Euphuism

The euphuism style employed the frequent use of alliteration, antithesis, balance, and simile, with references to nature and mythological tales.

There are two principal and peculiar gifts in the nature of man, knowledge and reason; the one commandeth, and the other obeyeth: these things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can change, neither the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, neither age abolish".

The beauty whereof is parched with the summer's blaze and chipped with the winter's blast: which is of so short continuance, that it fadeth before one perceive it flourish".

Whose words and bodies both watch but for a wind, whose feet are ever fleeting, whose faith plighted on the shore, is turned to perjury when they hoist sail".

Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey castigated his style, as did Aldous Huxley in his book On the Margin: Notes and Essays, who wrote, "Take away from Lyly his erudition and his passion for antithesis, and you have Mrs.

"[3] Lyly's style, however,[clarification needed] influenced Shakespeare, who satirised[clarification needed] it in speeches by Polonius and Osric in Hamlet and the florid language of the courtly lovers in Love's Labour's Lost; Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing also made use of it, as did Richard and Lady Anne in Richard III.

Walter Scott satirised it in the character of Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery, while Charles Kingsley defended Euphues in Westward Ho!.