The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, tho' it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem in the remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not have been perfect because the model was not true. But prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design. For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanza, are faults both of the second magnitude; for notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice, and for the last he is more to be admired, that labouring under such disadvantages, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he has professedly imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Waller among the English." Mr. Hughes in his essay on allegorical poetry prefixed to Spenser's works, tells us, that this poem is conceived, wrought up, and coloured with stronger fancy, and discovers more the particular genius of Spenser, than any of his other writings; and having observed that Spenser in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh calls it, a continued allegory, or dark conceit, he gives us some remarks on allegorical poetry in general, defining allegory to be a fable or story, in which, under imaginary persons or things, is shadowed some real action or instructive moral, or as I think, says he, it is somewhere very shortly defined by. Plutarch; it is that, in which one thing is, related, and another thing understood; it is a kind of poetical picture, or hieroglyphick, which by its apt resemblance, conveys instruction to the mind, by an analogy to the senses, and so amuses the fancy while it informs the understanding. Every allegory has therefore two senses, the literal and mystical, the literal sense is like a dream or vision, of which the mystical sense is the true meaning, or interpretation. This will be more clearly apprehended by considering, that as a simile is a more extended metaphor, so an allegory is a kind of continued simile, or an assemblage of similitudes drawn out at full length.