EUPHUES, OR THE ANATOMY OF WIT,” by John Lyly, is responsible for the word “Euphuism” to indicate what Saintsbury calls “conceited and precious language in general.” Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” published in 1621, more than forty years after Lyly wrote “Euphues,” is another noted example of the same style. Lyly was born in Kent, England, about 1554. At Oxford, where he took his first degree in 1573, he was known as a “noted wit” whose genius, it was said, “naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry, as if Apollo had given him a wreath of his own bays, without snatching or struggling.” Lyly wrote a number of plays and followed the “Anatomy of Wit” with his “Euphues and his England” in 1580. In 1589 he published a tract entitled, “Pappe with an Hatchet, alias a Figge for My Godsonne; or Crack Me This Nut; or A Countrie Cuffe,” etc., as his contribution to the celebrated Martin Marprelate controversies. He died in neglect in 1606. His burial is registered on November 20th of that year at St. Bartholomew the Less, in London. His work belongs largely to the curiosities of literature; but in spite of its worst affectation, it is frequently interesting in itself, and always so as an illustration of the eccentricities of intellect which accompany such great crises in history as that which developed in the Puritan revolution against the Stuarts.