XLVII.

"Is not he just, that all this doth behold From highest heven, and beares an equall eie ? Shall he thy sins up in his knowledge fold, And guilty be of thine impietie?

Is not his lawe, Let every sinner die;

Die shall all flesh? What then must needs be donne, Is it not better to doe willinglie,

Then linger till the glas be all out ronne?

Death is the end of woes: die soone, O faeries sonne!"

From Una, when the Red Cross Knight is yielding to the sense of his unworthiness, come the saving words that enable her knight to live and persevere, and arm himself for victory in the last battle with the Dragon:

"In heavenly Mercies hast thou not a part?

Why should'st thou then despair that chosen art?
Where Justice grows, there grows eke greater Grace."

When, in the next canto, the tenth, the Red Cross Knight is brought into the House of Holiness, and there is an allegorical picture of man's body as the home of pure religion, the prelude to this in the opening stanza still lays emphasis on a final victory that can be attained only by aid of the Grace of God.

What man is he that boasts of fleshly might
And vain assurance of mortality,

Which all so soon as it doth come to fight
Against spiritual foes, yields by and by,
Or from the field most cowardly doth fly?
Ne let the man ascribe it to his skill
That thorough Grace hath gainéd victory.
If any strength we have, it is to ill:

But all the good is God's, both power and eke will.

After full preparation in the House of Holiness, there comes, in the eleventh canto, the crowning adventure the fight with the Dragon, as the Book of Revelation terms him, "the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil." The Christian warrior becomes then, in the last canto, the bridegroom of Truth, Duessa forbidding the banns, in a paper signed "Fidessa," brought by a messenger, who is Archimago, and who is discovered and bound hand and foot with iron chains. When the holy knots were tied that joined Truth finally to the Red Cross Knight,

and the Red Cross Knight, through occasional appearances in other parts of the poem, had next to find his way into the unwritten twelfth book, where the several knights were to meet at the Court of Gloriana, and all powers of endeavour heavenward for the Glory of God were to be blended in one harmony at the close.

In the Second Book of the "Faerie Queene " Archimago had escaped from his bands, and was The Red Cross again abroad laying his snares. Knight was not again to be deceived.

[CANTO I.]

V.

Nath'lesse th' Enchaunter would not spare his

payne,

In hope to win occasion to his will;
Which when he long awaited had in vayne,
He chaungd his mynd from one to other ill;
For to all good he enimy was still.
Upon the way him fortunéd to meete,
Fayre marching underneath a shady hill,
A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
That from his head no place appeared to his feete.

VI.

His carriage was full comely and upright; His countenance demure and temperate; But yett so sterne and terrible in sight, That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate He was an Elfin borne of noble state And mickle worship in his native land; Well could he tourney, and in lists debate, And knighthood tooke of good Sir Huons hand, When with king Oberon he came to Faery land.

VII.

Him als accompanyd upon the way A comely Palmer, clad in black attyre, Of rypest yeares, and heares all hoarie gray, That with a staffe his feeble steps did stire, Least his long way his aged limbes should tire: And, if by lookes one may the mind aread, He seemd to be a sage and sober syre; And ever with slow pace the knight did lead, Who taught his trampling steed with equall steps to tread.

In making Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, one who had been knighted by Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Spenser applied typically the romance story of Sir Huon and Rezia, who, aided by Oberon, were the only lovers pure enough to bear every trial. The black Palmer has in this Book the place given to Una in the legend of the Red Cross Knight. He is the quality idealised from which the knight is parted only when he is astray. Archimago, in feigned shape of a poor man, who quaked in every limb, stopped Sir Guyon's steed, with a false accusation of wrong done by a knight who bore a Red Cross on his shield. Sir Guyon could not readily believe ill of that fellow-adventurer,

"A right good knight, and true of word iwis:
I present was, and can it witness well,
When arms he swore, and straight did enterpris
Th' adventure of the Errant Damozel,

In which he hath great glory won, as I hear tell."

Duessa, who professed herself the injured virgin, had been found in the wilderness by Archimago despoiled of her proud ornaments and borrowed beauty. Arthur had stripped her of those, but Archimago had re-clothed her, and craftily devised himself to be her squire. But when Archimago had brought Guyon to the knight whom he accused, the

SAINT GEORGE.

From a Bas-relief on Henry VII.th's Tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Knight of Temperance had power to restrain himself when in the act of running, spear in rest, and came to a fair understanding with his friend. The aged Palmer, Guyon's companion, exalted the achievement of Saint George;

"But wretched we, where ye have left your mark
Must now anew begin like race to run."

