Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) [Transcriber's Note: This e-text includes one word in accented Greek. If it does not display properly, please use the transliterated (Latin-1) version of this text instead.] JOHN LYLY BY JOHN DOVER WILSON, B.A., Late Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Members' Prizeman, 1902. Harness Prizeman, 1904. Honours in Historical Tripos. Macmillan and Bowes Cambridge 1905 A MIA DONNA. PREFACE. The following treatise was awarded the _Harness Prize_ at Cambridge in 1904. I have, however, revised it since then, and in some matters considerably enlarged it. A list of the chief authorities to whom I am indebted will be found at the end of the book, but it is fitting that I should here make particular mention of my obligations to the exhaustive work of Mr Bond[1]. Not only have his labours of research and collation lightened the task for me, and for any future student of Lyly, to an incalculable extent, but the various introductory essays scattered up and down his volumes are full of invaluable suggestions. [1] _The Complete Works of John Lyly._ R. W. Bond, 3 Vols. Clarendon Press. This book was unfortunately nearing its completion before I was able to avail myself of Mr Martin Hume's _Spanish Influence on English Literature_. But, though I might have added more had his book been accessible earlier, I was glad to find that his conclusions left the main theory of my chapter on Euphuism untouched.