_One of the Last Examples of Euphuism._ When Lodge wrote "Rosalynde," euphuism was already on the wane. Even among Lodge's contemporaries the fashion was becoming an object of frequent ridicule. Thus Warner, in his "Albion's England" (1589), complains in the preface, which, by the way, is written wholly in the euphuistic manner: "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 less profitable in sentences and more prolixious to sense." By 1627 euphuism had become an obsolete fashion. In that year Drayton wrote of Sidney that he did first reduce Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use: Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of Fishes, Flyes, Playing with words and idle Similies As th' English Apes and very Zanies be Of everything that they doe heare and see, So imitating his ridiculous tricks, They spake and writ like meere lunatiques. "Rosalynde" marks the end of the unquestioned supremacy of euphuism as a literary mode. It was the last book of any importance to employ the style that Lyly had made so popular. _The Charm of the Book._ In spite of the conventionality inseparable from the pastoral form, and the obvious artificiality of the style in which it is written, "Rosalynde" is really charming. Its charm is much like that of Watteau's landscapes. Like them, it is an idyll in court dress, a _fete elegante_, a kind of elegant picnic. Yet, like Watteau's pictures it is of more than merely historic interest, for it is far more than simply a reminder of the fopperies of a vanished time. There is in it, as in the paintings, a lightness and daintiness of coloring, and an indescribable air of freshness that have made the romance appeal to poets as the work of Watteau has appealed to painters. Shakespeare felt its charm so much that he made it the basis of the plot of "As You Like It." That it became one of his "sources" has injured it incalculably in the popular estimation. It has become a commonplace of criticism to declare that "Rosalynde's" chief title to be remembered is its having furnished a hint to Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, however, it had, to use Johnson's phrase, "enough wit to keep it sweet," even without Shakespeare's play "to preserve it from putrefaction." Lodge really had a pretty story to tell, and he tells it, if not with gusto, at least with grace and with some degree of skill. Exquisitely graceful are some of the narrative passages, where the very words seem to possess a clear and pellucid quality like the water of the spring that Rosalynde and Aliena found in Arden, "so crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana and her Dryades and Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings."[1] Such, for instance, is the account of the night and morning succeeding the first meeting of Rosalynde and Rosader in the Forest of Arden.[2]