But prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design.  For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanza, are faults both of the second magnitude; for notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice, and for the last he is more to be admired, that labouring under such disadvantages, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he has professedly imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Waller among the English.”

Mr. Hughes in his essay on allegorical poetry prefixed to Spenser’s works, tells us, that this poem is conceived, wrought up, and coloured with stronger fancy, and discovers more the particular genius of Spenser, than any of his other writings; and having observed that Spenser in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh calls it, a continued allegory, or dark conceit, he gives us some remarks on allegorical poetry in general, defining allegory to be a fable or story, in which, under imaginary persons or things, is shadowed some real action or instructive moral, or as I think, says he, it is somewhere very shortly defined by.  Plutarch; it is that, in which one thing is, related, and another thing understood; it is a kind of poetical picture, or hieroglyphick, which by its apt resemblance, conveys instruction to the mind, by an analogy to the senses, and so amuses the fancy while it informs the understanding.  Every allegory has therefore two senses, the literal and mystical, the literal sense is like a dream or vision, of which the mystical sense is the true meaning, or interpretation.  This will be more clearly apprehended by considering, that as a simile is a more extended metaphor, so an allegory is a kind of continued simile, or an assemblage of similitudes drawn out at full length.

The chief merit of this poem, no doubt, consists in that surprising vein of fabulous invention, which runs through it, and enriches it every where with imagery and descriptions, more than we meet with in any other modern poem.  The author seems to be possessed of a kind of poetical magic, and the figures he calls up to our view rise so thick upon us, that we are at once pleased and distracted with the exhaustless variety of them; so that his faults may in a manner be imputed to his excellencies.  His abundance betrays him into excess, and his judgment is over-born by the torrent of his imagination.  That which seems the most liable to exception in this work is the model of it, and the choice the author has made of so romantic a story.  The several books rather appear like so many several poems, than one entire fable.  Each of them has its peculiar knight, and is independent of the rest; and tho’ some of the persons make their appearance in different books, yet this has very little effect in concealing them.  Prince Arthur is indeed the principal person, and has