[Sidenote: THE FAD OF EUPHUISM]

This "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: