A History of English Literature

inharmonious element in the otherwise delightful romantic atmosphere. For a
single illustration, the description of the House of Alma in Book II, Canto
Nine, is a tediously literal medieval allegory of the Soul and Body; and
occasional realistic details here and there in the poem at large are merely
repellent to more modern taste.
3. _The Lack of Dramatic Reality_. A romantic allegory like 'The
Faerie Queene' does not aim at intense lifelikeness--a certain remoteness
from the actual is one of its chief attractions. But sometimes in Spenser's
poem the reader feels too wide a divorce from reality. Part of this fault
is ascribable to the use of magic, to which there is repeated but
inconsistent resort, especially, as in the medieval romances, for the
protection of the good characters. Oftentimes, indeed, by the persistent
loading of the dice against the villains and scapegoats, the reader's
sympathy is half aroused in their behalf. Thus in the fight of the Red
Cross Knight with his special enemy, the dragon, where, of course, the
Knight must be victorious, it is evident that without the author's help the
dragon is incomparably the stronger. Once, swooping down on the Knight, he
seizes him in his talons (whose least touch was elsewhere said to be fatal)
and bears him aloft into the air. The valor of the Knight compels him to
relax his hold, but instead of merely dropping the Knight to certain death,
he carefully flies back to earth and sets him down in safety. More definite
regard to the actual laws of life would have given the poem greater
firmness without the sacrifice of any of its charm.
4. _The Romantic Beauty. General Atmosphere and Description._ Critical
sincerity has required us to dwell thus long on the defects of the poem;
but once recognized we should dismiss them altogether from mind and turn
attention to the far more important beauties. The great qualities of 'The
Faerie Queene' are suggested by the title, 'The Poets' Poet,' which Charles
Lamb, with happy inspiration, applied to Spenser. Most of all are we
indebted to Spenser's high idealism. No poem in the world is nobler than
'The Faerie Queene' in atmosphere and entire effect. Spenser himself is
always the perfect gentleman of his own imagination, and in his company we
are secure from the intrusion of anything morally base or mean. But in him,
also, moral beauty is in full harmony with the beauty of art and the
senses. Spenser was a Puritan, but a Puritan of the earlier English
Renaissance, to whom the foes of righteousness were also the foes of
external loveliness. Of the three fierce Saracen brother-knights who
repeatedly appear in the service of Evil, two are Sansloy, the enemy of
law, and Sansfoy, the enemy of religion, but the third is Sansjoy, enemy of
pleasure. And of external beauty there has never been a more gifted lover
than Spenser. We often feel, with Lowell, that 'he is the pure sense of the
beautiful incarnated.' The poem is a romantically luxuriant wilderness of
dreamily or languorously delightful visions, often rich with all the
harmonies of form and motion and color and sound. As Lowell says, 'The true
use of Spenser is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the mood takes
us, and where we spend an hour or two, long enough to sweeten our
perceptions, not so long as to cloy them.' His landscapes, to speak of one
particular feature, are usually of a rather vague, often of a vast nature,
as suits the unreality of his poetic world, and usually, since Spenser was
not a minute observer, follow the conventions of Renaissance literature.
They are commonly great plains, wide and gloomy forests (where the trees of
many climates often grow together in impossible harmony), cool caves--in
general, lonely, quiet, or soothing scenes, but all unquestionable portions
of a delightful fairyland. To him, it should be added, as to most men
before modern Science had subdued the world to human uses, the sublime
aspects of Nature were mainly dreadful; the ocean, for example, seemed to
him a raging 'waste of waters, wide and deep,' a mysterious and insatiate