[3] [Scott is here far too harsh.  “Euphues” is not a book to be despatched in a note, but the reader may be requested to suspend his judgment until he has read it.—­ED.]

[4] Our deserved idolatry of Shakespeare and Milton was equalled by that paid to this pedantic coxcomb in his own time.  He is called in the title-page of his plays (for, besides “Euphues,” he wrote what he styled “Court Comedies"), “the only rare poet of that time; the witty, comical, facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lillie.”  Moreover, his editor, Mr. Blount, assures us, “that he sate at Apollo’s table; that Apollo gave him a wreath of his own bays without snatching; and that the lyre he played on had no broken strings.”  Besides which, we are informed, “Our nation are in his debt for a new English, which he taught them; ‘Euphues and his England’ began first that language.  All our ladies were then his scholars; and that beauty in court who could not parle Euphuism, was as little regarded, as she which now there speaks not French.”

[5] So that learned and sapient monarch was pleased to call his skill in politics.

[6] Witness a sermon preached at St. Mary’s before the university of Oxford.  It is true the preacher was a layman, and harangued in a gold chain, and girt with a sword, as high sheriff of the county; but his eloquence was highly applauded by the learned body whom he addressed, although it would have startled a modern audience, at least as much as the dress of the orator.  “Arriving,” said he, “at the Mount of St. Mary’s, in the stony stage where I now stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation.”  “Which way of preaching,” says Anthony Wood, the reporter of the homily, “was then mostly in fashion, and commended by the generality of scholars.”—­Athenae Oxon. vol. i. p.183.

[7] Look at Ben Jonson’s “Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Carey and Sir H. Morison,” and at most of his Pindarics.  But Ben, when he pleased, could assume the garb of classic simplicity; witness many of his lesser poems.

[8] In Jonson’s last illness, Charles is said to have sent him ten pieces.  “He sends me so miserable a donation,” said the expiring satirist, “because I am poor, and live in an alley; go back and tell him, his soul lives in an alley.”  Whatever be the truth of this tradition, we know from an epigram by Jonson, that the king at one time gave him an hundred pounds; no trifling gift for a poor bard, even in the present day.

[9] “About a year after his return out of Germany, Dr. Cary was made bishop of Exeter; and by his removal, the deanery of St. Paul’s being vacant, the king sent to Dr. Donne, and appointed him to attend him at dinner the next day.  When his majesty was sate down, before he had eat any meat, he said, after his pleasant manner, ’Dr. Donne, I have invited you to dinner; and though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of a dish that I know you love well; for knowing you love London, I do therefore make you dean of Paul’s; and when I have dined, then do you take your beloved dish home to your study; say grace there to yourself, and much good may it do you.”—­WALTON’S Life of Donne.