beasts, fowles and fishes, are
rifled up, that they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our
conceits, which certainely is as absurd a surfet to the eares as is
possible." But his own style is scarcely less artificial than that of
Lyly, and consequently, its rules are quite as easy to discover.

They consist firstly in the antithetical and cadenced repetition of the
same words in the sentences written merely for effect; secondly, in
persistently ascribing life and feeling to inanimate objects. Sidney, it
is true, as Lyly with his euphuism, happily only employs this style on
particular occasions, when he intends to be especially attractive and
brilliant. A few specimens will afford means of judging, and will show
how difficult it was in Shakespeare's time, even for the best educated
and most sensible men, for the sincerest admirers of the ancients, to
keep within the bounds of good taste and reason. They might appeal to
the Castalian virgins in their invocations, but William Rogers'
Elizabeth was the Muse that rose before their eyes.

Here is an example of the first sort of embellishment: "Our Basilius
being so publickly happy, as to be a prince, and so happy in that
happiness, as to be a beloved prince; and so in his private estate
blessed, as to have so excellent a wife, and so over-excellent children,
hath of late taken a course which yet makes him more spoken of than all
these blessings." In another passage Sidney wishes to describe the
perfections of a woman; and "that which made her fairness much the
fairer, was, that it was but a fair ambassador of a most fair mind."
Musidorus considers it "a greater greatness to give a kingdome than get
a kingdome."[210] Phalantus challenges his adversary to fight "either
for the love of honour or honour of his love." In many of these
sentences the same words are repeated like the rhymes of a song, taken
up from strophe to strophe, and the sentence twists and turns, drawing
and involving the readers in its spiral curves, so that he arrives at
the end all bruised, and falls half stunned on the full stop.[211]

The other kind of elegance that Sidney affects is to be found in very
many authors, and it is, so to say, of all time; poets especially
indulge in it without measure; but Sidney surpasses them all in the
frequent use he makes of it; this peculiar language is more apparent and
has still stranger effect in a prose writer than in a poet. In his
Arcady, the valleys are