he planned twelve books to celebrate them. [Footnote: Only six of these
books are extant, treating of the Redcross Knight or Holiness, Sir Guyon or
Temperance, Britomartis or Chastity, Cambel and Triamond or Friendship, Sir
Artegall or Justice, and Sir Calidore or Courtesy. The rest of the
allegory, if written, may have been destroyed in the fire of Kilcolman.] In
each book a knight or a lady representing a single virtue goes forth into
the world to conquer evil. In all the books Arthur, or Magnificence (the
sum of all virtue), is apt to appear in any crisis; Lady Una represents
religion; Archimago is another name for heresy, and Duessa for falsehood;
and in order to give point to Spenser's allegory the courtiers and
statesmen of the age are all flattered as glorious virtues or condemned as
ugly vices.

[Sidenote: THE ALLEGORY]

Those who are fond of puzzles may delight in giving names and dates to
these allegorical personages, in recognizing Elizabeth in Belphoebe or
Britomart or Marcella, Sidney in the Redcross Knight, Leicester in Arthur,
Raleigh in Timias, Mary Stuart in Duessa, and so on through the list of
characters good or evil. The beginner will wisely ignore all such
interpretation, and for two reasons: first, because Spenser's allegories
are too shadowy to be taken seriously; and second, because as a chronicler
of the times he is outrageously partisan and untrustworthy. In short, to
search for any reality in _The Faery Queen_ is to spoil the poem as a
work of the imagination. "If you do not meddle with the allegory," said
Hazlitt, "the allegory will not meddle with you."

MINOR POEMS. The minor poems of Spenser are more interesting, because more
human, than the famous work which we have just considered. Prominent among
these poems are the _Amoretti_, a collection of sonnets written in