A very attractive element of his classicism is his worship of beauty. The Greek conception of beauty included two forms—the sensuous and the spiritual. So richly colored and voluptuous are his descriptions that he has been called the painters' poet, "the Rubens," and "the Raphael of the poets." As with Plato, Spenser's idea of the spiritually beautiful includes the true and the good. Sensuous beauty is seen in the forms of external nature, like the morning mist and sunshine, the rose gardens, the green elders, and the quiet streams. His ideal of perfect sensuous and spiritual beauty combined is found in womanhood. Such a one is Una, the dream of the poet's young manhood, and we recognize in her one whose soul is as fair as her face—an idealized type of a woman in real life who calls forth all our love and reverence.
3. INTERPRETATION OF THE ALLEGORY.—In the sixteenth century it was the opinion of Puritan England that every literary masterpiece should not only give entertainment, but should also teach some moral or spiritual lesson. "No one," says Mr. Patee, "after reading Spenser's letter to Raleigh, can wander far into Spenser's poem without the conviction that the author's central purpose was didactic, almost as much as was Bunyan's in Pilgrim's Progress." Milton doubtless had this feature of the Faerie Queene in mind when he wrote in Il Penseroso:—
"And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear."
That the allegory of the poem is closely connected with its aim and ethical tendency is evident from the statement of the author that "the generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline. Which for that I conceived should be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historical fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for varietie of matter then for profite of the ensample." The Faerie Queene is, therefore, according to the avowed purpose of its author, a poem of culture. Though it is one of the most highly artistic works in the language, it is at the same time one of the most didactic. "It professes," says Mr. Church, "to be a veiled exposition of moral philosophy."
The allegory is threefold,—moral, religious, and personal.