John Lyly | Page 7

years ago, definitely injurious to a true appreciation of our author's position, by blocking the path to a recognition of his importance in other directions. And yet, in spite of all this, it cannot be said that any adequate examination of the structure of Lyly's style appeared until Mr Child took the matter in hand in 1894[15]. And Mr Child has performed his task so scientifically and so exhaustively that he has killed the topic by making any further treatment of it superfluous. This being the case, a description of the euphuistic style need not detain us for long. I shall content myself with the briefest summary of its characteristics, drawing upon Mr Child for my matter, and referring those who are desirous of further details to Mr Child's work itself. We shall then be in a position to proceed to the more interesting, and as yet unsettled problem, of the origins of euphuism. The great value of Mr Child's work lies in the fact that he has at once simplified and amplified the conclusions of previous investigators. Dr Weymouth[16] was the first to discover that, beneath the "curtizan-like painted affectation" of euphuism, there lay a definite theory of style and a consistent method of procedure. Dr Landmann carried the analysis still further in his now famous paper published in the New Shakespeare Society's Transactions (1880-82). But these two, and those who have followed them, have erred, on the one hand in implying that euphuism was much more complex than it is in reality, and on the other by confining their attention to single sentences, and so failing to perceive that the euphuistic method was applicable to the paragraph, as a whole, no less than to the sentence. And it is upon these two points that Mr Child's essay is so specially illuminating. We shall obtain a correct notion of the "essential character" of the "euphuistic rhetoric," he writes, "if we observe that it employs but one simple principle in practice, and that it applies this, not only to the ordering of the single sentence, but in every structural relation[17]": and this simple principle is "the inducement of artificial emphasis through Antithesis and Repetition--Antithesis to give pointed expression to the thought, Repetition to enforce it[18]." When Lyly set out to write his novel, it seemed that his intention was to produce a most elaborate essay in antithesis. The book as a whole, "very pleasant for all gentlemen to read and most necessary to remember," was itself an antithesis; the discourses it contains were framed upon the same plan; the sentences are grouped antithetically; while the antithesis is pointed by an equally elaborate repetition of ideas, of vowel sounds and of consonant sounds. Letters, syllables, words, sentences, sentence groups, paragraphs, all are employed for the purpose of producing the antithetical style now known as euphuism. An example will serve to make the matter clearer. Philautus, upbraiding his treacherous friend Euphues for robbing him of his lady's love, delivers himself of the following speech: "Although hitherto Euphues I have shrined thee in my heart for a trusty friend, I will shunne thee hereafter as a trothless foe, and although I cannot see in thee less wit than I was wont, yet do I find less honesty. I perceive at the last (although being deceived it be too late) that musk though it be sweet in the smell is sour in the smack, that the leaf of the cedar tree though it be fair to be seen, yet the syrup depriveth sight--that friendship though it be plighted by the shaking of the hand, yet it is shaken by the fraud of the heart. But thou hast not much to boast of, for as thou hast won a fickle lady, so hast thou lost a faithful friend[19]." It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the euphuistic style save in a lengthy quotation, such as the discourse of Eubulus selected by Mr Child for that purpose[20]; but, within the narrow limits of the passage I have chosen, the main characteristics of euphuism are sufficiently obvious. It should be noticed how one part of a sentence is balanced by another part, and how this balance or "parallelism" is made more pointed by means of alliteration, e.g. "shrined thee for a trusty friend," "shun thee as a trothless foe"; musk "sweet in the smell," "sour in the smack," and so on. The former of these antitheses is an example of transverse alliteration, of which so much is made by Dr Landmann, but which, as Mr Child shows, plays a subordinate, and an entirely mechanical, part in Lyly's style[21]. Lyly's most natural and most usual method of emphasizing is by means of simple alliteration. On the other hand it must be noticed that he employs alliteration