Had spent his lampe, and brought forth dawning light; The dwarfe him brought his steed: so both away do fly." "So both away do fly!" No last look at Una! She is utterly vile. He thinks not of reproaching, for giving, or killing her; but flies away from Truth. The false flies-the forged true-seeming Lies-and the diverse dreams-so serviceable, have returned to "deep darkness dredd," and the house of Morpheus. Is Archimago in his cell? We know not. "God The Red-Cross does not say "Now when the rosy-fingered Morning faire, Had spread her purple robe through dewy aire? "And after him she rode with so much speede, In this desertion the Allegory itself is affecting; but without heeding the Allegory, it wounds us as if it were a desertion in the world of our human heart. And the more because of the delusion, to which that noble spirit became a sacrifice, having been such as could hardly have failed, we feel, to succeed against ourselves or man born of woman. But think of it all in its double sense, and it will be found perfect. For Hell itself could not have prevailed against Truth, if the RedCross had made greater advances towards Holiness-and understood the character of Truth, as well as he loved it. There were certain circumstances that, even at the worst, might and should have aroused sus picion that he was played upon by evil spirits. The Semblance told a lie when she said, "Your own dear sake forst me at first to leave My father's kingdom," for he first saw Una's face in the Faery court. Now one lie is as good as a thousand; and a lie like this, had he not been losing his understanding, would have convicted the false Una. We believe, however, that Spenser, throughout this part of the temptation, meant to shadow forth the mystery of the visitations we are involuntarily subject to in been seen to be but painted air, and within them nothing. Fartherthough it is not easy to disbelieve one's own eyes-it ought to be as difficult to disbelieve one's own soul and if he believed that Una was false, he ought to have that instant disbelieved God. Then-who was that Squire? And how had he come so opportunely and so noiselessly to those out-of-the-world cells? Had the Red-Cross looked for him at dawn he would have found him not-but seen Una sleeping as sound and as innocent as a child. Had he even in rage-collared old Archimago-he would have frightened the hypocrite into a fit-perhaps of absence for we shall see by and by that even a Sarazin overthrew him, and laughed to see the bald pate, fitter for a cowl than a helmet, as be stripped him of his lying arms. The hermitage itself would have shrunk into a pile of sand, less than that in an hour-glass. "The guilefull false enchanter parts The Red-Crosse knight from Truth: Into whose stead faire Falshood steps, And workes him woefull ruth." Una, falls into the toils of Duessa. Saint George having forsaken "Still flying from his thoughts and jealous feare: Will was his guide, and griefe led him astray," " all when he chanced to meet, armed to point," a huge Sarazin, on whose shield was writ Sans Foy. The Faithless was not without his leman. the world of dreams as the humane Banquo's sleep was haunted by inhuman thoughts that would not be driven off-the night that Duncan was murdered by Macbeth. If the Red-Cross was really awake, then he was not blameless in not leaping." Hee had a faire companion of his way, up at that lie, and showing Madam A goodly lady clad in scarlot red, the door. Had he done so, white Purfled with gold and pearle of rich wimple and black stole would have assay, And like a Persian mitre on her hed Shee wore, with crowns and owches garnished, The which her lavish lovers to her gave: Her wanton palfrey all was overspread With tinsel trappings, woven like a wave, Whose bridle rung with golden bells and bosses brave. With fair disport and courting dalliaunce She entertainde her lover all the way; But when she saw the knight his speare advaunce She soone left off her mirth and wanton play, And bad her knight addresse him to the fray; His foe was nigh at hand." "Faire lady! heart of flint would rew The undeserved woes and sorrowes which ye shew. Henceforth in safe assurance may ye rest, Having both found a new friend you to aid, And lost an old foe that did you molest: Better new friend than an old foe is said: With chaunge of chear, the seeming-simple maid Let fall her eien, as shamefast, to the earth And yielding soft, in that she nought gainsaid. So forth they rode, he feining seemly merth, And she coy lookes: so dainty, they say, maketh dearth.". How unlike his own lady-love whom he has forsaken, she with whom he now rides away to shame and loss of honour and captivity! Gorgeously apparelled in her scarlet robes, and with jewelled mitre on her head, can she be compared with Una in her white wimple and sable stole, with not so much as one single pearl in her hair? They are both royally born, but Una's parents were king and queen of Eden, Duessa is the sole daughter of the Emperour of Rome. And who was he? The Infallible, before whom kings and princes bowed and were fain to kiss his feet. The crowns and owches that garnished her Persian mitre, and which her lavish lovers gave, came from the Roman emperors and the Gothic kings who had been her devotees and her slaves. But Una had never received any such love-gifts or tokens as these; she had but one lover, and he had forsaken her, and left her all by herself-without even her dwarf" wandering in woods and forests." The scarlet lady sat proud She then goes on, with many tears, to tell that the body of her betrothed had been hidden in some unknown place, and that for many years she had wandered in search of it throughout the world-a virgin widow-tillly she chanced to fall into the hands of that Sarazin who led her perforce