serves merely for ornament, as in the sentence: "It is she, O gentle
swain, it is she, that saint it is whom I serve, that goddess at whose
shrine I do bend all my devotions; the most fairest of all fairs, the
phoenix of all that sex, and the purity of all earthly perfection."

The euphuistic similes were of three kinds. First, there were those
drawn from familiar natural objects, such as, "Happily she resembleth
the rose, that is sweet but full of prickles." Secondly, there are
those taken from classical history and mythology, like these: "Is she
some nymph that waits upon Diana's train, ... or is she some
shepherdess ... whose name thou shadowest in covert under the figure
of Rosalynde, as Ovid did Julia under the name of Corinna?" Thirdly,
there are those similes most characteristic of euphuism, though less
commonly found than the two kinds just mentioned, namely, those drawn
from "unnatural natural history." Such are the comparisons to "the
serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as
infectious as aconitum is deadly," to "the hyena, most guileful when
she mourns," to "the colors of a polype which changes at the sight of
every object," and to "the Sethin leaf that never wags but with a
southeast wind."

_One of the Last Examples of Euphuism._ When Lodge wrote "Rosalynde,"
euphuism was already on the wane. Even among Lodge's contemporaries
the fashion was becoming an object of frequent ridicule. Thus Warner,
in his "Albion's England" (1589), complains in the preface, which, by
the way, is written wholly in the euphuistic manner: "Onely this error
may be thought hatching in our English, that to runne on the letter we
often runne from the matter: and being over prodigall in similes we
become less profitable in sentences and more prolixious to sense."