In a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Spenser sets forth the general design of the ‘Faery Queene,’ and settles the scheme of the whole twelve books. But the following passage proves that he contemplated twelve more. “I labour to pourtraict in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve Moral Vertues, as Aristotle devised, the which is the purport of these first twelve books: which if I find to be well accepted, I may perhaps be encouraged to frame the other part of Politic Vertues in his person, after that he came to be king.” He also says, “In the person of Prince Arthur I set forth Magnificence in particular.” By magnificence Dryden understands him to mean magnanimity, in succouring the representatives of the particular moral virtues when in distress, and considers his interposition in each legend as the only bond of uniformity in a design, which in all other respects insulates his allegorical heroes, without subordination or preference. This plan gave him much opportunity of drawing flattering portraits of individual courtiers, though few of the likenesses have been recognized, and the originals seem to have shown but little gratitude for the compliment. It is generally allowed that Prince Arthur was meant for Sir Philip Sidney, who was the poet’s chief patron. The prevailing beauty of this great poem consists in its vein of fabulous invention, set off by a power of description and force of imagination, so various and inexhaustible, that the reader is too much pleased and distracted to be sensible of the faults into which his judgment is betrayed by occasional excess. It is remarked by Sir William Temple, in his ‘Essay on Poetry,’ that “the religion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of Christianity a place in their poems; but the true religion was not found to become fictions so well as the false one had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed rather to debase religion than heighten poetry.” Critics in general, and common sense itself, have confirmed Temple’s remark as to the hazard, which it required such a mind as Milton’s successfully to face, of giving a poetical colouring to the solemn truths of religion. To a feeling of this difficulty we probably owe the peculiarity of Spenser’s epic, if so it may be called. In other epics, instruction is subordinate to story, and conveyed through it; in the ‘Faery Queene,’ morality is the avowed object, to be illustrated by the actions of such shadowy personages, that but a thin veil is thrown over the bare design. Whatever may be thought of allegorical poetry as a system, the execution in this instance is excellent, the flights of fancy brilliant, and often sublime. Rymer finds fault with Spenser for having suffered himself to be “misled by Ariosto;” and says that “his poem is perfect Fairyland.”