Yet all this is little. However much mythology and chivalry can supply, they do not suffice for the needs of this poetical fancy. Spenser's characteristic is the vastness and overflow of his picturesque invention. Like Rubens, whatever he creates is beyond the region of all traditions, but complete in all parts, and expresses distinct ideas. As with Rubens, his allegory swells its proportions beyond all rule, and withdraws fancy from all law, except in so far as it is necessary to harmonize forms and colors. For, if ordinary minds receive from allegory a certain weight which oppresses them, lofty imaginations receive from it wings which carry them aloft. Freed by it from the common conditions of life, they can dare all things, beyond imitation, apart from probability, with no other guides but their inborn energy and their shadowy instincts. For three days Sir Guyon is led by the cursed spirit, the tempter Mammon, in the subterranean realm, across wonderful gardens, trees laden with golden fruits, glittering palaces, and a confusion of all worldly treasures. They have descended into the bowels of the earth, and pass through caverns, unknown abysses, silent depths. "An ugly Feend... with monstrous stalke behind him stept," without Guyon's knowledge, ready to devour him on the least show of covetousness. The brilliancy of the gold lights up hideous figures, and the beaming metal shines with a beauty more seductive in the gloom of the infernal prison. "That Houses forme within was rude and strong, Lyke an huge cave hewne out of rocky clifte, From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches hong Embost with massy gold of glorious guifte, And with rich metall loaded every rifte, That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt; And over them Arachne high did lifte Her cunning web, and spred her subtile nett, Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more black than iett. "Both roofe, and floore, and walls, were all of gold, But overgrowne with dust and old decay, And hid in darknes, that none could behold The hew thereof; for vew of cheerfull day Did never in that House itselfe display, But a faint shadow of uncertein light; Such as a lamp; whose life does fade away; Or as the moone, cloathed with dowdy night, Does show to him that walkes in feare and sad affright. "In all that rowme was nothing to be seene But huge great yron chests and coffers strong, All bard with double bends, that none could weene Them to enforce by violence or wrong; On every side they placed were along. But all the grownd with sculs was scattered And dead mens bones, which round about were flong; Whose lives, it seemed, whilome there were shed, And their vile carcases now left unburied....