o remember," was itself an antithesis; the
discourses it contains were framed upon the same plan; the sentences are
grouped antithetically; while the antithesis is pointed by an equally
elaborate repetition of ideas, of vowel sounds and of consonant sounds.
Letters, syllables, words, sentences, sentence groups, paragraphs, all
are employed for the purpose of producing the antithetical style now
known as euphuism. An example will serve to make the matter clearer.
Philautus, upbraiding his treacherous friend Euphues for robbing him of
his lady's love, delivers himself of the following speech: "Although
hitherto Euphues I have shrined thee in my heart for a trusty friend, I
will shunne thee hereafter as a trothless foe, and although I cannot see
in thee less wit than I was wont, yet do I find less honesty. I perceive
at the last (although being deceived it be too late) that musk though
it be sweet in the smell is sour in the smack, that the leaf of the
cedar tree though it be fair to be seen, yet the syrup depriveth
sight--that friendship though it be plighted by the shaking of the hand,
yet it is shaken by the fraud of the heart. But thou hast not much to
boast of, for as thou hast won a fickle lady, so hast thou lost a
faithful friend[19]." It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the
euphuistic style save in a lengthy quotation, such as the discourse of
Eubulus selected by Mr Child for that purpose[20]; but, within the
narrow limits of the passage I have chosen, the main characteristics of
euphuism are sufficiently obvious. It should be noticed how one part of
a sentence is balanced by another part, and how this balance or
"parallelism" is made more pointed by means of alliteration, e.g.
"shrined thee for a trusty friend," "shun thee as a trothless foe"; musk
"sweet in the smell," "sour in the smack," and so on. The former of
these antitheses is an example of transverse alliteration, of which so
much is made by Dr Landmann, but which, as Mr Child shows, plays a
subordinate, and an entirely mechanical, part in Lyly's style[21].
Lyly's most natural and most usual method of emphasizing is by means of
simple alliteration. On the other hand it must be noticed that he
employs alliteration for the sake of euphony alone much more frequently
than he uses it for the purpose of emphasis. So that we may conclude by
saying that simple alliteration forms the basis of the euphuistic
diction, just as we have seen antithesis forms the