Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/17

Rh extravagance of metaphor, to burlesque the faults of the Seicentisti; thus skilfully drawing from them a new source of amusement, turning absurdity into humour, and legitimizing the follies of his age by giving them a different and original character.

I may here observe, that Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, one of our earliest specimens of heroic romance, offers several points of comparison with Basile's writings. In that jar of sweets we find continually recurring metaphors and expressions scarcely less extravagant, and often remarkably similar to those which Basile is so fond of employing. Take for instance the following:—

Besides this similarity of style and language, we may note other points of coincidence, such as the "twenty specified shepherds, some for exercises and some for eclogues," in