Wit, Eloquence, and Wisdom in Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit

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SOURCE: "Wit, Eloquence, and Wisdom in Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXXI, No. 3, 1984, pp. 299-324.

[In the following excerpt, McCabe describes how Lyly demonstates that Euphues's wit hinders his self-knowledge and is ultimately destructive.]

Discussing Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, C. S. Lewis remarks that "it is no kindness to Lyly to treat him as a serious novelist; the more seriously we take its action and characters the more odious his work will appear."1 The modern reader is inclined to agree, but Lyly's contemporaries might not. Lewis' observations contain a certain amount of truth, but truth of a rather anachronistic kind. Lyly did intend the work to be taken seriously, yet he never set out to produce anything even resembling a modern novel. That his intentions were far different is clear from his subtitle: The anatomy of wit very pleasant for all Gentlemen to read, and most necessary to remember: wherein are contained the delights that Wit followeth in his youth by the pleasantness of love, and the happiness he reapeth in age, by the perfectness of wisdom. The emphasis is upon the merits and demerits of wit and wisdom, and the work is not a novel but an anatomy, or analysis, of a problem central to humanist thought: the relationship between eloquence and truth. For this reason the storyline is thin, not to say meagre: a young man betrays his friend for the love of a worthless young woman who in turn betrays him. Interest centers not in the narrative proper but in the numerous speeches and soliloquies in which the various characters defend and analyze the implications of their own actions and desires in relation to those of their fellows.

Characterization in the modern sense is not attempted; the typicality of the personae is more important than their individuality. Even the name "Euphues" is thought to have been drawn from Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster (1570) where it is used to designate a particular type of pupil with which the teacher may find himself confronted. Euphues is one of those who is "apt by goodness of wit, and appliable by readiness of will, to learning, having all other qualities of the mind and parts of the body that must another day serve learning."2 So little is Lyly concerned with the story in its own right, that he does not even bother to tell us what finally became of Lucilla. Once Euphues has recognized her duplicity, thereby recognizing the truth about himself, Lucilla ceases to be of any great interest: "what end became of her, seeing it is nothing incident to the history of Euphues, it were superfluous to insert it" (p. 89). The strictly narrative part of the work has long ended before we learn her fate, and then only in passing when it is used as an apposite moral exemplum by the reformed Euphues in a highly didactic letter to the still unregenerate Philautus. Yet the story is not, as Lewis suggests, merely a vehicle for the style.3 That is only partly true. Lyly was deeply interested in the theme and its analysis, in the "anatomy" of wit. It is upon this facet of the work I intend to concentrate, for I believe that here we find the issue which unifies and makes sense of the work as a whole. What I hope to elucidate is the pattern of education underlying the story, the movement, prompted by "experience," from wilful "wit" to deliberate "wisdom."

G. K. Hunter has set Lyly squarely in the tradition of the English humanists descending from Erasmus, More, Colet, and Lyly's own grandfather, the grammarian William Lyly.4 It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find him wrestling with a problem which had exercised the humanists from the time of Petrarch. In his excellent study entitled Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism (1968), Jerrold Seigel has convincingly demonstrated how the question of the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy became a major issue in the thought of Petrarch, Salutati, Bruni, Valla, Poggio, and a host of others. That this should have been the case was perhaps inevitable since, as Professor Kristeller has pointed out, the humanists were essentially rhetoricians.5 The problem, of course, is inextricably related to the Ciceronian controversy which raged from the time of Politian to that of Erasmus and Scaliger, and involved almost all the great names commonly associated with the revival of classical learning. It was continued during the Ramist controversy of the mid-sixteenth century with the emergence of a determined attempt to limit and define the boundaries of the two disciplines once and for all. Yet another manifestation was the so-called "Senecan" or "Anti-Ciceronian" movement of the fifteen-nineties: it was Bacon's declared aim to smash "the contract of error" between teacher and student by shifting the emphasis from style to matter in keeping with the views of Seneca.6 His fear was that rhetoric would conceal the flaws in the teacher's argument thereby impeding progressive thought. He feared, in other words, that eloquence would invariably pass for truth.

