Euphues is an epoch-making work which occupies an important place in the history of the English novel. If we put aside its highly ornate and a artificial style, as well as the many digressions and episodes with which it is heavily over-loaded, we will find, “the carcas of a very tolerable novel left behind.”
The plots of its various stories are novels in substances. Its many undeveloped sides, its presentation unromantically of contemporary morals, manners, politics and education, make it the ancestor of the modern novel. No doubt it lacks character-interest but says Saintsbury, “I do not know any book in which the possibilities, and even the out) of this thing (novel) were indicated and vaguely sketched earlier in any European language”. Even the character-interest in it is greater than in other works prior to it.