The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1919/Touching on Euphuism
Touching on Euphuism
By James F. Morton, Jr.
The average fairly well-read person, if asked for a definition of Euphuism, would undoubtedly affirm that it was an affected and artificial style of speaking and writing, current in the Elizabethan period, which originated in the vogue of a book named Euphues, by John Lyly, and might add that Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost was written largely to ridicule this contemporary vice of speech, much as Moliere, in the following century, dealt by his Preciouses Ridicules a death blow to a somewhat similar extravagance of language and manner.
As to reading Euphues and thus seeking enlightenment on the subject at its source, practically nobody dreams of so hazardous a procedure. The modern reader, in fact, is wont to neglect the literary masters of the past. He will join in the general acclaim with which their names are pronounced; but reading their books is quite another matter. Are not the bookstores crammed with the latest works of contemporaries? Let the dead past bury its dead, while we proceed to feed our minds on the effusions of living writers. It is much, if we condescend now and then to pick up a volume of Dickens or Thackeray, or one of the three or four novels of Scott whch are conceded to be “interesting” to a generation stuffed with the near-literary fiction of Marie Corelli, Florence Barclay, Robert Chambers, Harold Bell Wright and other wretched specimens of cheap ephemeralism. We pronounce Hugo’s masterpiece, the greatest novel of all time, “too long,” Balzac “too slow,” Duman “too old-fashioned.” To confess to the occasional reading of Jane Austen, or of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne or Defoe, is to be dubbed an incorrigible highbrow, whose idiosyncrasies may be charitably tolerated by mere men and women. And while it is universally granted that the Elizabethan age surpassed all others in the production of great works of English literature, how many readers of these lines have so much as dipped into the works of any writer of that age, except Shakespeare? Aye, and how many know even their Shakespeare through and through, and recognise as a personally loved companion the mighty master, who is the eternal glory of the English race? A few of Bacon’s essays, a handful of lyrics found in some anthology, a little of Chaucer and Spenser and something of Milton’s poetry (rarely by any chance his great Areopagitica or any other of his prose works); these represent nearly everything in English literature prior to the eighteenth century, so far as known by actual reading to the vast majority of “well-educated” readers of our day.
This is not as it should be. If ever there is to be an improvement in literary taste, it must be signalised by a reversion from the flashy and bodiless books of the “best seller” class to the real literature which lives for all time. “Whenever a new book comes out, I read an old one,” said Lamb in deprecation of the tendency to neglect the deathless for the ephemeral. This, however, is going to the other extreme. While human nature remains intrinsically the same from age to age, its manifestations vary; and each epoch brings with it new problems. We need to study the men and women of our own day in their present setting, and to grapple with the issues of our own period. Nor is literary talent wanting to the present generation. In the single department of English fiction, such writers as Hewlett, Wells, Locke, Smith and Mrs. Voynich are by no means deserving of neglect; while the still greater names of Hardy, Meredith and James shed undying lustre on the latter portion of the nineteenth and the earlier years of the twentieth centuries. Equally important are latter day contributions in poetry, history, science, criticism and many other branches. Our worthy contemporaries deserve something belter than neglect at our hands; but we are incapable of rendering to them their true meed of appreciation, unless we have prepared ourselves by familiarity with their predecessors to trace the historical and psychological connection between the past and the present. Nor are the older writings “dull” to any alert mind. The fascination of the Morte d’Arthur is perennial, as is the delight to be taken in those glorious relics of our ancestors embedded in Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry. “Marlowe’s mighty line” has not lost its power to thrill; nor has the charm of The Faery Queen faded away.
Returning to euphuism, the digression from which is more apparent than real, the current view is that reflected in most books dealing with English literature, although in many cases the writers who pronounce it show evidence of having based their verdict on the testimony of others, instead of searching for themselves to learn “whether these things were so.” Thus, the Standard Dictionary defines euphuism as “an affectation of elegance in writing; especially, a high-flown, periphrastic style; originally, the style of John Lyly in his Euphues, marked by antitheses, alliteration, pedantic affectation, obscurity, subtle similes, and fantastic conceits.”
The Everyman Encyclopaedia speaks of Euphues as “a very tedious story,” which is remarkable for its prose style, which is chiefly characterised by a continuous straining after anthithesis and epigram.”
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines Euphuism as “artificial or affected style of writing (prop.) in imitation of Lyly’s Euphues; high-flown style.”
John Berkenhout, M. D., in his Biographies Literari, violently attacks Lyly’s work as “a most contemptible piece of affectation and nonsense.” Equally condemnatory are the expressions of Gifford, the first editor of the Quarterly Review, few of whose judgments have stood the test of posterity; John Payne Collier, Henry Hallam and innumerable others. More kindly are the words of Professor Marsh, Stopford Brooke and Charles Kingsley, the last-named of whom shows unequivocal signs of having proceeded to the unusual extreme of himself having read the book about which he was writing.
As to Lyly’s motives, the majority of critics seem to suppose that it was his deliberate intention to corrupt the English language, by furnishing a new and highly objectionable model of style. Others express themselves variously. Thus the Everyman Encyclopedia declares: “His idea was not to improve, but to amuse.” Auguste Pilon, in his Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise, says: “The book—it is the author who says so—had no other ambition than to deserve a place on the knees of ladies, by the side of their favourite dog, in order that they might play with the animal when they should be tired of the pretty fancies of the writer.”
A contrary view is thus expressed by Stopford Brooke, in his Primer of English Literature: “The story is long, and is more a loose framework into which Lyly could fit his thoughts on love, friendship, education and religion than a true story.” In like manner, John W. Cousin, in his Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, credits Lyly as being “largely inspired by Ascham’s Toxophilus, and aiming at “the reform of education and manners. Charles Kingsley more emphatically declares that if parents “could train a son after the pattern of his Ephoebus, to the great saving of their own money and his virtue, all fathers, even in these moneymaking days, would rise up and call them blessed.”
The chief purveyor of misconceptions concerning Lyly and his work is undoubtedly Sir Walter Scott, who in The Monastery has given us a self-named euphuist in the Person of Sir Piercie Shafton. This fantastic knight has schooled himself to make use in the presence of ladies and persons whom he considers his equals or superiors of a high-flown jargon such as no mortal ever heard before or since. How far his personality and style are removed from his supposed model, may be judged by a single comparison.
Here is a specimen of Sir Piercie’s manner of addressing a lady:
“But who can talk of discords, when the soul of harmony descends upon us in the presence of surpassing beauty? For even as foxes, wolves and other animals void of sense and reason do fly from the presence of the resplendent sun of heaven when he arises in his glory, so do strife, wrath and all ireful passions retreat and as it were scud away from the face which now beams upon us, with power to compose our angry passions, illuminate our errors and difficulties, soothe our wounded minds, and lull to rest our disorderly apprehensions; for as the heat and warmth of the eye of the day is to the material and physical world, so is the eye which I now bow down before to that of the intellectual microcosm.”
No wonder that Mary Avenel could find no other answer than, “For heaven’s sake what is the meaning of this?”
Now consider the words of Euphues on a somewhat similar occasion:
“As there is no one thing which can be reckoned either concerning love or loyalty wherein women do not exceed men, yet in fervency above al! others, they so far exceed, that men are liker to marvel at them than to imitate them, and readier to laugh at their virtues than emulate them. For as they be hard to be won without trial of great faith, so are they hard to be lost without great cause of fickleness. It is long before cold water seethe; yet being once hot, it is long before it be cooled: it is long before salt come to his saltness; but being once seasoned, it never loseth its savour. I for mine own part am brought into a paradise by the only contemplation of women’s virtues; and were I persuaded that all the devils in hell were women, I would never live devoutly to inherit heaven; or that they were all saints in heaven, I would live more strictly for fear of hell. What would Adam have done in his paradise before his fall without a woman, or how could he have risen again after his fall without a woman?”
This quotation by no means unfairly represents the general tone of Lyly’s work. Here is no far-fetched hyperbole of expression, but the clear setting forth of a proposition, and its reinforcement of analogies. The peculiarity of Euphues is not to be found in turgid phrases, like those of Sir Piercie, but in the innumerable similes brought forth to emphasise each point. Take the following, as a fair example:
“Beware of delays. What less than the grain of mustard-seed; in time almost what thing is greater than the stalk thereof? The slender twig groweth to a stately tree; and that which with the hand might safely have been pulled up, will hardly with the axe be hewn down. The least spark if it be not quenched will burst into a flame; the least moth in time eateth the thickest cloth; and I have read that in a short space, there was a town in Spain undermined with coneys, in Thessalia with moles, with frogs in France, in Africa with flies..... Think this with thyself, that the sweet songs of Calypso were subtle snares to entice Ulysses; that the crab then catcheth the oyster when the sun shineth; that Hiena, when she speaketh like a man, deviseth most mischief; that women, when they be most pleasant, pretend most treachery.”
