The journey from Naples to London, and the episode of Fidus and Iffida, could have been worked up, in the good old three-volume days, to a most effective second volume.

And the picture of the court, with the further loves of Philautus, Camilla, and the "violet" Frances, would supply a third of themselves even if Euphues were left out, though some livelier presentation of his character (which Lyly himself was obviously too much personally interested to make at all clear) would improve the whole immensely.

But it was still too early: the thing was not yet to be done.
Only, I do not know any book in which the possibilities, and even the outlines, of this thing were indicated and vaguely sketched earlier in any European language, unless it be the _Lucretia and Euryalus_ of AEneas Silvius, which is much more confined in its scope.
The fact is that the very confusedness, the many undeveloped sides, of _Euphues_, make it much more of an ancestor of the modern novel than if it were more of a piece.

The _quicquid agunt homines_ is as much the province of the novel as of the satire; and there is more than something of this as it affected Elizabethan times in _Euphues_.

Men's interest in morals, politics, and education; their development of the modern idea of society; their taste for letters; their conceits and fancies--all these appear in it.
The _Arcadia_ stands in a different compartment.