"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.

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. GENERAL

He is but a little fellow, but he hath one of the best wits in England.-NASHE, THOMAS, 1592, Pierce Pennilesse.

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, Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madness, p. 57.

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, Athena Oxonenses, vol. I, p. 295.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. 1, p. 394.

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. 1, p. 378.

Exhausts the animal and vegetable kingdom to enhance a truism.-TOVEY, DUNCAN C., 1897, Reviews and Essays in English Literature, p. 39.

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, W. J., 1897, A History of English Poetry, vol. II, p. 201.

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.

His friendship is like a gem added to my treasures. LANGUET, HUBERT, 1586? Letter to Philip Sidney, Epistolae, p. 215.

Maister Edward Dyar, for Elegie most sweete, solempne and of high conceit.PUTTENHAM, GEORGE, 1589, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Arber, p. 77.

Thou virgin knight, that dost thy selfe obscure From world's unequal eyes.

-DAVIES, JOHN, OF HEREFORD, 1603, Microcosmos, Preface.

Sir Edward Dyer, of Somersetshire (Sharpham Parke, etc.), was a great witt, poet, and acquaintance of Mary, countesse of Pembroke, and Sir Philip Sydney. He He is mentioned in the preface of the "Arcadia." He had four thousand pounds per annum, and was left fourscore thousand pounds in money; he wasted it almost all. This I had from captaine Dyer, his great grandsonne, or brother's great grandson. I thought he had been the sonne of the Lord Chiefe Justice Dyer, as I have inserted in one of these papers, but that was a mistake. The judge was of the same family, the captain tells me. AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. 1, p. 243.

Sir Edward Dier, a person of good account in Queen Elizabeth's reign, poetically addicted, several of whose pastoral Odes and Madrigals are extant, in a printed Collection of certain choice pieces of some of the most eminent poets of that time.PHILLIPS, EDWARD, 1675, Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, ed. Brydges, p. 144. A poet whose lot has been rather singular. His name is generally coupled with that of Sir Philip Sidney, and of the most fashionable writers of the age; and yet Bolton, who was almost a contemporary critic, professes "not to have seen much of his poetry." Though a knight, in a reign when knighthood was nobility, the time of his birth is unknown. . . . The letters M. D. in the "Paradise of Dainty Devices" are presumed (says Mr. Ritson in his "Bibliographia") to denote this Master Dyer. Of six pieces, preserved in "England's Helicon," only half of one appeared worth transcribing, as a specimen of his style. ELLIS, GEORGE, 1790-1845, Specimens of Early English Poets, vol. II, p. 157.

Dyer is now remembered by one poem only, the well-known "My mind to me a Kingdom is," which though fluent and

spirited verse, probably owes most of its reputation to the happiness of its opening. The little poem "To Phillis the Fair Shepherdess" is in the lighter, less hackneyed Elizabethan vein, and makes a welcome interlude among the "woeful ballads" which immediately surround it in "England's Helicon," where it first appeared. Still, when all is said, Dyer, a man of action and affairs rather than of letters, is chiefly interesting for his connection. with Sidney and Greville; and that stiff pathetic engraving of Sidney's funeral, which represents him as pall-bearer side by side with Lord Brooke, throws a light upon his memory that none of his poems have power to shed.--WARD, MARY A., 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. 1, p. 376.

Dyer gained considerable fame as a poet in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Puttenham in 1589 pronounced him to be "for elegy most sweet, solemn, and of high conceit;" and Meres in "Wit's Treasury," 1598, mentions him as "famous for elegy." But his verse was never collected. During his lifetime, and early in the next century, critics were at a loss to know on what work his fame rested. Edmund Bolton in "Hypercritica' says that he "had not seen much of Sir Edward Dyer's poetry;" and William Drummond, coupling his name with Raleigh's, observes: "Their works are so few that have come to my hands, I cannnot well say anything of them."-BULLEN, A. H., 1888, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XVI, p. 284.

