mes, for the most part easily understood, and
easily applied to real counterparts, the struggle which every one at
that time supposed to be going on, between absolute truth and
righteousness on one side, and fatal error and bottomless wickedness on
the other. Una, the Truth, the one and only Bride of man's spirit,
marked out by the tokens of humility and innocence, and by her power
over wild and untamed natures--the single Truth, in contrast to the
counterfeit Duessa, false religion, and its actual embodiment in the
false rival Queen of Scots--Truth, the object of passionate homage, real
with many, professed with all, which after the impostures and scandals
of the preceding age, had now become characteristic of that of
Elizabeth--Truth, its claims, its dangers, and its champions, are the
subject of the first book: and it is represented as leading the manhood
of England, in spite, not only of terrible conflict, but of defeat and
falls, through the discipline of repentance, to holiness and the
blessedness which comes with it. The Red Cross Knight, St. George of
England, whose name Georgos, the Ploughman, is dwelt upon, apparently to
suggest that from the commonalty, the "tall clownish young men," were
raised up the great champions of the Truth,--though sorely troubled by
the wiles of Duessa, by the craft of the arch-sorcerer, by the force and
pride of the great powers of the Apocalyptic Beast and Dragon, finally
overcomes them, and wins the deliverance of Una and her love.

The second book, _Of Temperance_, pursues the subject, and represents
the internal conquests of self-mastery, the conquests of a man over his
passions, his violence, his covetousness, his ambition, his despair, his
sensuality. Sir Guyon, after conquering many foes of goodness, is the
destroyer of the most perilous of them all, Acrasia, licentiousness, and
her ensnaring Bower of Bliss. But after this, the thread at once of
story and allegory, slender henceforth at the best, is neglected and
often entirely lost. The third book, the _Legend of Chastity_, is a
repetition of the ideas of the latter part of the second, with a
heroine, Britomart, in place of the Knight of the previous book, Sir
Guyon, and with a special glorification of the high-flown and romantic
sentiments about purity, which wore the poetic creed of the courtiers of
Elizabeth, in flagrant and sometimes in tragic contrast to their
practical conduct of life. The loose and ill-compacted nature