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Updated: June 1, 2025
"I have heard highly creditable accounts of the zeal and ability with which you discharge your duties, Monsieur Jasmin, and of your fidelity to your master." The valet knew that this was not true; besides, even the overstrained euphuism of the day would not lead the proud Baroness de Valricour to speak thus to a mere valet unless, indeed, she had some covert end in view. What did she want?
Pater himself has expounded his theory and practice of prose, doubtless with a side-thought of self-justification, in various places up and down his writings, notably in his pregnant essay on "Style," and perhaps even more persuasively in the chapter called "Euphuism" in Marius.
Modern eyes see less of the wit than of the dregs in the books of Greene and his compeers; but the attacks which Nash directed against the Puritans and his rivals were the first English works which shook utterly off the pedantry and extravagance of Euphuism. In his lightness, his facility, his vivacity, his directness of speech, we have the beginning of popular literature.
A prose idyl is the term which best describes the courtly and pastoral character of Lodge's "Rosalynde," the last work of fiction of any importance which distinctly bears the impress of euphuism. Published in 1590, the ten editions through which it passed during the next fifty years are sufficient evidence of its popularity.
It is so with that old euphuism of the Elizabethan age that pride of dainty language and curious expression, which it is very easy to ridicule, which often made itself ridiculous, but which had below it a real sense of fitness and nicety; and which, as we see in this very play, and still more clearly in the Sonnets, had some fascination for the young Shakespeare himself.
There is abundance, indeed overabundance of ridicule of affected styles, and quips, with which the literature of the day was crammed: call it Gongorism, Euphuism, or what you please. It was not even necessary for the author to "have access to the Chronicles of Monstrelet." Perhaps it will be conceded that Love's Labour's Lost is not a play which can easily be attributed to Bacon.
She listened, however, and admired upon trust, as many a wise man has been contented to treat the conversation of a handsome but silly mistress. As for Sir Piercie, he was in his element; and, well assured of the interest and full approbation of his auditor, he went on spouting Euphuism of more than usual obscurity, and at more than usual length.
But at the end of Elizabeth's reign a writing of brief witty characters appears to have come into fashion as one of the many forms of ingenuity that pleased society, and might be distantly related to the Euphuism of the day. Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," first acted in 1600, two or three years before the end of Elizabeth's reign, has little character sketches set into the text.
Shakespeare, upon whose stage everything may happen, even the blinding of Gloster, and who has no formal check except what is implied in the slow, elaborate structure of blank verse, obtains time for reverie by an often encumbering Euphuism, and by such a loosening of his plot as will give his characters the leisure to look at life from without.
He became noisy and violent, so I desisted from this aspect of his lesson. "And then," said I, "you committed the sin of euphuism. You called it not Fat, which is just and inglorious, but Weight. You " He interrupted to say he recognised all that. What was he to DO? I suggested he should adapt himself to his new conditions. So we came to the really sensible part of the business.
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