And the Red Cross Knight answered,

"His be the praise that this achievement wrought,
Who made my hand the organ of His might;
More than goodwill to me attribute nought,
For all I did, I did but as I ought."

To Sir Guyon, whose pageant was next to ensue, he wished success according to his thought; and so they parted with goodwill from each to each. This

opening serves as transition from the First Book to the Second, of which the special allegory now begins to be developed.

Then Guyon forward gan his voyage make
With his black Palmer that him guided still;
Still he him guided over dale and hill,
And with his steady staff did point his way:
His race with reason and with words his will
From foul Intemperance he oft did stay,
And suffered not in wrath his hasty steps to stray.

As they passed by a forest-side they heard a dying woman's voice in lament over a babe that had been witness of his father's fall. Sir Guyon, dismounting, pressed into the thicket, and found the woman with a dagger in her bosom, bleeding by a fountain; a babe in her lap played with his little hands in her blood, beside them both lay the dead body of a knight, and blood sprinkled his armour. Guyon removed the dagger, stayed the bleeding, and learned from the wretched mother before she died that the knight who lay on the grass lifeless was the good Sir Mordant

"Was,-aye the while, that he is not so now!-
My lord, my love; my dear lord, my dear love!"

When she was about to be a mother he had left her to ride forth, as custom was, in search of adventures. He had come into the bower of Acrasia

"Acrasia, a false enchanteress

That many errant knights hath foul fordone;
Within a wandering island, that doth run
And stray in perilous gulf, her dwelling is.
Fair sir, if ever there ye travel, shun

The cursed land where many wend amiss,

And know it by the name; it hight the Bower of Bliss."

Now Acrasia has in this Book the place taken by the Dragon in the legend of the Red Cross Knight. She is named from a Greek word (anpaoía) meaning want of power or command over oneself, incontinence, and is the evil opposite to the virtue represented by Sir Guyon. The adventure upon which the Knight of Temperance is bound is to find Acrasia, bind her, and destroy her Bower of Bliss. This opening adventure shows her work among the men who yield to her enchantments. "Her bliss," says the dying mother, whose name is Amavia—

"Her bliss is all in pleasure and delight,
Wherewith she makes her lovers drunken mad;
And then, with words and weeds of wondrous might,
On them she works her will to uses bad.

My liefest lord she thus beguiléd had;
For he was flesh; all flesh doth frailty breed;
Whom when I heard to ben so ill bestad,
Weak wretch, I wrapt myself in palmer's weed,
And cast to seek him forth through danger and great
dreed."

On her way through the woods her child was born. She found her husband lost in sensual delight, by wisdom recovered him to better will, and drew him.

away from Acrasia, who gave him at parting a cup charmed with these verses :

"Sad Verse, give Death to him that Death does give, And loss of love to her that loves to live,

So soon as Bacchus with the Nymph does link.”

So they departed, but the charm was fulfilled, and Mordant died, when he stooped to drink of this well. Amavia, who had stabbed herself, died in passion of grief as she was ending her tale, and Sir Guyon saw feebleness of nature clothed in flesh when Passion has robbed Reason of her sway:

"The strong it weakens with infirmity,

And with bold fury arms the weakest heart;

The strong through pleasure soonest falls, the weak through smart."

Then Sir Guyon and the Palmer buried these victims of intemperance, the strong through pleasure and the weak through pain; and Guyon cut with the dead knight's sword a lock from the hair of each, mixed it with blood and earth, and cast it in the grave with a devout oath that he would not forbear due vengeance on Acrasia.

So ends the first canto of the story of the Knight of Temperance. In the second canto we read first how Sir Guyon took the child in his arms, with heartfelt pity:

"Ah, luckless babe, born under cruel star,
And in dead parents' baleful ashes bred,
Full little weenest thou what sorrows are
Left thee for portion of thy livelihed!
Poor orphan, in the wide world scattered
As budding branch rent from the parent tree,
And throwen forth till it be witheréd:
Such is the state of men; thus enter we
Into this life with woe, and end with misery."

He knelt to wash the blood from the child's limbs"so love does loathe disdainful nicéty;" a line parallel to another of Spenser's, "Entire affection hateth nicer hands"-but all his washing was in vain; the stains remained. The Palmer tells him that this fountain had been a nymph who, when pursued by Faunus, prayed to Diana that she might die a maid. The goddess heard, and changed her to a stone welling out streams of tears.

"And yet her virtues in her water bide,
For it is chaste and pure as purest snow,
Ne lets her waves with any filth be dyed,
But ever, like herself, unstainéd hath been tried."

Let the blood stay then on the babe's hands,

"That as a sacred symbol it may dwell In her son's flesh, to mind revengément,

And be for all chaste dames an endless monument."

Of all thralls to evil the victims of Acrasia are those in whom sins of the fathers most cruelly taint

the children's lives. They left the fountain, the Palmer carrying the babe, Sir Guyon its father's armour, but when they came to the place where Guyon had left his horse, it was not there. We learn afterwards how it had been stolen by Braggadochio. On foot, therefore, the Knight and his black Palmer proceeded with their burdens till they came to a strong castle built on a rock, wherein there dwelt three sisters. Medina, the second sister, far excelled the other two, for she represented the golden mean between sisters

who

both did at their second sister grutch

And inly grieve, as doth an hidden moth

The inner garment fret, not the outer touch;
One thought her cheer too little, one too much.

Elissa, the elder sister, froward and always full of
discontent (name from the Greek xoow, to turn
about in one's mind), had Sir Hudibras for lover,
an hardy man,

Yet not so good of deeds as great of name,
Which he by many rash adventures wan,
Since errant arms to sew he first began.
More huge in strength than wise in works he was,
And reason with foolhardise overran ;

Stern melancholy did his courage pass,

And was, for terror more, all armed in shining brass.

The younger sister of Medina was Perissa (name from the Greek Tepioσós, above measure, more than enough), and she was suited in a lover with Sansloy. The lovers of Elissa and Perissa were at feud. Both sallied out against the stranger knight, but before they reached him were at blows together. The Knight of Temperance sought vainly to pacify them. While they beat at him fiercely, Medina came to part them, and exhorted them to peace with gracious words that did restrain their rancour. She made them all her guests, and after her fairly attempered feast called on Sir Guyon to tell upon what adventure he was bound. He told how he had been enrolled by Gloriana, that great Queen, in the Order of Maidenhead; how that old Palmer had come to Gloriana's yearly feast, and sought redress against the mischiefs of a wicked fay, the same of whom he also told how she had wrought the deaths of Mordant and Amavia.

The third canto tells briefly how Sir Guyon left in charge of Medina the babe, whom he called Ruddymane, a name that should hereafter remind him of the vengeance due on those who had wrought his parents' death. The Knight of Temperance proceeded on foot with measured pace, and the canto tells how he lost the horse that he does not recover till we come to the third canto of Book the Fifth. Throughout the whole legend of Temperance its knight is on foot. His horse and spear have been purloined by Braggadochio,

One that to bounty never cast his mind,
Ne thought of honour ever did assay
His baser breast, but in his kestrel kind
A pleasing vein of glory he did find.

1 Sew, French "suivre," follow.

Braggadochio will often reappear in the poem as type of the baseness underlying the endeavour to seem that which we cannot be. Provided thus with lance

and steed, Braggadochio with threat of arms and a big thundering voice subdued a wretched idler by the wayside, Trompart, who willingly became his thrall, and serving him as his squire soon found his folly, flattered him and aided him with "cunning sleights and practick knavery." This well-consorted pair was met by Archimago, who now desired ill to Guyon,

And coming close to Trompart gan inquere
Of him, what mighty warrior that mote be
That rode in golden sell1 with single spear,
But wanted sword to wreak his enmity.
"He is a great adventurer," said he,

That hath his sword through hard assay foregone,
And now hath vowed, till he avengéd be

Of that despite, never to wearen none;

That spear is him enough to doen a thousand groan."

Archimago, glad to meet so doughty a hero, complained to him of wrongs done by Sir Guyon and the Red Cross Knight. Braggadochio breathed vengeance and, with extravagant boast of his own prowess, eagerness for the fray. Archimago urged need of a sword against such antagonists as these. Braggadochio said he had sworn once, when he killed seven knights with one sword, never to wear sword again unless it were that of the noblest knight on earth. "I will get you that," said Archimago, "for now the best and noblest knight alive Prince Arthur is, and by to-morrow you shall have his sword by your side." With these words Archimago vanished, flying on the wings of the north wind spread at his command. Braggadochio and Trompart, nearly dead with fright, "both fled at once, ne ever back returnéd eye."

