However, this great revolution in modern taste was brought about by degrees; and the steps, that led to it, may be worth the tracing in a distinct Letter.
LETTER XII.
The wonders of Chivalry were still in the memory of men, were still existing, in some measure, in real life, when Chaucer undertook to expose the barbarous relaters of them.
This ridicule, we may suppose, hastened the fall both of Chivalry and Romance. At least from that time the spirit of both declined very fast, and at length fell into such discredit, that when now Spenser arose, and with a genius singularly fitted to immortalize the land of Fairy, he met with every difficulty and disadvantage to obstruct his design.
The age would no longer bear the naked letter of these amusing stories; and the poet was so sensible of the misfortune, that we find him apologizing for it on a hundred occasions.
But apologies, in such circumstances, rarely do any good. Perhaps, they only served to betray the weakness of the poet’s cause, and to confirm the prejudices of his reader.
However, he did more than this. He gave an air of mystery to his subject, and pretended that his stories of knights and giants were but the cover to abundance of profound wisdom.
In short, to keep off the eyes of the prophane from prying too nearly into his subject, he threw about it the mist of allegory: he moralized his song: and the virtues and vices lay hid under his warriors and enchanters. A contrivance which he had learned indeed from his Italian masters: for Tasso had condescended to allegorise his own work; and the commentators of Ariosto had even converted the extravagances of the Orlando Furioso, into moral lessons.
And this, it must be owned, was a sober attempt in comparison of some projects that were made about the same time to serve the cause of the old, and now-expiring Romances. For it is to be observed, that the idolizers of those Romances did by them, what the votaries of Homer had done by him. As the times improved and would less bear his strange tales, they moralized what they could, and turned the rest into mysteries of natural science. And as this last contrivance was principally designed to cover the monstrous stories of the Pagan Gods, so it served the lovers of Romance to palliate the no less monstrous stories of magic enchantments.
The editor or translator of the 24th book of Amadis de Gaule, printed at Lyons in 1577, has a preface explaining the whole secret, which concludes with these words, “Voyla, lecteur, le FRUIT, qui se peut recueiller du sens mystique des Romans antiques par les ESPRITS ESLEUS, le commun peuple soy contentant de la SIMPLE FLEUR DE LA LECTURE LITERALE.”