We know that Lyly had read the _Schoolmaster_, as he took the very title of his book from its description of Εὐφυής as "he that is apte by goodnesse of witte and applicable by readiness of will to learning"--a description which is in itself a euphuism; and it is probable that he knew his Ascham as thoroughly as he did his Guevara. Sir Henry Craik has some very pertinent remarks on the peculiarities of Ascham's style. "One of these," he writes, "is his proneness to alliteration, due perhaps to his desire to reproduce the most striking features of the Early English.... A tendency of an almost directly opposite kind is the balance of sentences which he imitates from Classical models.... These two are perhaps the most striking characteristics of Ascham's prose; and it is interesting to observe how much the structure of the sentence in the more elaborated stages of English prose is due to their combination[58]." Here we have the two elements of our native-grown euphuism, and their origins, carefully distinguished. Of course with euphuism we do not commence English prose; that is already centuries old; but we are dealing with the beginnings of English prose style, by which we mean a conscious and artistic striving after literary effect. That the first stylists should look to the rhetoricians for their models was inevitable, and of these there were two kinds available; the classical orators and the alliterative homilies of the Early English. But, deferring this point for a later treatment, let us conclude our study of the evolution of euphuism in England. [58] Craik, I. p. 269.