[Illustration: THE GREAT SEA SERPENT, ACCORDING TO TOPSELL, 1608.] Euphues is a young Athenian, a contemporary not of Pericles, but of Lyly, who goes to Naples, thence to England, to study men and governments. Grave with that gravity peculiar to lay preachers, well-informed on every subject, even on his own merits, assured by his conscience that in making mankind sharer in his illumination, he will assure their salvation, he addresses moral epistles to his fellow men to guide them through life. Omniscient like the inheritors of his vein whom we have heard since, he instructs the world in the truth about marriage, travel, religion. He anticipates, in his discourses concerning aristocracy, the philosophical ideas of "Milord Edouard," of "Nouvelle Heloise" fame; he treats of love with the wisdom of Grandison, and of the bringing up of children with the experience of Pamela.[83] When women are his subject he is especially earnest and eloquent, and having, as it seems, suffered much at their hands he concludes: "Come to me al ye lovers that have bene deceived by fancy, the glasse of pestilence, or deluded by woemen, the gate to perdition; be as earnest to seeke a medicine, as you were eager to runne into a mischiefe." Having thus secured, as it seems, a fairly large audience, he begins his sermon, which he is pleased to call, "a cooling carde for Philautus, and all fond lovers."[84] His intention is to give men remedies, which shall cure them of loving. Some of his precepts resemble the wise advice of Rondibilis to Panurge; some do not. Philautus is to avoid solitude, and idleness; he must study. In the same way Panurge is recommended _labeur assidu_ and _fervente estude_.[85] Philautus is advised to try law, "whereby thou mayest have understanding of olde and auntient customes;" if law proves of no avail, there is "Physicke," and if this again fails, then there is "the atteining of ye sacred and sincere knowledge of divinitie." Study then may be supplemented by contemptuous meditations about women;[86] a remedy which Rabelais, who probably knew more of life than twenty-five-years-old Lyly, refrains from recommending.