Lyly's natural history was at any rate the result of learning; many of his "facts" were drawn from Pliny, while others were to be found in the plentiful crop of mediaeval bestiaries, which, as Professor Raleigh remarks, "preceded the biological hand-books." Perhaps also we must again allow something for Lyly's invention; for lists of authorities, and footnotes indicative of sources, were not demanded of the scientist of those days, and one can thoroughly sympathise with an author who found an added zest in inventing the facts upon which his theories rested. Have not ethical philosophers of all ages been guilty of it? Certainly Gabriel Harvey seems to be hinting at Lyly when he slyly remarks: "I could name a party, that in comparison of his own inventions, termed Pliny a barren wombe[27]." [27] Bond, I. p. 131 note. The affectations we have just enumerated are much less conspicuous in the second part of _Euphues_ than in the first, and, though they find a place in his earlier plays, Lyly gradually frees himself from their influence, owing perhaps to the decline of the euphuistic fashion, but more probably to the growth of his dramatic instinct, which saw that such forms were a drag upon the action of a play. And yet at times Lyly could use his clumsy weapon with great precision and effect. How admirably, for example, does he express in his antithetical fashion the essence of coquetry. Iffida, speaking to Fidus of one she loved but wished to test, is made to say, "I seem straight-laced as one neither accustomed to such suites, nor willing to entertain such a servant, yet so warily, as putting him from me with my little finger, I drewe him to me with my whole hand[28]." Other little delicate turns of phrase may be found in the mine of _Euphues_--for the digging. Our author was no genius, but he had a full measure of that indefinable quality known as wit; and, though the stylist's mask he wears is uncouth and rigid, it cannot always conceal the twinkle of his eyes. Moreover a certain weariness of this sermonizing on the stilts of antithesis is often visible; and we may suspect that he half sympathises with the petulant exclamation of the sea-sick Philautus to his interminable friend: "In fayth, Euphues, thou hast told a long tale, the beginning I have forgotten, ye middle I understand not, and the end hangeth not well together[29]"; and with this piece of self-criticism we may leave Lyly for the present and turn to his predecessors. [28] _Euphues_, p. 299. [29] _Euphues_, p. 248. SECTION II. _The Origins of Euphuism._