Outlines of English and American Literature The Fad of Euphuism byLong, William J.
The "high fantastical" style, ever since called euphuistic, created a
sensation. The age was given over to extravagance and the artificial
elegance of Euphues seemed to match the other fashions. Just as
Elizabethan men and women began to wear grotesque ruffs about their necks
as soon as they learned the art of starching from the Dutch, so now they
began to decorate their writing with the conceits of Lyly. [Footnote: Lyly
did not invent the fashion; he carried to an extreme a tendency towards
artificial writing which was prevalent in England and on the Continent. As
is often the case, it was the extreme of fashion that became fashionable.]
Only a year after Euphues appeared, Spenser published The
Shepherd's Calendar, and his prose notes show how quickly the style,
like a bad habit, had taken possession of the literary world. Shakespeare
ridicules the fashion in the character of Holofernes, in Love's Labor's
Lost, yet he follows it as slavishly as the rest. He could write good
prose when he would, as is shown by a part of Hamlet's speech; but as a
rule he makes his characters speak as if the art of prose were like walking
a tight rope, which must be done with a balancing pole and some
contortions. The scholars who produced the translation of the Scriptures
known as the Authorized Version could certainly write well; yet if you
examine their Dedication, in which, uninfluenced by the noble sincerity of
the Bible's style, they were free to follow the fashion, you may find there
the two faults of Elizabethan prose; namely, the habit of servile flattery
and the sham of euphuism.
Among prose writers of the period the name that appears most frequently is
that of Philip Sidney (1554-1586). He wrote one of our first critical
essays, An Apologie for Poetrie (cir. 1581), the spirit of which may
be judged from the following:
"Nowe therein of all sciences ... is our poet the monarch. For he
dooth not only show the way but giveth so sweete a prospect into
the way as will intice any man to enter into it. Nay, he dooth, as
if your journey should be through a faire vineyard, at the first
give you a cluster of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may
long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions,
which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the
memory with doubtfulnesse; but hee cometh to you with words set in
delightfull proportion, either accompanied with or prepared for the
well enchaunting skill of musicke; and with a tale, forsooth, he
cometh unto you,--with a tale which holdeth children from play and
old men from the chimney corner."
Sidney wrote also the pastoral romance Arcadia which was famous in
its day, and in which the curious reader may find an occasional good
passage, such as the prayer to a heathen god, "O All-seeing Light,"--a
prayer that became historic and deeply pathetic when King Charles repeated
it, facing death on the scaffold. That was in 1649, more than half a
century after Arcadia was written:
"O all-seeing Light, and eternal Life of all things, to whom
nothing is either so great that it may resist or so small that it
is contemned, look upon my miserie with thine eye of mercie, and
let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limite out some proportion of
deliverance unto me, as to thee shall seem most convenient. Let not
injurie, O Lord, triumphe over me, and let my faults by thy hands
be corrected, and make not mine unjuste enemie the minister of thy
justice. But yet, my God, if in thy wisdome this be the aptest
chastisement for my inexcusable follie; if this low bondage be
fittest for my over-hie desires; if the pride of my not-inough
humble hearte be thus to be broken, O Lord, I yeeld unto thy will,
and joyfully embrace what sorrow thou wilt have me suffer."
