endless conversation and discussion of life, love, and learning, always in the same style of fantastic decoration and allusion: all continued when Euphues arrives in England, all conveying general information not verified by experiment. "I have read that the bull, being tied to a fig tree, loseth his strength; that a whole herd of deer stand at the gaze if they smell a sweet apple"; facts on which the cattle-breeder or the hunter would not, if well advised, rely. This was the kind of science against which Bacon uprose. But Lyly appealed, in his Dedication, and with success, "To the Ladies and Gentlewomen of England," who found in the book a kind of love-story, much philosophizing on that dear theme; and a pleasurable example of a new way of being witty and romantic. Lyly was the chief cause of the difficulty in telling a plain tale plainly which besets the minor writers of the age of Elizabeth. Before approaching the chief prose writers of Elizabeth's time, we must turn aside to her greatest poet, and his friend, to Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney, and to the Drama. Sidney. Spenser did not more surely attain immortality by his verse than Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) by his life, writings, and character. He was one of those who, as Plato says, are born good, exemplars of natural charm and excellence. He is the ideal gentleman of the type which Spenser professed to educate by the examples of his virtuous knights, brave, pious, courteous, and just. The son of Sir Henry Sidney and nephew of Elizabeth's Leicester, Philip Sidney was born into the Court, but was not of it; his heart was set on other things than pleasure, splendour, flattery, and promotion. Educated at Shrewsbury School, he went to Christ Church at 14, being already the friend of the noble Fulke Greville, who, however, went from Shrewsbury to Cambridge. In 1572 he was attached to the English embassy in France, and, on the night of the Bartholomew massacre was sheltered in the house of his future father-in-law, Walsingham. Till 1575 he travelled, chiefly in Germany, and made the acquaintance of his constant correspondent and adviser, Languet, whom he celebrates as a shepherd of the Ister, and as his own religious Mentor. In Venice his portrait was painted by Veronese; at Vienna he perfected himself in horsemanship under Pugliano, whose enthusiasm he describes so amusingly in his "Defence of Poesie". For a man so earnest as Sidney was, he had a fine sense of humour.