I have said that it is very important to distinguish between the two parts of _Euphues_. Two years only elapsed between their respective publications, but in these two years Lyly, and with him our novel, had made great strides. In 1578 he was not yet a novelist, though the conception of the novel and the capacity for its creation were, as we have just shown, already forming in his brain. In 1580, however, the English novel had ceased to be merely potential; for it had come into being with the appearance of _Euphues and his England_. Here in the same writer, in the same book, and within the space of two years, we may observe one of the most momentous changes of modern literature in actual process. The _Anatomy of Wit_ is still the moral Court treatise, coloured by the influence of the Italian _novella_; _Euphues and his England_ is the first English novel. Lyly unconsciously symbolizes the change he initiated by laying the scene of his first part in Italy, while in the second he brings his hero to England. That sea voyage, which provoked the stomach of Philautus sore, was an important one for us, since the freight of the vessel was nothing less than our English novel. The difference between the two parts is remarkable in more ways than one, and in none more so than in the change of dedication. The _Anatomy of Wit_, as was only fitting in a moral Court treatise, was inscribed to the gentleman readers; _Euphues and his England_, on the other hand, made an appeal to a very different class of readers, and a class which had hitherto been neglected by authors--"the ladies and gentlewomen of England." With the instinct, almost, of a religious reformer, Lyly saw that to succeed he must enlist the ladies on his side. And the experiment was so successful that I am inclined to attribute the pre-eminence of Lyly among other euphuists to this fact alone. "Hatch the egges his friendes had laid" he certainly did, but he fed the chicks upon a patent food of his own invention. Mr Bond suggests that the general attention which the _Anatomy_ secured by its attacks upon women gave Lyly the idea for the second part. But, though this was probably the immediate cause of his change of front, something like _Euphues and his England_ must have come sooner or later, because all the conditions were ripe for its production. Side by side with the ideal of the courtier had arisen the ideal of the cultured lady. Ascham, visiting Lady Jane Grey, "founde her in her chamber reading _Phaedon Platonis_ in Greeke and that with as much delite, as some gentlemen would read a merie tale in Bocase[90]"; and, when a Queen came to the throne who could talk Greek at Cambridge, the fashion of learning for ladies must have received an immense impetus. With a "blue stocking" showing on the royal footstool, all the ladies of the Court would at least lay claim to a certain amount of learning. Dr Landmann has attributed the vogue of