Coke Literature

(Composed, mostly, by the use of a pair of scissors)

By HON. THOMAS BEER, OF BUCYRUS

Sir Edward Coke - Lord Coke the Great Coke, flourished in the days of Elizabeth and while James I was "happily reigning." He was a lawyer, member of parliament, attorney general and judge. He spoke some and wrote much. Sir William Blackstone, Lord Campbell and others of less note have put on record disparaging criticisms concerning his literary style. If these criticisms are not entirely groundless, it may afford some satisfaction to look into the why and the wherefore. Let it be remembered that Coke's mode of expression was acquired during the creative period of English literature. Did he create a style for himself, or fall into a style then prevailing, which has gone out of style? The latter, I shall endeavor to prove.

John Lilly was born in the Weald of Kent, England, in 1553 or 1554, about the time Queen Mary succeeded to the crown. He became a student of Magdalen College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen, and was matriculated in 1571, when he was but seventeen years of age. In 1573 he took his degree of B. A. In 1574 he wrote a Latin letter to Lord Burghley, which is preserved in the British Museum. A year later, when he was but twenty years of age, he took the degree of M. A. In 1578 he wrote "Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit," two editions of which were published in 1579. In 1580 he wrote "Euphues, and His England," which was published the same year. Many editions of these works were printed and sold between 1579 and 1636. In 1584 he commenced writing dramas, and before 1589 had written nine dramatic pieces, some of which were frequently presented and acted before Queen Elizabeth and her household., That the books and plays of Lilly attained great popularity during the Elizabethan age, there is little doubt.

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In 1586, William Webbe, Graduate, published "A Discourse of English Poetrie," in which he adduces EUPHUES as a proof of the capabilities of English language for Heroic verse:

"Now will I speake somewhat of the that princelie part of Poetrie, wherein are displaied the noble actes and valiant exploits of puissaunt Captaines, expert souldiers, wise men, with the famous reportes of ancient times, such as are the Heroycall workes of HOMER in Greeke, and the heauenly verse of VIRGILIS AENEIDOS in Latine; which workes, comprehending as it were the summe and grounde of all Poetrie, are verilie and incomparably the best of all other. To these, though wee haue no English worke aunswerable, in respect of the glorious ornaments of gallant handling; yet our auncient Chroniclers and reporters of our Countrey affayres, come most neere them; and no doubt, if such regarde of our English speeche, and curious handling of our verse, had beene long since thought vppon, and from time to time beene pollished and bettered by men of learning, judgement, and authority, it would ere this, haue matched them in all respects. A manifest example thereof, may bee the great good grace and sweet vayne, which Eloquence hath attained in our speeche, because it hath had the helpe of such rare and singuler wits, as from time to time myght still adde some amendment to the same. Among whom I thinke there is none that will gainsay but Master JOHN LILLY hath deserued moste high commendations, as he hath stept one steppe further therein than any either before or since he first began the wyttie discourse of his EUPHUES. Whose workes, surely in respecte of his singuler eloquence and braue composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and make tryall thereof thorough all the parts of Rethoricke, in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speeche, in plaine sence, and surely in my judgement. I think he wyll yeelde him that verdict, which QUINTILLIAN giueth of bothe the best Orators DEMOSTHENES and TULLY, that from the one, nothing may be taken away, to the other, nothing may be added.”

In 1632, EDWARD BLOUNT, the bookseller, reprinted six of Lyly's plays, under the title of SIX COURT COMEDIES, to which he refixed the following "EPISTLE DEDICATORIE:"

"To the right honovrable Richard Lvmley, Viscount Lvmley of Waterford. MY NOBLE LORD: It can be no dishonor, to listen to this Poets Musike, whose Tunes alighted in the Eares of a

great and euer-famous Queene: his Inuention, was so curiously strung, that ELIZAES Court held his notes in Admiration. Light Ayres are now in fashion; and these being not sad, fit the season, though perchance not sute so well with your more serious Contemplations. The spring is at hand, and therefore I present you a Lilly, growing in a Goue of Lawrels. For this Poet sat at the SUNNES Table; APOLLO gaue him a wreath of his owne Bayes; without snatching. The LYRE he played on had no borrowed strings. The greatest treasure our Poet left behind him are these six ingots of refined inuention: richer than Gold. Were they Diamonds they are now yours.

"Accept them (Noble Lord) in part, and Mee YOUR LORDSHIPS EUER OBLIGED AND DEUOTED

"Ed. Blount."

