XXVIII.

"Therefore since mine he is, or free or bond, 'Or false or trew, or living or else dead, 'Withhold, O soverayne Prince, your hasty hond From knitting league with him, I you aread; 'Ne weene my right with strength adowne to tread, "Through weaknesse of my widowhed or woe: "For Truth is strong her rightfull cause to plead, And shall finde friends, if need requireth soe. So bids thee well to fare, thy neither friend nor foe, Fidessa.'

[OUR poet having brought his vessel into harbour, to refit and repair; let us, like travellers, talk over the wonders we have seen, and the regions we have passed over of fable, mystery, and allegory.

However the wise, and the grave, may affect to despise wonderful tales; yet well related, with novelty and variety, they work upon the heart by secret charms and philters, and never fail both to surprise and to delight. But delight and entertainment are not all; for a good poet should instruct; not in the narration of particular facts, like an historian; but in exhibiting universal truths, as a philosopher: by showing the motives, causes, and springs of action; by bringing before your eyes TRUTH in her lovely form, and ERROR in her loathsome and filthy shape; DECEIT should be stripped, and HYPOCRISY laid open and, while wonderful stories and representations of visionary images engage the fancy, the poet should all along intend these only as initiations into the more sacred mysteries of morals and religion.

Lest you should object to the probability of his stories, the poet names the time, when these wonders were performed, viz. during the minority of Prince Arthur; and mentions the very persons who performed them; Prince Arthur, St. George, Sir Satyrane, Archimago, &c. nay, he points out the very places, wherein the adventures were achieved. If after so circumstantial a recital of time, place,

and persons, you will still not believe him, you must be enrolled, I think, among the very miscreants; for as to his wonderful tales of enchantments, witches, apparitions, &c. all this is easily accounted for by supernatural assist

ance.

This first book bears a great resemblance to a tragedy, with a catastrophe not unfortunate. The Redcrosse Knight and Una appear together on the stage; nothing seeming to thwart their happiness; but, by the plots and pains of Archimago, they are separated; hence suspicions and distresses: She with difficulty escapes from a lawless Sarazin and Satyrs, and he is actually made a prisoner by a merciless Giant: When unexpectedly Prince Arthur, like some god in a machine, appears, and releases the Knight; who becomes a new man, and with new joy is contracted to his ever-faithful Una.

If we consider the persons or characters in the drama, we shall find them all consistent with themselves, yet masterly opposed and contrasted: The simplicity and innocence of Una may be set in opposition to the flaunting falsehood of the Scarlet Whore: The pious Knight is diametrically opposite to the impious Sarazfn: the sly hypocrite Archimago differs from the sophist Despair. And even in laudable characters, if there is a sameness, yet too there is a difference; as in the magnificence of Prince Arthur, in the plainness of the Christian Knight, and in the honest behaviour of Sir Satyrane.

How well adapted to their places are the paintings of the various scenes and decorations! Some appear horrible, as

the den of Error; Hell; the Giant; the cave of Despair; the Dragon, &c. others terrible and wonderful, as the magical cottage of Archimago; the plucking of the bloody bough; the Sarazin's supernatural rescue and cure, &c.: others are of the pastoral kind, as the pleasing prospects of the woods, and diversions of the wood-born people, with old Sylvanus; or magnificent, as the description of Prince Arthur, and the solemnizing of the contract of marriage between the Knight and Una.

The scene lies chiefly in Fairy land, (though we have a view of the house of Morpheus, in the first canto, and of hell in the fifth,) and changes to the land of Eden, in the eleventh and twelfth cantos.

Should we presume to lift up the mysterious veil, wrought with such subtle art and ornament, as sometimes to seem utterly to hide, sometimes lying so transparent, as to be seen through; should we take off, I say, this fabulous covering under it we might discover a most useful moral: The beauty of truth; the foulness of error; sly hypocrisy; the pride and cruelty of false religion, holiness completed in virtues; and the church, if not in its triumphant, yet in its triumphing, state. Spenser, in his letter to Sir W. R., tells us his poem is a continued allegory: Where therefore the moral allusion cannot be made apparent, we must seek (as I imagine) for an historical allusion; and always we must look for more than meets the eye or ear; the words carrying one meaning with them, and the secret sense another.

UPTON.]

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