"Is this the Faith?" she said, and said no more;
But turn'd her face, and fled away for evermore.
In a romantic scene,[5] "the gentle squire" in banishment is wasted with
grief, so as not to be recognised by his friends; his lone companion is
a turtle-dove, a magical and sympathizing bird, who entices Belphoebe,
that Sovereign Chastity, to pursue its playful flight, till it leads her
to the cell of the miserable man from whom she had so long averted her
face, and Timias recovers her favour.
In this extended scene we are to view the condition of Rawleigh during
his disgrace; and the opening of the canto gives some countenance to the
particular application. The aptitude of a resemblance, however, may only
be a coincidence. The fatal error of our conjectural historian is that
of spinning at his allegory long after he is left without a thread. In
Amoret's calamitous adventure, "rapt by greedie Lust," Upton sees an
adumbration of the lady of Sir Walter _before_ her marriage; and in
another adventure, where another person, _Serena_, with "the gentle
squire," are both carried to a hermit's cell, to be healed of the wounds
inflicted by calumny and scandal, their condition _after_ marriage. Our
diviner, as further evidence of "the double sense," discovers how
remarkably appropriate was the name of Serena to the lady of Rawleigh.
In all these transmigrations of persons the enigmatical expounder
acknowledges that the typical incidents suddenly diverge from their
prototype. The parallels run crooked, and the fictions will not square
with the facts; and he desperately exclaims that "the poet has
designedly perplexed the story:" but he concludes with this hardy
assumption, "If the reader cannot see through these disguises, he will
see nothing but _the dead letter_." And what but "the dead letter," as
this hierophant of mystic senses asperses the free inventions of genius,
can now interest the readers of Spenser? For the honour of our poet we
protest against the dark and broken dreams hovering about a
commentator's desk. Who can credit that the courteous and courtly spirit
of Spenser would thus lay bare to the public eye the delicate history of
the lady of Sir Walter, even by a remote allusion? Yet this he does by
connecting her name with Amoret carried away by "greedie Lust," and with
Serena, who required to be healed of the wounds inflicted by scandal.
Can we conceive that the poet would have thus deliberately re-opened the
domestic wound, still tender, of his patron-friend, and distressed that
"serene" lady, in a poem to be read by them, to be conned by malicious
eyes, and to be consigned to posterity?
The readers of Upton's revelations may often be amused by his lettered
ingenuity reasoning with eager perversity. In Book II. Canto i. a
pathetic incident occurs in a forest, where we find a lady with her
infant on her bosom, and her knight extended in death beside her. Her
shriek is deadly as the blow she has given herself. Guyon the Knight of
Temperance flies to her succour; dying, she tells how "her liefest lord"
had been beguiled, "for he was flesh," by Acrasia, or sensual pleasure.
The lady had recovered him from the fell embraces of that sorceress,
who, in parting, seduces him to drink from a charmed cup her accursed
_wine_. On his return homewards with his lady he would quench his thirst
at a fountain, but
So soon as Bacchus with the Nymphe does lincke,
that is, the instant the pure water reaches his viny lips, he tastes,
and he dies!
The Knight of Temperance takes the infant from the bleeding bosom of the
mother to wash it in the fountain--but no water could cleanse its bloody
hand; hence it was to be called "Ruddimane:" it was "a sacred symbol in
the son's flesh, to tell of the mother's innocence." Upton had
discovered that the great Irish insurrectionist O'Neal, as Camden
records, "dwelt in all the pollutions of unchaste embraces, and had
several children by O'Donnel's wife."
The badge of the O'Neals was "a bloody hand." In the ecstasy of
divination he exclaims, "This lady with the bloody-handed babe is--the
wife of O'Neal!" The dying lady had told her sad tale, but never had she
hinted at the Irish origin. Her knight had fallen a victim to Acrasia; a
suitable incident in the legend of temperance--a result of that
"passion" at which the poet pointed, and described as one which
Robs Reason of her due regality.
And this simple incident is converted into the fate of the O'Neals,
presenting an image of the miseries of the Irish rebellion!
We pass by the contemporary portraits inscribed by our speculative
historian with real names. When fancy is busy, likenesses are often
found; a single feature is sometimes taken for a whole physiognomy.
Never surely did our conjecturer shoot wider of the mark than when he
discovered in the two burlesque characters of the poltroon Braggadochio
and his cheating squire Trompart, the Duke of Anjou and his envoy
Simier. These were eminent characters known in the court of Elizabeth.
To the French prince the Queen seemed partial, and once placed a ring on
his finger, too sanguinely accepted as a plight of betrothment; and
Simier was a discreet diplomatist, whom the Queen publicly commended for
his conduct. To have degraded such distinguished men by such vulgar
baseness would have been a discrepancy in the taste and decorum of our
courtly poet which Spenser never betrayed.[6]
In regard to Spenser, after all these allusions problematical for a
succeeding generation, the poet is no longer to be judged by the
darkness which has hidden small and fugitive matters. We cannot know the
degree which Spenser allowed himself in distant allusions to the court
of Elizabeth, or, as the poet himself vaguely said, to "Fairy-land;" he
may have promised far more than he would care to perform; for an epical
poet must have found the descent into a chronicler of scandalous
legends, a portrayer of so many nameless personages, incompatible with
the flow and elevation of his themes. And for what was never ascertained
in its own age we dare not confide to that mystical vaticinator of past
events, a conjectural historian!
Our interpreter of allegory was honest as well as hardy; in truth, he is
sometimes startled at the historical revelations which crowd on his
mind. It required "the hound's fine footing," to borrow the beautiful
figure of Spenser himself, for our conjecturer to course in this field
of allegory. With great candour he says, "Let us take care we do not
overrun our game, or start more game than we are able to catch." His
occasional dilemmas are amusing. He perplexed himself by a discovery
that Amoret, whom he had made the lady of Sir Walter Rawleigh, might
also have served for Mary Queen of Scots. In this critical crucifixion,
he cries in torture, "I will neither affirm nor deny that Amoret is the
type of Mary Queen of Scots!" But he had his ecstasies; for on another
occasion, having indulged a very extravagant fancy, he exclaims in
joyous rapture, "This may show how far types and symbols may be
carried!" Yet, with his accustomed candour, he lowers down. "If the
reader should think my arguments too flimsy, and extended beyond their
due limits, and should laugh
To see their thrids so thin as spiders frame,
And eke so short that seem'd their ends out shortly came,
let him consider the latitude of interpretation all types and symbolical
writings admit."[7] Truly that latitude has been too often abused on
graver subjects than "The Faery Queen;" but the honesty of our mystical
interpreter of double senses may plead for the extravagance of his
ingenuity whenever he needs our indulgence.
Enough on this curious subject of allegory--this child of darkness among
the luminous progeny of fancy. We have shown its changeable nature, and
how frequently it fails in unity and clearness; we have demonstrated
that "the double sense"--this system of types and symbols--has served as
an imposture, since allegories have been deduced from works which were
not allegorical, and forced interpretations of an ambiguous sense have
led to fallacies which have fatally been introduced into history, into
politics, and into theology.