"No false enchantment, nor deceitful train,
Might once abide the terror of that blast,
But presently was void and wholly vain :

No gate so strong, no lock so firm and fast,

But, with that piercing noise, flew open quite, or brast."

The Giant came forth, and after him Duessa on her many-headed beast, who was "bloody-mouthed with late cruel feast" of the days of persecution to the death. In the combat the Giant was overcome by the loosing of the veil over the covered shield, "the light whereof, that Heaven's light did pass," blinded the many-headed beast, so that he fell, and Duessa cried in vain, "O! help, Orgoglio, help! or else we perish all." Orgoglio

"has read his end

In that bright Shield, and all their forces spend
Themselves in vain: for since that glancing sight
He hath no power to hurt or to defend :

As where the Almighty's lightning brand does light,
It dims the dazéd eyes and daunts the senses quite."

When Orgoglio received his death-blow,

soon as breath out of his breast did pass,

That huge great body which the giant bore

Was vanished quite, and of that monstrous mass
Was nothing left, but like an empty bladder was."

Then Duessa was given in charge to King Arthur's squire, and Arthur entered the castle of Orgoglio, which had for its porter Ignorance, Ignaro, with reverend hairs and holy gravity, who

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as he forward moved his footing old,

So backward still was turned his wrinkled face."

Taking the keys from him, Arthur released the Red Cross Knight from his dungeon, brought him to Una, and stripping the false Duessa of her scarlet robe, displayed her ugliness.

"Such is the face of falsehood, such the sight
Of foul Duessa, when her borrowed light
Is laid away, and counterfesaunce known."

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After this allegory of the triumph over a form of faith that Spenser, combatant with all the bitterness of Puritan reformers in his time, opposed to the uttermost, and could only associate with wiles of the Devil, the Red Cross Knight, accompanied by Truth and heavenly Grace, proceeded to the house of Holiness, but met on the way (ninth canto) with a knight, Sir Trevisan (Portuguese "trevas," privation of light, from Latin "tenebræ "), flying in terror, who has seen a man of hell that calls himself Despair.' Despair had already driven to death his friend Sir Terwin, whose name, perhaps, is formed from "terra," earth, and the name-suffix -win, meaning a friend. allegory is here continuing the development of the place of Divine Grace in Spenser's religious system. Unworthiness of human effort heavenward would lay the soul open to promptings of despair, but for the knowledge that "where Justice grows, there grows eke greater Grace." Despair tempts with the question :

"Is not he just, that all this doth behold From highest heven, and beares an equall eie ? Shall he thy sins up in his knowledge fold,

And guilty be of thine impietie?

Is not his lawe, Let every sinner die;

Die shall all flesh? What then must needs be donne

Is it not better to doe willinglie

Then linger till the glas be all out ronne?

Death is the end of woes: die soone, O faeries sonne!"

The

From Una, when the Red Cross Knight is yielding to the sense of his unworthiness, come the saving words that enable her knight to live and persevere, and arm himself for victory in the last battle with the Dragon :

"In heavenly Mercies hast thou not a part?

Why should'st thou then despair that chosen art?
Where Justice grows, there grows eke greater Grace."

When, in the next canto, the tenth, the Red Cross Knight is brought into the House of Holiness, and there is an allegorical picture of man's body as the home of pure religion, the prelude to this in the opening stanza still lays emphasis on a final victory that can be attained only by aid of the Grace of God.

"What man is he that boasts of fleshly might

And vain assurance of mortality,

Which all so soon as it doth come to fight

Against spiritual foes, yields by and by,
Or from the field most cowardly doth fly?
Ne let the man ascribe it to his skill
That thorough Grace hath gainéd victory.
If any strength we have, it is to ill :

But all the good is God's, both power and eke will."

Rescue came, by God's help, with the Reformed Church under Elizabeth, and it remained only for England then to fight the good fight and overcome, after full training in the House of Holiness, where lives Dame Cœlia with her three daughters, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

After full preparation in the House of Holiness there comes, in the eleventh canto, the crowning adventure-the fight with the Dragon, as the Book of Revelation terms him, "the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil." The Christian warrior becomes then, in the twelfth and last canto, the bridegroom of Truth, Duessa forbidding the banns in a paper signed "Fidessa," brought by a messenger, who is Archimago, and who is discovered and bound hand and foot with iron chains. When the holy knots were tied that joined Truth finally to the Red Cross Knight, there were heard by men sweet harmonies of Heaven.

