The first author to give them these things was John Lyly, whose book _Euphues_ was for the five or six years following its publication a fashionable craze that infected all society and gave its name to a peculiar and highly artificial style of writing that coloured the work of hosts of obscure and forgotten followers.

Lyly wrote other things; his comedies may have taught Shakespeare the trick of _Love's Labour Lost_; he attempted a sequel of his most famous work with better success than commonly attends sequels, but for us and for his own generation he is the author of one book.

Everybody read it, everybody copied it.

The maxims and sentences of advice for gentlemen which it contained were quoted and admired in the Court, where the author, though he never attained the lucrative position he hoped for, did what flattery could do to make a name for himself.

The name "Euphuism" became a current description of an artificial way of using words that overflowed out of writing into speech and was in the mouths, while the vogue lasted, of everybody who was anybody in the circle that fluttered round the Queen.
The style of _Euphues_ was parodied by Shakespeare and many attempts have been made to imitate it since.