upon it, gives a shock of unpleasant surprise, as when in eating
strawberries one's teeth encounter grit.'

The same lack of unity pervades the external story. The first Book begins
abruptly, in the middle; and for clearness' sake Spenser had been obliged
to explain in his prefatory letter that the real commencement must be
supposed to be a scene like those of Arthurian romance, at the court and
annual feast of the Fairy Queen, where twelve adventures had been assigned
to as many knights. Spenser strangely planned to narrate this beginning of
the whole in his final Book, but even if it had been properly placed at the
outset it would have served only as a loose enveloping action for a series
of stories essentially as distinct as those in Malory. More serious,
perhaps, is the lack of unity within the single books. Spenser's genius was
never for strongly condensed narrative, and following his Italian
originals, though with less firmness, he wove his story as a tangled web of
intermingled adventures, with almost endless elaboration and digression.
Incident after incident is broken off and later resumed and episode after
episode is introduced, until the reader almost abandons any effort to trace
the main design. A part of the confusion is due to the mechanical plan.
Each Book consists of twelve cantos (of from forty to ninety stanzas each)
and oftentimes Spenser has difficulty in filling out the scheme. No one,
certainly, can regret that he actually completed only a quarter of his
projected work. In the six existing Books he has given almost exhaustive
expression to a richly creative imagination, and additional prolongation
would have done little but to repeat.

Still further, the characteristic Renaissance lack of certainty as to the
proper materials for poetry is sometimes responsible for a rudely
inharmonious element in the otherwise delightful romantic atmosphere. For a
single illustration, the description of the House of Alma in Book II, Canto