look’d more like a Design to shew his own Ingenuity, than to instruct the People.  In short, he added and curtailed in such a manner that he vexed me; insomuch that I could not forbear thinking (what, I confess, I ought not to have thought of in so holy a Place) that this young Spark was as justly blameable as Bullock or Penkethman when they mend a noble Play of Shakespear or Johnson.  Pray, Sir, take this into your Consideration; and if we must be entertained with the Works of any of those great Men, desire these Gentlemen to give them us as they find them, that so, when we read them to our Families at home, they may the better remember they have heard them at Church.’

  SIR,

  Your humble Servant_.

* * * * *

No. 540.  Wednesday, November 19, 1712.  Steele.

  ‘—­Non Deficit Alter—­’

  Virg.

  Mr. SPECTATOR,

’There is no Part of your Writings which I have in more Esteem than your Criticism upon Milton.  It is an honourable and candid Endeavour to set the Works of our Noble Writers in the graceful Light which they deserve.  You will lose much of my kind Inclination towards you, if you do not attempt the Encomium of Spencer also, or at least indulge my Passion for that charming Author so far as to print the loose Hints I now give you on that Subject.

’Spencer’s general Plan is the Representation of six Virtues, Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy, in six Legends by six Persons.  The six Personages are supposed under proper Allegories suitable to their respective Characters, to do all that is necessary for the full Manifestation of the respective Virtues which they are to exert.

’These one might undertake to shew under the several Heads, are admirably drawn; no Images improper, and most surprizingly beautiful.  The Red-cross Knight runs through the whole Steps of the Christian Life; Guyon does all that Temperance can possibly require; Britomartis (a Woman) observes the true Rules of unaffected Chastity; Arthegal is in every Respect of Life strictly and wisely just; Calidore is rightly courteous.

’In short, in Fairy-Land, where Knights Errant have a full Scope to range, and to do even what Ariosto’s or Orlando’s could not do in the World without breaking into Credibility, Spencer’s Knights have, under those six Heads, given a full and a truly Poetical System of Christian, Public, and Low Life.

  ’His Legend of Friendship is more diffuse, and yet even there the
  Allegory is finely drawn, only the Heads various, one Knight could not
  there support all the Parts.