It would perhaps be an injury to Spenser to dismiss his Life without a few remarks on that great work of his which has placed him among the foremost of our poets, and discovered so elevated and sublime a genius.  The work I mean is his allegorical poem of the Fairy Queen.

Sir William Temple in his essay on poetry, says, “that the religion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of christianity a place also in their poems; but the true religion was not found to become fictitious so well as the false one had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed, rather to debase religion than heighten poetry.  Spenser endeavoured to supply this with morality, and to make instruction, instead of story the subject of an epic poem.  His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very noble and high.  But his design was poor; and his moral lay so bare, that it lost the effect.  It is true, the pill was gilded, but so thin that the colour and the taste were easily discovered.—­Mr. Rymer asserts, that Spenser may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets.  He had a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for heroic poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil, but our misfortune is, he wanted a true idea, and lost himself by following an unfaithful guide.  Tho’ besides Homer and Virgil he had read Tasso, yet he rather suffered himself to be misled by Ariosto, with whom blindly rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of probability; all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity, or without any foundation in truth; in a word his poem is perfect Fairy-Land.  Thus far Sir William Temple, and Mr. Rymer; let us now attend to the opinion of a greater name.  Mr. Dryden in his dedication of Juvenal, thus proceeds:  The English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton in heroic poetry, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are liable to many censures; for there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without subordination or preference:  Every one is valiant in his own legend; only we must do him the justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress.  The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, tho’ it turned not much to his account.  Had he lived to finish his poem in the remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not have been perfect because the model was not true.