ed immediately in an "ecstacy,"
and Philomela "returned home to Venice, and there lived the desolate
widow of Philippo Medici all her life; which constant chastity made her
so famous, that in her life she was honoured as the paragon of virtue,
and after her death, solemnly, and with wonderful honour, entombed in
St. Mark's Church, and her fame holden canonized until this day in
Venice."

The character of Philomela possesses strong traits of feminine virtue
and wifely fidelity. Philippo has little distinctiveness except in his
extreme susceptibility to jealousy--a fault which was exaggerated by
the author to set off the opposite qualities of Philomela. The story
has no little merit in regard to the construction and sequence of the
narrative, and holds up to admiration a high moral excellence. But its
interest is seriously impaired by the same defect which marks all the
fiction of the time. Philomela is almost the only tale which makes any
pretence to being a description of actual life, or which deals with
possible incidents. Yet the language, although it has some elegance, is
so affectedly formal, that all sense of reality is destroyed. When
Philippo's treachery to his wife is discovered, and he himself is
plunged in remorse, it is in such words as these that he speaks of his
exposure: "There is nothing so secret but the date of days will reveal;
that as oil, though it moist, quencheth not fire, so time, though ever
so long, is no sure covert for sin; but as a spark raked up in cinders
will at last begin to glow and manifest a flame, so treachery hidden in
silence will burst forth and cry for revenge."[64]

A prose idyl is the term which best describes the courtly and pastoral
character of Lodge's "Rosalynde," the last work of fiction of any
importance which distinctly bears the impress of euphuism. Published in
1590, the ten editions through which it passed during the next fifty
years are sufficient evidence of its popularity. It is probably the
only work of fiction of Elizabeth's time which could be read through at
the present day without impatience, and its story and personages are
well known to all through their reproduction in Shakespeare's "As You
Like it." The author of "Rosalynde" was a man of very varied talents
and experience. The son, it is believed, of a Lord Mayor of London, he
graduated at Trinity College, Oxford, and followed successively the
professions of an actor, soldier, lawyer, and physician. In the