id="id00056">[Footnote 2: Though not published till 1598, Bartholomew Young's translation of the "Diana" was made in 1583.]

[Footnote 3: In the epistle To the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to "A Margarite of America," he tells us that he read the original of that story "in the Library of the Jesuits in Sanctum … in the Spanish tongue."]

[Footnote 4: Jusserand, "The English Novel in the Time of
Shakespeare," p. 236.]

Style: Euphuistic. Nor was Lodge more original in his manner than in his matter. His style is that of the euphuists. John Lyly's "Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit" (1579), and its sequel "Euphues and His England" (1580), had set a fashion that was destined for the next two decades to enjoy a tremendous vogue. Lyly's was the first conspicuous example in English of the attempt to achieve an ornate and rather fantastic style. The result became known as euphuism, and those who employed it as euphuists. In its essential features it consists of three distinct mannerisms: a balance of phrases, an elaborate system of alliteration, and a profusion of similes taken from fabulous natural history. Regarding the euphuistic use of balance, Dr. Landmann says of Lyly's prose:[1] "We have here the most elaborate antithesis not only of well balanced clauses, but also of words, often even of sentences…. Even when he uses a single sentence he opposes the words within the clause to each other."

[Footnote 1: In "Shakspere and Euphuism," Transactions of the New
Shakspere Society, 1880-1882.]

Of this balance Lodge's "Rosalynde" affords abundant illustration. Such a succession of sentences as that on page 7, where each sentence is composed of balanced clauses, is a striking but by no means unique example. Usually the contrasted words begin with the same letter or sound, as in the sentences just cited, where the alliteration appears to be employed to emphasize the contrast. Often the alliteration serves merely for ornament, as in the sentence: "It is she, O gentle swain, it is she, that saint it is whom I serve, that goddess at whose shrine I do bend all my devotions; the most fairest of all fairs, the phoenix of all that sex, and the purity of all earthly perfection."

The euphuistic similes were of three kinds. First, there were those drawn from familiar natural objects, such as, "Happily she resembleth the rose, that is sweet but full of prickles." Secondly, there are those taken from classical history and mythology, like these: "Is she some nymph that waits upon Diana's train, … or is she some shepherdess … whose name thou shadowest in covert under the figure of Rosalynde, as Ovid did Julia under the name of Corinna?" Thirdly, there are those similes most characteristic of euphuism, though less commonly found than the two kinds just mentioned, namely, those drawn from "unnatural natural history." Such are the comparisons to "the serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as infectious as aconitum is deadly," to "the hyena, most guileful when she mourns," to "the colors of a polype which changes at the sight of every object," and to "the Sethin leaf that never wags but with a southeast wind."

One of the Last Examples of Euphuism. When Lodge wrote "Rosalynde," euphuism was already on the wane. Even among Lodge's contemporaries the fashion was becoming an object of frequent ridicule. Thus Warner, in his "Albion's England" (1589), complains in the preface, which, by the way, is written wholly in the euphuistic manner: "Onely this error may be thought hatching in our English, that to runne on the letter we often runne from the matter: and being over prodigall in similes we become less profitable in sentences and more prolixious to sense."

By 1627 euphuism had become an obsolete fashion. In that year Drayton wrote of Sidney that he

                            did first reduce
    Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use:
    Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of Fishes, Flyes,
    Playing with words and idle Similies
    As th' English Apes and very Zanies be
    Of everything that they doe heare and see,
    So imitating his ridiculous tricks,
    They spake and writ like meere lunatiques.

"Rosalynde" marks the end of the unquestioned supremacy of euphuism as a literary mode. It was the last book of any importance to employ the style that Lyly had made so popular.

The Charm of the Book. In spite of the conventionality inseparable from the pastoral form, and the obvious artificiality of the style in which it is written, "Rosalynde" is really charming. Its charm is much like that of Watteau's landscapes. Like them, it is an idyll in court dress, a fête élégante, a kind of elegant picnic. Yet, like Watteau's pictures it is of more than merely historic interest, for it is far more than simply a reminder of the fopperies of a vanished time. There is in it, as in the paintings, a lightness and daintiness of coloring, and an indescribable air of freshness that have made the romance appeal to poets as the work of Watteau has appealed to painters. Shakespeare felt its charm so much that he made it the basis of the plot of "As You Like It." That it became one of his "sources" has injured it incalculably in the popular estimation. It has become a commonplace of criticism to declare that "Rosalynde's" chief title to be remembered is its having furnished a hint to Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, however, it had, to use Johnson's phrase, "enough wit to keep it sweet," even without Shakespeare's play "to preserve it from putrefaction." Lodge really had a pretty story to tell, and he tells it, if not with gusto, at least with grace and with some degree of skill. Exquisitely graceful are some of the narrative passages, where the very words seem to possess a clear and pellucid quality like the water of the spring that Rosalynde and Aliena found in Arden, "so crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana and her Dryades and Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings."[1] Such, for instance, is the account of the night and morning succeeding the first meeting of Rosalynde and Rosader in the Forest of Arden.[2] Graceful, too, are the descriptions of the landscapes in Arden, such as that of the "fair valley" where Rosalynde and Aliena found Montanus and Corydon "seeing their sheep feed, playing on their pipes many pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous chat." So charmingly graceful are these descriptions that, together with Shakespeare, Lodge has made the Forest of Arden almost as much the accepted home of the pastoral as Sicily and Arcadia[3] had been hitherto.

[Footnote 1: P. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Pp. 58 and 60.]

[Footnote 3: Theocritus (283-263 B.C.) localized his "Idyls" in
Sicily; Vergil (70-19 B.C.), his "Eclogues" in Arcadia.]

Lodge's Skill as a Story-teller. To say that Lodge is a skillful as well as a graceful story-teller is, of course, to make an indefensible assertion. In the sixteenth century English fiction was still in its infancy, and English prose was still undeveloped. Yet we do find in Lodge certain qualities of style that show clearly an advance over the formlessness of some of the stories that had preceded. Though the sentence and paragraph structure is loose and amorphous, the transitions from one subject to another are almost invariably well made, or at least are clearly marked. Phrases such as, "But leaving him so desirous of the journey, to Torismond"[1]; "Leaving her to her new entertained fancies, again to Rosader"[2]; "where we leave them, and return again to Torismond"[3]; show clearly a growing regard for the value of clear arrangement, to which the earlier romancers had been