e Florimel, probably the fierce temptress, the Amazon
Radegund. Thus, what for a moment was clear and definite, fades like the
changing fringe of a dispersing cloud. The character which we identified
disappears in other scenes and adventures, where we lose sight of all
that identified it. A complete transformation destroys the likeness
which was begun. There is an intentional dislocation of the parts of the
story, when they might make it imprudently close in its reflection of
facts or resemblance in portraiture. A feature is shown, a manifest
allusion made, and then the poet starts off in other directions, to
confuse and perplex all attempts at interpretation, which might be too
particular and too certain. This was no doubt merely according to the
fashion of the time, and the habits of mind into which the poet had
grown. But there were often reasons for it, in an age so suspicious, and
so dangerous to those who meddled with high matters of state.

2. Another feature which is on the surface of the _Faery Queen_, and
which will displease a reader who has been trained to value what is
natural and genuine, is its affectation of the language and the customs
of life belonging to an age which is not its own. It is indeed redolent
of the present: but it is almost avowedly an imitation of what was
current in the days of Chaucer: of what were supposed to be the words,
and the social ideas and conditions, of the age of chivalry. He looked
back to the fashions and ideas of the Middle Ages, as Pindar sought his
materials in the legends and customs of the Homeric times, and created a
revival of the spirit of the age of the Heroes in an age of tyrants and
incipient democracies.[132:3] The age of chivalry, in Spenser's day far
distant, had yet left two survivals, one real, the other formal. The
real survival was the spirit of armed adventure, which was never
stronger or more stirring than in the gallants and discoverers of
Elizabeth's reign, the captains of the English companies in the Low
Countries, the audacious sailors who explored unknown oceans and
plundered the Spaniards, the scholars and gentlemen equally ready for
work on sea and land, like Ralegh and Sir Richard Grenville, of the
"Revenge." The formal survival was the fashion of keeping up the
trappings of knightly times, as we keep up Judge's wigs, court dresses,
and Lord Mayor's shows. In actual life it was seen in pageants and
ceremonies, in the yet lingering parade of joust