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of the purpose of these Books, is obliged to break away from the plan he laid down for himself in his well-known Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh. To have worked out the twelve Books as representing "the twelve moral virtues," each with its own knight and its own adventures, would have demanded a far narrower treatment of these two opening Books. Instead of ranging over the whole extent of human life and interests as they do, pourtraying Holiness and Temperance, we should have had the adventures of the liberal soul struggling against extravagance or stinginess, or the brave man attacked by temptations of rashness or of cowardice. The genius of the poet happily delivered him from his own bonds, and enabled him to deal with his subject with a dignity and completeness which makes each Book a work by itself, and a commentary on the whole breadth of human life.

But though we may look on each of these Books as a whole, still the author is mindful to link the different "gests" together, by likeness of structure, by reference to the original design, by the introduction of the old actors at the beginning of the new piece, and especially by the grander figures of Arthur and the Faery Queene, who appear dimly throughout. The image of the Queen looking down on the action is never absent from the Books: in a veiled form she actually enters on the stage, the divine huntress, chaste and beautiful as Artemis herself, and ennobles the work with her presence and her high-souled words. The Prince, in quest of her through the world, full of a mysterious love and allegiance to her, appears in each Book to help the labouring knights. This link is so artfully contrived, that while it carries on the mysterious undercurrent of the action, it does not diminish the interest felt in the main actors. Prince Arthur comes as a deliverer when the heroes are reduced to helplessness: he delivers them, but he does not do their work for them His work is noble and perfect; but it only tends in these Books to restore the knights to themselves, and so to enable them to work out their proper ends for themselves.

In this respect, and in many others, the two Books run upon parallel lines. It may be worth while to notice some of these similarities.

While Error's hateful figure forms a very striking introduction to the treatment of the subject of the search after Truth, the sad picture of the fall of Mordant and the consequent miseries of Amavia give us, in the same way, the key-note of the Second Book, pourtraying the terrible power of moral evil, if not resisted; it gives Sir Guyon the clue to his path in life, as avenger of their innocent babe. Acrasia is thus brought before us, the central figure of evil, foreseen in the effects of her poisonous fascinations: "Sin, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth death.”

The House of Pride may be contrasted with Alma's Castle; the description of the Cave of Despair, and the discussion on suicide which follows it, stand over against the account of Mammon's Cave, and the disquisition held in it respecting the use and value of riches, and man's proper aim in life.

Again, as in Canto VIII of the First Book we have the overthrow of Orgoglio (that most formidable enemy of the religious character, Pride) by the hand of Arthur; so in Canto VIII of the Second Book we meet the same Prince doing to death the various forms of angry passion and fiery temper, which had all but undone the weakened and prostrate Sir Guyon.

Una corresponds, in a sort, to the Black Palmer; though we may rank the religious purity of the snow-white maiden higher than the moral equanimity of the sad-robed sober Mentor. Una guides the Red Cross Knight, the Palmer Sir Guyon: they are parted from one another under circumstances suitable to the character of each Book. The Red Cross Knight loses his companion through false illusions: Sir Guyon parts with his Palmer in order that he may pass with Idleness, in the boat that goes without an oar, across the Idle Lake.

And, lastly, the tenth Canto of each book is dedicated to the preparation of the hero of each for the crowning work of his calling. When the Red Cross Knight is taken to the House of Mercy, it is that his mind may be enlightened, and that his soul may obtain glimpses of heavenly truth before his last struggle with the Old Serpent, the Father of Lies. When Guyon reaches the Castle of Alma, he betakes himself to the study of the "Antiquities of Faery Land," in order that he may prepare himself by high example and the tranquil study of the great

actions of the past to discern the difference between the glitter and allurement of Acrasia and the true greatness of a temperate and upright life.

There are also, on the other hand, special characteristics and points of difference between the two Books, arising from the different themes treated in them. The Second Book stands quite alone in English literature for its melodious diction and beautiful descriptions of a false Fairyland; while the First Book is full of fighting and grim pictures, some of them revolting rather than terrible. The Dragon, laid low over acres of land, horrible even in death, fills the mind with painful images: on the other hand, Acrasia, fair and frail, carried away in bonds, not tormented nor slain, her slaves released, and restored to human form; her bower broken down, her garden defaced, may be sad, but is not horrible. Again, the First Book is naturally far fuller of historical allusions to the time in which it was written than the Second: for the latter dealt simply with the development of each man's moral nature, while the former treated of the great religious and political questions which were agitating the world. For the same reason the allegorical character of the First Book is more strongly marked than that of the Second, though we have the general similitude of the struggle against temptation, and the detailed and interpolated allegories of the House of Moderation and of the Castle of the Soul.

