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 _fete elegante_, a kind of elegant picnic. Yet, like
Watteau's pictures it is of more than merely historic interest, for it
is far more than