consoled for their lowness by the silver streams
which wind in the midst of them; the ripples of the Ladon struggle with
one another to reach the place where Philoclea is bathing, but those
which surround her refuse to give up their fortunate position. A
shepherdess embarks: "Did you not marke how the windes whistled, and the
seas danced for joy; how the sales did swell with pride, and all because
they had Urania?" Here is a description of a river: "... The banks of
either side seeming armes of the loving earth, that faine would embrace
it; and the river a wanton nymph which hill would slip from it ... There
was ... a goodly cypres, who bowing her faire head over the water, it
seemed she looked into it and dressed her green locks by that running
river." One of the heroines of the romance appears, and immediately the
flowers and the fruits experience a surprising commotion; the roses
blush and the lilies grow pale for envy; the apples perceiving her
breast fall down from the trees out of vexation, unexpected vanity on
the part of this modest fruit.[212]

Similar conceits were at that time the fashion not only in England, but
also in Italy, in Spain, and in France. There might still be found in
France, even in the seventeenth century, authors who described in these
terms the appearance of flowers in spring: "There perhaps at the end of
the combat, a pink all bleeding falls from fatigue; there a rosebud,
elated at the ill-success of her antagonist, blooms with joy; there the
lily, that colossus among the flowers, that giant of curdled cream, vain
of seeing her image triumph at the Louvre, raises herself above her
companions, and looks at them with contemptuous arrogance." The same
author, who is Cyrano de Bergerac, calls ice "an hardened light, a
petrified day, a solid nothing."[213] But contrary to what was the case
in England, this style was in France, even before Boileau and in the
preceding century, the style of bad authors. In England it is frequently
adopted by the most eminent writers, since on many occasions it is even
that of Shakespeare himself. Besides, the combinations of sound obtained
by means of the repetition of words, added to the turgidness of the
images, give to Sidney's language in the passages written for effect, a
degree of pretension and bad taste that Cyrano himself, in spite of his
natural disposition, could never have equalled. When both kinds of
Sidney's favourite embellishments are combined in th