LYLY, LILLY or LYLIE, JOHN (1553?-1606), English writer, the famous author of Euphues, was born in Kent in 1553 or 1554. At the age of 16, according to Wood, he became a stu dent of Magdalen college, Oxford, where in due time he proceeded to his bachelor's and master's degrees (I573 and 1575). In he applied, in vain, to Lord Burghley "for the queen's letters to Magdalen college to admit him fellow." After he left Oxford, where he had already the reputation of "a noted wit," Lyly seems to have attached himself to the service of Lord Delawarr, and in 1580 to that of Burghley's son-in-law, Edward, earl of Oxford. Two years later we possess a letter of Lyly, dated July 1582, in which the writer protests against some accusation of dishonesty which had brought him into trouble with his patron, and de mands a personal interview for the purpose of clearing his char acter. He obtained, probably through Oxford, a lease at Black friars for a theatrical undertaking, which apparently failed, for he was in prison for debt in 1583, when Oxford seems to have helped him out.
In 1578 he wrote Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit, which was licensed to Gabriel Cawood on Dec. 2, 1578, and published in the spring of 1579. In the same year the author was incorporated M.A. at Cambridge, and possibly saw his hopes of court advance ment dashed by the appointment in July of Edmund Tylney to the office of master of the revels, a post at which, as he reminds the queen some years later, he had all along been encouraged to "aim his courses." Euphues and his England appeared in 1580. For a time Lyly was the most successful and fashionable of Eng lish writers. He was hailed as the author of "a new English," as a "raffineur de l'Anglois"; and, as Edmund Blount, the editor of his plays, tells us in 1632, "that beautie in court which could not parley Euphuism was as little regarded as she which nowe there speakes not French." After the publication of Euphues, however, Lyly seems to have entirely deserted the novel form, which passed into the hands of his imitators, and to have thrown himself almost exclusively into play-writing, probably with a view to the mastership of revels whenever a vacancy should occur. Their lively dialogue,
classical colour and frequent allusions to persons and events of the day maintained that popularity with the court which Euphues had won.
In 1589 Lyly published a tract in the Martin Marprelate con troversy, called Pappe with an hatchet, alias a figge for my God sonne ; Or Crack me this nut; Or a Countrie Cuffe, etc. About the same time we may probably date his first petition to Queen Eliza beth. The two petitions, transcripts of which are extant among the Harleian mss., are undated, but in the first of them he speaks of having been ten years hanging about the court in hope of pre ferment, and in the second he extends the period to 13 years. It may be conjectured that the ten years date from 1579, when Edmund Tylney was appointed master of the revels with a tacit understanding that Lyly was to have the reversion of the post. But in 1589 or 1590 the mastership of the revels was as far off as ever—Tylney in fact held the post for 31 years—and that Lyly's petition brought him no compensation in other directions may be inferred from the second petition of 1593. "Thirteen yeres your highnes servant but yet nothing. Twenty freinds that though they saye they will be sure, I finde them sure to be slowe. A thousand hopes, but all nothing; a hundred promises but yet nothing. Thus casting up the inventory of my friends, hopes, promises and tymes, the summa totalis amounteth to just nothing." Edmund Blount says vaguely that Elizabeth "graced and re warded" him, but of this there is no other evidence. After 1590 his works steadily declined in influence and reputation; other stars were in possession of the horizon ; he seems to have received some reward in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, possibly out of the Essex forfeitures. He was buried in London at St. Bar tholomew the Less on Nov. 3o, 16o6. He had married, in 1583, Beatrice Browne, of Mexborough, York, and had two sons and a daughter.