JOHN LYLY WAS born in the weald of Kent. Wood places his birth in 1553. Oldys makes it appear probable that he was born much earlier. He studied at both the universities, and for many years attended the court of Elizabeth in expectation of being made master of the revels. In this object he was disappointed, and was obliged, in his old age, to solicit the Queen for some trifling grant to support him 1, which it is uncertain whether he ever obtained. Very little indeed is known of him, though Blount, his editor, tells us that "he sate at Apollo's table, and that the god gave him a wreath of his own bays without snatching." Whether Apollo was ever so complaisant or not, it is certain that Lyly's work of "Euphues and his England," preceded by another called "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit," &c. promoted a fantastic style of false wit, bombastic metaphor, and pedantic allusion, which it was fashionable to speak at court under the name of Euphuism, and which the ladies thought it indispensable to acquire. Lyly, 1 If he was an old man in the reign of Elizabeth, Oldys's conjecture as to the date of his birth seems to be verified,- as we scarcely call a man old at fifty. in his Euphues, probably did not create the new style, but only collected and methodised the floating affectations of phraseology.-Drayton ascribes the overthrow of Euphuism to Sir P. Sydney, who, he says, did first reduce Our tongue from Lylie's writing then in use, As th' English apes and very zanies be Sydney died in 1584, and Euphues had appeared but four years earlier. We may well suppose Sydney to have been hostile to such absurdity, and his writings probably promoted a better taste; but we hear of Euphuism being in vogue many years after his death; and it seems to have expired, like all other fashions, by growing vulgar, Lyly wrote nine plays, in some of which there is considerable wit and humour, rescued from the jargon of his favourite system, CUPID AND CAMPASPE. CUPID and my Campaspe play'd He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows, Growing on 's cheek, but none knows how, SONG. FROM ALEXANDER AND CAMPASPE. WHAT bird so sings, yet so does wail? Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at Heaven's gate she claps her wings, The morn not waking till she sings. Hark! hark! but what a pretty throat, Poor Robin red-breast tunes his throat; Hark! how the jolly cuckoos sing FROM MOTHER BOMBIE. O CUPID, monarch over kings, It is all one in Venus wanton school, Who highest sits, the wise man or the fool- Have far more knowledge, To read a woman over, Than a neat-prating lover; Nay, 'tis confest That fools please women best. ALEXANDER HUME WAS the second son of Patrick, fifth Baron of Polwarth, from whom the family of Marchmont are descended. He was born probably about the middle, and died about the end, of the sixteenth century. During four years of the earlier part of his life, he resided in France, after which he returned home and studied law, but abandoned the bar to try his fortune at court. There he is said to have been disgusted with the preference shewn to a poetical rival, Montgomery, with whom he exchanged flytings, (or invectives) in verse, and who boasts of hav ing "driven Polwart from the chimney nook." He then went into the church, and was appointed rector or minister of Logic; the names of ecclesiastical offices in Scotland then floating between presbytery and prelacy. In the clerical profession he continued till his death. Hume lived at a period when the spirit of Calvinism in Scotland was at its gloomiest pitch, and when a reformation, fostered by the poetry of Lyndsay, and by the learning of Buchanan, had begun to grow hostile to elegant literature. Though the drama, rude as it was, had been no mean engine in the hands of Lyndsay against popery, yet the Scottish reformers of this latter period even anticipated the zeal of the English puritans against dramatic and romantic poetry, which they regarded as emanations from hell. Hume had imbibed. so far the spirit of his times as to publish an exhortation to the youth of Scotland to forego the admiration of all classical heroes, and to read no other books on the subject of love than the Song of Solomon. But Calvinism itself could not entirely eradicate the This once gloomy influence of Calvinism on the literary character of the Scottish churchnien, forms a contrast with more recent times, that needs scarcely to be suggested to those ́ac |