showing him, from the top of the hill, the hea venly Jerusalem, which was proper to animate the hero against the combat in which he is presently after engaged: his success in that combat, and his marrying Una, are a very just conclusion of this Book, and of its chief Allegory.

It would be easy to point out many instances, besides those I have mentioned, of the beauties in this Book; yet these few will give the reader a taste of that poetical spirit and genias for Allegory which every where shine in this Author. It would be endless to take notice of the more minute beauties of his epithets, his figures, and his similés, which occur in almost every page. I shall only mention one or two as a specimen. That image of Strength, in striking a club into the ground, which is illustrated by the following simile, is very great:

As when almightie love, in wrathfull mood,
To wreake the guilt of mortall sins is bent,
Hurles forth his thundring dart with deadly
food,

• Enrold in flames, and smouldring dreriment, Through riven cloudes and molten firmament; The fiers threeforked engin, making way,

Both loftie towres and highest trees hath rent, •And all that might his angry passage stay; And shooting in the earth, castes up a mount of clay.

His boystrous club, so buried in the grownd,

He could not rearen up againe, &s.

As also that of a giant's fall;

That downe he tombled; as an aged tree,
High growing on the top of rocky clift,

Whose hart-strings with keene steele nigh hewen

be;

"The mightie trunck halfe rent with ragged rift Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearfull drift.'

These are such passages as we may imagine our excellent Milton to have studied in this Author. And here, by the way, it is remarkable that as Spenser abounds with such thoughts as are truly sublime, so he is almost every where free from the mixture of little conceits, and that low affectation of wit which so much infected both our verse and prose afterwards, and from which scarce any writer of his own time, besides himself, was free.

I shall shorten my Remarks on the following Books; yet the beauties in them rise so thick, that I must not pass them by without mentioning some. The Second Legend is framed on the Virtue of Temperance, which gives the Author opportunity to lay out in description all the most luxurious images of pleasure, riches, and riot, which are opposed to it, and consequently makes it one of the most poetical Books of this whole Work. Sir Guyon is the hero, and the poet has given him Sobriety, in the habit of

a palmer, for his guide and counsellor; as Homer has supposed Minerva or Wisdom, in the shape of Mentor, to attend Telemachus in his travels, when he is seeking out his father Ulysses. That shining description of Belphebe, as a huntress, like Venus in Virgil, appearing to her son Æneas, is designed as a compliment on Queen Elizabeth,. and is therefore wrought up with the most finished beauty. Her speech in praise of that true glory which is only attained by labour and study, is not only extremely proper to the subject of this Book, but admirable, if we consider it as the sense of that Princess, and as a short character of so active and glorious a reign,

Abroad in armes, at home in studious kynd, Who seekes with painfull toile, shall Honor soonest fynd:

In woods, in waves, in warres, she wonts to dwell,
And will be found with perill and with paine;
Ne can the man, that moulds in ydle cell,
Unto her happy mansion attaine:

Before her gate High God did Sweate ordaine,
' And wakefull Watches, ever to abide :
But easy is the way and passage plaine
To Pleasure's pallace; it may soon be spide,
And day and night her dores to all stand open wide.'

Such passages as these kindle in the mind a generous emulation, and are an honour to the art of poetry, which ought always to recommend

worthy sentiments. The reader may see in Canto VI. character quite opposite to this, in that of Idleness, who draws Sir Guyon for a while from his guide, and lays him asleep in her island. Her song with which she charms him into a slumber,

Behold, O Man! that toilesome paines doest take, The flowrs, the fields, and all that pleasaunt growes, &c.'

is very artfully adapted to the occasion, and is a contrast to that speech of Belphehe I have just quoted.

The episode of Mammon, who in the palmer's absence leads Sir Guyon into his cave, and tempts him with a survey of his riches, very properly diversifies the entertainment in this Book, and gives occasion to a noble speech against riches, and the mischievous effects of them. I have, in the Discourse on Allegory, taken notice of the fiends and spectres which are placed in crowds at the entrance to this place. The Author supposes the House of Riches to lie almost contiguous to hell; and the guard he sets upon it expresses a very just moral:

• Before the dore sat selfe-consuming Care,
‹ Day and night keeping wary watch and 'ward.”

The light which is let into this place,

Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away;

• Or as the moone cloathed with clowdy night :'

-The smokiness of it, and the slaves of Mammon working at an hundred furnaces, are all described in the most lively manner; as their sudden Jooking at Sir Guyon is a circumstance very naturally represented. The walks, through which Mammon afterwards leads the Knight, are agreeably varied. The description of Ambition, and of the Garden of Proserpine, are good Allegories; and Sir Guyon's falling into a swoon on his coming into the open air gives occasion to a fine machine of the appearance of an heavenly spirit in the next Canto, by whose assistance he is restored to the Palmer.*

I cannot think the poet so successful in his description of the House of Temperance, in which the Allegory seems to be debased by a mixture of too many low images, as Diet, Concoction, Digestion, and the like, which are represented as persons : but the allegorical description of Memory, which follows soon after, is very good.

The IXth Canto, in which the author has made an abridgement of the old British history, is a very amusing digression, but might have been more artfully introduced. Homer or Virgil would not have suffered the action of the poem to stand still whilst the hero had been reading