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INTRODUCTION
partly under the influence of current ideas as to the didactic function of
poetry. Yet, in truth, Spenser was- so influenced only because he was
constitutionally of that idealistic temper in which allegorical poetry had
taken its rise, and because he could most readily express in that medium
'the rich and varied interests of a mind that continually hovered between
the worlds of fact and of idea The idealist, starting from the actual
world of which he has experience, distils from it what seems to be its
essence, and creates another world of spiritual and moral conceptions
which becomes as real for him as that from which he has created it. This
other world is not peopled by dead abstractions The prosaic analyst
may murder to dissect' the artist does not merely extract and isolate,
he recreates To him ideas depend for their reality upon the vividness
with which they kindle his imagination His mind has, as it were, a centre
in two worlds, and it may work with equal freedom upon material drawn
[from either That imaginative vision, which gives to the world of fact
2hlgher reality by expressing the soul that informs it, gives to the world
of ideas a sensuous incarnation which utters its voice in song
In the allegory of the Faeru Queene these two worlds meet and fuse But
the fusion is not complete, and the children of each world bear upon their
forms traces of their origin Hence, two types of allegory may often be
distinguished At times the poet starts from the idea, and the process of
incarnation follows Human qualities are then abstracted into the rarefied
atmosphere of thought and presented to his imagination for conscious
artistic handling The result is somewhat formal personification, cast in
the traditional mould of mediaeval allegory, and executed in the manner
of a pageant or a Morality. At its worst it is mechanical in structure and
somewhat arbitrary in its symbolism, but it is seldom unrelieved by vivid
detail that gives it an independent life, and at its best it turns an abstract
conception with triumphant success into concrete living form The
Masque of Cupid (III 12) embraces the quaintly emblematic figures of
Dissemblance twisting her two clewes of silk, and Suspect peeping through
his lattis, and along with them the haunting picture of Fear, * all armed
from top to toe, yet taking fright even at the clash and the glitter of his
own coat of mail Of this kind is much of the incidental allegory in the
Faeru Queene, and Spenser has used to the full the opportunities it offers
to his rich power over colour and form, and his genius for imaginative
description But when his mind is turned rather upon the warm realities
of life itself, the process is different, Human qualities, justice, temperance,
and the rest, are still realized in their essence, but they are seen to be
present in living human beings Hence he does not present an abstract
conception by a human symbol, but accepts under his idealizing vision
a human being as the symbol of his conception Britomart is not the
abstract conception of Chastity, but a real woman who expresses in her
personality and her conduct, along with many other powers and some
human weakness, the essential quality of chastity Una may be Truth,