In life people pleased themselves irregularly enough: in literature they could not get out of the idea that they ought to be instructed, that it was enough to be instructed, and that it was discreditable to ask for more.
Even the poet was allowed to delight grudgingly and at his peril; was suspected because he did delight, and had to pay a sort of heavy licence-duty for it, in the shape of concomitant instruction to others and good behaviour in himself.

In fact he was a publican who was bound to serve stodgy food as well as exhilarating drink.
It is impossible to doubt that people were similarly affected to the fiction of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, at least in its longer examples--for the smaller _novelle_ could amuse in their own way sometimes, though they could hardly absorb.

It is equally impossible to imagine any one being "enthralled" by _Euphues_.

Admiration, of a kind, must have been the only passion excited by it.

In the _Arcadia_ there is a certain charm, but it belongs to the inset verse--to the almost Spenserian _visionariness_ of parts--to the gracious lulling atmosphere of the whole.