It may be well to trace the way in which this allegory is worked out.

We have already noticed how the episode of Mordant and Amavia, with their bloody-handed babe, sets the action of the story into its right course. They save us from forgetting that all the struggles of the earlier Books are only preparatory to the main issue yet to come. It seems that Spenser originally intended to have given this key-note even earlier; for in the Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh he describes the Palmer as coming in (at the very outset) to the Queen's presence, bearing tlie babe in his arms, and seeking redress for him; he goes on to say that the task was assigned to Sir Guyon, who went forth at once to fulfil it. But the poet has happily deviated from his plan otherwise we must have waited till the never-written

Twelfth Book for the history of the babe and the grievance against Acrasia. The hero of the Book is drawn as an honest, manly gentleman, tried as man is, but (fortified by the wise counsels of his calmer comrade) finally victorious over all temptations. And just as the episode of the bloody-handed babe brings before us the evil to be overcome, so does the Castle of Medina, in the second Canto, lay out the general principle which is to run through all morality, the Aristotelian principle that Virtue lies in the mean between the extremes of excess and defect. Yet even here the poet deviates from the philosopher. His 'defect,' the frowning Elissa, is not merely too little of the quality of which 'excess,' the gay Perissa, is too much; but each of them is a definite and independent obliquity. The one is too fond of pleasure; the other is too morose and gloomy. The knight, devoting himself to moderation, will be called on to contend now against the one, now against the other; for Spenser tacitly divides the moral trials of the knight into those of pleasure and those of pain; those of anger and spite, and those of idleness and license. The earlier Cantos deal with painful struggles against the passions of wrath and malignity, the latter ones with the passions of desire. We may say, in passing, that the episode of Braggadocchio and Trompart, in the third Canto, is intended both to be quasi-comic, as a foil to the grave nobleness of the hero, and also to complete the general treatment of the subject by adding a picture of cowardice and low knavery. It would have been impossible to have subjected Sir Guyon himself to temptations to that moral deficiency, the merest suspicion of which would have damaged the dignity of the knightly character. Braggadocchio is, therefore, drawn and left alone, after being contrasted with the splendid vision of the Virgin Queen.

The serious business of the Book begins with the fourth Canto. There Guyon encounters and overcomes Fury and the hag Occasion; and we have in the episode of Phedon a pleasing if not original illustration of the evils against which the knight is now struggling-the evils of unbridled anger and revenge. The Book continues in the same strain: to Fury

and Occasion succeed the varlet Strife and the fiery Pyrocles. But in the sixth Canto the transition to the other series of temptations begins in the introduction of Phaedria, the spirit of idleness. The Knight, after these toilsome struggles, falls into her hands, and is parted from the wise Palmer. This incident relieves the action, and also prepares the way for what is to come. The loose merriment of Phaedria, the love-song in praise of idleness, the floating island, the idle lake, the little gliding skippet,-all foreshadow the yet more soft and alluring beauties of the Bower of Bliss.

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With the sight of the agony and burning wounds of Pyrocles, the utter misery and pain of ungoverned wrath, this division of the Book comes to an end.

Thus far Passion (τὸ θυμικόν); now Desire (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν). And first the temptations of wealth and ambition in Mammon's Cave, overcome by Guyon, but with so much stress on him that he lies senseless and as dead on his return to the upper air. In this condition he is attacked by the fiery brothers, Cymocles and Pyrocles, and would have perished had not Prince Arthur appeared to rescue him and to overthrow them finally.

Then we have the Castle of the Soul, and the venomous assaults of its myriad foes, the twelve troops of temptationfive attacking the five senses, and seven representing the seven deadly sins-led by their gaunt captain Maleger. The curious and very dull episode of the British annals delays the action through a long Canto, and mars its unity and forward movement. But in the last two Cantos the struggle draws to its end. Arthur delivers the beleaguered soul, destroying the devilish captain and scattering the villains away; and Guyon, passing undismayed through many marvellous risks, reaches at last his goal the Bower of Bliss, and (thanks to a power guiding him stronger than himself) resists all the most subtle temptations of the flesh, and destroys for ever the charmed domains of luxury and intemperance.

Thus in Mammon's Cave, the World is overcome; in the person of Maleger, Arthur resists the Devil; in Acrasia's bower, Guyon wrestles with the flesh, and prevails against it. So

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