By 1627 euphuism had become an obsolete fashion. In that year Drayton
wrote of Sidney that he

did first reduce
Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use:
Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of Fishes, Flyes,
Playing with words and idle Similies
As th' English Apes and very Zanies be
Of everything that they doe heare and see,
So imitating his ridiculous tricks,
They spake and writ like meere lunatiques.

"Rosalynde" marks the end of the unquestioned supremacy of euphuism as
a literary mode. It was the last book of any importance to employ the
style that Lyly had made so popular.

_The Charm of the Book._ In spite of the conventionality inseparable
from the pastoral form, and the obvious artificiality of the style in
which it is written, "Rosalynde" is really charming. Its charm is much
like that of Watteau's landscapes. Like them, it is an idyll in court
dress, a _fête élégante_, a kind of elegant picnic. Yet, like
Watteau's pictures it is of more than merely historic interest, for it
is far more than simply a reminder of the fopperies of a vanished
time. There is in it, as in the paintings, a lightness and daintiness
of coloring, and an indescribable air of freshness that have made the
romance appeal to poets as the work of Watteau has appealed to
painters. Shakespeare felt its charm so much that he made it the basis
of the plot of "As You Like It." That it became one of his "sources"
has injured it incalculably in the popular estimation. It has become a
commonplace of criticism to declare that "Rosalynde's" chief title to