ted metaphors, or distorted by a pompous verbosity; romance
writers mostly looked at life and realities through painted glass. For
this, Sidney is in some degree responsible.

His book was, so to speak, a standard one; everybody had to read it;
elegant ladies now began to talk "Arcadianism" as they had been before
talking "Euphuism." Dekker, in 1609, advises gallants to go to the play
to furnish their memories with fine sayings, in order to be able to
discourse with such refined young persons: "To conclude, hoarde up the
finest play-scraps you can get, upon which your leane wit may most
savourly feede for want of other stuffe, when the _Arcadian_ and
_Euphuized_ gentlewomen have their tongues sharpened to set upon
you."[216] When he has to represent "a court-lady, whose weightiest
praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more," her lover, Ben
Jonson, in his "Every man out of his humour," makes her talk
"Arcadianism." Her lover, who is quite the man to appreciate these
elegancies of speech, being "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one
that wears clothes well and in fashion, practiseth by his glass how to
salute ... can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the
gingle of his spur and the jerk of his wand," thus describes the
Arcadian music which falls from the lips of the lady Saviolina: "She has
the most harmonious and musical strain of wit that ever tempted a true
ear ... oh! it flows from her like nectar, and she doth give it that
sweet quick grace and exornation in the composure, that by this good
air, as I am an honest man, would I might never stir, sir, but--she does
observe as pure a phrase and use as choice figures in her ordinary
conference as any be in the 'Arcadia.'"[217]

The demand for Sidney's book continued long unabated. It was often
reprinted during the seventeenth century,[218] and found imitators,
abbreviators and continuators. Among its early admirers it had that
indefatigable reader of novels, William Shakespeare, who took from it
several hints, especially from the story of the "Paphlagonian unkind
king," which he made use of in his "King Lear."[219] Books were
published under cover of Sidney's name, as "Sir Philip Sydney's
Ourania";[220] others were given away bearing as an epigraph an
adaptation of two well-known verses:

"Nec divinam _Sydneida_ tenta
Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora,"[221]

no insignificant compliment, considering the word