Lyly, John, 1554?-1606 -- Criticism and interpretation
Here is no transverse alliteration, such as we find so frequently in
Lyly, but a simple alliteration--"a rudimentary euphuism of balanced and
alliterative phrases, probably like the alliteration of Anglo-Saxon
homilies, borrowed from popular poetry[54]." Latimer also employs the
responsive method so frequently used by Lyly. "But ye say it is new
learning. Now I tell you it is old learning. Yea, ye say, it is old
heresy new scoured. Nay, I tell you it is old truth long rusted with
your canker, and now made new bright and scoured." It is no long step
from this to the rhetorical question and its formal answer "ay but----."
Alliteration is not found in Guevara; it was an addition, and a very
important one, made by his translators. This was at any rate a purely
native product, and cannot be assigned to Spain. The antithesis and
parallelism were the fruits of humanism, and they appear, combined with
Latimer's alliteration, in the writings of Sir John Cheke and his pupil
Roger Ascham. Cheke's famous criticism of Sallust's style, as being
"more art than nature and more labour than art," introduces us at once
to euphuism, and gives us by the way a very excellent comment upon it.
Again he speaks of "magistrates more ready to tender all justice and
pitifull in hearing the poor man's causes which ought to amend matters
more than you can devise and were ready to redress them better than you
can imagine[55]"; which is a good example of the euphuistic combination
of alliteration and balance.
[54] Craik, vol. I. p. 224.
[55] Craik, p. 258.
In Ascham the style is still more marked. There are, indeed, so many
examples of euphuism in the _Schoolmaster_ and in the _Toxophilus_,
that one can only select. As an illustration of transverse alliteration
quite as complex as any in _Euphues_, we may notice the following: "Hard
wittes be hard to receive, but sure to keep; painfull without weariness,
hedefull without wavering, constant without any new fanglednesse;
bearing heavie things, though not lightlie, yet willinglie; entering
hard things though not easily, yet depelie[56]." Classical allusions
abound throughout Ascham's work, and he occasionally indulges in the
ethics of natural history as follows:
"Young Graftes grow not onlie sonest, but also fairest and bring always
forth the best and sweetest fruite; young whelps learne easilie to
carrie; young Popingeis learne quickly to speak; and so, to be short, if
in all other things though they lacke reason, sense, and life, the
similitude of youth is fittest to all goodnesse, surelie nature in
mankinde is more beneficial and effectual in this behalfe[57]."
[56] Arber, _Schoolmaster_, p. 35.
[57] _id._, p. 46.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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