and this present humour before honour to come." His travels bring him to Naples, where he falls in love with Lucilla, the governor's light-minded daughter. Lucilla is already pledged to Euphues's friend Philautus, but Euphues's passion betrays his friendship, and the old lover finds himself thrown over by both friend and mistress. Euphues himself, however, is very soon forsaken for a more attractive suitor. He and Philautus make up their quarrel, and Euphues writes his friend "a cooling card," to be "applied to all lovers," which is so severe upon the fair sex that Lyly feels it necessary to balance it by a sort of apology addressed "to the grave matrons and honest maidens of Italy." Euphues then leaves Naples for his native Athens, where he gives himself up to study, of which the first fruits are two long treatises--the first, "Euphues and his Ephoebus," a disquisition on the art of education uddressed to parents, and the second, "Euphues and Atheos," a discussion of the first principles of religion. The remainder of the book is filled up with correspondence between Euphues and his friends. We have letters from Euphues to Philautus on the death of Lucilla, to another friend on the death of his daughter, to one Botonio "to take his exile patiently," and to the youth Aldus, remonstrating with him on his bad behaviour at 'he university. Finally a pair of letters, the first from Livia at the emperour's court to Euphues at Athens," answered by "Euphues to Livia," wind up the first part, and announce to us Euphues's intention of visiting England. An address from Lyly to Lord Delawarr is affixed, to which was added in the second edition "An Address to the Gentlemen Scholars of England."
Euphues and his England is longer than the first part of the work. Euphues and Philautus travel from Naples to England. They arrive at Dover, halt for the night at Fidus's house at Canterbury, and then proceed to London, where they make acquaintance with Surius, a young English gentleman of great birth and noble blood; Psellus, an Italian nobleman reputed "great in magick"; Martius, an elderly Englishman; Camilla, a beautiful English girl of insignificant family; Lady Flavia and her niece Fraunces. After endless correspondence and conversation on all kinds of topics, Euphues is recalled to Athens, and from there corresponds with his friends. "Euphues' Glasse for Europe" is a flattering description of England sent to Livia at Naples. It is the most interesting portion of the book, and throws light upon one or two points of Lyly's own biography. The author naturally seized the opportunity for paying his inevitable tribute to the queen, and pays it in his most exalted style. "O fortunate England that hath such a queene, ungratefull if thou praye not for hir, wicked if thou do not love hir, miserable if thou lose hir!"--and so on. The book ends with Philautus's announcement of his marriage to Fraunces, upon which Euphues sends characteristic congratulations and retires, "tormented in body and grieved in mind," to the Mount of Silexedra, "where I leave him to his musing or Muses."
The above is a brief outline of a book which for a time set the fashion for English prose. Two editions of each part appeared within the first year after publication, and thirteen editions of both are enumerated up to 1636, after which, with the exception of a modernized version in 1718, Euphues was never reprinted until 1868, when Dr Arber took it in hand. The reasons for its popularity are not far to seek. As far as matter was concerned it fell in with all the prevailing literary fashions. Its long disquisitions on love, religion, exile, women or education, on court life and country pleasures, handled all the most favourite topics in the secularized speculation of the time; its foreign background and travel talk pleased a society of which Lyly himself said "trafic and travel hath woven the nature of all nations into ours and made this land like arras full of device which was broadcloth full of workmanship"; and, although Lyly steered clear in it of the worst classical pedantries of the day, the book was more than sufficiently steeped in classical learning, and based upon classical material, to attract a literary circle which was nothing if not humanist. A large proportion of its matter indeed was drawn from classical sources. The general tone of sententious moralizing may be traced to Plutarch, from whom the treatise on education, "Euphues and his Ephoebus," and that on exile, "Letter to Botonio to take his exile patiently," are literally translated, as well as a number of other shorter passages either taken direct from the Latin versions or from some of the numerous English translations of Plutarch then current. The innumerable illustrations based upon a kind of pseudo natural history are largely taken from Pliny, while the mythology is that of Virgil and Ovid.
It was not the matter of Euphues, however, so much as the style which made it famous (see euphuism). The source of Lyly's peculiar style has been traced by Dr Landmann (Der Euphuismus, sein Wesen, seine Quelle, seine Geschichte, etc. Giessen, 1881) to the influence of Antonio de Guevara, whose Libra Aureo de Marco Aurelio (1529)--a sort of historical romance based upon Plutarch and upon Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, the object of which was to produce a "mirror for princes," of the kind so popular throughout the Renaissance--became almost immediately popular in England.
The first edition, or rather a French version of it, was translated into English by Lord Berners in 1531, and published in 1534. Before 1560 twelve editions of Lord Berners's translation had been printed, and before 1578 six different translators of this and later works of Guevara had appeared. The translation, however, which had most influence upon English literature was that by North, the well-known translator of Plutarch, in 1557, called The Dial for Princes, Compiled by the Reverend Father in God Don Antony of Guevara, Byshop of Guadix, etc., Englished out of the Frenche by Th. North. The sententious and antithetical style of the Dial for Princes is substantially that of Euphues, though Guevara on the whole handles it better than his imitator, and has many passages of real force and dignity. The general plan of the two books is also much the same. In both the biography is merely a peg on which to hang moral disquisitions and treatises. The use made of letters is the same in both. Even the names of some of the characters are similar. Thus Guevara's Lucilla is the flighty daughter of Marcus Aurelius. Lyly's Lucilla is the flighty daughter of Ferardo, governor of Naples; Guevara's Livia is a lady at the court of Marcus Aurelius, Lyly's Livia is a lady at the court "of the emperor," of whom no further description is given. The 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th chapters of the Dial for Princes suggested the discussion between Euphues and Atheos. The letter from Euphues to Alcius is substantially the same in subject and treatment as that from Marcus Aurelius to his nephew Epesipo. Both Guevara and Lyly translated Plutarch's work De educatione liberorum, Lyly, however, keeping closer than the Spanish author to the original. The use made by Lyly of the university of Athens was an anachronism in a novel intended to describe his own time. He borrowed it, however, from Guevara, in whose book a university of Athens was of course entirely in place. The "cooling card for all fond lovers" and the address to the ladies and gentlemen of Italy have their counterparts among the miscellaneous letters by Guevara affixed by North to the Dial for Princes; and other instances of Lyly's use of these letters, and of two other treatises by Guevara on court and country life, could be pointed out.
Lyly was not the first to appropriate and develop the Guevaristic style. The earliest book in which it was fully adopted was A petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure, by George Pettie, which appeared in 1576, a production so closely akin to Euphues in tone and style that it is difficult to believe it was not by Lyly. Lyly, however, carried the style to its highest point, and made it the dominant literary fashion. His principal followers in it were Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge and Nash, his principal opponent Sir Philip Sidney; the Arcadia in fact supplanted Euphues, and the Euphuistic taste proper may be said to have died out about 1590 after a reign of some twelve years. According to Landmann, Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost is a caricature of the Italianate and pedantic fashions of the day, not of the peculfar style of Euphues. The only certain allusion in Shakespeare to the characteristics of Lyly's famous book is to be found in Henry IV, where Falstaff, playing the part of the king, says to Prince Hal, "Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied; for, though the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth the more it is wasted the sooner it wears." Here the pompous antithesis is evidently meant to caricature the peculiar Euphuistic sentence of court parlance.