The relevance of all of this for our discussion of Lyly lies, of course, in the insistence of so many sixteenth-century authorities on the close relationship between eloquence and wit. Properly speaking, wit, as in Ascham, was the innate agility of the mind, and to be witty was therefore a distinct advantage. According to Cicero's De Oratore it is futile to expect that the ingenium denied by nature may ever be attained through art.7 That this opinion should occur in the De Oratore, itself indicates the close classical connection between wit and eloquence. Similarly in Timber: or Discoveries Ben Jonson's discussion of ingenium (translated throughout as "wit") soon transforms itself into a discussion of the art of rhetoric. This is hardly surprising in view of his assertion that "speech is the only benefit man hath to expresse his excellencie of mind above other creatures. It is the Instrument of Society." "Language," he declares, "most shewes a man: speake that I may see thee."8 Roger Ascham was not alone in emphasizing what he saw as the inextricable connection between style and matter. John Hoskins too reminds us that,

his mind [cannot] be thought in tune whose words do jar, nor his reason in frame whose sentences are preposterous; nor his fancy clear and perfect whose utterance breaks itself into fragments and uncertainties…. Careless speech doth not only discredit the personage of the speaker but it doth discredit the opinion of his reason and judgment, it discrediteth the truth, force, and uniformity of the matter and substance.9

The danger here lies in the corollary: given such opinions it is easy to see how eloquence might well come to be mistaken for truth—such at least is the implication of this point of view.

In The Book of the Courtier Castiglione's characters display the agility of their wit by their fluency in debate, and Thomas Wilson duly draws upon Castiglione's work in his own Arte of Rhetorique (1553).10 The connection between the witty, the courtly, and the eloquent is thereby made clear. Similarly in Euphues and his England (1580), where the characters frequently engage in the questioni d'amore so popular on the continent, we hear that the three qualities which argue a "fine wit" are "invention, conceiving, answering" (p. 263)—all qualities pertaining to the cultivation of eloquence and all attributable to Euphues. Indeed the questioni themselves are described as "questions to whet our wits" (p. 259). Furthermore, "it is wit that allureth; when every word shall have his weight, when nothing shall proceed but it shall either savour of a sharp conceit or a secret conclusion" (p. 262).

But this is where the problem arises. It is indeed "wit that allureth" but wit may be deceitful. Euphues is a man "of more wit than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom" although these qualities, as we have seen, need not stand in opposition to each other. Ideally the humanist educator sought to inculcate a love of wisdom or truth into the naturally witty. Such is the point of Ascham's Scholemaster. Thomas More was one of the great examples of a "wit" dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom; Erasmus was another. Their talents were devoted to the service of religious and philosophical truth. They were eloquent but wisely eloquent, and this combination was long upheld as the ideal. Yet it was all too possible for wit and wisdom to go their separate ways. The witty mind with no regard for truth might still manipulate the techniques of rhetoric as well and as successfully (as far as the persuasion of others is concerned) as the wise man. In this case the purpose of rhetoric would be solely to persuade irrespective of the merits or demerits of the case.

At the outset of Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit we are informed that Euphues is a young man "of more wit than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom" who "seeing himself inferior to none in pleasant conceits thought himself superior to all in honest conditions, insomuch that he deemed himself so apt to all things that he gave himself almost to nothing but practising of those things commonly which are incident to these sharp wits—fine phrases, smooth quipping, merry taunting, using jesting without mean, and abusing mirth without measure" (p. 10). By mistaking "pleasant conceits" for "honest conditions" he has put pleasure before truth. He so luxuriates in his own wit, or aptitude, that it has become an end in itself with no purpose beyond its own indulgence. Facility of speech has usurped the place of moral value although its products—"fine phrases, smooth quipping, merry taunting"—have no obvious moral significance. The striking contrast between the negative premise ("inferior to none") and the superlative conclusion ("superior to all") highlight the depth of Euphues' ignorance. Nevertheless his eloquence is astonishing. It is this which first attracts the attention of Eubulus who, "seeing his pregnant wit, his eloquent tongue somewhat taunting yet with delight, his mirth without measure yet not without wit, his sayings vainglorious yet pithy, began to bewail his nurture and to muse at his nature, being incensed against the one as most pernicious and inflamed with the other as most precious" (p. 13, my emphasis). The passage is carefully balanced to suggest the complexity of the case. Eubulus has the humanist's eye for talent, detecting the potential beneath all the faults. The wit, he concedes, is pregnant, the manner of speaking eloquent, delightful, and pithy. Yet the overall effect remains disturbing, for it is precisely because the talents are so "precious" that their abuse is so "pernicious." What Eubulus has realized is that Euphues is the victim of his own shallow eloquence. He is blind to the need for self-knowledge, acquiescing far too easily in a delusive sense of his own worth. In other words, he has become a sophist for whom the function of rhetoric is indeed to persuade but, as Thomas Wilson's formulation suggests, not necessarily to persuade in a good cause. "Invention," Wilson tells us, "is a searching out of thynges true, or thynges likely, the whiche maie reasonably sette furth a matter, and make it appere probable."11 The use of "places of Logique" is for those who "seke onely to teache thereby the truthe." In A Discourse of Civill Life, Spenser's friend Lodowick Bryskett is far more explicit. The purpose of Aristotle's Rhetoric, he tells us,

