Men of Kent and Kentishmen/John Lily
John Lily,
DRAMATIST,
Or Lylly, was born in the Weald about 1553, and educated at Oxford. "His genie," says Wood, "being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry did, in a manner, neglect academical studies, yet not so much that he took his degrees in arts." On leaving the University he became attached to the Court of Elizabeth, where he acquired a reputation as a rare poet, witty, comical, and facetious." He was the originator of an attempt to reform and purify the English language, for which purpose he wrote a book called "Euphues," the rules of which became the model of all persons with any pretensions to taste and fashion. It really exhibits the absurdest excess of Pedantry, and has been well ridiculed by Sir Walter Scott in his character of Sir Piercie Shafton in "The Monastery." Lilly was the author of nine dramatic pieces, and of a famous pamphlet against Martin-Marprelate (J. Penry), and his party, entitled "Pass with a Hatchet, alias a Fig for my Godson," published in 1589. His death occurred in the year 1600.
[See "Wood's Athenæ Oxon." by Bliss; "Wharton's History of Poetry," and "Biographica Britannica."]