And if this was his design, I will venture to say that both his expedients were injudicious. Their purpose was, to ally two things, in nature incompatible, the Gothic, and the classic unity; the effect of which misalliance was to discover and expose the nakedness of the Gothic.
I am of opinion then, considering the Fairy Queen as an epic or narrative poem constructed on Gothic ideas, that the poet had done well to affect no other unity than that of design, by which his subject was connected. But his poem is not simply narrative; it is throughout allegorical: he calls it a perpetual allegory or dark conceit: and this character, for reasons I may have occasion to observe hereafter, was even predominant in the Fairy Queen. His narration is subservient to his moral, and but serves to colour it. This he tells us himself at setting out,
Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize my song;
that is, shall serve for a vehicle, or instrument to convey the moral.
Now under this idea, the Unity of the Fairy Queen is more apparent. His twelve knights are to exemplify as many virtues, out of which one illustrious character is to be composed. And in this view the part of Prince Arthur in each book becomes essential, and yet not principal; exactly, as the poet has contrived it. They who rest in the literal story, that is, who criticize it on the footing of a narrative poem, have constantly objected to this management. They say, it necessarily breaks the unity of design. Prince Arthur, they affirm, should either have had no part in the other adventures, or he should have had the chief part. He should either have done nothing, or more. This objection I find insisted upon by Spenser’s best critic[49]; and, I think, the objection is unanswerable; at least, I know of nothing that can be said to remove it, but what I have supposed above might be the purpose of the poet, and which I myself have rejected as insufficient.
But how faulty soever this conduct be in the literal story, it is perfectly right in the moral: and that for an obvious reason, though his critics seem not to have been aware of it. His chief hero was not to have the twelve virtues in the degree in which the knights had, each of them, their own (such a character would be a monster;) but he was to have so much of each as was requisite to form his superior character. Each virtue, in its perfection, is exemplified in its own knight; they are all, in a due degree, concentrated in Prince Arthur.
This was the poet’s moral: and what way of expressing this moral in the history, but by making Prince Arthur appear in each adventure, and in a manner subordinate to its proper hero? Thus, though inferior to each in his own specific virtue, he is superior to all by uniting the whole circle of their virtues in himself: and thus he arrives, at length, at the possession of that bright form of Glory, whose ravishing beauty, as seen in a dream or vision, had led him out into these miraculous adventures in the land of Fairy.
The conclusion is, that, as an allegorical poem, the method of the Fairy Queen is governed by the justness of the moral: as a narrative poem, it is conducted on the ideas and usages of Chivalry. In either view, if taken by itself, the plan is defensible. But from the union of the two designs there arises a perplexity and confusion, which is the proper, and only considerable, defect of this extraordinary poem.
LETTER IX.
No doubt, Spenser might have taken one single adventure, of the Twelve, for the subject of his Poem; or he might have given the principal part in every adventure to Prince Arthur. By this means his fable had been of the classic kind, and its unity as strict as that of Homer and Virgil.