ladies was still in the exalted terms which Amadis would have
addressed to Oriana, before encountering a dragon for her sake. This
tone of romantic gallantry found a clever but conceited author, to
reduce it to a species of constitution and form, and lay down the
courtly manner of conversation, in a pedantic book, called Euphues and
his England. Of this, a brief account is given in the text, to which
it may now be proper to make some additions.

The extravagance of Euphuism, or a symbolical jargon of the same
class, predominates in the romances of Calprenade and Scuderi, which
were read for the amusement of the fair sex of France during the
long reign of Louis XIV., and were supposed to contain the only
legitimate language of love and gallantry. In this reign they
encountered the satire of Moliere and Boileau. A similar disorder,
spreading into private society, formed the ground of the affected
dialogue of the _Praecieuses_, as they were styled, who formed
the coterie of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and afforded Moliere matter
for his admirable comedy, _Les Praecieuses Ridicules_. In
England, the humour does not seem to have long survived the
accession of James I.

The author had the vanity to think that a character, whose
peculiarities should turn on extravagances which were once universally
fashionable, might be read in a fictitious story with a good chance of
affording amusement to the existing generation, who, fond as they are
of looking back on the actions and manners of their ancestors, might
be also supposed to be sensible of their absurdities. He must fairly
acknowledge that he was disappointed, and that the Euphuist, far from
being accounted a well drawn and humorous character of the period, was
condemned as unnatural and absurd. It would be easy to account for