But the Red Cross Knight was bound to return to the Faerie Queene when his adventure was achieved, "the which he shortly did, and Una left to mourn." The allegory of his adventures is completed, and Saint George of England, through occasional appearances in other parts of the poem, had next to find his way into the unwritten twelfth book, where the several knights were to meet at the Court of Gloriana, and all powers of endeavour heavenward for the Glory of God were to be blended in one strain of music at the close.

Spenser believed that he had given aid enough for the interpretation of his allegory. In the introduction to his second book he told the reader that

"Of faery land, yet if he more inquyre,

By certein signes here sett in sondrie place
He may it fynd: ne let him then admyre,
But yield his sence to bee too blunt and bace

That note without an hound fine footing trace."

Spenser's "fine footing" has been traced but carelessly, while all readers have felt the sweetness of music, and

enjoyed the feast of imagination that "The Faerie Queene" offers to those who simply yield themselves up to a sense of the surpassing beauty of its pictures and of its deeply earnest spiritual undertone.

The Second Book.

In the second book of "The Faerie Queene," Archimago had escaped from his bands, and was again abroad laying his snares. The Red Cross Knight was not again to be deceived. But the Enchanter, enemy still to all good, met an elfin knight all armed, upright of carriage, and with countenance demure and temperate.

"Well could he tourney, and in lists debate,

And knighthood took of good Sir Huon's hand,
When with King Oberon he came to Faery land.”

"Him als accompanyd upon the way

A comely Palmer, clad in black attyre,
Of rypest yeares, and heares all hoarie gray,
That with a staffe his feeble steps did stire,
Least his long way his aged limbes should tire:
And, if by lookes one may the mind aread,

He seemd to be a sage and sober syre;

And ever with slow pace the knight did lead,

Who taught his trampling steed with equall steps to tread."

The knight's skill in horsemanship shows Temperance skilled in control of passion and desire. In making Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, one who had been knighted by Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Spenser applied typically the romance story of Sir Huon and Rezia, who, aided by Oberon, were the only lovers pure enough to bear every trial. The black Palmer has in this Book the place given to Una in the legend of the Red Cross Knight. He is the quality idealised from which the knight is parted only when he is astray. Archimago, in feigned shape of a poor man, who quaked in every limb, stopped Sir Guyon's steed, with false accusation of a wrong done by a knight who bore a Red Cross on his shield. Sir Guyon could not readily believe ill of that fellow-adventurer

"A right good knight, and true of word iwis :
I present was, and can it witness well,

When arms he swore, and straight did enterpris
Th' adventure of the Errant Damozel,

In which he hath great glory won, as I hear tell."

Duessa, who professed herself the injured virgin, had been found in the wilderness by Archimago, despoiled of her proud ornaments and borrowed beauty. Arthur had stripped her of those, but Archimago had re-clothed her, and craftily devised himself to be her squire. But when Archimago had brought Guyon to the knight whom he accused, the Knight of Temperance had power to restrain himself when in the act of running, spear in rest, and came to a fair understanding with his friend. The aged Palmer, Guyon's companion, exalted the achievement of Saint George

"But wretched we, where ye have left your mark
Must now anew begin like race to run."

And the Red Cross Knight answered-

"His be the praise that this achievement wrought,
Who made my hand the organ of His might;
More than goodwill to me attribute nought,
For all I did, I did but as I ought."

To Sir Guyon, whose pageant was next to ensue, he wished success according to his thought; and so they parted with goodwill from each to each. This opening serves as transition from the First Book to the Second, of which the special allegory now begins to be developed.

"Then Guyon forward gan his voyage make

With his black Palmer that him guided still;
Still he him guided over dale and hill,

And with his steady staff did point his way :

His race with reason and with words his will

From foul Intemperance he oft did stay,

And suffered not in wrath his hasty steps to stray."

As they passed by a forest-side they heard a dying woman's voice in lament over a babe that had been witness of his father's fall. Sir Guyon, dismounting, pressed into the thicket, and found the woman with a dagger in her bosom, bleeding by a fountain; a babe in her lap played with his little hands in her blood; beside them both lay the dead body of a knight, and blood sprinkled his armour. Guyon removed the dagger, stayed the bleeding, and learned from the wretched

W-VOL. IX.