away, on her proud palfrey, the white lady meekly, "Upon a lowly ass more white than snow." Tears and floods of tears Duessa shed, and many sighs and sobs she fetched, and her bosom heaved high as it would burst its band of gold. Una had a dim wet eye for ruth and pity, but her "feelings did often lie too deep for tears;" when she wept it was as if she smiled-and at all times, whether grief or joy touched her heart, her breast was still. Duessa had words at will, flowing and flowery, and her speech was richest music; but Una's words were few and simple, she syllabled them sweetly as if she were somewhat sad, and her voice was soft and low, an excellent thing in woman.' Had the Red-Cross not been blind "with jealous feare" he would have seen on Duessa's approach, how "With faire disport, and courting dalliaunce, She entertainde her lover all the way;" and he would have remembered how Una used to ride by his side, looking up to his face with her holy eyes. She in scarlet declared that she was a virgin-she in white had no thought of "The fort which ladies hold in sove reigne dread," for she had come from Eden, where all are pure. The story told by Duessa, whom we have seen decked out as the scarlet whore in the Revelation, is made up of truth and falsehoodthe most dangerous kind of lie. It is true that she was an emperor's daughter, or rather the offspring of the Pope, and that she was betrothed to a mighty king, who was untimely slain. For Upton asks pertinently, "is not the allegory, that the Pope designed to make himself universal bishop over the Greek and Eastern churches, as he had already over the Western; but, before this could be completed, the Greek and Eastern Christians fell under the power and cruelties of the Saracens and the Turks?" The first incident after this that befalls-dim, ghastly and woefulinspires us with compassionate horror at the danger of the Red-Cross, infatuated by the enchantments of the hag. To screen themselves from the heat, they sit down below the shadows of two goodly trees, him not to tear "my tender sides in A piteous yelling voice beseeches this rough rynd embard," and then tells the tale of such rueful imprisonment the voice of one " once a Fradubio, who had lived always in man, Fradubio, now a tree." Poor doubt and wavering-his name signifying want of faith-had been the lover of Frælissa, a maiden, as her name imports, of weak and frail nature. Frælissa was beautiful; but Fradubio, having fallen under the same enchantment as the Red-Cross Knight, forsook her for Duessa, who, by her hellish science, had breathed a deforming mist over her face, making her loathsome to her lover, while she herself seemed to shine with celestial charms. "Eftsoones I thought her such as she me told, And would have kild her; but with faigned paine The false witch did my wrathfull hand withhold: So left her, where she now is turnd to treën mould." Fradubio then enjoyed Duessa, "Till on a day (that day is everie prime, When witches wont do penance for their I chaunst to see her in her proper hew, crime) Bathing her selfe in origane and thyme: A filthy foule old woman I did vew, That ever to have toucht her I did deadly rew." "Parce, precor; nostrum laniatur-in! arbore corpus; "" " in Ariosto, the ghost speaking from his treen mould to Ruggiero of the witchcraft of Alcina; in Tasso and Dante, instances of the same transformation, or imprisonment of flesh in wooden walls; and in Shakspeare what Prospero tells Ariel of his durance hard by the witch Sycorax. "Into a cloven pine, within whose reft Imprison'd, thou didst painfully remain A dozen year." But in Spenser the description is the finest of them all, and also the moral. It cannot be read without our being, like the knight himself, "Her seeming dead he fownd with who hears the voice, "full of sad feigned feare, There must be some profound cause in our being for the popular and romantic fiction of the imprisonment of human life within the bole and rind of a tree, with the suffer ings, and groans, and droppings of blood, when any of the branches are torn away. What else can it be than a dim, or rather vivid commentary on our sympathy with vegetable life! Old Homer never fells a fair spreading poplar by the side of a river, even in a simile, without much tenderness for the tree, as well as for the beautiful young man to whom it is likened; and Wordsworth bids us << touch gently, for there is a spirit in the leaves." Or is the fiction an embodied illustration of our own life in death-our notion of what we should feel when, yet retaining our consciousness, subjected to the indignities of the grave? "Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." We all remember the voice Virgil gives to poor Polydore; of Ovid the feare and ghastly dreriment." There is something shockingly witch-like in Duessa's non-avoidance of the two wretched trees, and in her bringing a new victim to hear the tale of their misery and of her own change every prime, into a foul, filthy, old Then woman's shape man would believe to bee."' swoon-but Una's lips he had never Her the Red-Cross kisses out of a thought of kissing; before that night of false wicked dreams it was heaven to him but to touch her hand! And where now is Una? As if his heart were overcome by the sorrows of the sainted being of his imagination, Spenser exclaims: "Nought is there under heav'ns wide hollownesse That moves more deare compassion of mind, Then beautie brought t'un worthie wretchednesse, Through Envie's snares, or Fortune's freaks unkind. I, whether lately through her brightness blynd, Or through alleageance and fast fealty, Which I do owe unto all womankynd, Feele my hart prest with so great agony When such I see, that all for pitty I could dy." The gentle Edmund! How we love him as we read these words! |