is to instruct a man how to frame his speech to perswade, and how to move the minds of Iudges to anger, hatred, revenge, compassion, and such like other affects, which oftentimes wrest the truth, and make wrong to prevaile. So as if the Orator prevaile, and attaine the end he seeketh, which is to perswade, or use the meanes to attaine it artificially, he hath done his dutie. By which it appeareth, that Rhetorike is ordained for iudgements and controversies, but not for instruction of civill life and manners.12

It is precisely "civill life and manners," however, that Euphues proceeds to take as his subject with such disastrous consequences. Since for him "invention, conceiving, and answering" have become ends in themselves, his duty, as he understands it, is indeed done once his arguments have prevailed. He "frames his speech to perswade" concentrating his efforts on the means to attain this end "artificially," and his first argument is therefore as logical as it can be, given the limitations of his position. He is not attempting to ascertain the truth but to defend his own wilful inclinations. As Walter King puts it, "the debate was not intended to develop logically. Lyly's aim was to characterize Euphues as a presumptous purveyor of false wit."13

Sixteenth-century discussions of rhetoric lay strong emphasis upon the plentiful employment of various figures of speech. John Hoskins tells us that "to amplify and illustrate are two the chiefest [sic] ornaments of eloquence, and gain of men's minds two the chiefest advantages, admiration and belief."14 But "amplification and illustration" are the hallmarks of Lyly's style. Indeed, as W. G. Crane has pointed out, the extensive treatment of various methods of amplification in Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique reads like an inventory of Lyly's numerous rhetorical devices.15 Crane's study is devoted to demonstrating how "wit" is almost invariably understood or described by Lyly's close contemporaries as the ability to indulge in all sorts of rhetorical amplification. This, of course, was largely the result of contemporary teaching methods which insisted upon the composition of short essays or "theames" for which vast quantities of quotable material had to be painstakingly amassed and arranged under elaborate indices in commonplace-books. Texts such as Erasmus' De duplici copia verborum et rerum were extremely popular as were the many similar compilations published in English stretching from The dictes and sayingis of the philosophers (1477) to Meres' Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury (1598).16 It can scarcely be doubted that many years of assiduous compilation lie behind the amazing stock of similes and comparisons that fill the speeches in both parts of Euphues. It is with some justification that Euphues himself tells Eubulus that "infinite and innumerable were the examples" he could "allege" in support of his position, and this despite the obvious logical inferiority of his arguments to those of his opponent (p. 20). It is interesting to note in passing that there are over two hundred quotations from Lyly in Meres.17

Such then is Euphues' "wit," the wit of a keen rhetorician, skilled in all the best techniques of amplification and illustration, determined, and often able, to persuade at all costs, but quite unwilling to tackle the crucial problem of the relationship between rhetorical skill and philosophical or moral insight. His use of the exemplum is a case in point. Wisdom, as I have said, concerns itself with the pursuit of truth, and giving an account of the "Wise Man" in his Characters of Vertues and Vices (1608) Bishop Hall tells us that,

Hee is a skilfull Logician, not by nature so much as use; his working mind doth nothing all his time but make syllogismes, and draw out conclusions, every thing that he sees and heares, serves for one of the premisses: with these he cares first to informe himselfe, then to direct others … He is both an apt scholler and an excellent master; for both every thing he sees informes him, and his mind enriched with plentifull observation, can give the best precepts.18

The wise man puts logic before rhetoric. He develops his natural talents by "use," learns from experience, and sees to his own self-instruction before he presumes to direct others: "There is nothing that he desires not to know, but most and first himselfe." Everything that he sees serves him as an exemplum, as a premise for some moral conclusion. His arguments are not fabricated to suit the needs of the moment, but discovered through careful meditation. When he makes a comparison it is truly pertinent to the point at issue. "Enriched with plentifull observation" he formulates "precepts" for the good life. "His wit," concludes Bishop Hall, "hath cost him much; and he can both keep, and value, and employ it. He is his owne Lawyer; the treasury of knowledge, the oracle of counsell; blind in no mans cause, best sighted in his owne."19

