It is a
fashion of the more artificial kind of Elizabethan writing in all
schools to employ a wealth of classical allusion. Even the simple
narratives in _Hakluyt's Voyages_ are not free from it, and one may
hardly hope to read an account of a voyage to the Indies without
stumbling on a preliminary reference to the opinions of Aristotle and
Plato. Lastly, _Euphues_ is characterised by an extraordinary wealth of
allusion to natural history, mostly of a fabulous kind. "I have read
that the bull being tied to the fig tree loseth his tail; that the whole
herd of deer stand at gaze if they smell a sweet apple; that the dolphin
after the sound of music is brought to the shore," and so on. His book
is full of these things, and the style weakens and loses its force
because of them.
Of course there is much more in his book than this outward decoration.
He wrote with the avowed purpose of instructing courtiers and gentlemen
how to live. _Euphues_ is full of grave reflections and weighty morals,
and is indeed a collection of essays on education, on friendship, on
religion and philosophy, and on the favourite occupation and curriculum
of Elizabethan youth--foreign travel. The fashions and customs of his
countrymen which he condemns in the course of his teaching are the same
as those inveighed against by Stubbs and other contemporaries.
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