assertion. In the sixteenth century English fiction was still in its
infancy, and English prose was still undeveloped. Yet we do find in
Lodge certain qualities of style that show clearly an advance over the
formlessness of some of the stories that had preceded. Though the
sentence and paragraph structure is loose and amorphous, the
transitions from one subject to another are almost invariably well
made, or at least are clearly marked. Phrases such as, "But leaving
him so desirous of the journey, to Torismond"[1]; "Leaving her to her
new entertained fancies, again to Rosader"[2]; "where we leave them,
and return again to Torismond"[3]; show clearly a growing regard for
the value of clear arrangement, to which the earlier romancers had
been indifferent. In the avoidance of digressions, too, Lodge's style
is an improvement upon that of his predecessors, and even upon that of
most of his contemporaries.[4] The story moves along, if not rapidly,
at least continuously from start to finish. There is a gratifying lack
of such preposterous complications and tortuous windings as we meet
with in the plot of Greene's "Menaphon," for example, where it
sometimes seems doubtful whether the characters ever will emerge from
so mazy a labyrinth of plot, and where the reader is bewildered by the
almost complete lack of unity in the story.

[Footnote 1: P. 12.]

[Footnote 2: P. 17.]

[Footnote 3: P. 50. See, also, pp. 19, 41, 51, 59, 73, 97, 104.]

[Footnote 4: On page 72 Lodge accuses himself of digressing; but the
four lines in which he here anticipates the conclusion of the story
seem not to warrant the charge.]