e of the
general qualities of its style upon later prose must have been
incalculable. The vogue of euphuism as a craze was brief; but _Euphues_
received fresh publication about once every three years down to 1636,
and long after its social popularity had become a thing of the past, it
probably attracted the careful study of those who wished to write
artistic prose. The only model of prose form which the age possessed
could scarcely sink into oblivion, or become out of date, until its
principal lessons had been so well learnt as to pass into common-places.
The exaggerations, which first gave it fame, were probably discounted by
the more sincere appreciation of later critics, to whom its more
sterling qualities would appeal. For some reason, the musical properties
of euphuism do not appear to have found favour among those critics, and
this was probably a loss to our literature. "Alliteration," as Professor
Raleigh remarks, "is often condemned as a flaw in rhymed verse, and it
may well be open to question whether Lyly did not give it its true
position in attempting to invent a place for it in what is called
prose[81]." Possibly its failure in this respect was due to the growth
of that intellectual asceticism, and that reaction against the
domination of poetry, which are, I think, intimately bound up with the
fortunes of Puritanism. The beginning of this reaction is visible as
early as 1589 in the words of Warner's preface to _Albion's England_,
which display the very affectation they protest against: "onely this
error may be thought hatching in our English, that to runne on the
letter we often runne from the matter: and being over prodigall in
similes we become lesse profitable in sentences and more prolixious to
sense." But, however this may be, it was the formal rather than the
musical qualities which gave _Euphues_ its dynamical importance in the
history of English prose. Subsequent writers had much to learn from a
book in which the principle of design is for the first time visible.
With euphuism, antithesis and the use of balanced sentences came to
stay. We may see them in the style of Johnson and Gibbon, while
alliterative antithesis reappears to-day in the shape of the epigram.
Doubtless Lyly abused the antithetical device; but his successors had
only to discover a means of skilfully concealing the structure, an
improvement which the early euphuists, with all the enthusiasm of
inventors, could not have appreciated.