one hand, and sin and heresy on the other.  The second book tells the story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance; the third, of Britomartis, representing Chastity; the fourth, fifth, and sixth, of Cambel and Triamond (Friendship), Artegall (Justice), and Sir Calidore (Courtesy).  Spenser’s plan was a very elastic one and he filled up the measure of his narrative with everything that caught his fancy,—­historical events and personages under allegorical masks, beautiful ladies, chivalrous knights, giants, monsters, dragons, sirens, enchanters, and adventures enough to stock a library of fiction.  If you read Homer or Virgil, you know his subject in the first strong line; if you read Caedmon’s Paraphrase or Milton’s epic, the introduction gives you the theme; but Spenser’s great poem—­with the exception of a single line in the prologue, “Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song”—­gives hardly a hint of what is coming.

As to the meaning of the allegorical figures, one is generally in doubt.  In the first three books the shadowy Faery Queen sometimes represents the glory of God and sometimes Elizabeth, who was naturally flattered by the parallel.  Britomartis is also Elizabeth.  The Redcross Knight is Sidney, the model Englishman.  Arthur, who always appears to rescue the oppressed, is Leicester, which is another outrageous flattery.  Una is sometimes religion and sometimes the Protestant Church; while Duessa represents Mary Queen of Scots, or general Catholicism.  In the last three books Elizabeth appears again as Mercilla; Henry IV of France as Bourbon; the war in the Netherlands as the story of Lady Belge; Raleigh as Timias; the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland (lovers of Mary or Duessa) as Blandamour and Paridell; and so on through the wide range of contemporary characters and events, till the allegory becomes as difficult to follow as the second part of Goethe’s Faust.

POETICAL FORM.  For the Faery Queen Spenser invented a new verse form, which has been called since his day the Spenserian stanza.  Because of its rare beauty it has been much used by nearly all our poets in their best work.  The new stanza was an improved form of Ariosto’s ottava rima (i.e. eight-line stanza) and bears a close resemblance to one of Chaucer’s most musical verse forms in the “Monk’s Tale.”  Spenser’s stanza is in nine lines, eight of five feet each and the last of six feet, riming ababbcbcc.  A few selections from the first book, which is best worth reading, are reproduced here to show the style and melody of the verse.

      A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
      Ycladd[117] in mightie armes and silver shielde,
      Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine
      The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde;
      Yet armes till that time did he never wield: 
      His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
      As much disdayning to the curbe to yield: