that Lyly is thought to be particularly indebted for his style. This man used "lavishly the well-known figures of pointed antithesis and parisonic balanced clauses, in connection with a general climactic structure of the sentence or period, the emphatic or antithetic words being marked by rhyme or assonance." Lyly substitutes for rhyme alliteration, and adds persistent play on words. The book is genuinely Renaissance, then, for, looking to classic literature for much of its substance, it expresses itself in a style that typifies an intellectual mood of the hour. =Lyly's Plays: their Subdivision.=--Just before 1580 the acting of choir boys was in great favour with the Queen and, as a consequence, with the public. The boys of Westminster, Windsor, the Chapel Royal, and St. Paul's were often summoned to court. For the last two companies, with whom acting became a profession, Lyly wrote his plays. These divide into four classes. The allegorical comedies, in which what is alluded to is as important as what is said, are _Endimion_, _Sapho and Phao_, and _Mydas_. _Endimion_, perhaps the most complete example of Lyly's allegorical comedy, presents the apology of Leicester to the Queen for his secret marriage with Lettice, Countess of Essex. _Sapho and Phao_ is full of allusions to the coquetting of the Queen with the Duc d'Alençon and his wrathful departure from England in February, 1582. _Mydas_ allegorises--though with less detail than the others--as to the designs of Philip II. on the English throne, and the Spanish Armada. _Gallathea_, _Love's Metamorphosis_, and _The Woman in the Moone_ form a second class--pastoral comedies. They are allegorical only when some figure is given qualities which the Queen was fond of hearing praised as hers. _Mother Bombie_, standing alone as a comedy on the model of Plautus, has a much more involved plot than any of the other plays. Finally, also in a class by itself, is _Alexander and Campaspe_.