It was as a novelist that Lyly first came before the world of English letters. In 1578 he published a volume, bearing the inscription, _Euphues: the anatomy of wyt_, to which was subjoined the attractive advertisement, _very pleasant for all gentlemen to reade, and most necessary to remember_. This book, which was to work a revolution in our literature, was completed in 1580 by a sequel, entitled _Euphues and his England_. _Euphues_, to combine the two parts under one name, the fruit of Lyly's nonage, seems to have determined the form of his reputation for the Elizabethans; and even to-day it attracts more attention than any other of his works. This probably implies a false estimate of Lyly's comparative merits as a novelist and as a dramatist. But it is not surprising that critics, living in the century of the novel, and with their eyes towards the country pre-eminent in its production, should think and write of Lyly chiefly as the first of English novelists. The bias of the age is as natural and as dangerous an element in criticism as the bias of the individual. But it is not with the modern appraisement of _Euphues_ that we are here concerned. Nor need we proceed immediately to a consideration of its position in the history of the English novel. We have first to deal with its Elizabethan reputation. Had _Euphues_ been a still-born child of Lyly's genius, had it produced no effect upon the literature of the age, it would possess nothing but a purely archaeological interest for us to-day. It would still be the first of English novels: but this claim would lose half its significance, did it not carry with it the implication that the book was also the origin of English novel writing. The importance, therefore, of _Euphues_ is not so much that it was primary, as that it was primordial; and, to be such, it must have laid its spell in some way or other upon succeeding writers. Our first task is therefore to enquire what this spell was, and to discover whether the attraction of _Euphues_ must be ascribed to Lyly's own invention or to artifices which he borrows from others.