Flying in fear through a green forest, Braggadochio and Trompart heard the sound of a shrill horn, at which the feigned knight fell from his horse and crept into a bush, but Trompart stayed to see who came. It was a goodly huntress, glorious in beauty, with a boar-spear in her hand. At sight of her, who seemed a goddess, Trompart was dismayed. She asked the course of a hart wounded by her arrow. When Trompart began an answer she saw a stir in the bush that concealed Braggadochio, and advanced her spear in mind to mark the beast, but Trompart intervened, and with that, Braggadochio

crawled out of his nest,

Forth creeping on his caitiff hands and thighs,
And standing stoutly up, his lofty crest

Did fiercely shake and rouse, as coming late from rest.

Charmed with her beauty, Braggadochio advanced himself, and wondered at so fair a lady in the woods. "The Wood is fit for beasts, the Court is fit for thee."

XL.

"Whoso in pomp of proud estate," quoth she, "Does swim, and bathes himself in courtly bliss,

1 Sell, saddle.

The madman is Furor, and the hag, his mother Occasion, stirring him to strife. Attacked by Furor, the Knight of Temperance replies with blow for blow, but is taught by the Palmer that he is not so to be subdued. To tame the frantic son he must begin with the mother, bind and withdraw Occasion. Her Guyon seized then by the forelock, fastened a lock upon her tongue, and bound her hands. Then Furor fled, and he also was fettered by the force of Temperance. Then Guyon turned to the youth whom Furor was misusing. It was Phedon, to whom a false friend Philemon had traduced fair Claribel, his chosen bride, and shown false evidence of her unworthiness. In fury he had first slain his innocent, and then finding how he had been deceived, had poisoned his false friend. Then following in wrath his friend's accomplice, he had become Furor's prey. The Palmer was counselling Phedon against unbridled passion, when there ran to them a varlet with two sharp darts in his hand and a brazen shield,

On which was drawen fair, in colours fit,
A flaming fire in midst of bloody field,

And round about the wreath these words were writ,
Burnt I do burn.

This was Atin-Strife-who bade Guyon fly the place, for Pyrochles was on his way thither, against whom no enemy could stand unhurt; Pyrochles, brother of Cymochles, descended from Erebus and Night, delights only in blood and spoil. "His am I, Atin, his in wrong and right.' Atin has been sent before by Pyrochles "to seek Occasion, wheresoe'er she be."

XLIV.

"Madman," said then the Palmer, "that does seek Occasion to wrath and cause of strife; She comes unsought, and shunnéd follows eke. Happy, who can abstain when rancour rife Kindles revenge, and threats his rusty knife:

Woe never wants, where every cause is caught, And rash Occasion makes unquiet life.” "Then lo, where bound she sits whom thou hast

sought,"

Said Guyon; "let that message to thy lord be brought."

Then Atin, who reviled the knight for using his strength upon weak old women, threw at the breast of Guyon one of his darts "headed with ire and vengeable despite; " but Guyon was wary, and it rebounded harmless from his shield.

In the fifth canto Pyrochles-whose name for fitful wrath is taken from the Greek word for fire, as that of his brother Cymochles is taken from the waves-rushed upon Guyon, who fought with him till he caused him to stoop, and then, "tempering the passion with advisement slow," restrained his hand and gave life to his enemy upon condition of allegiance to him who gave it. Pyrochles wondered at his bounty, and was generously told that never was a conqueror but sometimes had the worse.

"Loss is no shame, nor to be less than foe;
But to be lesser than himself doth mar
Both losers' lot, and victor's praise also:

Vain other's overthrows whose self doth overthrow."

Pyrochles urged that Occasion ought to be set free. Sir Guyon yielded her to him. Then Pyrochles began to break the bands of Occasion and Furor her son, and the hag straight defied both knights,

The one, said she

Because he won; the other because he
Was won so matter did she make of nought
To stir up strife, and do them disagree.

Furor was soon urged by her to attack Pyrochles, his deliverer, and drag him through the mire until he called the Knight of Temperance to be his helper. Guyon obeyed; but Atin, thinking his master slain, hurried to tell Cymochles of his fall. The dearest dame of Cymochles was Acrasia in her Bower of Bliss. There Atin found him sojourning, and drew him thence to be avenged

On him that did Pyrochles dear dismay.
So proudly pricketh on his courser strong,

And Atin ay him pricks with spurs of shame and wrong.

So ends the fifth canto, and the sixth changes for a time the form of the intemperance that is in all forms to be overcome.

[CANTO VI.]

I.

A harder lesson to learne Continence In joyous pleasure then in grievous paine; For sweetnesse doth allure the weaker sence So strongly, that uneathes it can refraine From that which feeble nature covets faine : But griefe and wrath, that be her enemies And foes of life, she better can abstaine: Yet vertue vauntes in both her victories, And Guyon in them all shewes goodly maysteries.