This long harping on one string is what wearies the modern reader, in attempting to enjoy Euphues. Yet I do not hesitate to assert that the occasional pain is well rewarded. Of obscurity there is little or none, save that few will be familiar with all the historical and mythological references to be found therein, or with the immense number of mediaeval beliefs introduced with regard to imagined properties of plants and animals. The story is slight; but the picture of the times is of distinct interest. The first part, entitled Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit, deals with the experiences of a young Athenian, contemporary with the author, who learns by sharp lessons that cleverness and brilliancy of intellect are insufficient means whereby to achieve the higher aims of life. Disappointed in love and friendship, he turns first to intellectual labour and then to the consolation of religion, becoming pious even to the verge of fanaticism. A dialogue with an Atheist, whom Euphues beats from his position rather by threat of divine wrath than by such arguments as would be considered requisite in these days, and an elaborate and (for its time) wholly admirable treatise on the education of youth, occupy about a third of the entire work. Its sequel,, Euphues and His England, deals with a journey to England, and contains some ingenious conversation, love-making of a highly edifying sort, moral tales and the inevitable eulogies of the flattery-loving Elizabeth and her court.
Of the influence of Lyly on Shakespeare there can be on question. A simple comparison of style shows that no preceding writer except Marlowe is so clearly to be traced throughout the earlier works of the supreme dramatist. Even Love’s Labour Lost, commonly supposed to be a satire on euphuistic phraseology, shows more of Lyly in the seriously treated characters than in those held up to ridicule. Pedantry and highly elaborated language are indeed unsparingly satirised; but there is no trace of the manner of Euphues in Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel or even Don Armado; while it is abundant in Biron and his companions and in the ladies of the French court. Two Gentlemen of Verona abounds in expressions typical of Lyly’s influence; and few even of the later plays are without traces of it.
In two instances at least, Shakespeare has not failed to draw directly from Euphues for subject matter, to be worked over by his incomparable genius. Note the advice of old Eubulus to Euphues:
“Be merry, but with modesty; be sober but net too sullen; be valiant, but not too venturous. Let thy attire be comely, but not costly; thy diet wholesome, but not excessive; use pastime as the word importeth to pass the time in honest recreation. Mistrust no man without cause; neither be thou credulous without proof; be not light to follow every man’s opinion, nor obstinate to stand in thine own conceit.”
Out of this passage, with the addition of suggestions from certain other precepts to be found in Lyly’s work, Shakespeare elaborated the famous counsel of Polonius to Laertes, with which every school child is familiar.
The other example is that of the famous passage in Act 1, Scene 2, of King Henry V, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury describes the commonwealth of the bees. This is modelled on a passage in Euphues and His England, wherein Fidus, an old nobleman retired to country life, discourses to Euphues and Philautus concerning his observations of the social organisations in which the bee serves as a model to human society.
That the name euphuism was applied to a grossly affected style of conversation, which came into vogue the latter portion of Elizabeth’s reign, and grew yet worse during the subsequent degenerate period of the worthless Stuarts, is not to be denied. For this corruption, however, Lyly is in no way responsible. There is no trace of any effort on his part to thrust his own style of writing upon others, still less the later perversion which has little of Euphues besides the stolen name. As a matter of fact, his style differs less from that of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors than does that of Thomas Carlyle from the English style current in his day and in ours. Not only are its extravagances far less than represented; but, such as they are, they merely represent his individuality, departing no further from the normal than do the very different manners of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe. His message was a sincere attempt to improve the manners and the morals of his time; and the language employed was that which best fitted his individuality as a means of his wholly laudable end. In this day, when so many idols are being shattered, it is surely not amiss to correct one of the great injustices of literary history, and to remove from John Lyly a reproach which has so long been wrongfully cast upon him.
