he is proud to be a citizen of
London, not, after all, of Bohemia; if he represents himself shipwrecked
near the coast of an island where, like Robinson Crusoe, he is alone
able to swim, finding the country pleasant, he describes it as "much
like that faire England the flower of Europe."[127] Euphues' praise of
London is matched by Greene's description of its naval power in his
"Royal Exchange": "Our citizens of London (Her Majesties royal fleet
excepted) have so many shyppes harboured within the Thames as wyll not
onelie match with all the argosies, galleyes, galeons and pataches in
Venice, but to encounter by sea with the strongest cittie in the whole
world."[128] As for foreign women, Greene agrees with Lyly that they all
paint their faces, and cannot live without a lover. French women, for
example, are "beautifull," it is true, but "they have drugges of
Alexandria, minerals of Egypt, waters from Tharsus, paintings from
Spaine, and what to doe forsooth? To make them more beautifull then
vertuous and more pleasing in the eyes of men then delightful in the
sight of God.... Some take no pleasure but in amorous passions, no
delight but in madrigals of love, wetting Cupid's wings with rose water,
and tricking up his quiver with sweete perfumes."[129]

[Illustration: ANOTHER DRAGON. 1608.]

But Greene's style marked him most indelibly as a pupil of Lyly. He has
taken Euphues' ways of speech with all their peculiarities, and has
sometimes crowded his tales with such a quantity of similes, metaphors
and antitheses as to beat his master himself on his own ground.[130]
Here, again, we are in the middle of scorpions, crocodiles, dipsas, and
what not. Take, for instance, "Philomela the lady Fitzwaters
nightingale;"[131] as it is written expressly for ladies, and dedicated
to one of them, and as, in addition, the characters are of high rank,
the novel is nearly one unbroken series of similes: "The greener the
alisander leaves be, the more bitter is the sappe," says Philip, the
jealous husband, to himself; "the salamander is most warm when it lyeth
furthest from the fire;" thus his wife may well be as heart-hollow as
she seems lip-holy. He charges his friend Lutesio to tempt her, by way
of trial. "Lutesio," the lady replies to the young man's declaration,
"now I see, the strongest oake hath his sap and his worms [and] that
ravens will breed in the fayrest ash." These observations appear
unanswerable to Lutesio, and the husband w