Mr. Gladstone's _Gleanings of Past Years_
(vol. i., p. 26), in which the author confuses
Daniel with Shadrach, Meshech, and
Abednego, has been pointed out: ``The
fierce light that beats upon a throne is
sometimes like the heat of that furnace in
which only Daniel could walk unscathed,
too fierce for those whose place it is to
stand in its vicinity.'' Who would expect
to find Macaulay blundering on a subject
he knew so well as the story of the
_Faerie Queene_! and yet this is what he

wrote in a review of Southey's edition
of the _Pilgrim's Progress_: ``Nay, even
Spenser himself, though assuredly one of
the greatest poets that ever lived, could
not succeed in the attempt to make allegory
interesting. . . . One unpardonable
fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades
the whole of the _Fairy Queen_. We become
sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly
Sins, and long for the society of plain men
and women. Of the persons who read
the first Canto, not one in ten reaches the
end of the first book, and not one in a
hundred perseveres to the end of the
poem. Very few and very weary are
those who are in at the death of the
Blatant Beast.''[5] Macaulay knew well
enough that the Blatant Beast did not