ues, a young Athenian, goes to Naples, where he falls in love and
is jilted. This is all the action in the first part of the so-called
story. The rest is moralizing. In the second part, Euphues comes to
England with a friend, who falls in love twice, and finally marries;
but again there is more moralizing than story. Euphues returns to
Athens and retires to the mountains to muse in solitude.

In its use of a love story, _Euphues_ prefigures the modern novel. In
_Euphues_, however, the love story serves chiefly as a peg on which to
hang discussions on fickleness, youthful follies, friendship, and
divers other subjects.

Lyly aimed to produce artistic prose, which would render his meaning
clear and impressive. To achieve this object, he made such excessive
use of contrast, balanced words and phrases, and far-fetched
comparisons, that his style seems highly artificial and affected. This
quotation is typical:--

"Achilles spear could as well heal as hurt, the scorpion though he
sting, yet he stints the pain, through the herb _Nerius_ poison the
sheep, yet is a remedy to man against poison... There is great
difference between the standing puddle and the running stream, yet
both water: great odds between the adamant and the pomice, yet both
stones, a great distinction to be put between _vitrum_ and the
crystal, yet both glass: great contrariety between Lais and
Lucretia, yet both women."

Although this selection shows unnatural or strained antithesis, there
is also evident a commendable desire to vary the diction and to avoid
the repetition of the same word. To find four different terms for
nearly the same idea "difference," "odds," "distinction," and
"contrariety," involves considerable painstaking. While it is true
that the term "euphuism" has come to be applied to any stilted,
antithetical style that pays more attention to the manner of
expressing a thought than to its worth, we should remember that
English prose style has advanced because some writers, like Lyly,
emphasized the importance of artistic form. Shakespeare occasionally
employs euphuistic contrast in an effective way. The sententious
Polonius says in _Hamlet_:--

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."

[Illustration: PHILIPPE SIDNEY. _After the miniature by Isaac
Oliver, Windsor Castle._]

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote for his sister, the Countess of
Pembroke, a pastoral romance, entitled _Arcadia_ (published in 1590).
Un