Eubulus resembles Hall's wise man but Euphues is the complete opposite, and the discrepancy between the two is all the more noticeable in that, as Jonas Barish has demonstrated, Lyly's style is fundamentally analytic.20 For example, it frequently concerns itself with making discriminating distinctions between apparently similar qualities (such as wit and wisdom) or conversely with demonstrating the underlying similarity of supposedly disparate entities. Euphues' blindness is rendered all the more striking, therefore, by the apparent logicality of his arguments, by his use of what are fundamentally the same rhetorical methods as those employed by Eubulus but to far different ends. His utterances are models of polemical rhetoric in the worst sense of the term, and not until he meets the fickle Lucilla does he ever question his own motives, and motives are what matter. As I hope to demonstrate, Lucilla's significance is that she emerges in the course of the work as exactly the sort of person Euphues initially threatens to become. Hence the importance of recognizing her true nature. For Euphues, to understand Lucilla is to understand himself. The theme of the work is only ostensibly love. Being perhaps the most powerful, and certainly one of the most dangerous, of the passions, love functions as the perfect medium for the expression of unbridled will.

At the outset Eubulus realizes that a man of Euphues talents must employ them either constructively or destructively; he fears the latter. As a result he argues the case for education and discipline employing the usual armory of rhetorical figures designed to gain "admiration and belief." Had Euphues' parents taken the example of wise gardeners or good husbandmen or cunning painters they might have realized how to discipline their son (pp. 14-15). All of this is quite in order, for in the Rhetoric, Aristotle recognizes the validity of inducing moral precepts from a host of examples.21 Indeed Eubulus himself defends his use of exempla by the highly apposite employment of yet another one: "The Lacedaemonians were wont to show their children drunken men and other wicked men, that by seeing their filth they might shun the like fault and avoid such vices when they were at the like state" (p. 15). That there are quite so many exempla must be ascribed rather to the taste of the age than to any desire on Lyly's part to depict Eubulus as a sort of tedious old Polonius. The important thing to remember is that Eubulus' remarks are justified: the reformed Euphues repeats them almost verbatim later on. Like Hall's wise man, Eubulus has considered the matter deeply before he speaks. His defense of his own rhetorical methods by insisting on the moral purpose of the exemplum is entirely sound, and the exempla he chooses are all strikingly apt. The simile of the "wise gardeners or good husbandmen" for example, derives ultimately from Cicero's Orator where the mind is compared to a fruit ful field requiring the cultivation of judgment. Otherwise "arguments are derived which are inconsequential, immaterial, or useless."22

In describing the use of rhetorical progressio John Hoskins demonstrates how a subject may be amplified by "examining the comparison in every particular circumstance." Conveniently for our purposes the subject he chooses to illustrate is the dictum that "it is lamentable that a young man should be offended with the advice of his experienced friend, tending to his profit":

First, it is a hard case that counsel should be neglected, but harder that it should offend. It is woeful to see any man displeased with good admonitions; but more woeful to see a youth so affected. Who would not grieve to have his advice ill taken? But who would not grieve to see his own experience controlled? Unhappy is that youth that listens not to good exhortations of his skilful friends, he is miserable and infortunate that quarrels with the sound precepts of his discreet friends, but more miserable and unfortunate that mislikes directions given for his own good advantage.23

"This," Hoskins concludes, "is a most easy, clear, and usual kind of amplification, for it gives more light and force out of every circumstance." "Light and force" are what Eubulus desires. His discourse has no ulterior motive; his advice to Euphues is couched in the form of "sound precepts … given for his own good advantage." For him, rhetoric is on the side of truth. The various techniques and devices he employs are designed to enlighten, not to confuse, his listener. His intention is not merely to persuade, but to persuade in a sound moral cause. The power of his rhetoric argues his moral sincerity. What he asks of Euphues is the cultivation of self-knowledge: "descend into thine own conscience and consider with thyself the great difference between staring and stark-blind, wit and wisdom, love and lust."

Very different, however, not in overt method, but in tone and intention, is Euphues' reply. Ostensibly he argues for "Nature," but in fact he distorts this Stoic concept in order to further his own ends. Essentially what he seeks to justify is the freedom to assert his own will quite irrespective of any moral or social standard. He is young, and youth cannot be taught—a proposition repugnant to the humanist mind: "It is natural for the vine to spread; the more you seek by art to alter it, the more in the end you shall augment it…. education can have no show where the excellency of nature doth bear sway" (p. 19). The point here, of course, is that there is no logical conection between the analogy and the situation to which it is applied. Because it is natural for the vine to spread it does not follow that youth should be undisciplined. In fact viticulture is an art of some complexity and a famous passage in the book of Isaiah 5:4-5 describes in harrowing detail the fate of an untended vineyard. The whole tradition of this trope, from Tarquin lopping off the heads of the poppies to the gardeners in Shakespeare's Richard II, works against the simile Euphues presents.24 His argument also constitutes a contradiction of his own nature, for according to Ascham, his name implies that he should be "apt by goodness of wit, and appliable by readiness of will, to learning."