The number of poems which can be confidently ascribed to Dyer is small, but some of them have real merit, and not only justify the reputation which he enjoyed in his day, but are interesting as mirrors of his character and feelings. Oldys says of him that "he would not stoop to fawn;" and this may well be believed of the writer of the famous lines "My mind to me a kingdom is."-COURTHOPE, W. J., 1897, A History of English Poetry, vol. II, p. 307.

He had a very great reputation in his time as a poet, but his remains are small, and only one of them, the famous and excellent, but not superexcellent,

My mind to me a kingdom is, has obtained much place in the general memory. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 272.

the monument. This is the author of the first elaborately executed farce in our language. SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON, 1884, Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama, p. 205.

GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE

The writer has a degree of jocularity which sometimes rises above buffoonery, but is often disgraced by lowness of incident. Yet in a more polished age he would have chosen, nor would he perhaps have disgraced, a better subject.WARTON, THOMAS, 1778-81, History of English Poetry, sec. xlvii.

The humour of this curious old drama.

. is broad, familiar, and grotesque; the characters are sketched with a strong though coarse outline, and are to the last consistently supported.- DRAKE, NATHAN, 1817, Shakspeare and his Times, vol. II, p. 233.

"Gammer Gurton's Needle" has this peculiarity belonging to it, that it is, I believe, the first existing English play acted at either University; and it is a singular coincidence, (which is farther illustrated in "The Annals of the Stage,") that the author of the comedy so represented should be the very person who many years afterwards, when he had become Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, was called upon to remonstrate with the ministers of Queen Elizabeth against having an English play performed before her at that University, as unbefitting its learning, dignity, and character. -COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE, 1831, History of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. II, p. 463.

It is impossible for any thing to be meaner in subject and characters than this strange farce; but the author had some vein of humor, and writing neither for fame nor money, but to make lighthearted boys laugh, and to laugh with them, and that with as little grossness as the story would admit, is not to be judged with severe criticism.- HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. ii, ch. vi, par. 23.

For the simple dry humour which prevails in it, as well as for the sustained tone and colouring, which are in perfect keeping with the subject, and the sphere of life in which its scene is laid, is not unworthy of its place in the history of the English drama. ULRICI, HERMANN, 1839, Shakspeare's Dramatic Art, p. 18.

This ancient comedy is the work of a truly comic genius, who knew not how to choose his subject, anti indulged a taste repulsive to those who only admit of delicate and not familiar humor. Its grossness, however, did not necessarily result from the prevalent grossness of the times: since a recent discovery, with which Warton was unacquainted, has shown the world. that an English comedy, which preceded the hitherto supposed first comedy in our language, is remarkable for its chasteness, the propriety of its great variety of characters, the truth of the manners in a wide circle of society, and the uninterrupted gayety pervading the whole airy composition.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1841, First Tragedy and First Comedy, Amenities of Liter

ature.

It may be coarse, earthy, but in reading it one feels that he is at least a man among men, and not a humbug among humbugs. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1875-90, Spenser, Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. IV, p. 300.

"Gammer Gurton's Needle" is not such a play as a Bishop would have written, for its fun is associated with some coarseness of jesting common to the good old time, from which "Ralph Roister Doister" was free only because it was written by a schoolmaster for public acting by his boys. John Still wrote as a young man with high spirits, to amuse his comrades. Fun is abundant in this comedy of rustic life, and its jesting-at the rudest-only sins against later convention, the play being in no thought or word immoral. It is indelicate, but not indecent. MORLEY, HENRY, 1892, English Writers, vol. VIII, p. 383.

The serious-minded Still has been generally claimed as the author of the boisterously merry comedy "Gammer Gurton's Needle," but the evidence in his favour proves on examination to be inconclusive. While Still was in residence at Christ's College the books of the bursar show that a play was performed there in 1566, when 20s. was paid "the carpenters for setting up the scaffold." It may be inferred (although there is no positive proof) that the play was identical with the one published in 1575 under the title of "A Ryght Pythy, Pleasaunt, and Merie Comedie: Intytuld Gammer Gurton's Needle: Played on Stage not long ago in Christes