ulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song.

But in considering the literature of Elizabeth's reign it will be
convenient to speak first of the prose. While following up Spenser's
career to its close (1599) we have, for the sake of unity of treatment,
anticipated somewhat the literary history of the twenty years preceding.
In 1579 appeared a book which had a remarkable influence on English
prose. This was John Lyly's _Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_. It was in
form a romance, the history of a young Athenian who went to Naples to
see the world and get an education; but it is in substance nothing but a
series of dialogues on love, friendship, religion, etc., written in
language which, from the title of the book, has received the name of
_Euphuism_. This new English became very fashionable among the ladies,
and "that beauty in court which could not parley Euphuism," says a
writer of 1632, "was as little regarded as she which now there speaks
not French."

Walter Scott introduced a Euphuist into his novel the _Monastery_, but
the peculiar jargon which Sir Piercie Shaft on is made to talk is not at
all like the real Euphuism. That consisted of antithesis, alliteration,
and the profuse illustration of every thought by metaphors borrowed from
a kind of fabulous natural history. "Descend into thine own conscience
and consider with thyself the great difference between staring and
stark-blind, wit and wisdom, love and lust; be merry, but with modesty;
be sober, but not too sullen; be valiant, but not too venturous." "I see
now that, as the fish _Scolopidus_ in the flood _Araxes_ at the waxing
of the moon is as white as the driven snow, and at the waning as black
as the burnt coal; so Euphues, which at the first increasing of our
familiarity was very zealous, is now at the last cast become most
faithless." Besides the fish _Scolopidus_, the favorite animals of
Lyly's menagerie are such as the chameleon, "which though he have most
guts draweth least breath;" the bird _Piralis_, "which sitting upon
white cloth is white, upon green, green;" and the serpent _Porphirius_,
"which, though he be full of poison, yet having no teeth, hurteth none
but himself."

Lyly's style was pithy and sententious, and his sentences have the air
of proverbs or epigrams. The vice of Euphuism was its monotony. On every
page of the book there was something pungent, something quotable; but
many pages of such writing became tiresome