He adds the following address "To the Reader:"

"Reader, I haue (for the loue I beare to Posteritie) dig'd vp the Graue of a Rare and Excellent Poet, whom QUEENE ELIZABETH then heard, Graced, and Rewarded. These Papers of his, lay like dead Lawrels in a Churchyard: But I haue gathered the scattered branches vp, and by a Charme (gotten from APOLLO) made them greene againe, and set them vp as Epitaphes to his Memory. A sinne it were to suffer these Rare Monuments of wit, to lye couered in Dust, and a shame, such conceipted Comedies, should be Acted by none but wormes. OBLIUION shall not so trample on a sonne of the MUSES; and such a sonne, as they called their Darling. Our Nation are in his debt, for a new English which hee taught them. EUPHUES and his England began first, that language: All our Ladies were then Schollers; And that Beautie in Court, which could not Parley, EUPHUEISME, was as little regarded; as the which now there, speaks not French. "These his playes Crown'd him with applause, and the Spectators with pleasure."

In the second volume of Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe," he gives a meager account of English polite literature in the Elizabethan age. He appears to consider Euphues as the first attempt in England at elegant writing. After brief mention of "Ascham's Schoolmaster" and Puttenham's "Art of English Poesie," he says:

"But in these later years of the queen, whem almost every one was eager to be distinguished for sharp wit or ready learning, the want of good models of writing in our own language gave rise to some perversion of the public taste. Thoughts and words began to be valued, not as they were just and natural, but as they were removed from common apprehension, and most exclusively the original property of those who employed them. This in poetry showed itself in affected conceits, and in prose led to the pedantry of recondite mythological allusion, and of a Latinfied phraseology.

The most remarkable specimen of this class is the Euphues of Lilly, a book of little value, but which deserves notice on account of the influence it is recorded to have had upon the court of Elizabeth; an influence also over the public taste, which is manifested in the literature of the age. It is divided into two parts, having separate titles-the first "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit"; the second, "Euphues and his England."

"The style which obtained celebrity is antithetical, and sententious to affection; the perpetual effort with no adequite success rendering the book equally disagreeable and ridiculous, though it might not be difficult to find passages rather more happy and ingenious than the rest.

"It generally happens that a style devoid of simplicity, when first adopted, becomes the object of admiration for its imagined ingenuity and difficulty; and that of Euphues was well adapted to a pedantic generation who valued nothing higher than farfetched allusions and sententious precepts. All the ladies of the time, we are told, were Lilly's scholars; 'she who spoke not Euphuism being as little regarded at court as if she could not speak French.' 'His invention' says one of his editors, who seems well worthy of him, 'was so curiously strung that Elizabeth's court held his notes in admiration."

Mr. George Perkins Marsh, late United States Minister to Italy, in a lecture delivered at the Lowell Institute, Boston, entitled "The Origin and History of the English Language," gives * this account of Lilly:

"Stanihurst flourished in that brief period of philological and literary affection which for a time threatened the language, the poetry, and even the prose ofpoetry, and even the prose of England with a degradation as complete as that of the speech and the literature of the last age of imperial Rome. This quality of style

appears in its most offensive form in the nauseous rhymes of Skelton, in the most elegant in Lillie, in its most quaint and ludicrous in Stanihurst. Spenser and Shakespeare were the DEI EX MACHINA Who checked the ravages of this epidemic; but still showed virulent symptoms in Sylvester, and the style of glorious Fuller and of gorgeous Browne is tinted with a glow which is all the more attractive because it is recognized as the flush of convalescence from what had been a dangerous malady.

"I have spoken of the literary and philological affectation of Stanihurst's time, as having assumed its most elegant form in the works of Lillie, the Euphurist. Though the quality of style called Euphuism has more or less prevailed in all later periods of English literature, the name which designates it had become almost obsolete and forgotten, until Scott revived it in his character of Sir Percie Shafton.

"The success of Euphues was very great. The work was long a VADE-MECUM with the fashionable world, and considered a model of elegance in writing and the highest of authorities in all matters of courtly and polished speech. It contains, with all its affections, a great multitude of acute observations, and just and even profound thoughts; and it was these striking qualities, not less than the tinsel of its style, which commended it to the practical good sense of contemporary England."

In April, 1861, Professor Henry Morley, in an article in The Quarterly Review on Euphuism, says:

"The work passed through ten editions in fifty-six years, and then was not again reprinted. Of these editions, the first four were issued during twenty-three years of Elizabeth's reign, the next four appeared in the reign of James, and the last two in the reign of Charles I; the latest edition being that of the year 1836, eleven years after that king's accesion. It's readers were the men who were discussing Hampden's stand against ship-money. During all this time, and for some years beyond it, worship of conceits was in this country a literary paganism, that gave strength to the strong as well as weakness to the weak, lasting from Surrey's days until the time when Dryden was in midcareer."

Sir Walter Scott, in "The Monastery," puts into the mouth of Sir Percie Shafton, the following: