Archimago to embark in a painted boat steered by Curiosity, which wafts
him over to a foreign shore where he is entertained by a bevy of light
damsels whose leader "hight Politessa," and whose blandishments the
knight resists. Thence he is conducted to a stately castle (the court of
Louis XV. whose minister--perhaps Cardinal Fleury?--is "an old and
rankled mage"); and finally to Rome, where a lady yclept Vertù holds
court in the ruins of the Colosseum, among mimes, fiddlers, pipers,
eunuchs, painters, and _ciceroni_.

Similarly the canto on "Education" narrates how a fairy knight, while
conducting his young son to the house of Paidia, encounters the giant
Custom and worsts him in single combat. There is some humor in the
description of the stream of science into which the crowd of infant
learners are unwillingly plunged, and upon whose margin stands

"A _birchen_ grove that, waving from the shore,
Aye cast upon the tide its falling bud
And with its bitter juice empoisoned all the flood."

The piece is a tedious arraignment of the pedantic methods of instruction
in English schools and colleges. A passage satirizing the artificial
style of gardening will be cited later. West had a country-house at
Wickham, in Kent, where, says Johnson,[28] "he was very often visited by
Lyttelton and Pitt; who, when they were weary of faction and debates,
used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table and literary
conversation. There is at Wickham, a walk made by Pitt." Like many
contemporary poets, West interested himself in landscape gardening, and
some of his shorter pieces belong to that literature of inscriptions to
which Lyttelton, Akenside, Shenstone, Mason, and others contributed so
profusely. It may be said for his Spenserian imitations that their