nce the views of the Bohemian
novelist are summed up in this premature essay on the "philosophy of
clothes."

IV.

The fame and success of Greene encouraged writers to follow his example.
He had shown that there was a public for novels, and that it was a sort
of literature that would pay, both in reputation and money. He had,
therefore, many rivals and imitators who were thus only second-hand
disciples of Lyly. Among these Nicholas Breton and Emmanuel Ford may be
taken as examples. Both were his contemporaries, but survived him many
years. In both traces of euphuism survive, but they are faint; at the
time they wrote euphuism was on the wane, and it is only on rare
occasions that Ford reminds us that "the most mightie monarch Alexander,
aswel beheld the crooked counterfeit of Vulcan as the sweet picture of
Venus. Philip of Macedon accepted...."[146]

What Ford especially imitated from Greene was the art of writing
romantic tales with plenty of adventures, unexpected meetings and
discoveries, much love, and improbabilities enough to enchant
Elizabethan readers and sell the book up to any number of editions. In
this he rivalled his model very successfully, and his romances were
among the most popular of the time of Shakespeare. The number of their
editions was extraordinary, and they were renewed at almost regular
intervals up to the eighteenth century; there was a far greater demand
for them than for any play of Shakespeare.[147] Besides imitating
Greene, who obviously revealed to him the success to be won by writing
romantic tales, he imitated at the same time the Italians and the
Spaniards, introducing into his romances a licentiousness quite unknown
to Greene, but well known to Boccaccio, and heroic adventures similar to
those his friend Anthony Munday was just then putting into English.
These last were to be the chief delight of novel-readers in the
seventeenth century, and did more than anything for the great popularity
of Ford's novels during that period.

Ford's earliest and most characteristic work was called "Parismus, the
renowned prince of Bohemia ... conteining his noble battailes fought
against the Persians ... his love to Laurana ... and his straunge
adventures in the desolate Iland," &c., &c.[148] As the title informs us
there are loves and wars in this romance, deeds of valour and of
sorcery, there are pageants and enchanters. The adventures take place in
purely imaginary lands, which the author is