and the
intriguers of 1571. At another, she is the fierce Amazonian queen,
Radegund, by whom for a moment, even Arthegal is brought into
disgraceful thraldom, till Britomart, whom he has once fought against,
delivers him. And finally the fate of the typical Duessa is that of the
real Mary Queen of Scots described in great detail--a liberty in dealing
with great affairs of state for which James of Scotland actually desired
that he should be tried and punished.[128:2] So Philip II. is at one
time the Soldan, at another the Spanish monster Geryoneo, at another the
fosterer of Catholic intrigues in France and Ireland, Grantorto. But
real names are also introduced with scarcely any disguise: Guizor, and
Burbon, the Knight who throws away his shield, Henry IV., and his Lady
Flourdelis, the Lady Beige, and her seventeen sons: the Lady Irena, whom
Arthegal delivers. The overthrow of the Armada, the English war in the
Low Countries, the apostasy of Henry IV., the deliverance of Ireland
from the "great wrong" of Desmond's rebellion, the giant Grantorto,
form, under more or less transparent allegory, great part of the _Legend
of Justice_. Nay, Spenser's long fostered revenge on the lady who had
once scorned him, the _Rosalind_ of the _Shepherd's Calendar_, the
_Mirabella_ of the _Faery Queen_, and his own late and happy marriage in
Ireland, are also brought in to supply materials for the _Legend of
Courtesy_. So multifarious is the poem, full of all that he thought, or
observed, or felt; a receptacle, without much care to avoid repetition,
or to prune, correct, and condense, for all the abundance of his ideas,
as they welled forth in his mind day by day. It is really a collection
of separate tales and allegories, as much as the _Arabian Nights_, or,
as its counterpart and rival of our own century, the _Idylls of the
King_. As a whole it is confusing: but we need not treat it as a whole.
Its continued interest soon breaks down. But it is probably best that
Spenser gave his mind the vague freedom which suited it, and that he did
not make efforts to tie himself down to his pre-arranged but too
ambitious plan. We can hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to
lose. It is a wilderness in which we are left to wander. But there may
be interest and pleasure in a wilderness, if we are prepared for the
wandering.

Still, the complexity, or rather, the uncared-for and clumsy arrangement
of the poem is matter which disturbs a reader's