Lyly's Euphues is anything but "appliable." His reply to Eubulus is long and supercilious. Beginning with an address to his "father and friend" and the assertion that he is "neither so suspicious to mistrust your good will nor so sottish to mislike your good counsel," he soon descends to declaring that "The similitude you rehearse of the wax argueth your waxing and melting brain, and your example of the hot and hard iron showeth in you but cold and weak disposition" (p. 20). At this point Euphues has abandoned debate for abuse leaving Eubulus' arguments completely unanswered. The similes he derides are among the most effective his opponent has adduced. That he can only deride them is itself an indication of their importance. Every contemporary humanist would have agreed that "the tender youth of a child is like the tempering of new wax apt to receive any form." They would equally have applauded the assertion that "as … the iron being hot receiveth any form with the stroke of the hammer and keepeth it, being cold, forever, so the tender wit of a child, if with diligence it be instructed in youth, will with industry use those qualities in his age." Such principles are fundamental to the theory of education. That Eubulus has illustrated them with images at once so imaginative and so apt argues both his wit and his wisdom.

Whereas it is Euphues' declared intention "not to cavil … as one loving sophistry" (p. 18), the further he proceeds the more the affair begins to resemble a rhetorical game: "Seeing therefore it is labour lost for me to persuade you and wind vainly wasted for you to exhort me, here I found you and here I leave you, having neither bought nor sold with you but changed ware for ware" (p. 24). This remark affords us a most revealing insight into Euphues' mind. He has made no attempt whatsoever to evaluate Eubulus' comments in the light of the present situation, nor has the relationship of the exemplum to its moral argument ever suggested itself to him. Instead, he assumes that all that is required is a list of different exempla illustrating the primacy of nature over discipline, and his ready wit supplies them plentifully. But wisdom consists in knowing which set of exempla is really applicable to the human condition, and this is where Euphues shows himself a fool despite his eloquence. All he does is exchange "ware for ware," one stock of exempla for another, without ever realizing the significance to himself of the issue being discussed. He is impervious to persuasion and ends as ignorant as he began: "here I found you and here I leave you." The ultimate insult from one who has himself spoken with such voluble fluency is the casting of Eubulus as the "empty vessel" which "giveth a greater sound than the full barrel." Not surprisingly the old man is left "in a great quandary," a state to be noted since it recurs, as we shall see, in significant circumstances.

Originally Eubulus had hoped to spare Euphues the pain of learning by experience. Hence his various exempla: "Is it not far better to abhor sins by the remembrance of others' faults than by repentance of thine own follies?" (p. 16). Now, however, he reluctantly concedes that this is impossible: "Seeing thou wilt not buy counsel at the first hand good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the second hand at such an unreasonable rate that thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth and ban thy hard heart" (p. 25). What Euphues must learn is that no amount of wit, of changing "ware for ware," can shield him indefinitely from discovering the truth: "Ah Euphues, little dost thou know that if thy wealth waste thy wit will give but small warmth, and if thy wit incline to wilfulness that thy wealth will do thee no great good. If the one had been employed to thrift, the other to learning, it had been hard to conjecture whether thou shouldest have been more fortunate by riches or happy by wisdom" (p. 25). The rest of the work presents us with an anatomy of this process of learning, just as Lyly had promised at the outset: "it hath been an old said saw and not of less truth than antiquity that wit is the better if it be the dearer bought" (p. 11).

Eubulus' comments upon Euphues' performance are given added substance through their confirmation by the authorial voice. Lyly's theme is the destructive influence of wilful wit, in this case virtually synonymous with wilful eloquence, when separated from wisdom, here represented by the prudent counsel of the fatherly Eubulus. As has often been remarked, the parable of the prodigal son hovers in the background: "Here ye may behold, gentlemen, how lewdly wit standeth in his own light, how he deemeth no penny good silver but his own, preferring the blossom before the fruit, the bud before the flower, the green blade before the ripe ear of corn, his own wit before all men's wisdoms" (p. 25).25 This, Lyly affirms, echoing the great humanist controversy, is the common vice of the witty fool, of the man whose cultivation of eloquence leads him to sophistry: "as their wit wresteth them to vice, so it forgeth them some feat excuse to cloak their vanity" (p. 26). The arguments of such individuals, splendidly adorned as they are by a multitude of similes and comparisons, remain false. What they have neglected is the essential connection between the exemplum and the truth of the situation to which it is referred. For Euphues the debate is a sort of game: "as you have ensamples to confirm your pretence, so I have most evident and infallible arguments to serve for my purpose" (p. 19). There is more than a touch of irony here, for although Euphues might seem to be opposing "ensamples" to "arguments," what actually follows is a whole paragraph of exempla which "serve for his purpose" but deepen his self-deception. A further irony is that, however they appear to differ, Euphues and Eubulus may be said to arrive at the same conclusion. By arguing that youth cannot be educated, what Euphues finally proves is that the only road to wisdom for a person such as himself is the road of painful experience to which Eubulus has now consigned him. At this point, however, Lyly pauses to justify his own authorial stance by explaining that he is opposed neither to wit nor to eloquence but to the wilful abuse of both:

