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]