It goes, you feel, one degree beyond _Euphues_ in the direction of freedom and poetry.

And just because of this greater freedom, its characteristics are much less easy to fix than those of _Euphues_.

Perhaps its chief quality is best described as that of exhaustiveness.

Sidney will take a word and toss it to and fro in a page till its meaning is sucked dry and more than sucked dry.

On page after page the same trick is employed, often in some new and charming way, but with the inevitable effect of wearying the reader, who tries to do the unwisest of all things with a book of this kind--to read on.