The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.
XVI. London and the Development of Popular Literature.
§ 2. Lodge on Usury.
| But the secret of realism was not discovered at once. Thomas Lodge made one of the first attempts in An Alarum against Usurers containing tryed experiences against worldly abuses 5 (1584). Money-lenders, with their devices for discovering the pecuniary embarrassments of young men, for gradually involving the spendthrift in debt and then using him as a decoy to enmesh others, were a theme of deadly interest to a large number of Londoners and offered endless opportunity for wit and narrative power. Although usurers had been an object of satire for more than a century, Lodge was the first systematically to expose their practices. But he still, in a style designed to appeal to the educated, relies for literary effect on the insincerities of the euphuistic novel, and presents a narrative full of apostrophes, harangues and reflections. |
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