like Lyly, Sidney did not aim at precision, emphatic contrast, and
balance. For its effectiveness, the _Arcadia_ relies on poetic
language and conceptions. The characters in the romance live and love
in a Utopian Arcadia, where "the morning did strow Roses and Violets
in the heavenly floor against the coming of the Sun," and where the
shepherd boy pipes "as though he should never be old."

Passages like the following show Sidney's poetic style and as much
exuberant fancy as if they had been written by a Celt:--

"Her breath is more sweet than a gentle southwest wind, which
comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the
extreme heat of summer and yet is nothing compared to the
honey-flowing speech that breath doth carry."

The _Arcadia_ furnished Shakespeare's _King Lear_ with the auxiliary
plot of Gloucester and his two sons and inspired Thomas Lodge to write
his novel _Rosalynde_, which in turn suggested Shakespeare's _As You
Like It_.

To Sidney belongs the credit of having written the first meritorious
essay on criticism in the English language, _The Apologie for
Poetrie_. This defends the poetic art, and shows how necessary such
exercise of the imagination is to take us away from the cold, hard
facts of life.

Richard Hooker's (1554?-1600) _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_
shows a third aim in Elizabethan prose,--to express carefully reasoned
investigation and conclusion in English that is as thoroughly
elaborated and qualified as the thought. Lyly's striking contrasts and
Sidney's flowery prose do not appeal to Hooker, who uses Latin
inversions and parenthetical qualifications, and adds clause after
clause whenever he thinks it necessary to amplify the thought or to
guard against misunderstanding. Hooker's prose is as carefully wrought
as Lyly's and far more rhythmical. Both were experimenting with
English prose in different fields, serving to teach succeeding writers
what to imitate and to avoid.

Unlike _Euphues_ and the _Arcadia_, _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity_ is more valuable for its thought than for its form of
expression. This work, which is still studied as an authority, is an
exposition of divine law in its relations to both the world and the
church. Hooker was personally a compound of sweetness and light, and
his philosophy is marked by sweet reasonableness. He was a clergyman
of the Church of England, but he shows a spirit of toleration toward
other churches. H