I go not about, gentlemen, to inveigh against wit, for then I were witless, but frankly to confess mine own little wit. I have ever thought so superstitiously of wit that I fear I have committed idolatry against wisdom; and if Nature had dealt so beneficially with me to have given me any wit, I should have been readier in the defence of it to have made an apology, than any way to turn to apostasy. But this I note, that for the most part they [witty novices] stand so on their pantofles that they be secure of perils, obstinate in their own opinions, impatient of labour, apt to conceive wrong, credulous to believe the worst, ready to shake off their old acquaintance without cause, and to condemn them without colour.

(pp. 27-8)

To be "secure" is not necessarily a bad thing. Hall's wise man is also secure but his security derives from self-knowledge: he stands "like a center unmoved, while the circumference of his estate is drawne above, beneath, about him." Yet for all that "his purposes are neither so variable as may argue inconstancy; nor obstinately unchangeable, but framed according to his after-wits, or the strength of new occasions."26 It is the unjustified security of the wilful wit to which Lyly objects. Euphues is not constant but obstinate.

The next major event in the narrative after the debate on nature and nurture is the development of the strikingly sudden friendship between Euphues and Philautus. The omens are bad from the very beginning and the sequel is designed to demonstrate the truth of the author's assertion that the "great familiarity between the ripest wits" is often little more than an association in vanity:

when they shall see the disposition the one of the other, the sympathia of affections, and as it were but a pair of shears to go between their natures; one flattereth an other in his own folly and layeth cushions under the elbow of his fellow when he seeth him take a nap with fancy.

(p. 26)

Euphues is attracted towards Philautus principally because he sees in him the image of himself. Their friendship will not force him into a reassessment of his own values, and despite his description of the relationship in terms of the archetypal examples of Damon and Pythias and a host of others, his avowal of affection is essentially an avowal of self-love: "I will therefore have Philautus for my fere, and by so much the more I make myself sure to have Philautus, by how much the more I view in him the lively image of Euphues" (p. 29). Lyly's comment is very much to the point,

Either Euphues and Philautus stood in need of friendship or were ordained to be friends; upon so short warning to make so soon a conclusion might seem in mine opinion, if it continued, miraculous, if shaken off, ridiculous.

(p. 31)

The friendship forms the background against which is played the tragi-comedy of "witty," eloquent love.

The first meeting between Euphues and Lucilla takes place in the suitably rhetorical setting of an elegant social gathering which turns for entertainment to the questioni d'amore. "The order was in Naples that the gentlewomen would desire to hear some discourse, either concerning love or learning" (p. 34). The issue to be decided upon this occasion is "whether the qualities of the mind or the composition of the man cause women most to like, or whether beauty or wit move men most to love" (p. 35). Euphues' skilful defence of the qualities of the mind is in marked contrast to his own reaction to the lady to whom his remarks are principally addressed, at "the first sight" of whom he"was so kindled with desire that almost he was like to burn to coals" (p. 34). On the other hand, Lucilla's insistence upon the inconstancy of woman has an ironic appropriateness to her future actions. Her first soliloquy is a masterpiece of sophistry outdoing even Euphues' reply to Eubulus. Her problem is to find some likely excuse for her faithlessness to her fiancé and disobedience to her father, despite the obvious fact that she is behaving quite disgracefully. I wish to examine this soliloquy in some detail for it highlights many issues central to an understanding of the work as a whole.

The position is quite simple. Lucilla has fallen in love with Euphues almost as quickly as he has fallen in love with her. Despite their obligations to Philautus they are both determined to "forge them some feat excuse to cloak their vanity" (p. 26). Lucilla begins by recognizing the conflict between duty and desire:

Ah, wretched wench Lucilla, how art thou perplexed! What a doubtful fight dost thou feel betwixt faith and fancy, hope and fear, conscience and concupiscence!

(p. 39)

She also recognizes how her fickleness may be represented by others:

Canst thou prefer a stranger before thy countryman; a starter before thy companion? Why Euphues doth perhaps desire my love, but Philautus hath deserved it. Why Euphues' feature is worthy as good as I [an unintentionally ambiguous remark], but Philautus his faith is worthy a better.

(p. 40)

From this point onwards, however, questions of duty and fidelity cease to be of primary concern—if indeed they ever were. Lucilla's further remarks demonstrate quite clearly that her real fear is of a possible inability to convince Euphues of her love for him, having so suddenly deserted his best friend. A host of unpleasant exempla strengthen her anxieties:

Will he have no doubt of thine honour, when thou thyself callest thine honesty in question? Yes, yes, Lucilla, well doth he know that the glass once crazed will with the least clap be cracked, that the cloth which staineth with milk will soon lose his colour with vinegar, that the eagle's wing will waste the feather as well of the phoenix as of the pheasant, that she that hath been faithless to one will never be faithful to any.

(p. 40)

Lucilla knows the truth, and the images that automatically suggest themselves to her as a result need no other proof of their justice than is provided by the sequel. The problem, however, is that she is determined to assert her own will despite the warnings of reason. Not wanting to believe what she knows to be true—that she is "faithless" and will continue to be so—she employs her wit to channel her thoughts into a far more congenial direction by rhetorically embellishing the arguments she wishes to prevail. The debate between Eubulus and Euphues is here internalized. What we see is a mind in the process of deluding itself:

But can Euphues convince me of fleeting, seeing for his sake I break my fidelity…. Doth he not remember that the broken bone once set together is stronger than ever it was? That the greatest blot is taken off with the pumice? That though the spider poison the fly, she cannot infect the bee?

(p. 40)

The logic of the last sentence is strained almost to breaking point for Lucilla has unwittingly cast herself as a poisonous spider which at best will not "infect" Euphues. That her subject is human emotions has become a matter of secondary importance; the bestiary is taking over. Soon she has exonerated herself almost completely, like Euphues providing innumerable arguments "to serve her purpose":

It is not my desire but his deserts that moveth my mind to this choice…. For as the bee that gathereth honey out of the weed when she espieth the fair flower flieth to the sweetest; or as the kind spaniel though he hunt after birds yet forsakes them to retrieve the partridge … so I although I loved Philautus for his good properties, yet seeing Euphues to excel him I ought by nature to like better.

(pp. 40-1)

Once again we have returned to the argument from nature. The only problem now outstanding is that Euphues may take Lucilla at her word and interpret her desertion of his friend in the light of her own remarks on female inconstancy. That this should occur so powerfully even to her is itself a comment upon Euphues' lack of insight. Yet even supposing Euphues should react differently, Lucilla recognizes the need to deal with her father whose more detached view of the affair may be less flattering than her own.27 However, having spent some time analyzing his likely reactions and exploring various avenues of defense, she finally reveals that the problem is relatively academic:

But were I once certain of Euphues' good will I would not so superstitiously account of my father's ill will. Time hath weaned me from my mother's teat, and age rid me from my father's correction. When children are in their swathing-clouts, then are they subject to the whip and ought to be careful of the rigour of their parents. As for me, seeing I am not fed with their pap, I am not to be led by their persuasions.

(p. 42)

Lucilla's attitude towards education, we see, is not greatly dissimilar to that of her lover. While he defends the irresponsibility of youth, she exults in the irresponsibility of age freed from the discipline to which youth is commonly subject. Yet in the heat of her triumph she is unexpectedly betrayed into a telling statement of self-condemnation:

Let my father use what speeches he list, I will follow mine own lust. Lust, Lucilla? What sayeth thou? No, no, mine own love I should have said; for I am as far from lust as I am from reason, and as near to love as I am to folly.

(p. 42)

Even the quick retraction has distinctly ironic overtones. Moreover, Lucilla's concluding remarks introduce to the work the important word "dissemble":"seeing I dare not discover my love for maidenly shamefastness, I will dissemble it till time I have opportunity" (p. 42). We have reached the point at which the characters make a conscious decision to prefer lies to truth.

Lyly so structures the work that Lucilla's soliloquy is paralleled almost immediately by that of Euphues. The similarity of their states of mind is thereby made clear. Euphues too begins with an admission of the facts, an admission that goes even deeper than hers in its acknowledgment of the central issues:

Too true it is that as the sea-crab swimmeth always against the stream, so wit always striveth against wisdom; and as the bee is oftentimes hurt with her own honey [perhaps a comment upon Lucilla's very similar image], so is wit not seldom plagued with his own conceit.

