reproaches she drags him away; but she sees him to be enfeebled and spiritually decadent, and guides him to the House of Holiness, prototype of Bunyan's House Beautiful, where he undergoes religious chastening; then, restored and regenerate, proceeds to Una's home, slays the dragon, replaces on their throne the aged parents, is happily wedded to his Una. Between the spiritual and political allegories of the romance, we may take our choice. In the first we have a Pilgrim's Progress. The knight is the Christian; Una, Gospel Truth; his desertion of her, Spiritual Fall; Duessa, Heresy; Archimago, Hypocrisy; Sansfoy, Unbelief; Orgoglio, Spiritual Pride reacting into Despair; the House of Holiness, Spiritual Discipline; the Dragon, Satan; Arthur, Divine Grace. Or we may follow, as Spenser certainly intended us to do, the political parable. In this the knight stands for the Englishman of the period; Una is the English Church; Duessa, Mary of Scots; the Dragon, Rome; Archimago, the Jesuits; Sansfoy, the Moslems; Orgoglio, Philip; Arthur, Lord Leicester. The first interpretation would appeal to the religious feeling of the time, the second to the high-born soldiers, statesmen, courtiers, who saw, in the characters glorified or libelled, men and women personally or patriotically admired or detested by themselves. Book II contains the adventures of Sir Guyon, representing Temperance, who rides forth accompanied not by a lovely lady, but by a comely Palmer," a sage and sober sire, to whose measured footsteps he accommodates the paces of his steed. His mission is to discover and destroy the bower of Acrasia, a wanton and malignant Circe, who, seducing gallant knights to her toils by sensual baits, slays them or transforms them into beasts. Many adventures await him on his way. He finds in a wood a lady lying on the ground, bleeding to death from a selfinflicted wound. Beside her lies a dead knight, her husband, poisoned by Acrasia's spells; on her knees is a living babe. She dies; the pair are reverently buried, and the infant preserved, by Sir Guyon and the Palmer. But meanwhile the knight's horse is stolen by a boastful coward, Braggadochio, the comic character of the poem, supposed to represent with his squire, Trompart, the Duke of Alençon, and Simia, his petit singe or minion. We part from Guyon for a time to follow this losel, and to encounter the female warrior, Belphoebe, whom we shall often meet again. Returning, we find Guyon combating a savage madman, Furor, with his mother Occasion, a loathly hag, with shaggy locks hanging from the front of her head, but significantly "bald behind." He overcomes and binds them, beats down their champion, a fierce knight, Pyrocles, and passing on comes to a wide river, on whose bank is moored a "little gondelay," its sole navigator a lady fresh and fair. She invites him in, but so soon as he has set foot on her boat shoots it far away from land before the Palmer can follow. Her name is Phaedria; she is a handmaid and emissary of Acrasia. She smiles upon and courts the knight; he suspects her laughing freedom, and, "with strong reason mastering passion frail," persuades her after a time to restore him to the shore. The Palmer, however, is no longer to be seen. The knight visits Mammon's cave; its squalid master in vain offers him great store of the untold wealth that lies heaped around. During three days and nights he follows Mammon through the labyrinths of his subterranean magazine, beset by hideous fiends prepared to seize upon him should he touch the proffered gold; is at last dismissed by the disappointed money god so weak and worn with his three days' fast and wandering, that on reaching the upper air he falls down in a swoon. Here the Palmer finds him, watched over by an angel sent from above to succour him. This, the only angelic apparition in the poem, is heralded by noble lines: And is there care in heaven? and is there love To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe. How oft do they their silver bowers leave, D |