(p. 43, my emphasis)

This observation casts a pervasive irony over the rest of the work, for it is this same wit that we now witness in the process of plaguing itself with its own conceits. Perhaps remembering the debate with Eubulus, Euphues boldly asserts that love cannot be restrained—another version of the argument from nature. He then takes up the question of inconstancy relying, significantly, upon Lucilla's wit for a favorable interpretation of his betrayal of his friend. The ideal figures of Damon and Pythias are now pushed aside in favor of more serviceable classical exempla:

Tush, the case is light where reason taketh place; to love and to live well is not granted to Jupiter. Whoso is blinded with the caul of beauty discerneth no colour of honesty. Did not Gyges cut Candaules a coat by his own measure? Did not Paris, though he were a welcome guest to Menelaus, serve his host a slippery prank? If Philautus had loved Lucilla he would never have suffered Euphues to have seen her.

(p. 46)

By this ingenious feat of intellectual legerdemain the blame is shifted to the victim and the lovers are excused any sense of moral responsibility. The upshot is exactly the same as in the case of Lucilla: "Let Philautus behave himself never so craftily he shall know that it must be a wily mouse that shall breed in the cat's ear, and because I resemble him in wit I mean a little to dissemble with him in wiles" (p. 46). One notices that the earlier recognition of a kindred spirit has taken an odd turn. Although she is still unaware of the fact, Lucilla can rely on Euphues' wit to regard her deviousness as favorably as she, being witty too, is prepared to regard his. Of the next meeting between Euphues and Philautus we hear how the former, hearing his friend's "comfort and friendly counsel, dissembled his sorrowing heart with a smiling face" (p. 49). The pattern of deceit has been established….

Notes

1English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1944), p. 314.

2Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit; Euphues and his England, ed. William Croll and Harry Clemons (London, 1916), p. 2. All references supplied in the text are to this edition. I have made one correction, however. Where Croll and Clemons read, "of more wit than wrath, and yet of more wrath than wisdom" (p. 10), I have supplied the reading of the first edition (1578), "of more wit than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom." There is no textual evidence for "wrath."

3 Lewis, p. 315.

4John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (London, 1962), pp. 1-35.

5Renaissance Thought, 2nd ed. (New York, 1961), pp. 3-23.

6 Izora Scott, Controversies over the Imitation of Cicero (New York, 1910) passim; Walter J. Ong, Ramus; Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 36-49, 270-292; George Williamson, "Senecan Style in the Seventeenth Century," PQ, [Philological Quarterly] XV (1936), 329-33.

7De Oratore, I, 25, 113-15.

8Works, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn M. Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925-52), VIII (1947), 584-8, 620-1, 625.

9Directions for Speech and Style, ed. H. H. Hudson, Princeton Studies in English, 12 (Princeton, N.J., 1935), p. 2. For Ascham's opinion see Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), 2 vols., I. l, 6.

10 W. G. Crane, Wit and Rhetoric in the Renaissance (New York, 1937), pp. 19-20.

11The Arte of Rhetorique (London, 1553), fol. 3V.

12Literary Works, ed. J. H. P. Pafford (Farnborough, Hants [Germany pr.], 1972), p. 82.

13 "John Lyly and Elizabethan Rhetoric," SP, LII (1955), 149-61 (p. 153).

14 Hoskins, p. 17.

15 Crane, p. 102.

16Ibid., p. 34.

17Ibid, p. 43.

18The Works of Joseph Hall (London, 1634), p. 155.

19Ibid., p. 156. Similarly Sir Thomas Overbury's "Wise Man" "understands things, not by their form, but qualities; and his comparisons intend not to excuse but to provoke him higher" (my emphasis). A Book of Characters, compiled and translated by Richard Aldington (London, 1924).

20 "The Prose Style of John Lyly," ELH [English Literary History] XXIII (1956), 14-35.

21The Rhetoric of Aristotle, translated with an analysis and critical notes by J. E. C. Welldon (London, 1886), p. 184.

22Orator (XV, 48), translated by H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1939), pp. 340-3.

23 Hoskins, p. 28.

24 See especially Sir Thomas Elyot, The Book named The Governor, ed. S. E. Lehmberg (London, 1962), p. 15.

25 Hunter, p. 63.

26Works (1634), pp. 155-6.

27 "But fie, Lucilla, why dost thou flatter thyself in thine own folly!" (p. 41).

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Reading Euphues